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myriadvision
Community Member

Private Feedback Affecting JSS?

So I have been using Upwork for about a full year now, and I am extremely pleased with the outcome that I have yeilded thus far. We have connected with some amazing people, and Upwork has really helped to launch my company off the ground. Netting more than $10k who wouldn't complain?


I was so successful on Upwork that I held a Top-Rated status for months, being the top search result when looking for 3D visualizations of architectural projects was amazing. Receiving invites to jobs left and right was fantastic, I had to turn people away due to the largess amount of work coming in. Life was grand! Well, when you are at the top, falling down is a long way down, and that is exactly what happened...

 

We were invited to work with a client on a fairly large project a few months back, large budget, large expectations, but nothing I couldn't handle; if anything, I was eager to get started right away! We began working with this client with ease, sending draft renderings of the site, buildings, amenities etc. The client was excited and everything was going smoothly. We started dedicating more time into the project to ensure its success, and ultimately we achieved what we had set out to do. 

 

*Note* We send our clients similar work we have completed over the years so they know the quality of work they recieve.

 

The client began requesting some very outlandish requests with the renderings, something that would fall outside of our expertise. We informed them of this and they began to get very upset. We continued to work with them to create a large marketing video for their upcoming website. We also worked with them to create their website. When we delivered the final product the quality was stunning, we had receieved multiple compliments from our colleagues, and actually received comissions based off of this work. Well, the client was not satisfied with our work, and they have that right to be upset with it.

 

We remained professional with the client, but reminded them that we needed to be paid for our services, and this sparked a war! We ended up going through the dispute process, and we ultimately were paid in the end, but the client had left us two 1 out of 5 star reviews. This hurt our score, a lot...

 

Well we went from a 100% JSS to an 82% and that changed everything, no more invites, tough to get recognized, ya know...Anyways, we perservered!

 

A few weeks went by and we reached out to the client and asked them to revise their very unfair feedback, and they happily did. They changed their scores from a 1 out of 5 to a 4.5 out of 5, and I was excited because we were going to get our reputation back.

 

Well, the day came when our JSS would be revised, and our score didn't change...I reached out to Upwork only to find out that the client can leave both Public, and Private feedback? And they are only able to revise their Public feedback... the private stays forever. I have tried to fight this multiple times, but I guess bad things happen to good people?

 

The client changed their feedback and recognized that they were unfair with their review, shouldn't this be enough for Upwork to take that off of our page?

 

I am not sure what else to do, the only answer we are getting is that we need to "work harder and get more jobs." But with such a low score, we are feeling the stress of this. Any ideas from anyone? Anyone else suffer the same fate?

 

Thanks all!

ACCEPTED SOLUTION
a_lipsey
Community Member

Unfortunately that's how it goes. They can leave private feedback, and you have to manage client relationships well enough to ensure that they do leave good private feedback. There is not much you can do except tighten up your proposals to  be better than the rest and make sure you continue to provide stellar work. You're at 84% JSS right now, and provided you can write stellar proposals and show the high quality of your work, you should still be able to land some jobs and improve your JSS. I dropped to 82% myself at one point and was still getting invites  - it's not all just about your JSS. It's about how good your profile is and how well you construct your proposals.  

 

Yeah, it sucks that one client can tank your score, but that's why it's important to manage these relationships. You just have to push through for a bit, maybe take some smaller jobs to help work back up to above 90%. Anything 90 or above is fine. Honestly you can still do quite a bit in the 80s. JSS is not the determining factor everyone thinks it is. Sure, it's in play, but it's not the only reason people get hired. 

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22 REPLIES 22
a_lipsey
Community Member

Unfortunately that's how it goes. They can leave private feedback, and you have to manage client relationships well enough to ensure that they do leave good private feedback. There is not much you can do except tighten up your proposals to  be better than the rest and make sure you continue to provide stellar work. You're at 84% JSS right now, and provided you can write stellar proposals and show the high quality of your work, you should still be able to land some jobs and improve your JSS. I dropped to 82% myself at one point and was still getting invites  - it's not all just about your JSS. It's about how good your profile is and how well you construct your proposals.  

 

Yeah, it sucks that one client can tank your score, but that's why it's important to manage these relationships. You just have to push through for a bit, maybe take some smaller jobs to help work back up to above 90%. Anything 90 or above is fine. Honestly you can still do quite a bit in the 80s. JSS is not the determining factor everyone thinks it is. Sure, it's in play, but it's not the only reason people get hired. 

Thanks Amanda, words of wisdom! You are right, we do still recieve invites, just not as much as I would like haha! I was ready to take things to the next level, but you have to work hard to play hard.

 

Thank you, it's nice to know that someone else has experienced this as well. Time to push through!

Amanda,

 

What if you believe the client lied in the private feedback.  I have a client whom I made a recommendation on how to speed up their website.  Then two weeks went by with nothing.  I use ManageWP to do my monitoring and backups.  I was performing a daily backup (at my expense) on their site. 

