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devbalo
Community Member

What should you do when the client's request more feature without in milestone and no paid?

Hello everyone, I have some dump question about progressing.

1. What should you do when the client's request more feature without in milestone and no paid?
I'm afraid they will close a contract and review me 1 star, or find somethings to review 1 star. It will affect me.

2. Can I chat with clients via skype or another communication tools outside upwork?

3. Which step I should do if the clients don't want to paid and review me 1 star? I mean proof of address/envidences for getting money from upwork?

Thanks,
Have a nice day.
ACCEPTED SOLUTION
wlyonsatl
Community Member

Henry N.,

 

1) Your best defense against having a client request significant work in addition to what your project's existing milestones provide for is to define clearly, before the project begins, what you both agree you will and will not do in order to complete the project. Set the client's expectations clearly, so they can't come back later and so "Oh, I just assumed you would do that, too."

 

Be strategic in setting up milestones. Always use multiple milestones for projects of any size, so you will know to stop work when the client refuses to pay. Make the value of your first milestone relatively small, so you won't do a lot of work before seeing the client refuse to pay. (If your average project value is only $20, multiple milestones may not make any sense.)

 

Once you have a contract in place you'll just have to say "no" to a client's demand for significant additional work by you without additional payments to you. Doing a little extra for a client builds goodwill with good clients, but we have heard many times here that some clients' demands for extra work are unfair and unjustified.

 

Nevertheless, don't let the tyranny of the one-sided Job Success Score system make you feel trapped into doing far, far more work than your contract and milestones provide for. After you have completed the work for a milestone, submit it using the green "Submit" button and tell the client you'll begin work on the next milestone after he releases payment on the just-completed milestone. If he refuses to release the milestone, you'll know what kind of client you're working with. Soon after, you should cut your losses and close the contract, leaving factual and accurate feedback for the client to warn off other freelancers.

 

2) You only have to use Upwork's decent VOIP app for conversations with potential clients. Once you have an Upwork contract in place with a client, you can communicate with them using any means you wish.

 

3) If you are doing fixed price projects, the only way you can really enforce payment by a client is to win at arbitration. Since arbitration will cost you $291 and you may or may not "win," arbitration is only worthwhile for projects worth far more than $291. (For this reason, I suspect non-payment-related dishonest behavior and outright fraud is far more common with low dollar fixed price projects than any other type of project. Payment is far better assured with hourly projects)

 

Good luck!

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1 REPLY 1
wlyonsatl
Community Member

Henry N.,

 

1) Your best defense against having a client request significant work in addition to what your project's existing milestones provide for is to define clearly, before the project begins, what you both agree you will and will not do in order to complete the project. Set the client's expectations clearly, so they can't come back later and so "Oh, I just assumed you would do that, too."

 

Be strategic in setting up milestones. Always use multiple milestones for projects of any size, so you will know to stop work when the client refuses to pay. Make the value of your first milestone relatively small, so you won't do a lot of work before seeing the client refuse to pay. (If your average project value is only $20, multiple milestones may not make any sense.)

 

Once you have a contract in place you'll just have to say "no" to a client's demand for significant additional work by you without additional payments to you. Doing a little extra for a client builds goodwill with good clients, but we have heard many times here that some clients' demands for extra work are unfair and unjustified.

 

Nevertheless, don't let the tyranny of the one-sided Job Success Score system make you feel trapped into doing far, far more work than your contract and milestones provide for. After you have completed the work for a milestone, submit it using the green "Submit" button and tell the client you'll begin work on the next milestone after he releases payment on the just-completed milestone. If he refuses to release the milestone, you'll know what kind of client you're working with. Soon after, you should cut your losses and close the contract, leaving factual and accurate feedback for the client to warn off other freelancers.

 

2) You only have to use Upwork's decent VOIP app for conversations with potential clients. Once you have an Upwork contract in place with a client, you can communicate with them using any means you wish.

 

3) If you are doing fixed price projects, the only way you can really enforce payment by a client is to win at arbitration. Since arbitration will cost you $291 and you may or may not "win," arbitration is only worthwhile for projects worth far more than $291. (For this reason, I suspect non-payment-related dishonest behavior and outright fraud is far more common with low dollar fixed price projects than any other type of project. Payment is far better assured with hourly projects)

 

Good luck!

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