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SUBMIT STORY

My family's house is having a kitchen extension. My parents have paid designers to make detailed plans of the kitchen. They provided a 3D model on their website to see what the room would actually be like. They state that we're allowed to ask for changes to see what they would look like on the 3D model.

And yet, for some reason, my mother asked me to download the 3D model form their website and add a specific model of washing machine to "see what it would look like." I have zero interest or skill in 3D modeling and have never indicated otherwise. 

Me: I can't. 

Mom: Sure you can! Just believe in yourself. 

Me: No, I really can't. I don't know how to rip a 3D model off a site, or to make a 3D model myself, and even if I knew how they've offered to do it themselves. 

Mom: Oh, just use your dad's computer then.

That wasn't the issue, mom. 

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I was talking with a potential client about her wanting to hire a marketer. I asked her questions about why she was hiring.

Me:  So you want to hire a marketer. Great. Why now? What are you trying to achieve?

Client: I'm the General Manager of this luxury events facility. There have already been millions of dollars invested in it, but I need help marketing it. 

Me: Wow! Congratulations. That's exciting.

Client: Yeah! I've been involved in some previous projects that failed, so I'm so glad this one is working out.  

She proceeded to interrogate me in the interview and she came across as quite arrogant and condescending. The pay wasn't great, and she needed a lot of help understanding what she wanted.

Client: I have had some trouble with freelancers before, but I'm finally at a point where I'm ready to hire someone to manage my marketing plans.

Me: ...Ok.

Client: If I were to call your references, what would they say about you? What kinds of criticisms?

Me: Well, I don't know about criticisms. I think they would say that they enjoyed working with me and wished I had stayed longer with them.

Client: What else? 

Me: Uh... 

Afterward, I re-visited the website for her business, and it looked like it was created on a shoestring budget. It looked very haphazard. Remember, there were "millions" invested in the facility, but very little money in the website. Red flag. 

I didn't want to have to be the one to tell her that she would need to overhaul her website, and I certainly didn't want to be in charge of holding her hand through it.

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I shoot video. I've had a recent spate of clients who all do the same thing.

Me:  What are you looking for, specifically?

Client: Just follow your own vision. You will know best.

This I think almost always a huge red flag, but really all you can do is plug on and hope you can get into the ballpark if they're stubbornly telling you nothing.

What happens every time:

Client: This isn't what I wanted. Can you just send me the raw footage?

Me: Please let me know what you're after and I'll get to work on the changes.

They proceed to not send me anything and they always use what I sent originally anyway.

This is why I make sure I get paid upfront.

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I work for a company that handles the email accounts for their clients.  We were migrating from one email service provider to another and had to transfer all of their mailboxes.  24 mailboxes.  The smallest one had 22 GB of mail in it.  The largest had over 90 GB.

Client: We need this mail migrated as quickly as possible.

Me: Okay, I'm working on the migration now.  Transferring the mail between the two services is going to take a considerable amount of time.

Client: Define considerable?  Like... 30 minutes?

Me:  Um... no.  There's over a terabyte of mail that needs to be moved.  Even if we sustain a gigabyte of transfer a minute, it would still not be done in less than 20 hours.

Client:  20 hours?  Unacceptable.  I need you to find a way to have it done in the next hour.

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We are a marketing agency with digital services, graphic arts, translations, etc. I am one of our Founders.

We have been courting a potentially enormous client (as in 7 figure, multi-year contract) for THREE YEARS. These high-level relationships take time to gain trust. So, after three years of talk, a thousand bucks on dinner for his team over time, and after we've outlined all our services in plain English, the guy tells me:

Client: We will entertain a commission-based fee only. We don't pay for activities. We pay for results.

He wanted us to do investor research, write proposals for grants and funding, as well as translate websites and create art. But he was saying that we will only pay us if we actually get him an investor?

C'mon... That's not how to do things.

He is sending us an itemized list of what he wants done, thinking we will accept his proposal for commission-based fees only. He is wrong. We are going to return a policy sheet stating that we do not work on success fee basis or any promise of FUTURE pay. We take a 4-figure retainer (at least $2,000 up front) and then an agreed-upon hourly  rate. Our team does not waiver from this position. This is our separation tool. We suspect they will hold firm in their position as well, expecting us to agree to their price structure. This will not happen, so this Client from Hell story is about managing time better; and cutting to the chase faster.

The good news is along the way, we made more huge connections and can sell them our services. Always hold yourself in highest esteem as the contractor. They are talking to you because they CANNOT do what you can do as a software designer, artist, etc. Hold your head high, my contractor friends, and do NOT accept less than you are worth. Any success fee type potential clients reading this: take heed.

Thanks for the chance to tell my story.

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I work as a general assistant/bookkeeper/web designer/designated young person for a fairly well known real estate company. One of my peers was in charge of the technical aspects of getting a simple WordPress website in order.

Client: I'm trying to publish a newsletter but I can't find my site.

Me: It says the IP address is unavailable.

Client: He can't take the website down. That's illegal.

Me: You haven't paid him for the past few months and you've hired a new social media marketer to redo the CRM he made.

Client: All of our things are on there! I'm pretty sure that's illegal.

 

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After I was asked for an enormous discount and declined:

Client: Just imagine me as your son. You'd do it for half price if I were your son, wouldn't you?

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I work as a designer for a firm that acts as a go-between the client and this particular vendor: we come up with a design concept with the client and the vendor interprets it for us with a lot of back-and-forth saying "More this" and "Less that." This particular vendor is very, very good at interpreting our designs. The client... not so good with the committing to a design. We've been working on this particular design with them for about a year and are no where close to production because every conversation is "Why didn't you do the opposite of what we told you to do?". Today we had a call to discuss the timeline and how we could wrap this up:

Client: I feel it would be beneficial to have everyone up here for a collaborative session next week.

Me: (groaning inside but foolishly optimistic that maybe something could come from it) Okay, being there in person would definitely keep things from getting lost in translation since this has been such a tumultuous process.

Client: Yes, we feel if the vendor's designer can sit and work on the design while we watch and correct them we'll be able to wrap this up quickly.

I'll be on vacation next week so I'm not going to be representing our firm, but that poor soul...

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I do cheap art commissions through a website from time to time. I have regular customers who are usually no problem. However there are certain clients who I have problems with.

One problem is they are both the same person, trying to pass themselves off as two different people. The, second, main biggest problem is, they ask ME for money to buy a commission from myself because they're "advertising my work."

What's wrong with some people?

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Me: This video will take about 1 week to edit but it could take longer as it's quite complicated.

Client: Okay, that's fine.

Six days later:

Client: How long until the video is done we're growing impatient.

Me, in my brain: WHY EVEN BOTHER PRETENDING YOU UNDERSTAND THE TIME SCALE THEN GAHHHHHHHHHH

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