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Osama's avatar
Osama N Community Member

Worst Policy of Upwork

Hi All,

First of all, sorry for such a critical subject but it is due to I want to discuss something important.

 

I've been used almost 40 connects to send the proposal for 10 jobs on upwork. Today, when I checked the list of proposals and their activity, the following is a summary of what I found.

 

- only 1 client has done hiring

- 4 of clients did interview only 

- 5 (50%) of clients did not respond, no interview or hiring

 

I was thinking, the rues of upwork are for only the freelancers? freelancers are spending $$ to send proposals and clients are allowed to even not answering? What the hell this is? 

 

and...the worst thing is that there is no policy for freelancers to get connects back if the client is not hiring any freelancer. 

UPWORK SHOULD TAKE THIS CASE SERIOUSLY.

 

I need other freelancer's point of view on this too. how you all see this matter?

Should we all report this thing to upwork personally?

 

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ALL SUGGESTIONS.

 

ACCEPTED SOLUTION
Aleksandar's avatar
Aleksandar D Community Manager

Hi Usama,

 

I will send your suggestion to our team for consideration. Please note that Connects are returned when a client closes their job without hiring or we find a job post has violated our Terms of Service.

 

Thank you.

~ Aleksandar
Upwork

View solution in original post

14 REPLIES 14
Aleksandar's avatar
Aleksandar D Community Manager

Hi Usama,

 

I will send your suggestion to our team for consideration. Please note that Connects are returned when a client closes their job without hiring or we find a job post has violated our Terms of Service.

 

Thank you.

~ Aleksandar
Upwork
Osama's avatar
Osama N Community Member

Thank you for considering this.

 

The easy solution is that it should be mandatory for client to hire any freelancer of a close job within 1 week. In this way, if client is supposed to hire none of the freelancers, we will be able to get connects back.

 

Kindly, give some rights to freelancers too !

Thank you again.

Amanda's avatar
Amanda L Community Member


Usama N wrote:

Thank you for considering this.

 

The easy solution is that it should be mandatory for client to hire any freelancer of a close job within 1 week. In this way, if client is supposed to hire none of the freelancers, we will be able to get connects back.

 

Kindly, give some rights to freelancers too !

Thank you again.


Your easy solution is a terrible idea. I often engage in talks with a new client for over a week before we come to an agreement on  a contract. And often we discuss and find they are not ready to start work, so the project is delayed for a bit, but eventually they are ready to start work with me. Upwork and freelancers would lose a lot of business if they had a mandatory requirement to hire within one week. 

 

If you weren't using Upwork you'd have even more expenses to send proposals to potential clients, and I'm sure if you actually thought for more than 5 seconds about business strategy you'd see that putting a time limit on purchasing your services would limit most of your business and put you out of business. 

 

You are paying to apply not to get hired. If you didn't get hired it's because you aren't right for the job. Focus on writing better proposals instead of blaming the system. 

Osama's avatar
Osama N Community Member

 

- If you've read my post completely, I've written that there are 50% clients who even not started the interview of any freelancer so what about those clients?

 

- 2ndly, as you said "If you didn't get hired it's because you aren't right for the job" you're not getting my point that's maybe my low power to clear things. but I want to clear now what about those jobs in which no one freelancer is able to hire? I am not complaining about not getting hired as myself. I am complaining about those jobs of clients in which client didn't hire any of freelancer so if client thinks that all of the freelancers are unskilled then, the client should close job 

Amanda's avatar
Amanda L Community Member

Maybe the client leaves the job open in the hope that someone who is qualified will apply.

Regardless, you dont get it and dont want to get it. I think you just want something to complain about.

Good luck with that.
Jamie's avatar
Jamie F Community Member

Clients should not be made to recruit within 1 month, let alone 1 week.

Phyllis's avatar
Phyllis G Community Member

The first rule of commerce: you have to spend money to make money. The cost of connects is a business expense. Each of us has to assess the ROI we get, just as we do for anything else, e.g. our websites, software we may need to perform our work, advertising, networking (attending conferences, wining & dining industry contacts and prospects), continuing education, etc.

