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mslane
Community Member

Message delay

I just recieved two messages from a client today. One has a timestamp from two days ago and the second is timestamped yesterday. I have checked the platform both on the app and on my desktop multiple time over the past few day and there were no signs of these messages. I've also been waiting to hear back from another client and am starting to wonder if there is a delay issue there as well.  Can someone look into why this has happened? All of my notification settings are turned on.

21 REPLIES 21
gilbert-phyllis
Community Member

That has happened to me before, in 2019 and again in 2020, and others have reported it, too. I'm flagging this post to get a moderator's attention so they will hopefully contact you for details and add it to the investigation. To my knowledge, they have not yet pinpointed the problem. Although it seems to happen infrequently, IMO It's one of the most serious malfunctions we can have here. I know it has cost me at least one project. (The first time it happened to me, the message was delayed by nearly two weeks. Client and I had been trying to schedule an interview call and she thought I ghosted her, and hired someone else.)

 

This happened to me today. A long-term client with whom I have a very positive experience so far wrote to me on May 25 asking for something related to an ongoig project we have, but the message never appeared in my Upwork inbox, so I didn´t respond. He wrote to me again today and also sought me out on LinkedIn to ask if everything was alright and if I was well! This is the first time it´s happened to me but it is quite concerning. Fortunately he is a very understanding and well-natured client so I hope he won´t be too upset about my tardiness in replying, but I can easily see how it could be a deal breaker for someone else. 

Hi Mary, Phyllis, and Gergana,

 

I'm sorry to hear about the delay in receiving notifications. I have reported this to our team so that they can look into this further. One of our agents will reach out and assist you directly via a support ticket.

~ Joanne
Upwork
geri_kol
Community Member

Hi Joanne,

 

Thank you for your response. I did receive a message from Upwork support, but as happens more often than not, the message is a boilerplate response that does not address the issue I described. The issue is that yesterday I received two messages from the same client in bulk - one dated May 25 and the other June 2. The first one was asking for some critical information, but since it never arrived in the message room inbox, I didn´t see and respond to it. I did see it when the second one arrived yesterday and the client emailed me separately on LinkedIn to see if I was ok, since I wasn´t responding. Obviously, since the message didn´t arrive until yesterday, I also didn´t get a notification for it (the little green box that shows up on top of the bell icon in the upper right hand corner as well as on top of the message itself). 

 

The communication I received from Upwork support was about how to set up or customize my e-mail and mobile notifications. But this was never my issue - the problem, as in both Phyllis and Mary Suzanne´s posts, was not receiving the messages in the first place.

Hi Gerdana and Mary,

 

Our support team and I are escalating your cases to our engineers for investigation. I believe I was able to identify the messages you're referring to. However, just to be sure we're checking the right messages, could you please reply to the agent's request for more information in your support tickets? Specifically, we'll need your confirmation of:

1. Name of clients.
2. Story IDs of the messages that you did not receive. To get the story IDs, go to Messages then go to the message. Click on the timestamp, and the address bar will show the Story ID. 

 

Thanks!

~ Valeria
Upwork

Hi Valeria,

 

Is there an update on the message delay issue? I have been in touch with Upwork support on three occasions since June 2, when I first noticed it (and it keeps reocurring), and they keep telling me they are still "working on it." Yet I keep not receiving notifications from one particular client with whom I am working on a major project, which is very time-sensitive. I have learned to proactively check the chat room I have with him, since obviously I cannot rely on Upwork to notify me when he sends a message, but in exchange for the fees we pay to the platform I would expect the engineering team to be a bit more responsive and actually fix problems such as this.

 

How long do you think it will take for Upwork to fix the problem with message notifications?

 

Thanks!

Gergana,

 

Sorry about the delay in providing an update. Our engineers have checked on the messages and confirmed that the notification is sent when the message is unread. However, when the message is registered as "read" - because the Message room was opened in a browser tab, desktop or mobile app - a notification about that message is not sent. From what we can see in the logs, the notifications for messages you're referring to weren't sent because those messages were read shortly after they were sent by the client.

