Recently I've experienced a very unpleasant issue with upwork which revealed 2 independent problems.
Problem #1
I received an offer email. On July 25 I read it, everything was as agreed. I clicked the 'view offer' button and reviewed the details on the site page. Everything still was ok. I accepted the offer to start working. But the contract did not appear on the contract list of the time-tracking app...
Then right after accepting the offer I received the following notification:
<...> has hired you for the position <...>, starting Jul 26, 2022. Full contract details will be sent on the day the contract starts.
What?! I had never been informed that the contract has a preset start date.
(Now I know that the start date, if any, can be seen if you click on 'view full offer' which is very inconvenient because it is a rarely used option and at the same time very important.)
Problem #2
Still that's not all. I contacted the client on the matter and he sent me a screenshot where the start date of our contract is July 25 which is what we agreed upon. How could it happen that my start date is July 26??
I contacted the upwork support. They approved that the actual start date is now July 26 and responded with the following:
"This may be a difference in timezone or a minor glitch. I will make sure to have this check with our Technical Team for further investigation."
As a result I wasted 1 work day because I scheduled the project on this day and was not able to track time.
And it could be even worse if the client or upwork's glitch would have set the contract to start on the date when I go on vacation or am busy on another project.
Improvements to consider:
1)My client set the start date because he has no experience with upwork. Actually he did not need this option because he wanted to get the project done as soon as possible. So, upwork should suggest clients who set a start date, to think if they really need to do so.
2)In the case when a client has set a start date, upwork must warn the freelancer to pay attention to this condition.
Currently upwork does not inform freelancers when sending them an offer email which lists all the offer details but the start date. The same with the offer details displayed on the site. You have to click the 'view full offer' link to see the start date if any. It's quite wrong because:
- the start date is rarely used so that a freelancer does not expect it at all (I never had it in about 70 projects done);
- at the same time it is quite an important condition which must not be overlooked;
Nevertheless at present the start date is not listed in 'offer details' declarations and can be seen only in the view full offer page which usually contains nothing new.
3)If a client has set a start date, upwork must set the same date for both the freelancer and the client. It seems to be an obvious requirement.
