Negative review

luissad · ‎09-10-2021

Two weeks ago a client sent me an interview. The job was easy for me and I agreed to do it. The job is to buy a few things on a website with a wallet of your own in a countdown time.

The first milestone was successfully completed. He asked me to buy a little over $ 1.5K worth of his stuff.

The second milestone was not achieved because the portfolio was out of funds at the time of purchase.

My client claims that he did not move the money from his account and that no one else had access to it.

I didn't move anything on your account either. I did not do it in the first milestone, much less in the second.

I noticed that my client hired two more clients who used the same wallets that they assigned me, so I suspect that one of them made a personal purchase or moved the money that had been assigned to him for my purchase.

All this inconvenience led my client to leave a negative comment on my profile even though the money for the second milestone was refunded.

I contacted Upwork and they tell me this:

By design, a contract that has earnings of less than $ 1 will not be visible on your profile. Please note that full refund jobs may be excluded from your profile history, but they are still an important factor in calculating your Success Score.

My question is this:

I refunded the second milestone to my client, but not the first, so their negative comment still shows up on my profile (I've earned more than $ 1 on that milestone). Now can I refund the first milestone (even though everything went fine) to at least remove that comment from my profile?

I have been an Upwork worker for a year and I have generated a little more than 5K dollars with 4 contracts and I am very worried that my profile has been affected by something that I had nothing to do with.

petra_r · ‎09-10-2021

Luis A wrote:
Now can I refund the first milestone (even though everything went fine) to at least remove that comment from my profile?

Yes, you can.

But I would be reluctant to do so. You did the work, so why refund? It's also not an insignificant amount of money. If it was $10 or $20, maybe...

luissad · ‎09-10-2021

You are absolutely right but I would rather do it than be negatively affected. I love working at Upwork and I don't want my account to have that negative image.

luissad · ‎09-10-2021

What do you recommend me to do in my case?

ashrafkhan81 · ‎09-10-2021

The real damage has been done, the rating from the client affected your JSS.

I am usually against refunding unless you were at fault. But in this case, the client has left a bad remark on your honesty, integrity. Regardless of what happened, other clients reading a remark like that will be not comfortable hiring you!

Freelancer profiles have an option to filter client feedback based on high, low ratings if someone filters by low rating that feedback is going to pop up!

If I were you, I'd refund in this specific case and get rid of that nasty feedback!

luissad · ‎09-10-2021

I will make a refund right now.

Can you tell me if when making the refund the client can in any way continue to affect me?

prestonhunter · ‎09-10-2021

re: "Can you tell me if when making the refund the client can in any way continue to affect me?"

If you issue a full refund, then it will be impossible for any mention of this job to remain in your public job history. No contract name. No written feedback. No score. Nothing.

The impact on JSS will remain.

That comes mainly from private feedback.

If you issue a full refund, it will be impossible for the client to dispute anything else. It will be impossible for the client to formally ask for any additional refund through the Upwork user interface.

So as a practical matter, the answer to your question is:

The client can NOT continue to affect you.

Theoretically, a client could be completely insane and TRY to contact Upwork Customer Support and tell them crazy things... for example he you could say you stole his dog or whatever... but it is unlikely that ANYTHING he does with Upwork would be able to impact you. Upwork's personnel follow specific procedures, and once a contract is closed and all the money refunded, that's pretty much it. The client has exhausted all options available through standard protocols.

ashrafkhan81 · ‎09-10-2021

Whether you issue the refund or not. He cannot cause any further harm, unless of course, you work with him again!

Whatever he could do, he has already done. Impacted your JSS and left bad feedback. By issuing the refund you will be able to undo the feedback part. Nothing can undo the JSS part.

jr-translation · ‎09-10-2021

Ashraf K wrote:
The real damage has been done, the rating from the client affected your JSS.

I am usually against refunding unless you were at fault. But in this case, the client has left a bad remark on your honesty, integrity. Regardless of what happened, other clients reading a remark like that will be not comfortable hiring you!

Freelancer profiles have an option to filter client feedback based on high, low ratings if someone filters by low rating that feedback is going to pop up!

If I were you, I'd refund in this specific case and get rid of that nasty feedback!

The contract ended last Tuesday AFTER the JSS update. One of the other two clients left a poor private feedback. I am wondering why there is a JSS with only two completed jobs.

mahmud_hasan_ag · ‎09-10-2021

In this case, I would refund (If I were you). The feedback is glinting on your profile. Everyone will consider the feedback before hiring.