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sevannahd
Community Member

My client **Edited** just insults at me, how to report his bad comment

I just feel so sad that I have finished my work 2 days before the deadline. He paid me the full amount. 

The next day, he asked me to do another work for him, and I give him my rate. He thinks it is too expensive and cut the price in half. I refused that I cannot do it. And stated clearly that I will offer the services at a certain amount. 

He insults me on Upwork and left a 1-star review saying that I am not a good communicator, kept on changing the terms and pricing, and deliverables. Would never hire me again. Don't waste your time.

 

I have completed the work successfully and he wants me to do another projects with an extremly low rate. I refused him so he gave me an extremly low rating. How would I REPORT him? 

 

I also saw a lot of comments "This feedback has been removed" under the client's recent history, I guess he is not the first time doing that. 

 

Been crying for an hour. Need help. Thanks!

ACCEPTED SOLUTION
nyonomega0
Community Member

I'm sorry for your experience.

 

That client was cheap & nasty. I've worked with such clients in the past. They left me an appallingly inappropriate and unreasonable comment for miscommunication.

 

You can report the client by flagging one of their (inappropriate) messages as inappropriate with prompt reasoning. However, chances are Upwork will not do anything about that client, because, as you know, they're an old client and have spent multi hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 

I would suggest you try to overlook this situation and focus on your current and future projects.

 

Good luck!

 

 

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50 REPLIES 50
yofazza
Community Member

This is the internets, just reply to it calmly & politely.

 

If you're a client looking at client vs freelancer argument, what makes YOU side with the freelancer? That's what you need to write.

Replying to feedback usually makes it worse. 

I didn't reply back to his comment.  He has poor reviews and a lot of Freelancers complained about him. 

deardipu
Community Member

To reply on a bad feedback is not good thing to do. Because it will draw more attention. 

martina_plaschka
Community Member

There is nothing to report. Upwork does not interfere with client feedback, no matter how unfair you think it is. 

But I have seen "This feedback has been removed" under the client's recent history. Any ideas? 

That is when you use the top-rated feedback removal perk. It completely eliminates the public feedback and the effects of private feedback. To use that perk, you must be a top-rated freelancer.

Thanks a lot! Really appreciate that!

You need to be a top rated freelancer to remove a feedback a client has left, so this is no option for you.

 

But it looks like the clients found a way to get feedback he has received removed, not the freelancers. Not sure how this works.

 

Why did you leave a 5* feedback if the client tried to get free work?

Thanks for your advice. Regarding why I gave him a 5star feedback:

I gave him a very bad feedback privately and said I would never want to work with him again, but on the public review, I was afraid of giving him a 1 star review for fear of revenge on his side, since he has my contact information. You can check my conversation record with him.

All in all, I think it is extremely unfair practice for the platform that: a client can negotiate price or for a favor for the next contract before ending the current one, essentially blackmailing me. If I don't lower my price for the 2nd contract, he then proceed to give me a bad review.

If you check our chat history, he accused me of being bad at English, when in fact, I deliver his work of translating the document from English to Traditional Chinese (Taiwanese) without issues, and he was satisfied with my work. So his bad review entirely comes from his issue with me not lowering my price for a future offer, not the quality of my work for the current job. And second, it's hard to fathom that he complains about my English capability while be satisfied with my translation work lol. From my perspective, it is his communication style that caused the issue because he tried to blackmail me into a lower price for the 2nd contract (half of the price actually). 

The people responding to you can't check your chat history, these are freelancers like yourself. 

Bad clients exist, your best strategy is to check their work history and never assume that you will have a better experience than the other freelancers before you. 

If upwork interfered with bad feedback, nobody would have it. This is between you and your client. 

Thank you so much for your advice!

You should have given honest public feedback also. Because other freelancers will decide to work with that client based on your public feedback. 

7862a11b
Community Member

Sorry for you. Just be a professional and simply go through. 

Sometimes this happens. 

Sure. Thanks for your advise. 

nyonomega0
Community Member

I'm sorry for your experience.

 

That client was cheap & nasty. I've worked with such clients in the past. They left me an appallingly inappropriate and unreasonable comment for miscommunication.

 

You can report the client by flagging one of their (inappropriate) messages as inappropriate with prompt reasoning. However, chances are Upwork will not do anything about that client, because, as you know, they're an old client and have spent multi hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 

I would suggest you try to overlook this situation and focus on your current and future projects.

 

Good luck!

 

 

Thanks!

roberty1y
Community Member

It does seem unfair, but there is no better system that I can think of. If Upwork could intervene in these matters, they'd be swamped with complaints about unsatisfactory feedback. This client's history is a bit deceptive. He has an overall rating of 4.7 on over 200 reviews. However, he has removed quite a bit of feedback from freelancers. I didn't know that was possible. 

Maybe they're not removed by the client but moderated (because of nasty writings).

