Can the customer return the money for the completed project?

Question

Freelance

I'm on Elance.com quite recently, and now I took my first project on Fixed-price, announced a deadline of 3 days. There was no technical task as such, but the customer wrote about what he wanted via Skype. 3 days have passed, the order was completed, sent to the customer, he liked it, he marked the project as completed, put a review with a rating of 5, paid.
After another 3 days, he wrote that he wanted an improved version of the script (Master - Slave with automatic deployment of servers on DigitalOcean and load balancing), I said that I could do it, but I don’t know how long it would take, agreed on a Hourly Job. I installed the tracker (Work View) and started, for 2 months the requirements changed almost every day, but I didn’t really care, because the payment was hourly.
Then I received a letter from Elance.com that the client is not able to pay me for my work (it turned out that more than 100 hours hung). I started to find out the reasons, it turned out that he had exceeded the monthly spending limit on the card and the money would definitely be within a week (in the next calendar month). I believed and continued to do the work (though already spending significantly less time on this project). The money did not come in a week, but it turns out in two. Then the client, referring to some problems with financing, asked to freeze the project.
The client marked the 2nd (already hourly) work as completed and gave positive feedback. He asked me to send the source codes (I sent them, but the point is that there was a whole infrastructure there). A week passes and I again receive a letter that the client cannot pay for my work (thank God this time there are about 20 hours left and, in principle, not very critical). But today I received an email from Elance.com stating that the client is demanding a refund on both projects that I completed, arguing that he could not install the code that I provided to him on the server. To my question on Skype "What is the actual problem? Let me set everything up and set it up for you," he replies that I tried to deceive him and gave him a non-working code, and that he is not funny and does not want to waste time communicating with me.
Actually, the question is whether he will be able to return the money for the work performed (he did not provide the TOR, what he wrote on Skype was not fully completed, because there was no go-ahead on his part that it was possible to continue work after eliminating financial issues on his part) or change already posted review?

Answer 1

Now you need to immediately make a copy of all Skype conversations, save them in a document and attach them to the correspondence on Elance (this is necessary so that you can refer to it in case of further proceedings).
Then write to the client that you received such a question from the site, add screenshots of the working application you have locally or somewhere where you can demonstrate it working. Add that you are concerned that the client believes that you have provided a broken code, and you have checked it and confirm that it works (with the above screenshots) and, as already mentioned, are ready to help with the configuration. Ideally, say that it can take from ... to ... time, you can describe what the problem might be.
After this letter to the client, write to Elance. Describe that the code works (add screenshots or a link to a demo, whatever), you wrote this to the client, offered to solve the issue. Again, describe how you are concerned that the client suspects you of inappropriate behavior, and you did all the work honestly. And because you are a new developer, working for a rating, you want to further develop on the site. And then ask Elance how they can help you in the current situation, for example, to offer the client to still give you the opportunity to customize the work of your code on his side.
And now from the real practice of arbitration. If you do not come to an agreement, most likely you will have arbitration on the site at the beginning, and if you do not come to a common decision there, then the court. Arbitration is assisted by Elance staff and their goal is to help you reach an agreement. In the situation with the court, it is not produced by Elance, but by an independent site. The court is paid and you share the cost of the court between yourself, the client and Elance. Unfortunately, in reality, the court made decisions on the return of money for the work performed. Although, according to the rules of Elance, the court cannot dispose of the money that you have already received for work, do not lie on Escrow and were paid by the client earlier.
Therefore, it is worth negotiating.

Answer 2

In fact, you had 2 signed acts of work performed. You can draw a line on them. In theory, 20 unpaid hours should remain in the dispute. Probably from this and you need to build your defense strategy. You can also point to the fact that the client had difficulties in paying.

Answer 3

In such cases, I usually immediately file a complaint on the exchange against the client; arbitration has never taken the side of a bad client.

Answer 4

Your work has already been paid, a review has been left. Plus, the work was done not yesterday, but several months ago. It is he who can no longer pay off with you and is trying in every possible way to get out of the situation.

Answer 5

If the client accepted the completed work, confirmed it with a positive review and paid, let him move on. Moreover, you must demand payment for 20 hours of your work (according to what is written).
But I don’t know the technical side in terms of editing reviews on Elance.