🐈
» Forums » New to Upwork » I hired a freelancer, the finish day has pass...
Page options
7eb01df4
Community Member

I hired a freelancer, the finish day has passed and job not completed.

Hello, i needed my website redesigned with payments functionality. I posted, i got many proposals, i clicked hire freelancer from the proposal page i recieved, I entered a finish date, the freelancer accepted.

 

The finish day came and went, in fact very very little was done during the 1 week job period. On the finish day, the freelancer read my notes it seems, they pretty much started on the finish day!!!

 

Now it is 4 days after the finish day and the job is nowhere near finished, the freelancer is acting like there is no finish day, it seems like it could go on for months!! Is this how upwork works?? Surely not, on Fiver the finish day is the finish day in my experience.

 

Now i just have a mess, no end in sight, i just do not know what to do.

 

Now i am pointing out things that were in my original notes before i made full payment in escrow, the freelancer says he will go off and work on each thing i point out, a very slow process that doesn't seem to be getting anywhere but i am just repeating the details i gave in the beginning. 

ACCEPTED SOLUTION
prestonhunter
Community Member

Specifying a finish date (or "deadline") does not guarantee that work will be done by that date.

 

As a client on Upwork, I can hire a freelancer and specify a deadline. Depending on who I hire, the freelancer might finish the work by that deadline. Maybe long before that deadline. Or maybe not.

 

If my schedule is flexible, so what?

 

But what if my schedule is NOT flexible?

 

What if I have a tight deadline?

 

Q. Wouldn't it be great if - as a client - I could specify a specific deadline and know for certain that the work will be done by then?

Answer: Yes. That would be great.

 

Q. Is that how Upwork works?

Answer: No. Upwork makes no guarantees about deadlines of finish dates.

 

What if I am up against a really important deadline? What can I do that will actually work?

 

I consider TWO OPTIONS:

a) Hire a freelancer I have already worked before who has already demonstrated more than once that she will deliver the work I need within the time frame that I need.

[or]

b) Hire multiple freelancers, in order to hedge my bets. The tighter the deadline, and the more important it is, the more freelancers I will hire in order to GUARANTEE that I get the work that I need finished by the deadline. I can hire using hourly contracts and tell all of the freelancers that this is a group project and that when the work is done, the contracts will be closed. That way, once I have what I need, I can safely and honestly close the contracts on all of the freelancers and minimize expenses. If any freelancers have not logged time working on the project, they will not be paid. But everybody will be paid for the time that they logged.

 

Ade:
You seem frustrated by the pace at which this work is being done.

YOU may choose to hire other freelancers to work on this project.

YOU may choose to close the current contract immediately and stop working with this freelancer.

You may choose to bring in additional people to have them work alongside the original freelancer, or you may continue to work ONLY with the original freelancer, or you may stop working with the current freelancer entirely and work only with new people, or one new person.

Upwork WILL NOT make these decisions for you. Upwork will not manage this project for you.

 

Keep in mind that by using a fixed-price contract, you have tied money up in escrow. You may still end the contract immediately by simply releasing any remaining escrow money. You do NOT need to continue working with this freelancer. You may even ask the freelancer to refund any remaining money back to you. Or you may agree to release SOME and ask for SOME back.

 

All of these are possibilities. Remember that you DO have LESS FLEXIBILITY than if you had hired using an hourly contract. When you hire using an hourly contract, zero money is tied up in escrow and it makes it easy to fire a freelancer at any time. It ALSO makes it easy to assign different tasks to different freelancers. If you had hired 4 freelancers with HOURLY contracts, then no specific task is assigned to any one of them. You could have assigned many tasks to the faster freelancers.

 

YOU have a right to decide how long is acceptable. I once fired a freelancer FIVE MINUTES after hiring him, because I hired him to work with me immediately via screen-sharing, and he wasn't ready to do so. I ended the contract and hired somebody else. Another time, I hired a freelancer and didn't hear from him for a month. I left the contract open and let him have time to work on the task he was hired to do because the deadline for THAT project was not pressing.

View solution in original post

7 REPLIES 7
prestonhunter
Community Member

Specifying a finish date (or "deadline") does not guarantee that work will be done by that date.

 

As a client on Upwork, I can hire a freelancer and specify a deadline. Depending on who I hire, the freelancer might finish the work by that deadline. Maybe long before that deadline. Or maybe not.

 

If my schedule is flexible, so what?

 

But what if my schedule is NOT flexible?

 

What if I have a tight deadline?

