*edited* Top Rated status and withdrawals

christine20 · ‎07-27-2020

For close to 3 years, I maintained a Top-Rated status. And considering my profile reviews, I have never gone below 4.5. Owing to some personal problems, I was not active on Upwork for some time. About 3 months ago, I realized that I had many dormant contracts. I tried to communicate with the clients on the private message board. When I realized that this dormancy could count against my ratings, I closed the contracts from my side. But, the communication I exchanged with these clients shows that I offered excellent service. (Can Upwork do a personalized evaluation of my profile?)

After closing most of the contracts, I received 5-star ratings and stellar reviews on 2 contracts. To my greatest surprise, my rating went down from 90+%, to 86%. What went wrong? Is there a way Upwork can incorporate private communication on the message board to calculate JSS?

I also have another bigger complaint concerning payments. Prior to last week, my terms for automatic wire transfer were to release payment if the amount exceeds $300. Last week, Upwork released $33.3 which was the remaining balance on my account. Remember transfer charges are $30 for international wire transfers. Much as the amount was not even close to the minimum of $300, without notification, Upwork released the balance, leaving me with only $3. I tried to find out the rationale for this move but failed to make meaning out of it.

I tried to reach out to the help desk but I did not receive a response up to now. This is a new practice with Upwork. Previously, each time I reached out to Upwork, I would receive a personalized response. This time, I had only the chatbot to communicate with me. When I showed that I was not satisfied with the answer, I received no follow up communication. Is this the way Upwork is improving service? Is Upwork really helping us to succeed? What changed? Where did Upwork efficiency and customer service disappear to?

kochubei_valeria · ‎07-27-2020

Hi Christine,

I moved your post here as it wasn't about the topic of the thread you posted it on. I'd love to address your questions here.

Unfortunately, Upwork team cannot manually review and adjust a freelancer's Job Success Score to take messages into account. Job Success score is based on the outcomes of the contracts. Feedback provided by clients is taken into considerations as well as long-term relationships and excessive number of contracts with no feedback (closed or open without recent payments.) All of that said, I understand that it's disappointing to see the score go down. It's entirely possible to improve it though! This help article contains some tips for how to do that.

As for the withdrawal, I checked and it looks like you had some balance on your account that was older than 180 days. Upwork is unable to keep funds on freelancers' accounts indefinitely so when there is any balance older than 180 days, the money will be sent to the user's primary payment method. Check out this help article for a note about that.

~ Valeria

a_lipsey · ‎07-27-2020

Christine M wrote:
For close to 3 years, I maintained a Top-Rated status. And considering my profile reviews, I have never gone below 4.5. Owing to some personal problems, I was not active on Upwork for some time. About 3 months ago, I realized that I had many dormant contracts. I tried to communicate with the clients on the private message board. When I realized that this dormancy could count against my ratings, I closed the contracts from my side. But, the communication I exchanged with these clients shows that I offered excellent service. (Can Upwork do a personalized evaluation of my profile?)

After closing most of the contracts, I received 5-star ratings and stellar reviews on 2 contracts. To my greatest surprise, my rating went down from 90+%, to 86%. What went wrong? Is there a way Upwork can incorporate private communication on the message board to calculate JSS?

I also have another bigger complaint concerning payments. Prior to last week, my terms for automatic wire transfer were to release payment if the amount exceeds $300. Last week, Upwork released $33.3 which was the remaining balance on my account. Remember transfer charges are $30 for international wire transfers. Much as the amount was not even close to the minimum of $300, without notification, Upwork released the balance, leaving me with only $3. I tried to find out the rationale for this move but failed to make meaning out of it.

I tried to reach out to the help desk but I did not receive a response up to now. This is a new practice with Upwork. Previously, each time I reached out to Upwork, I would receive a personalized response. This time, I had only the chatbot to communicate with me. When I showed that I was not satisfied with the answer, I received no follow up communication. Is this the way Upwork is improving service? Is Upwork really helping us to succeed? What changed? Where did Upwork efficiency and customer service disappear to?

On the JSS: you had a large job just drop out of your 12 month window. That could be the culprit for a drop in JSS.

On the chatbot and customer service, I believe live chat is only available for top-rated freelancers, so when you dropped out of top-rated, you lost that perk, so now you must email customer support. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm only going by what happened when I lost TR for a few months.)