 

If the client insults at people then most likely he'll get them back at the review, which is a wrong move.

If that is the case, then they should leave the number of stars but remove the offensive language with a comment that it vilolates guidelines, just like they do here when a freelancers says something obscene or that violates the ToS.

I didn't know they could do that either. Why didn't we know it? Seems very unfair to freelancers not to be able to see all of that feedback when trying to decidee on whether to work with them or not.

Thanks. All Upwork freelancers should be aware of this. That client is so good at playing around with the system.  Very unfriendly to new users. If this thing happens a lot, Upwork loses money eventually. 

I was shocked to learn clients are allowed to remove feedback for 14 days after a freelancer uses their perk to remove the bad feedback they'd left.  

 

I discovered that awhile ago after a client tried to blackmail me and I used the perk to remove their feedback.  

 

Yes, it's nuts because then there's no way for other freelancers to get warned about a specific client. 

 

 

 

 

Exactly.  Blackmail is quite common on Upwork. They should create a new flag on it: This client blackmailed me. 

Simple solution. If a client gets 10 such feedback, maybe Upwork should suspend his account. 


Lisa B wrote:

I was shocked to learn clients are allowed to remove feedback for 14 days after a freelancer uses their perk to remove the bad feedback they'd left.  

 


That's not even what happened here, though; you can see that the client left good feedback to the freelancers, but had their feedback to him removed. It's hard to believe that so many different top-rated freelancers left this client feedback that violated the ToS (which should be the only other reason for removal).

That's bizarre - I counted 11 "this feedback has been removed" for this client, and that's without even continuing to scroll through their first 45 jobs. It would be nice to get a response from Upwork as to how a client would be allowed to remove this many reviews. But this just goes to show that freelancers need to look at a client's past reviews before agreeing to work with them; a large amount of "feedback removed" is just as much of a red flag as bad reviews, if not more so. 

Cannot agree more. 

58feaef8
Community Member

Disheartening and somewhat malicious. I am so sorry you have to go through this. I actually remember this specific job post and decided to pass after reading the description (for some reason, it made me feel uncomfortable). I am grateful that you decided to share your experience with us. And I hope you feel better. Afterall, "Grit is having the courage to push through, no matter what the obstacles are, because it's worth it.” 💪

So lucky for you! I should have listened to my gut feeling as well. Lessoned learned. 

 

Thank you so much for your encouragement!!!

I experienced something very similar last night and I actually thought of you and the struggle you went through! So thank you for sharing with us. If I haven't read your post,  I don't think I would withdraw the proposal and block that client.

 

Please do not let his review stop you from working hard and diligently. Be confident! Even the best-selling products online have many horrible reviews, but customers are still buying them because most people trust their own fair judgement.The clients who deserve your service will also see your light and brilliance. 💖

 

Wishing you all the best, dear Lingzi. Thank you for being here!😊

Thank you for all your encouragement and I am glad you have avoided horrible clients. 

 

Wish you all the best!

Yeah, too bad you had to deal with theis client, Lingzi. As others have said, it kind of comes with the territory of freelancing - live and learn.

 

For me the more important point is what others have pointed out - that clients can remove feedback. I too didn't know this and agree with Christine that Upwork mods should address this. 

Thank you for your encouragement! Live and learn. Cannot agree more with you. 

Hope my experience can let Upwork be aware of these kinds of issues. Otherwise, bad for them. 

kochubei_valeria
Community Member

Hi Lingzi and others,

 

In general, feedback represents a client's or freelancer's experience or opinion and cannot be disputed in most cases. We share more information about how feedback system works and in which cases it can be disputed or removed here.
Additionally feedback may be removed from the client's work history upon their request if their feedback for the same contract was removed by the freelancer using their Top Rated perk. 
This has also been discussed on this thread before. 

~ Valeria
Upwork

Dear Valeria, 

 

Do you know where I can submit my suggestions to Upwork? 

 

I highly suggest Upwork should create a new flag on each post: This client blackmailed me.  

The flag: "the client asked for free work" may not be that serious. 

 

You can make the rules, such as If a client gets 10 such feedback, maybe Upwork should suspend his account. 

 

 

Thanks!!

 

Hi Valeria,

I'm curious about why a client who have been able to have feedback removed 10 times. That seems like a lot of removed comments. Didn't that raise any red flags?

 

sparkesusan
Community Member

I had one a while back like this. Complained about a (and yes, one!) mistake. And that mistake didn't exist. He even showed me a screenshot and again, nothing wrong. Not my fault, he didn't know his English well enough to trust the freelancer he'd hired. He gave me a one-star rating and that's what he got too. You can have the feedback removed, but it will still affect your jss, unfortunately. I was not happy to hear that! But know you know. 

 

Thank you for sharing the experience. I guess no freelancers want to take his offer anymore. Well done! 

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