Notify Clients About Philippine Typhoon

[Michael B]

I just would like to make sure Odesk notifies clients that there has been a typhoon and there is a power blackout. Im squeezing the life out of my laptop here, I don't know when power will be restored. FYI, almost every place in Cavite, if not all, suffers from the blackout. And I'm sure some areas in Metro Manila too.

[Garnor M]

Thanks for posting Michael. Our thoughts go out to all those affected by the typhoon. We have many wonderful colleagues in these areas and we are hopeful this storm will pass quickly. We'll continue monitoring this and responding to clients/freelancers who may have issues connecting with one another.

[Aleah T]

Hi Garnor What happened to the automatic notification that oDesk did before? You used to send notice to clients of Philippine freelancers whenever there's a storm coming, informing them that the storm would most likely affect our productivity. I thought you would do it this time around; after all, you've done it for years. I even reminded CS Support Delfin about it an hour or two before the power went out. Two days after the typhoon, when the electricity was restored in our area, I learned from all my clients that none of them has received such a notice. I assume then that you discontinued this practice? I really don't understand oDesk. You keep on implementing new things that we don't care about and removing features that are helpful to us.

[Nicole H]

It's not like oDesk informed our clients that our internet was cut off completely here in Egypt by the government back in 2011 without warning for days. My feedback suffered as a result of my lack of responsiveness when I had no way to respond then. In the case of a typhoon, you have some advance warning at least, so you can contact your clients yourselves and give them a heads up that you might be affected! We have near daily power outages here and one piece of software I use for my work only can be installed on one computer with limited battery time so I always let my clients know about the possibility that it might affect my work in advance.

[Aleah T]

oDesk did start doing it a couple of years ago without us asking for it, and our clients appreciated it. Now, it seems they've stopped doing so.

[Nicole H]

but did the clients appreciate it because the freelancers were too irresponsible to not do it themselves? A typhoon is not like an earthquake. You usually have several days warning that it is coming and could inform your client yourself. I had a fellow freelancer I used to work with who lived somewhere that there were tornadoes and when a tornado warning was issued (meaning a tornado could come in a few minutes) she would always take a few seconds to let us know she was headed down to her basement to wait for the threat to pass.