How to get a Dormant Contract closed - Unresponsive Client

[Pandora H]

I bit the bullet and closed out 3 dormant contracts today. These were really old, from last year even. None of them responded to my messages about closing the contracts.

I took a couple of screenshots of my scores in My Stats, and I'll check back in a couple of weeks and compare numbers.

No way am I going to get feedback from these 3 closed contracts.

[Iftikhar I]

Pandora

Please post what ever happen.I was at 97% and try to think about closing some inactive contracts.I have send messages to the clients and the next day my JS drop to 94% i was thinking may be I disturb sleeping contracts and it drops but Valeria clear that its not because i touch the old contracts so keep an eye on your JS and let us know what happend so I can close some of mine as well for time being I just dont want to take a risk because I am afraid from the robot.

[Pandora H]

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@Iftikhar I wrote:

Pandora

Please post what ever happen.I was at 97% and try to think about closing some inactive contracts.I have send messages to the clients and the next day my JS drop to 94% i was thinking may be I disturb sleeping contracts and it drops but Valeria clear that its not because i touch the old contracts so keep an eye on your JS and let us know what happend so I can close some of mine as well for time being I just dont want to take a risk because I am afraid from the robot.

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I shall be reporting back, but obviously it won't be for 2-3 weeks. I not super anxious, as I have 3 current long term clients, doing well in the price-per/hour department, and currently have a decent score.

However, mostly I am worried about possible glitches that could throw all this out the window. Needless to say, we shall see.

[Setu M]

Oh, so I figure that now may be as good a time as ever to disclose this.

***Disclaimer - Paraphrasing so not a breach of guidelines.

You can only see a change in JS score once our department reviews your account if there is enough data. Your account is reviewed twice a month.

So this twice a month thing is not automatic? Someone has to go through each account?

Yes. If there is enough data. No activity = no review = no change in JS score.

To be clear, all of this is manual?

Yes. Each account is manually done.

So therefore there is no mad robot running around in Upwork's system. But rather "roboticized" employees laying down the law when you have done enough work to qualify. Some parts of the post may get deleted, so in plain terms, JS score change and account review twice per month is not timed by date but by quantity of work and also is a manual process done on each account individually, by employees, guided by a formula.

[Krisztina U]

Thanks for posting this Setu. While it surely would explain a lot, especially taking into account the calibre of some of the support reps, I don't believe this. I really don't. If this is true, this is an incredibly poor use of resources, and they'd be better served having those resources focus on CS and technical support instead. But again, I don't believe it. The thing with support is, that the answer tends to vary based on the person you are asking.

Edited to add: And just to clarify, I am not questioning you. I believe someone actually told you that. I just don't believe that they knew what they were talking about. At least I hope they weren't. 

[Setu M]

I get you clearly. Why I will have to watch it a bit more to see the facts. I have already uncovered many pronouncements made on Stats page that are false so anything is possible.

One thing to note is that the score for each freelancer updates on different dates (not community-wide) and not set times apart for even the same freelancer.

[Garnor M]

Hi Setu,

I think there may be some confusion in what was communicated by our agent. It would not be scalable for us to do a manual review for every change in Job Success for all freelancers. I'll follow up with the agent to clarify this. It could be the agent was confused and was referring to some of the manual checks and efforts we undertake when evaluating and responding to appeals for account status reviews, but I'll clarify. 

[Setu M]

As Krisztina also said, she does not think that could be true since it would be incredibly resource intensive. I will await your findings Garnor to see what can be clarified.

[John K]

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned I would close one or 2 contracts without feedback. The net result was, Job Success first dipped 1%, from 98% to 97% but today it's gone up to 99%, which is the highest it's ever been. So in my case, closing a contract or 2 had no negative impact. Nonetheless, I think it's something best done over long intervals. 

[Setu M]

That is really good John, moving up in life; or that should be moving up in Upwork

We appreciate the update on this matter.