 

However, when I didn't hear from them I took their site of monitoring thinking they were no longer interested.  It appears they weren't making backups on their site at all.  At this point, I offered to get the backup back since I can do that with ManageWP.  After being called stupid by the client I closed the contract.

The next day I received this from the client:

 

"Whatever you did broke our website
Our Services page does not work
And our website is much slower than before when we started with you"

 

However, I only did minimal work on their production website and kept them posted every step of the way.  Everything else was all on their staging site and my personal website (as a test).

 

Since my rating dropped dramatically I'm sure they left me some negative feedback.  I haven't had a problem with any other clients so I know it's this one.  Is there anything I can do to dispute it?

AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi John, 

 

As noted in this help article, disputing feedback is only available under limited circumstances. In the majority of cases, it isn't possible to dispute feedback.

 

Your Job Success Score calculation includes multiple factors such as public and private feedback, long-term relationships, contracts without feedback if they represent a significant portion of your overall contracts, etc. We won't be able to advise regarding which contracts exactly affected your Job Success score, but we recommend that you read up on this help article for more information on how your score is calculated


~ Avery
Upwork

Hi Avery,

I'd like to ask about my JSS.
During the last 2 months my JSS doesn't change at all (91%). I ended 10 projects.

Is it possible that they didn't affect it?

Hi Oleksandra,

 

I've shared your concern with the team, and one of our agents reached out to you about your JSS. Please check ticket number 28541783. Thank you!

~ Joanne
Upwork
robin_hyman
Community Member

If you are Top Rated why don't you use your Top Rated perk and have the review removed from your JSS?  

 

https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/219801228-Feedback-Removal?flash_digest=1032c82a8d8931a...


Robin H wrote:

If you are Top Rated why don't you use your Top Rated perk and have the review removed from your JSS?  


He's not and even if he had been when it tanked, it's too late now. You only have 14 days after losing top rated status to use the perk.

Just reviewed the poster's profile.  You know about removing the feedback because you've done it in the past.  Your previous projects also haven't all been home runs.  That said, yes you can bounce back from this experience.  You'll have to invest in connects and write some awesome proposals to get work.  

Thanks for the advice all! You are right Robin, some of our other jobs have note been homeruns, design is always subjective! Thanks again, we are on our way up!

This:

"A few weeks went by and we reached out to the client and asked them to revise their very unfair feedback" 

 

is why private feedback exists. Freelancers weren't happy to let clients leave their honest feedback and would use various methods (some ethical, some not) to convince the clients to change those ratings. You were able to convince your client to revise their public rating, take that as a win. 

 

I've had hot-tempered clients slay me in private feedback. If you have lots of happy clients to counterbalance, you can soon bounce back. 

Hi Nicholas,

In your profile, as well as here, you talk about "our company" and "our team".
Your profile should be about you.

 

Otherwise, good luck!


Maria T wrote:

Hi Nicholas,

In your profile, as well as here, you talk about "our company" and "our team".
Your profile should be about you.

 

Otherwise, good luck!


That's because it was him and his team. He should have an agency account.

Hello Petra,

I'd like to ask about my JSS.
During the last 2 months my JSS doesn't change at all (91%). I ended 10 projects.

Is it possible that they didn't affect it?


Oleksandra K wrote:
Hello Petra,

I'd like to ask about my JSS.
During the last 2 months my JSS doesn't change at all (91%). I ended 10 projects.

Is it possible that they didn't affect it?

Your most recent jobs are for small monies, so they are not weighing in heavily, given the new weighting of the JSS.

Also, have you had a dispute in the recent past?

Thank you for your answer.

However, the total amount of these jobs is around 700$ and it's quit a lot for my account.

No, I didn't have disput
gilbert-phyllis
Community Member

I concur with the excellent advice you've gotten in this thread and would add one more suggestion: Next time you want input on a situation, boil it down.


Phyllis G wrote:

I concur with the excellent advice you've gotten in this thread and would add one more suggestion: Next time you want input on a situation, boil it down.


Lol.

Haha thanks all, didn’t know people came here this often! Also didn’t know people were so blunt!


Nicholas P wrote:
Haha thanks all, didn’t know people came here this often! Also didn’t know people were so blunt!

Is that why you set your profile to private, all in one fell swoop?

You may want to reconsider that decision.

You still need the invites, albeit it being a trickle.

And, don't mind the community members. They are extremely good at going above and beyond when giving solicited advice, and won't mind doing you the kind favour of invading your profile's privacy if that's what it takes to give you advice that will work for you. Don't worry. It's all for good. Nothing beats advice crowd-sourced, for free. Take that from me.

 

And are those renderings on your website yours?

I found them to be really cool.

 

Hey! Thanks for the boost of confidence haha, everyone here is so nice! Anyways, I didn't even know my profile was set to private, thank you so much for spotting that for me, I just changed that.

 

And yes! Those rendrings are all ours, we only use our own stuff.

 

Thanks again!

 

 


Abinadab A wrote:

Nicholas P wrote:
Haha thanks all, didn’t know people came here this often! Also didn’t know people were so blunt!

Is that why you set your profile to private, all in one fell swoop?

 


Is it possible to set your profile to private in small increments?

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