 

There are no guarantees here. UW delivers partially qualified leads. The quality of the clients and their job posts varies substantially from one discipline to another, and also with time, the tides, the stars, and who knows what other factors. Each FL has to figure out how to further qualify the leads and optimize their investment of time and connects. It is worthwhile for some, not for others.

 

If you invest in paid advertising and it doesn't bring you any business, you don't get your money back. If you spend the money to attend a professional conference in order to network and find new clients, nobody refunds your expenses if it doesn't pay off for you. 

 

Forcing FLs to invest cash in their pursuit of work here is good for all of us, as it effectively reduced the volume of spam proposals that clients had to wade through, before. Anything that makes it easier for clients to use the site and find the FL support they need, is a good thing.

 

Osama's avatar
Osama N Community Member

Sister, you didn't get my point. I am not against paid proposals nor investing BUT there should be rules. If we are investing, it doesn't mean we do not have the right to ask if there is something wrong. We are ready to invest and all of the freelancers are investing but it should make sense. If client is not hiring anyone, there should be returning policy of connects back to freelancers or at least it should be mandatory for clients to close job within 1 week if they do not want to hire any freelancer so that freelancer can get back connects. 

 

Pick my Point: if client hires one talented freelancer over 20,30, I am not demanding to return connects to other 20,30 freelancers BUT I have right to get back my connects if clients are supposed to hire none of them. In that case, it should be mandatory for client to close job.

Phyllis's avatar
Phyllis G Community Member


Usama N wrote:

Sister, you didn't get my point. I am not against paid proposals nor investing BUT there should be rules. If we are investing, it doesn't mean we do not have the right to ask if there is something wrong. We are ready to invest and all of the freelancers are investing but it should make sense. If client is not hiring anyone, there should be returning policy of connects back to freelancers or at least it should be mandatory for clients to close job within 1 week if they do not want to hire any freelancer so that freelancer can get back connects. 

 

Pick my Point: if client hires one talented freelancer over 20,30, I am not demanding to return connects to other 20,30 freelancers BUT I have right to get back my connects if clients are supposed to hire none of them. In that case, it should be mandatory for client to close job.


I got your point. You didn't get my point, or else you just don't want to accept it. Fine by me.

Muhammad's avatar
Muhammad F Community Member

Yeah the same issue with me and i decided to give up on Upwork. we paid 20% from our funds to Upwork and still we need to buy connects to bid on projects.
Petra's avatar
Petra R Community Member


Muhammad F wrote:
Yeah the same issue with me and i decided to give up on Upwork. we paid 20% from our funds to Upwork and still we need to buy connects to bid on projects.

You need to make a "business decision", not a "heart decision"

 

Connects are an investment. If your return on the investment is poor, then you clearly either have to change your bidding behaviour, or use a different platform where your return on investment is more profitable.

 

Ultimately, that is all there is to it.

 

Jason's avatar
Jason B Community Member

A lot of clients don't hire immediately.  You said you posted yesterday and checked today, but it is often for me to hear back from a client that I proposed to a few days after the proposal was sibmitted.  I also do have a good amount of proposals where the client never hired anyone, but we have to just accept this is Upwork's policy to not give the connects back.  Once we accept that, it won't be so bad.

Christal's avatar
Christal V Community Member

And also, give chance to those who are newbie. Give them chance to experience the world of freelancing. And that includes me.
Richard's avatar
Richard W Community Member

Upwork introduced the system of paid connects to discourage freelancers from making as many proposals. If they started refunding connects on half of proposals, that would roughly halve the average cost of making a proposal, so would make the policy less effective. I guess they could offset the effect of the refunds by doubling the cost of connects. But you would still end up paying about the same on average as you do now, so it wouldn't help you.

 

In fact, I'm not sure the policy had been very effective, as the number of proposals looks about the same to me as it did before. Perhaps that's because there are more freelancers now.  Or perhaps it's because Upwork actually made it _cheaper_ to submit large numbers of proposals (more than about 50 a month) than it was before.