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saadamir95
Community Member

Unreasonsable Client - Don't want my JSS to do down.

I am a relatively new freelancer with 7 jobs. I have a 100 JSS and and all my jobs have 5 stars.
I started a $10 job and after completeing it the client completely changed the requirements.
I did the entire work again and requested for payment.
Now the client has "requested changes to the milestone" and wants me to do an entirely new work.


I do not care about the money. I just don't want my JSS to go down and get a bad rating.
I want to end the contract.

Please provide suggestions in for the best possible outcome.
P.S The client is unreasonable and will not listen to reason.

ACCEPTED SOLUTION


Saad A wrote:

Thanks for your help everyone.
Somehow, the client decided to approve the milestone and now the money is in my "Pending".
Moving forward, I do not want to work with this client.
What should I do now that will have the least affect on my JSS?
Addionally, how could I not get a bad review from the client.


It is unprofessional to discuss feedback with clients, so don't do that. Nor do you have any control over  feedback they leave. As suggested, move on and use this experience as a lesson learned. If you don't want to work with him anymore, ask him (nicely) to close the contract. Or you can close it yourself.

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10 REPLIES 10
a_lipsey
Community Member


Saad A wrote:

I am a relatively new freelancer with 7 jobs. I have a 100 JSS and and all my jobs have 5 stars.
I started a $10 job and after completeing it the client completely changed the requirements.
I did the entire work again and requested for payment.
Now the client has "requested changes to the milestone" and wants me to do an entirely new work.


I do not care about the money. I just don't want my JSS to go down and get a bad rating.
I want to end the contract.

Please provide suggestions in for the best possible outcome.
P.S The client is unreasonable and will not listen to reason.


Have you actually explained to the client that they have changed the scope of work, so need to pay the milestone and fund another for more work? 

prestonhunter
Community Member

Saad:
You don't care about the money? You just don't want your JSS to go down?

If you have a zero-pay contract, then it will cause your JSS to go down MORE than if you get imperfect feedback.

 

So you may need to decide WHICH of these you want:

a) 100 JSS

[OR]

b) all 5-start reviews

 

I recommend that you try to keep the money that you earned, which will help you keep your JSS high.

 

Having imperfect (less than 5-star) jobs is fine. To my mind, it would make you look more trustworthy.

I did not earn the money.
I submitted work for payment.
The client changed the requirements and now the money is in the "Work in progress" tab and not in the "In Review" tab.

Saad, the client is being a bully and he is unprofessional and immoral. I am sorry that you are facing this.

 

So, let's discuss your options.

 

If you just want this to be over with, then you can close the contract yourself and refund the money back to the client. There is nothing the client can do to stop that. There will NOT be any negative feedback on your profile page. There will no public feedback at all. But the zero-pay contract will hurt your JSS. It will hurt a lot if you have very few completed jobs. It will hire only a little if you have many completed jobs to dilute the effect.

 

If you want to fight for your money, then you can dispute the contract. You can try to get all of the money. The client can not actually get his money back unless YOU agree to refund the money, or if he goes through dispute, arbitration, etc. If you do that, then he may indeed give you negative feedback.

 

Keep in mind that if you went to arbitration, you would need to pay $291. And you could only get back a maximum of $10. So the net loss to you would be at least $281. And you could still get negative feedback. The client would probably not want to go to arbitration, because he would need to pay $291 as well. So one option you have is to dispute the contract and not agree to any mediated compromise, and say you want to go to arbitration, and hope that the client decides he does NOT want to go to arbitration, and because he said no and you said yes, then you win and you get the ten dollars. But you probably also get negative feedback.

 

You could try to compromise with him... ask him to pay you just $5 and you will refund the other $5 to him immediately. That way you won't have a zero-pay contract.

 

All of this is kind of a big mess for just $10.

 

If it was me, personally, then I wouldn't be wasting my time with a person like that. I would close the contract myself and then post the work I did (which would belong to me because the client didn't pay for it) in my portfolio.

 

But I can get away with that because I have lots of completed jobs and a single zero-pay job will not have much impact on my JSS. I don't know how many jobs you have completed.

Thanks for your help everyone.
Somehow, the client decided to approve the milestone and now the money is in my "Pending".
Moving forward, I do not want to work with this client.
What should I do now that will have the least affect on my JSS?
Addionally, how could I not get a bad review from the client.


Saad A wrote:

Thanks for your help everyone.
Somehow, the client decided to approve the milestone and now the money is in my "Pending".
Moving forward, I do not want to work with this client.
What should I do now that will have the least affect on my JSS?
Addionally, how could I not get a bad review from the client.


It is unprofessional to discuss feedback with clients, so don't do that. Nor do you have any control over  feedback they leave. As suggested, move on and use this experience as a lesson learned. If you don't want to work with him anymore, ask him (nicely) to close the contract. Or you can close it yourself.

Close the contract yourself. Do **NOT** ask the client to close it.

 

If you do close the contract, the client may or may not leave feedback. 

If the client closes the contract, the client WILL leave feedback.

mtngigi
Community Member


Saad A wrote:

I am a relatively new freelancer with 7 jobs. I have a 100 JSS and and all my jobs have 5 stars.
I started a $10 job and after completeing it the client completely changed the requirements.
I did the entire work again and requested for payment.
Now the client has "requested changes to the milestone" and wants me to do an entirely new work.


I do not care about the money. I just don't want my JSS to go down and get a bad rating.
I want to end the contract.

Please provide suggestions in for the best possible outcome.
P.S The client is unreasonable and will not listen to reason.


Is the job out of scope? You must make sure to clearly state in your proposals the number of revisions you're willing to do, and what will be required if the client wants to go further than what was agreed upon. Then there is no argument - it's part of your contract. This should be done especially on low budget jobs. Cheap clients usually wring every little bit they can get out of a freelancer.

 

It's hard to imagine how clients aren't embarrassed paying so little, and asking so much. A little advice ... try to avoid those low-paying jobs. They usually don't end well.

 

We have all taken hits to our JSS, and recover from those hits. Don't let that metric rule how you work on this site. No matter what, your client will leave private feedback, and there's no escaping that.

 

ETA: I would do what Preston suggests, and just close the job. Your JSS will take a hit no matter what you do. Close the job and forget about it - it is indeed a big mess, all for $10.

 

And another thing ... I wish to god Upwork would raise the minimum to $25 (or at least $20). $10 isn't far from that f___r site. That might keep clients like this off the site, and good riddance.

kinector
Community Member

The best way to avoid similar issues in the future is to avoid the $10 jobs in the first place.

 

Would the price (even if paid!) really cover the time spent on fighting these kinds of bullies and window-shoppers?

kinector
Community Member

Saad, by the way, an important part of all this is that every job will stay in your work history.

Do a lot of $10 gigs and your profile will be labeled as "That ten bucks guy" which means only one thing: Your future jobs will be around the same price range!

It's important to specialize in a way that you don't need to start from the very bottom and compete with everyone else. Then your start level could be a lot higher.
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