Penalties for clients who do not respond to the proposals

[alexbconsulting]

Most of us freelancers (Can you confirm that I'm right?) face the following problem: The vast majority of clients don't give 2 cents on the effort of us freelancers to send customized proposals tailored to the client's brief, not responding in any way.

Don't get me wrong, I completely agree and I can understand that not all clients have the time to respond to all proposals in a personalized way but I demand that at least there is a standard option for them to notify the freelancer of their decision, such as:
- The job is no longer available
- I am working with another freelancer
- I no longer need these services
- I have closed this job

And the list of reasons goes on.

Thus, the freelancer is notified and his proposal is automatically rejected or deleted.

It's absolutely wrong to have to waste a lot of time withdrawing a proposal for the reason: "Unresponsive Client".

You have to understand that Freelancers put a lot of effort, which translates into a waste of time, to create custom proposals to which nobody responds.

So I propose a way for non-responsive clients to be penalized one way or another. We, freelancers, waste a lot of time and buy UpWork credits to be able to send proposals that clients don't put a minimum of effort to review or at least reject if they think our proposal is not good enough for them.

Possibly, when such usually non-responsive client posts a new job, a badge similar to "Verified Payment", "Usually don't respond to proposals" should appear.

Again, I don't expect to be engaged with every proposal sent, but I do expect to receive a response, even a default/generic one, so that I don't accumulate dozens of proposals sent without a response, being forced to waste time again to give withdraw the proposal.

What do you think, Freelancers?

[yofazza]

I think there's more scamming freelancer than client (not talking about the blatant conning / criminal activity).

There's also an endless supply of expendable freelancers.

There's also this fact, "The money flows from Client, to Freelancer and Upwork", so to scare the clients is a bad idea for the other two.

[alexbconsulting]

Radia, I'm afraid you didn't understand anything I wrote above.

I didn't say that clients scam freelancers!

All I said is that we freelancers want to be appreciated for our time. I mean I spend maybe 30 minutes sending a custom proposal, tailored to the needs of the client brief. I want this effort to be at least acknowledged by rejecting the proposal if it does not meet the client's needs or expectations.

In other words, I want every client to respond to every proposal or simply reject it by pressing a button, so that the freelancer takes his mind off that project and focuses on something else, not just waiting for an answer that will never come. Get the idea now?

[yofazza]

Sorry I didn't mean it like that in that first part.

I'm saying that it's probably harder to become a client than a freelancer. They (client) also have "ideas" that could "scare" freelancers, which has more probabilty to be implemented by Upwork, because of the other two parts. 😁

The button or similar idea was mentioned here before (forcing client to "respond" to each proposal) but it doesn't get much popularity even among freelancers themselves.

[alexbconsulting]

To be honest, it's not just customers who pay for the platform's services. And we freelancers pay for the platform that way:
1. Project commission (which is up to 20%)
2. UpWork Plus subscriptions ($15/month)
3. Membership Credits / Connects

Thus, not only the client is entitled to rights, but also obligations. In the case of Freelancers, if we do not respond quickly, our rating is affected. In the case of clients, nothing happens.

[martina_plaschka · Accepted solution]

1. The option to decline with a reason selected from a drop-down menu is already available to clients. Most don't use it, and you can't force them to. 

2. You should not waste your time withdrawing proposals. It does nothing, except excluding you from consideration if a client comes back after a few months looking to hire another freelancer.

3. I understand your frustration. The best way to deal with this is send a proposal and forget about it. Don't check it, don't withdraw it, don't get angry at clients for not responding. This is a waste of time and energy. 

If you want to relieve your frustration by punishing clients by black-balling them, you are going in the wrong direction. Your solution to the problem is terrible. I don't want clients to get frustrated with being black-balled, and leave the platform in disgust. Which they would. 

[feed_my_eyes]

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Alexandru B wrote:

Possibly, when such usually non-responsive client posts a new job, a badge similar to "Verified Payment", "Usually don't respond to proposals" should appear.

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This information is already available. If you look to the right of the job post under "About the client". If they have a low hiring rate, then you can choose not to apply.

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Alexandru B wrote:

Again, I don't expect to be engaged with every proposal sent, but I do expect to receive a response, even a default/generic one, so that I don't accumulate dozens of proposals sent without a response, being forced to waste time again to give withdraw the proposal.

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Who is forcing you to do this? You don't get your connects back, so what's the point of withdrawing? You're choosing to waste your own time if you're checking your proposals like this. I send my proposals and don't give them another thought.

If I don't hear from a client, THAT'S how I know they're not interested in working with me. Why would I want them to send me an email saying that they're not interested, when it's already clear from their lack of a response? It would only waste my time having to open and read such emails. 

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Alexandru B wrote:

What do you think, Freelancers?

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I think that Upwork won't spend even one second considering your idea to punish clients, and I certainly wouldn't want them to. 

[cyber_sec007]

I totally agree; the analogy that comes to my mind is pursuing normal employment, you send your cv, apply let it be an agency or an employer directly, and you forget about it until you don't receive an invite for an interview. There is no point to chase an employer to send you the standard refusal email (you are not selected this time, but we will store your details in our DB...).

It is not efficient to wait and hope for communication, also it is generating stress, which is totally unnecessary. Of course, it would be polite, but 99.9999% of clients will not take the time to give the real reason why someone was not selected, and I really don't care. 

[martina_plaschka]

Occasionally I get a nice message from a client who declined my proposal. "We are going with somebody else this time yada yada yada" which I NEVER appreciate. (Dear prospective clients, your good manners, politeness and overall caring is highly appreciated!) No, seriously, I don't want to get those. Silence is a message I'm able to understand, and silence doesn't distract me from other things, silence is bliss. I don't want anybody to tell me why they didn't hire me. It does nothing for me. It's a complete waste of my time! (Dear client, if you ever wrote any such message to me, I'm not talking about you. Yours was thoughtful, kind, and highly appreciated.)