~ Valeria
Upwork

Vsleria,

I understand what you are saying but this is not the case here and I explained this to Annelyn (the Upwork support person) who initially gave me the same explanation. There was an occasion when I did not see the client's messages for a week and another when I didn't see them for a couple of days, even though I had been checking my message room daily and seeing messages from other clients, The notifications for that client never arrived. I saw in the clients discussion forum that some clients arealso reporting the same problem with regard to seeing FLs' messages.


Gergana K wrote:

Hi Valeria,

 

Is there an update on the message delay issue? I have been in touch with Upwork support on three occasions since June 2, when I first noticed it (and it keeps reocurring), and they keep telling me they are still "working on it." Yet I keep not receiving notifications from one particular client with whom I am working on a major project, which is very time-sensitive. I have learned to proactively check the chat room I have with him, since obviously I cannot rely on Upwork to notify me when he sends a message, but in exchange for the fees we pay to the platform I would expect the engineering team to be a bit more responsive and actually fix problems such as this.

 

How long do you think it will take for Upwork to fix the problem with message notifications?

 

Thanks!


Gergana K wrote:
Vsleria,

I understand what you are saying but this is not the case here and I explained this to Annelyn (the Upwork support person) who initially gave me the same explanation. There was an occasion when I did not see the client's messages for a week and another when I didn't see them for a couple of days, even though I had been checking my message room daily and seeing messages from other clients, The notifications for that client never arrived. I saw in the clients discussion forum that some clients arealso reporting the same problem with regard to seeing FLs' messages.

'Notifications of messages' and 'messages' are two different things. As long as I've been on the platform, I've experienced occasional hiccups in receiving notifications of messages, that is, email from Upwork alerting me of new messages received. I live in hope the reliability of that feature will improve and meanwhile, easily work around it by checking my Messages page directly, as frequently as appropriate depending on what I have going on re. projects and interviews.

 

Delays or non-receipt of messages is an entirely different matter, one which cannot be worked around. IME it also happens very rarely but seemingly at random. THIS is the problem originally addressed in this thread and which I hope will be diagnosed and resolved sooner rather than later.

 

 

I had a prospective client message me through Upwork to start a new contract on Saturday morning. Except it didn't show up in my message center until today. I know this because I was communicating with another client in the message center throughout the weekend, PLUS, I never got any email notification about it (I have all email notifications turned on) nor did I get a push notification to EITHER of my smartphones, both which have Upwork on them. 

 

I have been in talks with this client for over a month, and they were finally ready to open a contract. I would never have seen this message because it was already marked as read. 

 

It's one thing to tell me to keep communications on platform pre-contract, it's another to NOT deliver messages regarding important, large contracts. I know this bug has been reported before. 

 

What gives? When will it be fixed? 

That's really awful.  I remember this problem being brought up before here, but obviously nothing was done to fix it. Is it specific to a particular browser? 


Robert Y wrote:

That's really awful.  I remember this problem being brought up before here, but obviously nothing was done to fix it. Is it specific to a particular browser? 


No, as I mentioned, I did not receive email notifications about it or push notifications to either my Android or iPhone. 

THIS. I had this same problem two months ago, which was happening with messages from one particular long-term client who has already spent more than $10K on our project and sometime his messages would arrived two weeks late, another time a few days late. I posted about it in the forum and also wrote to Upwork support several times, and was basically told the reason I had not received the notifications was because I had opened and read the message before the system had had a chance to generate the notification (!). This convoluted explanation came only after I insisted there was a problem with messages not arriving or arriving days late; the first explanation was that I had to adjust my notification settings (they all work fine with the rest of my clients and messages). Eventually I got an email saying the issue was too complex and Upwork couldn´t fix it, so they gave me some free Connects. 

Let me clarify, as I mispoke about the timeline. 

