Talent working on project without accepting contract

[suemazur]

I have a project that a freelancer is working on, but she has not accepted the contract despite 2 requests. This is worrying me because I have a deadline. Is this a ploy not to have contract cancelled and reflect badly on ranking if they don't meet deadline. This has not happened before. Please help.

[lysis10]

I’ve seen some freelancers claim that they only accept after they are finished to avoid bad feedback if they can’t. Risky. You sure she’s working on it?

[prestonhunter]

I think Jennifer may be right.

Theoretically a freelancer might try to finish the task successfully before accepting the contract, in order to avoid a bad review.

I think a more common reason is that a freelancer might be unfamiliar with the system. They may not understand that interviews and messages do NOT constitute being hired.

I often run into this, and in fact this happened to me this morning.

I post jobs for freelancers to work with me using screensharing to work with me on technically complex server configurations. Often, as happened today, they will dive right in before accepting the contract. I need to stop them, remind them that this is an hourly job, and that they need to accept the contract and begin logging time.

I don't recall ever having a freelancer refuse to accept the contract.

I can tell you that I would NOT have ANY freelancer working for me who was not under contract, especially if an important deadline was part of the equation. If there is a deadline, having someone working on the task who is not under contract is worse than not hiring anyone at all.

When I hire freelancers for a task that has an important deadline, I hire multiple freelancers using an HOURLY contract. I explain that this is a team project with a deadline, and that when the task is complete, the contacts of all team members will be closed.