There may be situations where a client is not satisfied with the service, any aspect of it, or the result of the delivered work. In such cases, it is the sole responsibility of the developer who’s been working on a project to de-escalate the situation. If you’ve tried all means of de-escalation but the client is still not satisfied, you can use one of the following solutions:

1. Offer the client to pass their project to another developer. However, you’ll need to negotiate it with one of the developers on the team and make sure that you can find a substitution before you make this suggestion to the client. In this case, your earnings will be split based on the delivered and usable work.

2. In case the client is looking for a refund, follow the policies outlined on our Terms of Service page; if the client qualifies, you may issue the refund. If they don’t qualify but you feel like it’d be better to make an exception to avoid a chargeback, contact the admin team to discuss it before making any offers (Ana, Gabriel, Evgeniya).

Refund Scenario:

To issue the refund, message Ana (or Evgeniya if Ana is away), explain the situation, and use the following information:

• email address that the client paid with

• link to the Help Scout or Shopexpert ticket

• amount that needs to be refunded

• details about the reason for the refund. This will be used in official notes; please make your message clear and concise.

Once we have this information, wait for our confirmation that the refund has been issued. After that, inform the client that they’ll soon see it in their bank.

Chargeback Scenario:

This is the worst possible scenario for the company and for you, because chargebacks pose a direct threat to our credibility as a secure service provider. This means that the payment processor may suspend the receiving account and hold the money until the company (and you as part of it) prove that we can be trusted. In this case, the company will, of course, have to freeze your balance with us until the situation is resolved. We don’t want to do that, and we ask all our developers to be very careful and try to avoid chargebacks.

In the event that a client submits a chargeback, the developer will have two options:

• Accept the chargeback and return the money right away, or

• Respond to the chargeback with evidence of completed work.

If you decide to proceed with responding, you'll need to gather relevant evidence that the service has been delivered. This evidence will be used against the client’s claim. Once you have prepared the evidence, send it to Ana or Evgeniya, and they will submit it on your behalf.

How to collect evidence for a dispute:

Collecting evidence is essentially taking screenshots of the conversation with the client that showcase the work that was completed/acknowledged by the client/found satisfactory by the client. You can also attach a screenshot of the client's current theme, showing they're using your work. Try to be thorough but do not screenshot every single message that you’ve ever exchanged with the client, as there are limits to the length of attachable texts and files. Know what is important and what can help you win your case.

Every screenshot must include the date of the message and the client's name and email address. Try to leave quick notes in the screenshots that'll explain why the message is important; this will be extremely helpful for agents reviewing your case and it might give you a better chance of winning as it'll be easier for them to understand the additional context.

Once you have prepared all screenshots, sort them by dates/times and compile them into one PDF file; you can use this free service for that.

Please see below an example of a screenshot taken for evidence:

You may be required to provide additional information on a case-by-case basis. We will inform you about that. There is also a time limit for responding to chargebacks, and if the evidence is not submitted on time, the dispute will automatically be accepted by the payment processor. This means that the money will be returned to your client, and we will take any amount lost on chargeback fees from your earnings.

Note: In the event of a complaint where an agreement cannot be reached and every option has been exhausted, you can reach out to us and we may step in to provide some advice where possible. In this case, we will need access to your communication with the client and a clear explanation from you on what was done and what went wrong. If we don’t have access to your communication with the client or can’t check the delivered work easily, we may not be able to help you. So, it is advisable to work with clients using the company’s communication platforms.