Friday, November 24th, 2006
Rant: Client, you’re fired!
Perhaps it was just my mood this week, but I am close to dropping another client. In the past year, I’ve developed an online resource management and monitoring system for this company. For a mission critical online app, this has got to be one of the cheapest I’ve charged out.
Anyway, my old contact must have been removed. It had been months since I’ve heard anything from them and well, I was too busy to do the old marketing call and there were very rarely calls for technical support on the app - such is the benefit of creating unit tested applications that do as they should.
I receive a call while at my full time position and it was (I guess) the replacement for my contact at the company.
I spoke with the contact who requests that I come in. I told the contact that I’m unable to do so and that I dealt with their predecessor through electronic correspondence.
So a day or so later I receive an email with requested changes. Along with jabs at the application saying that it is actually slowing down their productivity. Anyone can say that I suppose, I’d even go so far in saying that it is a fair call. I disagreed, but carried out some feature requests and layout decisions made and detailed by their company and the contact’s predecessors.
So to start throwing it at me at this stage is a classic case of barking up the wrong tree. Early signs of power tripping micro-management and something which I care very little for.
I decide to pick up on the comment and try to defuse it saying that the application is an ever changing thing what’s good yesterday is not so good today. I divide the task list she provided to managable chunks and sent a quote, followed by a timeline.
The contact then returns with the micro managerial attitude of “I’ll be expecting it at [so and so time] then” - Well of course! that’s what I stated. This isn’t some amateur hour operation, these details are taken for granted.
The contact then continues to express that if I am unable to deliver sooner, in the future, they will have to seek out assistance from elsewhere.
This is when I heard a click in my ear. “Drop ‘em”.
Seriously, I really don’t understand what this person or people who have this kind of attitude expect.
I reply with a stern recommendation that they seek assistance elsewhere. I offered to honour the then approved proposal and see where we stand upon it’s completion. Basically, to sum things up in a nutshell, I told the contact that if this was the attitude they were going to have, then I don’t have time for them. Go find someone else.
Once bitten twice shy I suppose. The company I used to work for had the “pleasure of serving” one of the biggest sporting outfits in New South Wales and being the sole developer who had developed the CRM, CMS and Managed their website, I had to deal with the Public Relations Manager who had the same “master, slave” mentality.
This “PR” person literally was the wrong person for the job. For someone in public relations, this person had no people skills and was somewhat illiterate. He yelled and screamed at myself, the web designer and the account managers who, in his mind, were there to “serve” him and his ego.
We took it, big money after all dictates we take it. It got worse as the years passed by and eventually, the PR person got around a certain clause in our contract with his organisation by asking us to quote on one thing and another web development company to quote on another. After all that, In the end, it was all for nothing. The PR person who was a total disaster didn’t want to be with us and they screwed us and I expect my client to do the same.
Back on rant - I offer a service. It’s not a green light to start power tripping on me. Maybe that was big in the nineties, but hey, things change. You are MY client. I’m not YOUR slave or sh*tkicker. Let’s just get things clear, it’s a business relationship. Not a master, slave relationship.
In my mind, I’ve dropped them already, after the first iteration, I’ll think about taking them back.
on Friday, November 24th, 2006 at 1:44 pm:
hey villar! i can relate to this post so much and i’ve got to say…GOOD ON YOU for firing em!! The best clients value your services and it’s clear that these guys simply don’t do that…
blog on bro! Mic
on Saturday, November 25th, 2006 at 4:40 pm:
Thanks Mic.
This client lit a fire under my belly somethin’ severe. I’m actually 1 day ahead of schedule with this iteration. :)
on Saturday, November 25th, 2006 at 10:12 pm:
I’ll be frank. I think you’re over reacting.
You need to hang in there, dealing with clients like these are the ones that give you bread and butter stuff.
We offer a service, yes, but part of that service is to calm clients fears. Maybe things would have been different if you went over and met with your “contact” (btw: gw with keeping the anonymity and sex of the client haha).
Unlike your fanboy mic, I’m going to advise that you go against your primal urges and give them another chance.
I know you’ve been through this before with the other client throwing money at you, but every case is different.
You should try and finish it ahead of time and show the contact how good you are, if it keeps on going on like this, then go through the proper channels to keep the business.
Welcome to the real world! Everyone I’ve dealt with is like this and I’ve managed to keep them all with me. Some screwed me over, but I still got money out of them.
on Sunday, November 26th, 2006 at 7:36 pm:
Hi kevin,
> I’ll be frank. I think you’re over reacting.
