Hi there! Would love your advice/best practices on this one...I’m definitely struggling quite a bit with my own personal feelings towards the situation. 🙂
I’ve been on Elance/Upwork for about 8 years. I’m a Top Rated freelancer with several hundred jobs under my belt — and I’m the first person to refund 100% of a client’s money if they’re unhappy.
Granted, this has maybe happened twice or three times in my years on the platform, with hundreds of clients during that time. But even if the work is complete, I’ve always felt that these are (mostly) small, self-funded businesses and those dollars count — I never want to feel like someone didn’t get what they paid for.
This week, though, I’m dealing with a different scenario. I’ve been working with this client for about five weeks. We have the upwork proposal in place but, also, I put together a through overview of the specific deliverables so there was no confusion (the job post was vague).
The first piece of this project was a branding review and, from there, a full brand book — new mission, positioning, logo, fonts, color palette, etc. We shared pieces with the client to get initial feedback here and there and got virtually nothing — usually a “we like #3” or “we hate 5” even when pushed for more color/insights. The most we got was, “I’m happy with what I’m seeing.” Positive, at least!
Even so, we felt we had their thumbs up on enough elements so finalized the brand book with the intent of getting sign off then moving into site copy.
Do you know the feeling when you send AMAZING work? That’s how I felt firing off that brand book. The logo came out just beautifully (they agreed), the content was strong and the book itself was gorgeous — our main designer is a 20-year veteran from the beauty industry, who’s worked for major mass beauty brands.
The client responded and asked for the packaging design — this was not included in our SOW. I explained that and he said he’d shared their old packaging (jars) and to just mock up the logo and our creative vision on those jars. I agreed and, over the weekend, our designer created three mocks for the jar, three for the exterior packaging and one lip option. They were stunning and we sent them off.
The client immediately responded and ripped us apart. He said the packaging was garbage, we took none of his feedback into account and that, now, he’s second-guessing all of the work because we clearly don’t “get it.” However, again no specific notes were shared. When I apologized for his disappointment and asked for notes so we could revise, he said he’d shared their clean, beautiful former packaging and ours looks like our designer “had 10 other projects on deadline and simply threw up every visual piece of the brand on the packaging.”
I showed several people the original and the new designs, and they’re very much in line — ours, of course, includes the new logo and approved brand visual, colors and fonts. Otherwise, though, they’re very much in line. Any closer and why redesign the packaging, really.
I asked to get on the phone several times and he ignored my ask. The client now insists he’s been giving amazing feedback this entire time and we’re just ignoring it so we can bill more — it’s an outrageous comment, and certainly not true. I’ve asked him to review the last four weeks of tracking and note anything he feels is redundant and I will refund that time.
He, though, still has provided no feedback except the “threw up” comment. We’ve let him know we’ll hold until we hear back — that we’re happy to do a free round of revisions or happy to refer him elsewhere and wrap up the job on our end. At this point, we’d be guessing and wasting his time, too.
Normally I would offer a refund but this is a team project and I have to pay my designer for her (amazing) work. While I’ve billed about $2000, this is less than they’d likely pay for a quality logo design — and, at this point, that’s approved and I am happy to turn it over to them. They, though, feel like they’ve been ripped off.
I spent lots of time reviewing all messages in the workroom and I’m stumped. The feedback is sparse and not specific. For example, he gave me a list of potential brand names so we rotated them through the deck (in visuals) and shared a page with each mocked with the approved logo. After a round or two he sent a very angry note saying they chose a name the prior week, why am I still using all of the names? I looked back and never saw a final choice, so I asked which name they’d settled on, apologizing if the confusion was on my end. He never responded. I asked again, still nothing — he responded to other questions, though.
When we sent the updated deck I indicated all names were included but we could update based on their final choice. Within minutes I received an angry note saying they’d picked a name, why wasn’t that the only name here, was I not listening, etc. There was zero regard to the fact I had just asked repeatedly with no response.
At this point I feel like we can’t recover from the lack of trust on his end — but even if we could we will likely keep hitting this wall. I think he’s a client who wanted that “wow” moment. Sometimes it’s real! But often getting that moment is the result of collaborative work between client and freelancer. He’s, though, waiting for that lightening to strike.
I can’t refund his money — for what I’ve billed and what I paid my designer, I am breaking even at this stage. I stopped billing for my time because he was questioning everything in the tracker — given the scope of the project I expected to generate personal revenue from my more labor-intensive work (copywriting) which I would be handling myself.
That said, they’re unhappy and feel they have nothing usable — and that makes me feel terrible. What should I do? I hate feeling like another person things they were somehow taken advantage of. We put so much into this — and we work with many, many other beauty brands who are thrilled with the work. It’s just not a good fit, and I think they’ll run into the same issues with other freelancers.
Thoughts? Open to suggestions...but really want to be fair and appropriate here.
