Hello UpWork! I am thinking of giving a refund to a client in order not to have the job show up on my profile along with his less than perfect review, but I don't know at which point: before or after the contract is closed?
What happened was that I applied for this job (Facebook ads video editing) which was located in my country to be able to work with someone on the same timezone. The client had mostly good reviews, the job was pretty clear so there was no reason why I couldn't apply. He got in touch with me and offered me the possibility to do a 10 second video test to check if I can do this kind of work and asked me for a rate - I gave him a 10 for $100 rate if he chose to do more than one video with me. 2 things stood out at this point: he was not located in Belgium, but in Vietnam and for that price, I'm pretty sure he had already made his mind up before I completed the test. Once I sent him the 10 second clip, he immediately hired me, paid the $10 for 1 video and asked me to add a little more to it to make it longer so he can already use it. He has decided to split the $100 budget into 10 milestones, that he would create one by one. I extended the clip and sent it over. He told me there are certain visual effects that he needs in these videos and will have his in-house designer add them to my video. I offered to do that myself, if his designer could tell me which effects they were, but he didn't reply to my suggestion. So instead I offered to continue doing the work like this: I put together the clip and his colleague can add the final touches which I don't have in my software. He agreed. I made the 2nd video, sent it, waited for feedback. No milestone created, no money funded for the second one. I don't know what happened in the meantime, but this morning I woke up with a message from him saying that he wants to pay me $30 for all the videos I already made because the designer thinks it would be easier for him to just edit the whole thing himself, rather than adding effects to my edits. Sounds like I'll be kicked off the project in my opinion. Fair enough, especially since I never had contact with the designer, all I had as a template was your classic cosmetics Facebook ad, so I recreated that to the best of my abilities, which were not good enough for this client.
Now, he has been very polite and understanding throughout our interaction, but I went back to see his history of leaving review to freelancers and there are some that reflect a similar experience: "The freelancer was very nice to work with but didn't have the skills necessary for the job - 4*". I have only been on UpWork for a month, I don't know how much my rating affects my chances of getting jobs, but I don't really want to know. Since it's only $10 that I'd be refunding him, I think in the long run it won't affect my JSS, but for now I just want that when this contract is ended, that my future clients won't know about it. When should I give the refund, therefore, before or after the contract is ended? Thank you.