 

Friday I received a message from a client. This was received by me. 

 

A message was sent from another client on Saturday but not delivered until today. 

 

I did not open Upwork on Saturday or Sunday. I opened the message center next on Monday morning to look for something from the first client again, and the message from Saturday had not been delivered or it would have been on top. 

 

I messaged the first client TODAY, and that's when the Saturday message showed up on the top, as read. 

 

How can a message be marked as read if the message center has not even been opened? Why would that even be the case? That makes no sense, and is not the case at all. If I look at my job stream, it does not make messages in the message center magically marked as read. 

 

This message did not even show up until today. You are failing to acknowledge that the message was not delivered. You are saying it was delivered and marked read, and I didn't see it. I am telling you that is not the case. It was not delivered on Saturday. It was sent on Saturday but it certainly was not delivered on Saturday, because it wasn't delivered until today. 

And this is exactly why I communicate with clients through email only.


Mary W wrote:

And this is exactly why I communicate with clients through email only.


I did not have a contract with the 2nd client yet, the one whose message did not get delivered. So I could not communicate through email without violating TOS. 

 

But yes, this is also why I move communication to email so that I don't miss messages. 

Hi Amanda,

 

I escalated your comment to our engineers to check on the logs for the message as I'm pretty sure I was able to identify the message you're referring to. That message was registered as delivered and read by the account owner on Saturday. Messages can register as read when the message room is opened in a browser tab, desktop or mobile app when the message arrives. Also, currently by design, email and push notifications can only be send for unread messages. So if the message was opened in a browser tab and registered as read, a notification wouldn't have been sent. 

It is not a bug, it's how it currently works by design. However, we understand that this experience needs to be better. Our engineers are working on improving the system in general as well as on some updates that would give users more control over notifications. 

 

I am going to merge your post with a previous thread where similar issues were reported and I'll be sharing this feedback with the team as well as providing updates once they're available. 

~ Valeria
Upwork


Valeria K wrote:

Hi Amanda,

 

I escalated your comment to our engineers to check on the logs for the message as I'm pretty sure I was able to identify the message you're referring to. That message was registered as delivered and read by the account owner on Saturday. Messages can register as read when the message room is opened in a browser tab, desktop or mobile app when the message arrives. Also, currently by design, email and push notifications can only be send for unread messages. So if the message was open in a browser tab and registered as read, a notification wouldn't be sent. 

It is not a bug, it's how it currently works by design. However, we understand that this experience needs to be better. Our engineers are working on improving the system in general as well as on some updates that would give users more control over notifications. 

 

I am going to merge your post with a previous thread where similar issues were reported and I'll be sharing this feedback with the team as well as providing updates once they're available. 


I didn't have Upwork open on Saturday or on Sunday. It didn't show up as unread when I opened Upwork on Monday. 

 

How can it register as read if I'm not IN the message center and have opened it? I was not in the message center NOR did I open. You can say this is as designed but then it's designed to be faulty. 

Does this mean that, if you check the message thread with the client in question, you'll find the message, even if no notification of a new message showed up in your email or on your messages page? I'm trying to make sure I never miss a message this way.


Robert Y wrote:

Does this mean that, if you check the message thread with the client in question, you'll find the message, even if no notification of a new message showed up in your email or on your messages page? I'm trying to make sure I never miss a message this way.


Well, no, not exactly. Because when I checked messages on Monday it wasn't there. It showed up on Tuesday, already read, and showing it had been sent on Saturday. The problem isn't that they are being marked read. The problem is that they are not being delivered until many days afterwards, which Upwork seems to continually be denying even though many of us have reported such. 

The same thing happened to me a while ago and I allowed myself to be fobbed off with the standard 'you must have had messages open somewhere' excuse, even though I knew that wasn't the case. It felt like I was losing my mind! I lost a contract because of it and lost a fair bit of trust in the platform. At least now I know my mind is working as intended, even though the Upwork message system is not.

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