I worked 85 hours for a unresponsive client and now he is demanding the full refund.

Salman S · Apr 5, 2019 12:21:50 PM

I have placed a proposal for the job "INSTAGRAM AD FOR NATURAL ORGANIC SKINCARE" on January 10, 2019. He had sent an hourly contract on January 15, 2019, after the discussion. I accepted the offer and started working on the job. Then he disappeared the whole season. All of a sudden he came back, ended the contract and left feedback with a full of lies. From then he had been continuously lying and blaming me. He is demanding the total money back. Now I want to consult with the community about what should I do?

Melanie H · Apr 5, 2019 12:33:32 PM

It doesn't seem like this client has a bad history overall. He tends to give good reviews. It sounds to me like either a) there's more to this situation or b) he completely misunderstood that he had started the contract and now thinks he is somehow being scammed.

I don't know of ANY way for a freelancer to log hours if a contract isn't started so any client reading that review will likely realize it is the client who misunderstood the situation. A freelancer can't just decide to log hours on a random contract without the contract being awarded to the freelancer and started. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, it's a situation I've never encountered personally.

Petra R · Apr 5, 2019 12:33:34 PM

Salman S wrote:
He is demanding the total money back. Now I want to consult with the community about what should I do?

Were your hours tracked using the Upwork tracker and with meaningful memos and adequate activity etc?

85 hours for an Instagram advert sounds a bit excessive....

Salman S · Apr 5, 2019 12:36:20 PM

The manual hours was not permitted. The total hours was logged by the tracker. And the complete work has been delivered!

Petra R · Apr 5, 2019 12:39:31 PM

Salman S wrote:
The manual hours was not permitted. The total hours was logged by the tracker. And the complete work has been delivered!

meaningful memos? Activity? 85 hours spent on one advert?

Salman S · Apr 5, 2019 01:41:51 PM

I have created almost 170 contents.

Tonya P · Apr 5, 2019 01:24:07 PM

Salman S wrote:
The manual hours was not permitted. The total hours was logged by the tracker. And the complete work has been delivered!

If you respond to the negative feedback you should indicate that the hours were logged using the time tracker and billed weekly. Thus, someone representing the client and using the client's Upwork account did authorize the contract.

Amanda F · Apr 5, 2019 02:52:48 PM

But did the client communicate to you that he wanted you to make 170 ads? The original post seemed to not be pural but rather looking for 1. Did they communicate that they needed more and if they did, with something like 170 ads I'd be checking with them to see if 2-3 are good first before continuing.

That's what would be important here because if they didn't communicate and it was me I'd wait until they get back to continue work. I'd send a message every so often to check in and see if there is any work they need or just leave a message kindly wondering about the contract.

At the same time, the client had the chance to review the hours so did he just keep approving and releasing payments? If so, it is their fault for not expressing to you that they disliked the work.

Melanie H · Apr 5, 2019 02:56:35 PM

Amanda F wrote:
But did the client communicate to you that he wanted you to make 170 ads? That's what would be important here because if they didn't communicate and it was me I'd wait until they get back to continue work. I'd send a message every so often to check in and see if there is any work they need or just leave a message kindly wondering about the contract.

Personally, so would I...but it was on the client to make sure he didn't hit a button to get work started without realizing what he was doing (I guess...?), then forget all about it, then not dispute hours which he was surely advised were done for a given week. I agree that it's a bad idea to move forward when there are crickets from the client if there was no CLEAR outline of exactly what to do, at X hours per week (and it sounds like there wasn't), but that's not the feedback Salman wants changed. What he wants changed is the weird feedback indicating that the project was somehow never assigned and the hint that Salman somehow has cracked the system and managed to illegally log hours or something.

Amanda F · Apr 5, 2019 02:59:54 PM

Yeah it does definitely seem weird the way the client left that message. But something has to be going on there. It almost seems like they liked the work up until a certain point and then got mad and regreted getting it all. They did have to approve the hours afterall. I personally still would want to check with the client and make sure they approve so many before continuing to do 170 if it was the case that this didn't happen. If the client kept approving though and suddently got angry and made up this whole story about not hiring in the first place, well that is different.