 

Q. Wouldn't it be great if - as a client - I could specify a specific deadline and know for certain that the work will be done by then?

Answer: Yes. That would be great.

 

Q. Is that how Upwork works?

Answer: No. Upwork makes no guarantees about deadlines of finish dates.

 

What if I am up against a really important deadline? What can I do that will actually work?

 

I consider TWO OPTIONS:

a) Hire a freelancer I have already worked before who has already demonstrated more than once that she will deliver the work I need within the time frame that I need.

[or]

b) Hire multiple freelancers, in order to hedge my bets. The tighter the deadline, and the more important it is, the more freelancers I will hire in order to GUARANTEE that I get the work that I need finished by the deadline. I can hire using hourly contracts and tell all of the freelancers that this is a group project and that when the work is done, the contracts will be closed. That way, once I have what I need, I can safely and honestly close the contracts on all of the freelancers and minimize expenses. If any freelancers have not logged time working on the project, they will not be paid. But everybody will be paid for the time that they logged.

 

Ade:
You seem frustrated by the pace at which this work is being done.

YOU may choose to hire other freelancers to work on this project.

YOU may choose to close the current contract immediately and stop working with this freelancer.

You may choose to bring in additional people to have them work alongside the original freelancer, or you may continue to work ONLY with the original freelancer, or you may stop working with the current freelancer entirely and work only with new people, or one new person.

Upwork WILL NOT make these decisions for you. Upwork will not manage this project for you.

 

Keep in mind that by using a fixed-price contract, you have tied money up in escrow. You may still end the contract immediately by simply releasing any remaining escrow money. You do NOT need to continue working with this freelancer. You may even ask the freelancer to refund any remaining money back to you. Or you may agree to release SOME and ask for SOME back.

 

All of these are possibilities. Remember that you DO have LESS FLEXIBILITY than if you had hired using an hourly contract. When you hire using an hourly contract, zero money is tied up in escrow and it makes it easy to fire a freelancer at any time. It ALSO makes it easy to assign different tasks to different freelancers. If you had hired 4 freelancers with HOURLY contracts, then no specific task is assigned to any one of them. You could have assigned many tasks to the faster freelancers.

 

YOU have a right to decide how long is acceptable. I once fired a freelancer FIVE MINUTES after hiring him, because I hired him to work with me immediately via screen-sharing, and he wasn't ready to do so. I ended the contract and hired somebody else. Another time, I hired a freelancer and didn't hear from him for a month. I left the contract open and let him have time to work on the task he was hired to do because the deadline for THAT project was not pressing.

Thanks very much, its only the second time i have used a freelancer so that was very helpful.

Thank you for your answer, i have gone over it a few times and it is not as simple for me as you seem to make out. It looks like i made a big mistake by paying into escrow (which seemed to be the right thing to do with no experience of Upwork), now i am stuck. I cannot fire the freelancer as i will lose my money unless they agree to refund which would be very rare wouldn't it. I do not have the budget to pay again.

- Frustrated at the pace? so little is being done each day, the freelancer is complaining that it is too much work and doing what appears to be very little each day, now it is nearly 2 weeks after the start date of a 1 week job. 

Now i dared to question the freelancer! they have said just cancel it then!! but no word on a refund. Do i get a refund? This tells me what? That the work that has been done was not real work, or that the freelancer knows/thinks they will get paid anyway?

 

Please see my 2nd answer.

 

The freelancer has said i will get a refund if i cancel. The end contract button, i don't know what will happen if i click it! will it end the contract? or will it go to another page to give details i can decide on, it says somewhere i don't get a refund when i end the contract, i have to pay any money in escrow. So conflicting confusing information there. 

How do i get a refund if the freelancer said that?

If you click the button to end the contract, you will then be given an opportunity to EDIT the amount of money you release to the freelancer. You can change that amount to zero.

 

Or do this:

Tell the freelancer:

"Yes, let's do that. Thank you for being willing to refund the money in escrow. You don't need to do any more work on the project. I would like to give you the opportunity now to close the contract from your end. That way you can initiate the refund and because you close the contract, I won't need to provide feedback. After you close the contract I will not leave any feedback of any kind, and that will benefit you."


Preston H wrote:

That way you can initiate the refund and because you close the contract, I won't need to provide feedback. After you close the contract I will not leave any feedback of any kind, and that will benefit you."


No, the client should make no such promises. The right thing to do would be to warn others about working with a freelancer who misses deadlines and doesn't care about his clients.

Latest Articles
Featured Topics
Learning Paths