Agreed. But “they started it” :P
> You need to hang in there, dealing with clients
> like these are the ones that give you bread
> and butter stuff.
A potentially difficult client that gives you jobs once every 6 months is “bread and butter stuff”? How do you figure that?
> We offer a service, yes, but part of that
> service is to calm clients fears.
If you were in marketing or sales maybe, but the service I offer is my expertise in web development.
I’ve seen some apps that would fall apart if you changed ANYTHING in the way of simple functionality and/or variables.
> Maybe things would have been different
> if you went over and met with your “contactâ€
Maybe it’s you who should actually see what the real world is like. Do you actually freelance? Have you been to meetings? Meetings are useful at times and are cool when you start attending them, it makes you feel important, but generally consist of “noise” and repetition instead of “signals” and new information.
We had an app already built, the contact wanted to changes some things. Give me a list of things to change and I’ll execute with professionally automatic fervour. If there are things I need clarified, I’ll ask you, if there are 10 things I need clarified, I’ll meet with you.
> (btw: gw with keeping the anonymity
> and sex of the client haha).
Thanks it was written as such. There’s no need to name name’s when ranting - it becomes personal then.
>You should try and finish it ahead of time and
> show the contact how good you are, if it keeps on
> going on like this, then go through the proper
> channels to keep the business.
Well, I’m onto my last task for the iteration regarding finishing it ahead of time, but regarding the proper channels, the contact being the contact, which channel am I going to go to? straight to the CEO? :P
Thanks for the advice but really, I’ve already thought this through as irrational as my rant may have seemed, it was really a measured choice weighed using pros and cons comparisons.
> Welcome to the real world! Everyone I’ve dealt
> with is like this and I’ve managed to keep
> them all with me. Some screwed me over, but
> I still got money out of them.
I didn’t realise that the world was so ignorantly optimistic. Maybe you’ve got one of those “I get knocked down, but I get up again” attitudes. That is very commendable, the rest of us however just drop difficult clients like they were soap lathered bowling balls.
And like you said, you still got screwed over. I’m trying to avoid getting screwed over so potential screwer overers are treated as such.
These clients are for guys like you ;)
ps mic is a very successful entrepreneur he’s no fanboy. Please be nice to other commentators.
on Monday, November 27th, 2006 at 9:48 pm:
Kevin, thanks for your input. Getting screwed over is NEVER good for business - yours or theirs! If you’re truly desperate and would cop all sorts of abuse and ill treatment for a few dollars then I guess that’s your decision. I’d define ‘bread and butter’ stuff as mutually beneficial business relationships - WIN WIN - otherwise either you or the client will end it at one point.
Once you’ve been around the block enough, you’ll realise that there are GOOD clients and then there are BAD ones. That my friend is reality - and the sooner you realise that the better.
Check out related article..
on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 11:54 pm:
I, too, can relate to this situation. Having had bad experiences with a major clients after a promotion with the company left me with some guy who thought he was a web developer and that “he knew how to do the stuff I did and was surprised I charged so much”.
I didn’t know how to answer that, so I asked him what his experience was. He said he had extensive phpnuke experience.
The next email was the termination notice. That was very satisfying that the next time I looked at his company’s “powered by php nuke” web site, it looked like it WAS a php nuke website complete with missing information and screwed up invalid HTML.
I found out through my old contact that they had to get another freelancer to fix the screwed up site who overcharged them big time!
I was happy I dropped them because I’ve just finished working on their competitors website which kciks their overpriced sites a$$ in features alone.
I try not to work toward a win win situation, but more a win (for me). I’m very stern and purposefully inflexible. If the client keeps with me, then they are either without choice or like their place in the relationship.
on Saturday, December 23rd, 2006 at 4:39 pm:
Ow! *clutches at his heart* you… bastards… you… got me…
Ok, I get what you guys are saying, sorry if I seemed patronising, the point I was trying to get accross was that sometimes you need to work to keep clients. If you are not in this position, then it’s good for you.
just my 0.02c - keep posting rvdavid :)
on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 2:15 am:
Yah, never make it personal. I just spent the last 4 months building a custom cms system for someone that supports uploading videos, photos, writing blogs, has custom paypal store, and mail system in admin, and user control…….all from scratch and for not even a penny. I was 95% done and the client jacked the code and won’t return any calls or emails cause I was building it on their server. Payment was suppose to be when I was done and it was my first client as I am 24 and just out of college. This pains me so much, I don’t even know what to do, cause it just happened the other week. I remained unemployed and went into debt for all this and then got jacked. sigh. everyone just tells me live and learn.