Discrepancy between 'About the client' average reviews and the actual reviews average

[allthingsgjd]

Hi All,

Discrepancy between 'About the client' average reviews and the actual reviews average

This maybe something to do with hidden backend Upwork settings, I keep noticing the average reviews score shown in the About the client panel, does not seem to match the reviews given.

Here is an example, it is easy to spot on some posts as the client does not have many reviews, so the discrepancy jumps out, **Edited for Community Guidelines**

They have a total of 10.8 stars for 5 reviews, an average of 2.16, yet the about average shows 3.80 for 5 reviews.

Both are terrible scores, but the reality is the actual score is even worse than the summary score, which is misleading when applying for work from the client.

Any insight into this?

Thanks Graham.

[kochubei_valeria]

Hi Graham,

Thanks for your question. The number of stars a client receives on the 5-star feedback scale is based on several factors. While we can’t share all the details, in general, the score is calculated based on freelancer feedback, which is then weighted by the project’s total cost. For example, say a client has used Upwork for two projects. On one project, which cost $20, they receive a 5-star rating from the freelancer. On the other, they get a 2-star rating on a $500 project. This client will likely have a score closer to 2 stars because the larger contract carries more weight. 

[allthingsgjd]

Hi Valeria, thanks for the clarification. I can't say as I agree, why mess around with the scores, just show the actual score.

Let’s take your analogy a little further, if you have a client that is very switched on when spending more money, but is very poor at running projects when only spending a small amount, the one big spending project is going to completely skew the ratings, giving the impression that overall the client is a good client score wise, when in fact, overall the client is a poor client, that is only good to work with when the project has a good budget.

Thereby misleading all the freelancers that apply to lower budget projects because the score they see is carrying weight from a project that has no bearing on the project they are bidding on.

Let’s look at another analogy, for example a category from the feedback, say Communication, so just as an example, the client was good at communication for the higher budget project, but poor for the lower budget ones.

A freelancer applies for a lower budget project thinking the client’s communication is good, when in fact it is poor for projects of this budget, but the score is skewed by the one higher paying project, therefore completely misleading the freelancer applying.

As it happens, I always dig into individual project feedback scores, which is why I noticed the discrepancy.

What I really want is to look at the summary score and see a genuine average, not an average that has been manipulated.

Thanks for your time.

Graham

[bacterie]

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[bacterie]

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