Dealing With A Dishonest Buyer
Answered
I’m having an harrowing experience with one of the clients I got through peopleperhour; I decided to post my story here to perhaps get some advice or help others avoid the same situation.
The job in question is this: http://www.peopleperhour.com/job/i-need-a-total-branding-solution-637681
I was invited by the client and immediately selected for this job. They were in a rush, so I tried my best to come up with good designs quickly, and upon seeing them, the client replied that they are very satisfied, selected one, gave guidelines as to revisions which I've done immediately… until suddenly, for no obvious reason, I haven’t heard from them for three weeks despite sending several messages, and despite them being online on PPH almost all the time and initiating several new projects with other sellers in the mean time. Finally I politely asked the client to please let me know what’s up with our project so that I can plan my time accordingly. Still no reply. Needless to say, I started feeling as if I’m being ignored at that point.
I then asked PPH customer service what to do in such a case and they told me to just issue an invoice if I don’t hear from the client soon. I then informed client about this and said that I will be forced to raise an invoice if they don’t reply by next week. This time I got a reply within hours, saying that they were busy with some problems, and that let’s continue with the project.
However, right after the client sending their message, I was away for a whole day and couldn’t reply immediately (my response time on PPH is “instantly” otherwise). The next morning back in office, a message awaited me in my inbox saying that the client demands a refund of nearly all deposit money because “they haven’t heard from me”. At first I was like “this can’t be, of course I have done nothing wrong”… until I read the PPH rules:
"A Buyer is entitled to receive a refund of funds held in the Escrow Account under the following circumstances:
a) no response: the Seller has not responded in the WorkStream within one (1) working day of the Commencement of the Job;"
http://support.peopleperhour.com/entries/41690183-6-Cancellations-and-refunds
In other words, if I understand things correctly, it might be that just because I haven’t responded to one of her messages for a little more than one working day, I will now be forced to refund nearly all money, plus I will probably also get a negative feedback/rating. It doesn’t matter that the client has not responded to my multiple messages for weeks before, to the point where I've had to consult with PPH, and that I've actually completed half the job in time with the client saying that they loved my work. Honestly, I can hardly believe that this is even a possibility in a case where I have clearly done nothing wrong. If so, PPH suffers from some serious glitches and have lost another serious and professional seller as far as I’m concerned. It should be clear to anyone who reads our workstream that:
1) the client is the one who has not been responsive, or even acting decently towards me as a seller,
2) the client has very likely changed her mind in the midst of the project and now wants to place blame on me in order to pay as little as possible.
BTW, I got a refund request this morning. Upon seeing it, I immediately responded to the client, in a matter of hours sent her revised designs, and twice asked her if we can resolve the issue without a dispute. One working day has passed since, with her being online on PPH the whole day, and again I got no reply.
Any advice would be very appreciated.
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Tell this to support@peopleperhour.com
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Thanks for the replies guys! Now the story has unfolded further, in quite a complicated way I’m afraid… first I disputed the client’s refund request, in regards to which I wrote the above message, and won the dispute. Apparently my fear that she has the right to a refund just because of me not replying for one day was unfounded - still, that doesn't prevent the dispute affecting my ranking negatively I guess. However, client shortly afterwards placed another refund request for the same amount (with a different, but no better “explanation”), which I again disputed and she was again rejected. PPH staff then wrote to us:
“From the WorkStream we can see that the job was cancelled by the Buyer after work had started {without the Buyer giving the Seller opportunity to provide iterations based on the feedback to complete the work satisfactorily}. As explained in the PPH terms and conditions, in these cases the Seller is entitled to request reasonable payment for the time that they have spent which can be as a minimum the deposit funds held in Escrow. Thus, based on the information available we propose that the Seller raises an invoice for a lesser sum, as a suggestion, and if we believe based on the workstream that the amount is fair, then it will be processed.”
I then issued an invoice for the deposit amount, which is 120 GBP. If I understand correctly, I could've demanded more (I’ve done more work than that), but I simply didn’t want any more trouble.
BUT, the client has now rejected my invoice. And below the invoice rejection message PPH explains:
“You could settle the case by offering them to pay a lower amount. To do so, just raise a new Invoice.
If you are unable to resolve this and you believe you should receive payment for completed you can raise a Dispute. But keep in mind that raising a dispute will affect your CERT score and your ranking on PPH. Most disputes can be prevented with some good will and compromise. We highly recommend you try working it out with the Buyer before going down this route.”So this means that just because I was unlucky enough to stumble upon an unstable, dishonest client, I am now being forced into the third dispute, all of which apparently affect my rankings EVEN IN CASE I WIN THEM ALL. Why did PPH then tell me to issue an invoice for a minimum the deposit amount, and then the buyer could simply reject it and place me into another uncomfortable situation? What was that about the "if we believe based on the workstream that the amount is fair, then it will be processed.”? Which amount will be processed - the one the client thinks is fair, if I don't want to see my ranking go to hell?
