My client has hired me, and 10 minutes later he wants to cancel our project

[mutual-success]

Hello,

My client is a middleman. I wish I had known that before.

He has hired me, and then he wants to cancel our mutual project 20 minutes later.

He allegedly says that his end client is not interested in it anymore.

It is too grim.

Whatever I do, I am going to be between a rock and a hard place.

If I return the money, my JSS will drop down.

If I insist on completing it, my JSS will drop down

He hired me, not his end client.

My JSS is 91% at the moment.

And you know how difficult it is to find any new client in the Summer if your JSS is 80%.

I am trapped.

The only thing I want is to keep my JSS intact. 

Please, I NEED YOUR HELP!

[petra_r]

I had that a couple of weeks ago. I explained it to the client, he gave me a $ 2 bonus and everyone (including JSS) was happy.

It wasn't the client's fault as such, he lost his funding for the project.

[florydev]

Petra,

I have never had this happen (on Upwork) but I don't really understand what happened with you and I would like to if (really when) it happens:

So you refunded the money on the project but they then gave you a $2.00 bonus and that didn't effect your JSS.  Is that correct?

Thanks,

Mark

[petra_r]

---

Mark F wrote:

Petra,

I have never had this happen (on Upwork) but I don't really understand what happened with you and I would like to if (really when) it happens:

So you refunded the money on the project but they then gave you a $2.00 bonus and that didn't effect your JSS.  Is that correct?

---

The job was an hourly job to spend an hour on the phone and screensharing with the client to develop something to do with my area of expertise. The client lost his funding just before we were supposed to talk and I didn't want it to turn into a $ 0 earned contract, so the client paid me a $ 2 bonus, which rendered the contract harmless as far as the JSS is concerned. The downside is a silly $ 2 contract on my profile but that isn't the end of the world either.

[prestonhunter]

A client does NOT need to give freelancers a $2.00 bonus in order to ensure they don't have a JSS-harmful zero-pay contract.

But a conscientious client who understands things from a freelancer's point of view will do this, and a freelancer will be grateful for it.

Getting paid something with positive feedback for doing absolutely no work: That's a win for the freelancer.

As for ME PERSONALLY AS a FREELANCER:

If speaking of HOURLY CONTRACTS, then the kind of thing that the original poster describes won't cause a problem for me, because if I accept an hourly contract, I immediately do at least 10 minutes of work on the contract.

If this is a FIXED-PRICE CONTRACT, then I would explain to the client that I am willing to immediately agree to giving him a complete refend, except for $2.00, and I would explain why.

(It appears that is what Petra did. She just talked to the client, explained the ramifications of a zero-pay contract, and he was a reasonable person who did the right thing.)

[petra_r]

---

Preston H wrote:

As for ME PERSONALLY AS a FREELANCER:

This kind of thing won't happen to me, because if I accept an hourly contract, I immediately do at least 10 minutes of work on the contract.

---

That isn't always possible or practical.

I wouldn't change my day just so I can jump into desperate time-logging the second I accept a contract.

This was the first time in 240 contracts that something like that happened to me, so I don't feel the need to "immediately" log 10 minutes just to avoid a nothing paid contract. If the client had not gone for the $ 2.00 I'd just have used my top rated perk to remove the impact, if any.

[florydev]

Thank you

[prestonhunter]

re: "If I return the money, my JSS will drop down."

If by this you mean:

"This is an hourly contract, and I already logged time, thus earning a small amount of money..."

You don't need to return the money. Has the client even ASKED you to return the money? If there is a tiny amount of money charged to the contract already, and the client isn't asking you to return that money, then don't worry about it. You did some work. The client will be charged a tiny bit. Your client is the one who is embarrassed about this. He knows you did nothing wrong. There is no reason to assume he would give you bad feedback.

If you mean:

"This is a fixed-price contract, and there is a certain amount of money in escrow already."

...Then the right thing for you to do is to refund the money, because you didn't do the work. But I would do what Petra did, which is to explain to the client that a zero-pay contract can be harmful to you, and ask if can release just $2.00 to you. Most any logical person, if faced with the choice of paying $2 or paying $200, will quickly choose to pay $2.