Hello, I'm a new freelancer and on Monday 5th I got invited to a project from a client in upwork so I thought this was my first opportunity to win a good review and start my freelancing career with the right foot, well it was a whole project about translating voices and the profile of the client has payment method verified and 258.00 reviews so I thought well it is a trust-worthy client nothing can go wrong.
I applied as the person of the project asked, we talked through chat and gave them my email address because I guess they needed that to send me credentials to log in on their platform and all of that while also chatting through Upwork. they were asking if I was able to achieve it this week and I said yes of course because it is on my best interest to leave a good impression.
Well, on the 7th they put me in contact with another freelancer from here called Gabriel and we add each other on Discord but I see something fishy and it was that they did all of that and got us in contact and all but they didn't send a contract, even thought we were already about to work, i found weird that i had to ask for it so but I did because I want to protect myself of course and there has to be proof to the platform that I'm working so I asked for it, and then after me asking for it was that they sent it, so did I tell my partner to do. because we were both new, so I told him to ask for a contract because he shouldn't stay without one if he does and they dip he'd be left without nothing.
We recorded audios for 5-6 hours, and the deadline being the 8th which is today, we turned it yesterday the 7th which is literally the same day we were linked up together it even said on the gmail that if we did that we would get a bonus, my partner was head over heels over that idea but i didn't care, my drive was the 5 star review more than anything else.
Then I wake up this morning to a text that says on my email... Good afternoon we inform you that, unfortunately, the client has stopped collecting more recordings after having already received the necessary ones and his participation has come too late. However, we would like to keep you on our list of participants for other projects if you are interested.
We appreciate your interest and look forward to collaborating with you very soon. Cheers.
So I was like, what in the world? because i literally sent it the same day the wanted it, but since I usually think things through before they happen when I sent it I sent it through Upwork in the contract side where you can upload files so now it says payment request (1) on My Jobs section but i also it through email yesterday just in case they needed it there too.
I didn't know the desktop app of upwork worked for fixed-price too because it didn't use to appear, so i went a set that up after finding it does this morning and just made screenshots of what happened yesterday since I finished it then, so there's a record of what happened. So now all of that info is there linked to the contract too.
My question is... What should I do? Should I leave the contract open? Should I end it? because the client is unresponsive after it all and then under the payment method smartly enough they put:
- Milestone 1: $60.00
- $60.00 Budget
- $60.00 in Escrow
So I know that if I cancel that contract, that Escrow is going to give that back to the client, leaving me and the other freelancer in a tought spot and then I dunno what happens if i leave this contract open, there's enough proof and files that show that we worked but I dunno what proceeds now... help please 😕 why does upwork have weird loopholes like these? thank you for reading I hope the answers here help new freelancers in the future too