I find this a major glitch in PPH operation and will be writing about it publicly in case it is not resolved in some way. I have done absolutely nothing wrong as far as I know - I have tried my best and the client was very happy with my work, and all that is documented in the workstream. She is wanting to cancel the project due to personal reasons, I’m guessing financial troubles.
To sum it up, my main question is: Why should a seller's ranking be affected negatively just because they were unlucky and stumbled upon a nasty buyer?
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There's allot of people that want to take advantage of your work, i can't believe sometimes why people are like this... we invested sometimes a lot of time to won't be pay any penny...extremely unfair! and most for the people that are full time freelancers... and leave work to take another, and sometimes that "another" is a nasty buyer!
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Hi Jana Novak,
Thanks for sharing the issue with us. Currently I am also facing same issue with one of my client. After sending a hell lot of reminders, he is not responding to my emails, even though he is online seeing my message on the message board. This is really frustrating. Have you got any resolution for this issue? Let me know if you got any?
Thanks!
Sharat
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If you've done a lot of work, tell the buyer that you will invoice for the time spent. The buyer may ignore you, but then you can invoice the buyer. If the buyer ignores the invoice, PPH should pay the money to you if it's in escrow.
Most buyers are likely to respond to an invoice.
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Sounds like a nightmare - I have a client who we have delivered a job for and didn't take the handover call explaining how to manage the product choosing to go live with it straight away. I then received an angry email saying how rubbish the job was for various reasons and they are refusing to take my calls or reply to emails explaining that it works fine they just don't know how to use the product.
So we have an invoice that will go through and if not disputed will undoubtedly get rubbish feedback even though it was a perfectly delivered job.
I think PPH should adopt a similar cert system for buyers so we can see how they have been rated by sellers. Ebay runs the same system where you can see an aggregated feedback on random people and get a feel for whether they are a problem or not. A good addition would be to have the option to reject an hourlie that has been purchased upon closer inspection of their profile.
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Been trawling PPH for their terms on silent buyers seeing as there are plenty of rules for sellers and even automatic refunds on late delivery, no matter what the circumstances, even if the buyer hasn't requested a refund, and stumbled across this thread. Not found anything on the seller protection though!
I had a similar issue as this over Christmas. I constantly chased the client for 3 weeks running up until Christmas for any final revisions on a project that was pretty much complete. I had already made numerous revisions that went beyond the scope of the project in the first place. The buyer would rarely respond on the workstream as his preferred communication method appeared to be via WhatsApp (not a problem, whatever makes the buyer's life easier is fine). I flagged his non-communication multiple times to PPH support and they just told me to message the buyer again to which I did. The third time I chased him up after the conversation with support, I informed him that his delay in response was now going to cause further delays as we were moving into the Christmas period (sent 19th December). He finally sends a message on the workstream and on WhatsApp with his revisions to which I reply to him on WhatsApp saying I will sort it when I'm working again on the 28th December. The following day I get a refund request saying I was uncontactable (the irony!), which I appealed and even offered to send screenshots of our conversation on WhatsApp to PPH. No reply from PPH and the buyer was issues a full refund for late delivery and no communication!! I have no words. -
Pete, that's shocking.
I have no idea if you are both in the UK or how much money is involved.
I would consider taking this client to the small claims court, but to be prepared to lose your money.
At the very least sending the client a direct invoice with formal notice of starting a small claims action if the invoice is not paid within 28 days. Explain what evidence you will provide.
A letter like this may do the trick. PPH has let you down. Sadly they are anonymous people passing their judgements.
I have had a very few disputes with clients and the outcome was always positive. On one such occasion I threatened a Small Court action and they paid up.
Good luck. -
The job wasn't drastic, but sufficient enough to be frustrated by (around £500). Sadly the client is in Spain so a small claims court wouldn't be applicable anyway.
Luckily enough, I get a relatively small number of awkward buyers. I've had about 5 over hundreds of projects, but that said, I have noticed a substantial increase in buyers just not communicating which indicates that they must be aware of PPH's liberal refunds that are open to abuse.
I had one client who was issued an automatic refund for late delivery, to which the delay was directly caused by her not having some of the content that I needed to complete the job. She was just as perplexed as me as to why she even got refunded seeing as I was half way through the project and she was causing the delay and never even asked for a refund! I think this setting may now be turned off though, and rightly so!
My hourlie offer for small website developments has a 5 day turnaround listed and even then I have some purchases that were made in October that were only signed off last week, and one is even still open right now all down to buyers not responding. PPH's reply is always to tell me to send them another message for a reply to which I have chased and chased for weeks and months on end and then after months of chasing up through their support do they trigger a message for the buyer to respond urgently. Even then, if they don't reply, I'm fairly certain they will not release the funds I am owed for the work.
I just don't understand how this is fair as I know if I don't reply within a day of when it suits the buyer, there is a decent chance that I will a refund is granted after my last experience. It's not as though I'm a new seller with no past to check on either, I have a 5 star rating over hundreds of reviews spanning 8 years and I am currently in the top 10 sellers in the IT and Development sector. What more can I do?! The whole thing just stinks.
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