A couple of days ago a client treated me very badly. Initially, I thought it wouldn't affect me too much. But during the last couple of days, I have been thinking about this incident all the time. I'm having trouble sleeping. I think this is happening because my subconscious mind is going through an insecurity complex. I am not sure how if there's any better way to deal with such issues if it happens again in the future. And that's why I'm feeling insecure and I can't concentrate on my work now.
Let me tell you about the incident in brief. (I exchanged all messages with this client via Upwork. So Upwork support agents are free to check my profile to verify the authenticity of my statements.) A client was having an HTTP error 500 on his website. The issue was pretty complex and was happening in an irregular manner. He was working with a web developer. Maybe he couldn't fix it. The client blamed him in an inappropriate manner during the chat. But even then I didn't suspect what's going to happen to me next. Since it's a troubleshooting issue I wasn't exactly sure how much time I would need to fix this. But he was insisting about the timeframe and I said 5-6 approx. Since he was so sensitive about hours, I gave him a fixed price estimate as well. My proposed rate was $150 but he told me that he can restart his server in minutes and fix this problem. So he decided not to hire me. I said good luck to him and politely ended the conversion.
But later he came back and told me that he would give me $125. I agreed to do the job for him as I already spent some time reviewing his server setup.
Since I already checked his server setup and also I would say luck favored me I could solve the HTTP error in 3 hours time. Additionally, he thought his site would be super slow again. So he demanded I need to do the speed optimization within this budget, I refused to do this within this budget initially and he agreed as well. But since I could able to fix the HTTP error faster than I anticipated, I spent some time making his site load faster. He checked everything and confirmed that all problems were solved.
And then all of a sudden he started to abuse me very badly. He called me garbage, snake, and *other obscene words. He felt that my charge was high. He felt I extorted money from him. Now as a freelancer I will be honest with you guys. Yes, I do freelancing so that I can earn money. I spent thousands of hours over the last few years developing my skill set. He couldn't find anyone else who could solve the problem for less. So he came to me and accepted his offer on the terms he set for me ($125) even though my proposed rate was higher than that.
He gave me 1-star feedback obviously. I was thinking I would simply refund him so that the negative feedback doesn't appear in my profile. But later I realized it could be a trap. Maybe he is just trying to misuse the feedback system here. He might be using the bad feedback to create pressure on me so that I refund. I am thinking like this because he mentioned about one-star feedback in one of his comments.
As I previously said I thought I could move on. That's why I didn't contact Upwork immediately. But now I feel really insecure. The more I think about this client the more I feel that he just insulted my work, my freelancing lifestyle. And I believe anyone who sells services to earn livelihood will feel discouraged after hearing about this incident.
I strongly believe the client is misusing the feedback system here. He gave me 1-star in all departments but in his feedback comment, he mentioned that I know what I am doing and I solved all of the issues. Now if I could solve everything... how do I deserve 1-star in skills and quality departments? This is one of the reasons I am posting here: Can Upwork team investigate the matter for me?
Another reason is: I really need some mental support from the freelance community. Please, guys, say something to boost my self-confidence. I'm feeling down. I'm not sure if my ethnicity acted like a catalyst here. I simply don't get why someone would use such strong abusive words to another human being. Just to save a few dollars?
