Is keeping offers in message okay?

[lazxxxy]

Hi everyone,

I am top-rated on Upwork with a 100% job success rate. These good badges and stats always come with fear and you always fight hard to keep them.

I usually ask clients to send me an offer after a conversation and understanding the requirements, but I do not accept the offer until I am 100% sure that I can do the job, and I keep the offer pending in my messages for a few days until my research is done.
My question is, can this affect my profile? One of my client's offers just got expired 😅 and I asked him to send the offer again. And I have some 6+ offers pending in my messages.

Please share your thoughts. Thanks in advance 🙂

[martina_plaschka]

You are overthinking this. How should an open offer have any negative effect?

Why are you not removing the bad feedback from your profile with the top rated removal perk? (And if you don't have it available at this time, never answer to a client's feedback, you just draw more attention to it. It takes up space on your profile that clients need to scroll through.)

[spectralua]

I do that too sometimes. The offer confirms that the client is ready to start. I take it when I'm sure of the result. Although there is a risk that the client will withdraw it.

[a4lfr32]

I did the same many times. But now, knowing that if you don't meet the requirements and the client would write a bad review while previously you would reject the offer, it is practically the same as giving a refund in the worst case, while having protection if you did it right.

If you are worried about getting a bad review because you are not sure if you are able to do the job, you could accept it, and if you failed, refund it all.

However, I have not tried this and I am not sure if it works like that. You might want to confirm it before.

[a4lfr32]

This is especially a concern in programming, as some things that appear to be so easy could be really hard, even impossible (maybe a tiny bug would crash all). Predicting the limitations improves with experience, but if it is a personalized requirement is hard to know.

Probably the best is to suit a predefined project for fixed contracts so that you are sure you would do it successfully. And let hourly contracts for those uncertain situations where your promise is to make the best and not a result. (Again, not sure how a refund would play a role here with bad reviews)

[spectralua]

With full refund you can get a bad feedback.

[martina_plaschka]

That is a bad strategy. Even if you refund all, the client can leave bad private feedback. Only accept jobs you KNOW you can do successfully. 

[sofia2008]

Why do you ask a client to send you an offer when you are not sure if you can do the job?

Usually, an offer means the client agrees to hire a freelancer and that the freelancer can do the job. If the freelancer cannot do the job, he should make the client to hire someone else. If some research has to be made, I think it has to be done before negotiating an offer.

[a4lfr32]

It has to do with impostor syndrome, which is pretty common in programming. It is because those kinds of jobs are hard to predict the results and limitations, each task could be unique and require some level of improvisation making it hard to predict. But he could perfectly be able to do something he is not sure about and finish them all at 100%.

[pudingstudio]

All/any personal stuff, whilst existing, doesn't influence accept/reject job offer. We do not accept jobs we do not know if we can deliver.

Impostor syndrome doesn't have place in professional work. It does exist. Self doubt exists. We don't jump into darkness, we know job scope before accepting.