Hello everyone,
I just want to get some ideas from the community about an incident that happened recently to me. In advance, I apologize for the wall of text.
Context: I was hired to make a minecraft style 3d animation, the client offered a high hourly rate (It seemed weird at first, but hey, who would refuse being offered a higher rate than usual?) During the course of around 2 weeks, I made a 3d environment, a house interior, 3 different animated characters, and around 1 minute of animation, for all this I logged in around 33 hours in total. Producing 1 minute of animation with the characteristics and timeframe I mentioned above is pretty good I would say.
I was paid without issue for my work in the first week. I logged in some time on the second, and two hours in the first day of my third week, because the client asked for some revisions which needed re-rendering. After this I waited for the client to provide more input as to what to do next.
Some days later, I got an email from Upwork, saying that the contract was put on hold, becuase they were investigating some problems on the client's account. I did some searching and it seems that this happens when the client's payment doesn't go through.
I contacted the client to let him know, and waited. I checked Upwork's article and I fulfill all of Upwork's requirements for payment protection.
After the wait, I received the pending payment, which I withdrawed. Then today, it looks like Upwork issued a refund to the client. How are they refunding the client, if he didn't pay? and my balance shows debt, because apparently I have to pay that refund. Why did I got paid and then the next day a refund was forced upon me?
From a mail I received they said that I did not qualify for protection because of the high hourly rate, and because there were low activity periods on my timelog. For context, the client asked me to remake an existing minecraft animation but using his own characters, so during the process, I had to check constantly his video reference, and there were idle minutes during which I rendered previews for him. The seconds during which I play the animation to check the movement and timing also counts as idle time it seems.
I have always worked this way, and have always received good feedback from clients. It seems their concern was the high hourly rate under which I was working, which is not my fault, but where the terms proposed by the client.
Not every freelancer does writing or accounting, in which they have to press keys regularly, and there are times in my field in which I have to play my animations back and forth, and check the client's references. There are also times in which my PC sits rendering, which to be honest, is a pretty low amount per frame (In this instance, it was around 3 or 4 seconds per frame) but still, if I render a 1 minute preview for the client, this is time that adds-up (In one minute of video there are around 1800 frames, rendering all of them at 3 or 4 seconds per frame, gives you an idea of how this time adds-up)
Thanks for any ideas or comments, and sorry for my English, it is not my first language.
Cheers!
