Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this freelancer as the work was not completed. In my opinion, the worst thing a freelancer can do when unable to meet a deadline is to start making excuses instead of admitting promptly that they are unable to cope and providing the client with more time to find a way out of the situation. This is exactly what happened at the end of our cooperation with Yelizaveta. It felt like I was dealing with someone who had agreed to help me for free, and instead of completing the work on time, started inundating me with excuses. I understand that there are challenges with scheduled power outages in Ukraine, but there was plenty of time given to complete the work. I already regularly donate to charities, and here it was important for me to get results.
What did I get?
1) Incredible stress, as the freelancer did not even send the part of the work that was ready. I would have just overlooked the missed deadline if I had received something that I could work on/complete/enhance. Yelizaveta kept me hanging for a long time and only admitted her helplessness an hour before my (not even her) deadline. Luckily, I already understood where this was heading and managed to somehow complete the work in four and a half hours (half of the desired time, but at least something!). In the case of Yelizaveta, the timeline was approximately as follows: June 7 - confirmation that she was taking on the task; June 11 - deadline; June 12 - a circus of excuses.
2) Non-constructive excuses about electricity/exams with an unclear purpose, which I could only outline as (but please forgive me if I am wrong) - making me feel guilty for asking for work to be done for the money I pay. I have experience in writing various papers for students after urgent requests (including those needed "yesterday"), and I know that the lack of internet and electricity complicates the work. But there are many solutions - maximizing internet usage when available, saving all possible articles, web pages, etc. in offline format for later reading, processing, and analysis when there is no internet. Yelizaveta had internet for communicating with me, but there was no internet to send at least a minimum of completed work (I suspect because there was nothing to send).
Conclusion: wasted time and nerves. Please do not take on tasks that you cannot complete.
What did I get?
1) Incredible stress, as the freelancer did not even send the part of the work that was ready. I would have just overlooked the missed deadline if I had received something that I could work on/complete/enhance. Yelizaveta kept me hanging for a long time and only admitted her helplessness an hour before my (not even her) deadline. Luckily, I already understood where this was heading and managed to somehow complete the work in four and a half hours (half of the desired time, but at least something!). In the case of Yelizaveta, the timeline was approximately as follows: June 7 - confirmation that she was taking on the task; June 11 - deadline; June 12 - a circus of excuses.
2) Non-constructive excuses about electricity/exams with an unclear purpose, which I could only outline as (but please forgive me if I am wrong) - making me feel guilty for asking for work to be done for the money I pay. I have experience in writing various papers for students after urgent requests (including those needed "yesterday"), and I know that the lack of internet and electricity complicates the work. But there are many solutions - maximizing internet usage when available, saving all possible articles, web pages, etc. in offline format for later reading, processing, and analysis when there is no internet. Yelizaveta had internet for communicating with me, but there was no internet to send at least a minimum of completed work (I suspect because there was nothing to send).
Conclusion: wasted time and nerves. Please do not take on tasks that you cannot complete.
