Not responsive clients

duskoavramovski · ‎10-30-2018

I have issues with unneresponsive clients.

One of them was highly communicative in the first phase of couple of days and then completely went dark. Wont even reply. Have no idea what the thing is but i am afraid the job is left open for longer period of time and UpWork sees that as failure. WHICH IS BAD! How can i protect from such stuff?

I have another one, who hired me, gave me some work then went as well dark. I try to contact him he is not resposnding. Although we all shared skype and what not, they are ... not responding.

I asked this second one, to pause the contract but ... no response.

Two clients with open contracts, without any work for (first 3 weeks not responding) second contract (without work for almost a month and responds like its on a quizz)

How to protect myself ???

petra_r · ‎10-30-2018

@Dusko A wrote:
I have issues with unneresponsive clients.

How to protect myself ???

Make sure you are hired, make sure you are paid, make sure you stop panicking.

Contracts with earnings (!!!!) do not affect you whether the client goes quiet or not unless you have a significant percentage of such contracts.

duskoavramovski · ‎10-30-2018

I am not panicking. Last time around on the subject i was told "contracts that were open longer period of time without work are markes as bad or failed and JSS goes down"

So its pretty normal that i dont want that to repeat, because of unneresponsive clients

tlbp · ‎10-30-2018

Close the contracts

duskoavramovski · ‎11-01-2018

I can't. No such option. That is why i am asking.

petra_r · ‎11-01-2018

@Dusko A wrote:
I am not panicking. Last time around on the subject i was told "contracts that were open longer period of time without work are markes as bad or failed and JSS goes down"

So its pretty normal that i dont want that to repeat, because of unneresponsive clients

No. no matter how often this is repeated, it doesn't get any more true.

Provided (!) money has at some point (ever) been paid and you don't have a significant percentage of such contracts, idle contracts have no impact on your JSS at all. Nor have contracts which were closed without feedback (identical provisos)

Close them, just not all at once but one at a time. But they are neither hurting nor benefitting you.

Contracts with nothing (ever) paid hurt your JSS eventually when idle, but they also hurt when closed without or with poor feedback so it doesn't matter.

And every contract has an "end contract" function.

Go to My Jobs > All Contracts

Find the contract and click on it

click on the 3 dots and select to end the contract

rabia7 · ‎11-01-2018

This is a very common issue, seems like everyone is experiencing with it these days. This has been happening with me lately. And I don't agree ending an idle contract doesn't affect your overall JSS. My JSS dropped from a 90+ to 84% just under one month. There is no obvious explanation for that, as I only ended a couple of idle contracts.

petra_r · ‎11-01-2018

@Rabia A wrote:
My JSS dropped from a 90+ to 84% just under one month. There is no obvious explanation for that, as I only ended a couple of idle contracts.

You don't get to agree or disagree with facts. Facts are facts.

When you say "no obvious explanation" - have you looked at your feedback in October?

Take a look at your private feedback percentage, which only includes clients who actually gave private feedback.

What is your "Clients who would recommend" (Private feedback) percentage? Anything under about 70% is very, very poor...

rabia7 · ‎11-01-2018

How about if that private feedback is only given by a single client?
I ended a long term contract in September with a client I worked consistently for 2 years and then it was on pause for quite a long time. She gave me a 5 star rating and so did I. But my JSS didn't go up and only went down.
After that I've only been getting smaller projects.
I was away from Upwork for a year before returning in July this year. And sorry the quality of work and client professionalism has only gone down. And I have worked here for 7 years plus. Unfortunately only the upwork service fee has gone up!

tlbp · ‎11-01-2018

Feedback older than 24 months doesn't count toward your JSS.

rabia7 · ‎11-01-2018

That feedback was given in september this year not 24 months ago. That's why I'm bringing it to attention as its recent.
And if private feedback is the deciding merit behind JSS that seems to be quite a dodgy practice anyway. Why would someone leaving you with a good public feedback give bad feedback in private?

sergio-soria · ‎11-01-2018

@Petra R wrote:
You don't get to agree or disagree with facts. Facts are facts.

Hey Petra, I understand the facts. However, idle contracts even those who were paid DO affect the JSS "a little" when there is a significant percentage of such contracts. Even moderators have said so themselves. The problem is that no-one knows for sure what is "a little" or "a significant percentage." Obviously if someone has 20 idle contracts out of 22 the JSS will be affected, but in other cases it's not that obvious and that is where people start worrying. I do agree that private feedback has more impact.

@Dusko A wrote:
How to protect myself ???

Ways to protect from this?

1) Before accepting a contract make sure you have everything you need (brief, samples, materials, project guidelines) to work and deliver, so in case the client goes MIA you still can submit something and get paid.

2) Check the client's history carefully before accepting a job. If the history shows that most of the freelancers working for his/her in the past received a "no feedback given" it's clear that it's a client who doesn't close contracts.

3) If a client is new it may happen that he/she doesn't know much on how to use Upwork UI so maybe they think that approving the milestones are enough. It's not bad to explain the steps to them.

4) There are clients that leave a job open "just in case" they have more work for you in the future. You can explain they can close the contract and hire you later very easily opening a new one.

5) Some clients are just very busy, they care about their business and it makes sense, so just give them time. The first time a client left me wondering I got crazy because it was my 3rd or 4rd contract so I knew it was gonna hurt me. The guy responded me after 1 month but he did!

petra_r · ‎11-04-2018

@Sergio S wrote:
@Petra R wrote:
You don't get to agree or disagree with facts. Facts are facts.
Hey Petra, I understand the facts. However, idle contracts even those who were paid DO affect the JSS "a little" when there is a significant percentage of such contracts.

That is what I said. The OP very clearly does not have "a significant percentage" of such contracts so the point is moot. And if he had, then closing them wouldn't help anyway because they would still fall into the "no feedback or long term idle" thing.

There are people with over a third idle contracts and 100% JSS.