First Dispute on Freelancer.com

This post is about my first dispute in Freelancer.com. I came to know about this dispute in today morning (2012-09-24). When I open my email inbox I saw a strange email from freelancer.com (I told you I received this kind of strange email a few weeks ago too. It was about a deleted project on freelancer.com). This time the mail was about a dispute regarding an initial milestone payment.

A few days ago I received a 'Someone wants to hire you' email. That said,

"Congratulations! cargoria is impressed by your Profile and wants to hire you directly for their project on Freelancer.com. You don't even have to bid!"

Then it said,

"Good news! cargoria has created a Milestone Payment of $50 USD for 'Final Hand Facebook App'."

I didn't even bid on this particular project. Usually I stop bidding for other projects once I was awarded a project. I was working on another project at this time. So once I received this message about the custom project that had been awarded to me, I messaged back to the project poster about my inability to accept the project. He understood my explanation and agreed to work after finishing the current project.

Normally, when I do not accept a project, the project is automatically revoked and any milestones created is refunded back to the creator. But at this time he, the project poster, had filed a dispute regarding his initial milestone. This was a new experience to me. Initially I though I might need to pay some kind of compensation for him. But the dispute was resolved through few clicks on the dispute resolution pages on freelancer.com.

The message I am trying to communicate is; if you cant accept the project, reject it with a polite message. Then the milestones will be refunded back to the project poster. Otherwise he will need to wait until the project is automatically revoked. (Actually I don't know how this is shown in project poster's interface, as I neither awarded a project to anyone on freelancer.com nor created a milestone.) Always reject if you can't accept the project. It does not hurt the project poster.

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