Over the course of your freelance career, you are bound to come across a client who is simply not happy with their job. When this happens, it may leave you with negative feedback. To a freelancer, this can often seem like a ‘scarlet letter’ that you can never escape. With over 800 Elance projects under my belt, I too have experienced the feeling of the “scarlet letter” at times. Fortunately, there are a few ways to repair negative reviews. Let’s examine some of those tips and tricks.

Communicate with the client

If a customer has left you a negative comment, there are often ways they can remove it. Talk to the client and apologize for their dissatisfaction with the work you have done. Ask them for the opportunity to review and correct your specifications, and ask them to remove the comments once they are happy. Most clients will have no problem doing this if they are reasonable people.

If the feedback was unjustified

If you know the client should have been happy with the job because they specifically delivered what they asked for within the time frame they gave you, talk to the freelance site you are working on. Explain the situation or issue a conflict ticket for the independent work site board to review the situation. If the site thinks you’re right, they may be able to remove the negative comments from your profile.

Explain the situation

On many sites, like Elance, you have the ability to respond to negative comments. This is your chance to explain to other customers who can see the comments exactly what happened – your chance to tell your side of the story. Explain what happened and why you think the feedback was undeserved. It may have been that he was experiencing a family hardship or that the client was simply not being reasonable about the work he turned in. Many customers who are browsing the profiles will stop to read the negative comments, as well as your response.

When all else fails

If there is nothing you can do to eliminate negative feedback, just live with it. Do what you can to develop your positive comments and forget about the negative ones. If you have fifty positive comments and one negative comment, it probably doesn’t affect you as much; just take a look at some of the other providers to see if it’s true.

By using the tips above, you can do everything in your power to repair a negative comment so that it doesn’t affect your career as a freelancer.