Freelancer Should be Given Option to Initiate Cancellation a Project with Full Refund without Penalty
Answered
https://support.peopleperhour.com/hc/en-us/articles/205217847
The above article describes how a client can cancel a project after a proposal has been accepted. That's fine, but what about scenarios where a freelancer discovers that a buyer is being unreasonable, unworkable, or otherwise and simply wants to cancel the contract and issue a full refund?
A freelancer should always be given the opportunity to cancel a project and offer a full refund without any kind of penalty or punishment for doing so.
Overall, there are many mechanisms that cater to clients when freelancers misbehave or aren't a good fit, but there are no equivalent standardized tools for freelancers to get recourse when a buyer behaves badly.
Yes, one can always contact support, but these tools should be standardized and worked into the workflow to streamline operations, set expectations upfront with buyers that they need to behave well, and so on.
Generally speaking, I see many ways that buyers are protected on this platform, but very few ways in which freelancers are protected from buyers, comparatively speaking. Please investigate this further or contact me for more details, if you would find such a conversation productive and useful.
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Official comment
Hi Joshua,
first of all thanks for you honest feedback.
I understand what you are saying, and the truth is you've got a point.
We are in the process of changing the way we work as Product team, and one of the chapters that will soon be addressed is revamping such kind of processes; therefore your suggestion fits nicely with this and will definitely be taken into consideration.
Best,
Haris
Product Manager @ PeoplePerHour
Comment actions -
Hi Haris - despite requests with dupport it is impossible to message you.
Disputes on pph are currently extremely poor and leaves very little protection for the freelancer.
The freelancer has to pay to dispute and could produce work then not get paid at all which in turns leads them to working for free.
Surely the charge should only occur if you favour in the freelancer favour. No freelancer should ever work for free or be out of pocket. For your 25% commission after VAT this would seem reasonable.
A professional from the community should look at the dispute (perhaps reach out to the network of Topcert freelancers and obtain writers, designers etc) so a balanced judgement could be obtained. Currently the crop who review them placed incorrect information or don't read the forms correctly.
No clarity is ever provided via PPH - one response on the workstream with no reasoning and no clarification who has reviewed usually with either a 50% payout (still deduct commission on top) or no payment at all.
To date, I've had 3 disputes on this site 2 have been the wrong reasoning (haven't delivered goods) which you have gestured a goodwill payment when realising it was wrong but it is alarming the little protection for freelancers.
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Has this been rectified? I'm new to this platform and having issues with a client. They literally have no idea what they are doing and are not clear what they want and will not answer any questions. I've been on Upwork for a while and not had any issues like this before. I would be able to cancel on my side on there, if this happened though.
Do I need to ask them to cancel the project? then I'll probably be left with a bad review for one of my first jobs on here.
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