How to properly end a contract early

[2d2399f9]

I am a client who hired a worker on upwork.

In the end it looks like the project doesn't make sense to complete, so it is going to be closed with partial payment.  It has ended amicably, but I don't know if I'm the right person to judge the clients work.

So I was ending the contract to get the remainder of my escrow money back, and it asked for feedback.  I was going to just skip that, but then I realized it might very well assume I was leaving a feedback of 0 stars, which is not my intent.

What's the proper way to end a contract so I can free up the remainder of escrow, without being forced to judge a client on things I am not capable of judging?

[prestonhunter]

You are NOT being forced to judge their performance. Leave BLANK for the free form text. You do NOT NEED to write anything. You may be asked again to write something, but you can leave blank and it will accept that.

As for the star feedback, do NOT judge their performance in any categories. Simply click on five for all categories - without thinking about it.

[2d2399f9]

"Simply click on five for all categories - without thinking about it"

🙂

Is that a joke, I presume?

[sjbercot]

When you close a contract, you will always be prompted to leave something in feedback. I'm curious though why you feel unable to review your experience with that freelancer if you've made a partial payment and worked with them a bit. I don't suggest you give all positive ratings without thinking, but there doesn't seem to be a reason to give the freelancer poor marks, unless I'm missing something? You can ask the freelancer to close the contract if you really want to avoid reviewing them, but FYI they still have the option to review you.

[2d2399f9]

I don't want to give them poor or good marks, because I haven't really worked with their code at all.  They did an investigation and it was determined that the project wasn't going to work, so I'm going to give them some $$ for the investigation and close the project early.  How am I suppose to judge their programming based on this?

[prestonhunter]

If you really don't want to participate in the feedback system, all you need to do is ask them to end the contract. If the freelancer ends the contract, the client doesn't need to leave feedback of any kind.

[2d2399f9]

That would be asking them to end the contract with no payment and just trust that I'll send them money somehow after the contract has ended?

[prestonhunter]

re: "That would be asking them to end the contract with no payment and just trust that I'll send them money somehow after the contract has ended?"

Release whatever payment you want to release to them. Then after they have received the payment, you can ask them to close the contract.

[sjbercot]

Thanks for clarifying. In that case, in my mind you'd be reviewing the skills required to complete the investigation, which you could note in your written comments if you thought there was ambiguity. But there's always asking the freelancer to close it once you've released payment.