Client of the Day
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- nb3
This is a long, old, and boring story. And a puzzle! Help me understand!
Website client owed me $2800. Commercial industrial parts reseller, this is a very small expense relative to his business. Also I don't care that much because it's not much money. Still, it's mine, pay me muthafucka.
Doesn't pay. Literally years go by, I make regular requests for payment. A few "sure, we'll send a check soon" for a while, but after a few months they responses stop. I'm not charging interest and I'm not doing any work for them. No big deal.
Finally, I just say fuck it maybe the owner died or something who knows. I disable the site and put up a polite "Our website is currently down, please call, thank you."
This, of course, also stops their email accounts from working.
It's a small family business, just a couple employees. Two days later I get an email from the owner's dad. It is full of wild excuses including someone got cancer, a divorce, very hard times, etc. Keep in mind I haven't heard from them in YEARS.
He makes no indication that they will attempt to pay ever. I reply that I understand but there are expenses to keep a website running and I've been more than fair by keeping it up all this time, and I am not charging interest on payment due. Can we work out a payment plan? I tell him I am happy to flip the site back on and hand over all materials and the domain and everything to them for free, just pay me the $2800 you owe, in installments if necessary.
No response.
About a week later I get an email from a "local businessman" (seriously that's how it started, "Hello, I am a local businessman..." lolololol) interested in purchasing the .com domain from me. Never in the 7 years I ran this website has anyone ever offered to buy the domain. It's not even a good domain.
Guy leaves a name and a phone number. I google the number, turns out it's just the owner's friend. Now I assume they've come up with a moronic ploy to trick me into buyiing back the domain and I'm expecting they will offer a lower price. I imagine they were drinking some beers when they came up with this genius grift.
So, I play stupid and email him "I would need to hear an offer before I would consider selling it. I am open to offers, let me know what you had in mind."
He offers me $2800. The exact amount owing on the account. Lolwut???
I email him I accept the offer, thinking hey-o I'll get my money and be done with it. I don't know why we had to do this whole sneaky Ocean's 11 rigamarole, but whatever.
I tell him I accept.
AND THEN I NEVER HEARD FROM ANY OF THESE CLOWNS EVER AGAIN.
Tell me why. Make it make sense.
- This should be made into a movie.cherub
- $2800 is a whole month's bills. I usually don't chase after $200 but would for $2800.doggydoggdog
- Should disable after 3 months of non-payment.doggydoggdog
- Lolthx for the business advice, but... Cutting off whenever wouldn’t guarantee payment, and why cripple a small business when I can easily cut them a break?nb
- Recoup your costs by selling the site to their competition.noneck
- Did you even read the storynb
- The local businessman ruse is simply to deflect attention from the owner owing $2800. Now you are thinking someone is gonna pay $2800 for the domain....shapesalad
- That makes no sense. Was he thinking I would transfer the domain before payment?nb
- You could still chase the owner for the monies owed - $5600 totes, cha-chingNairn
- imbecile0
The fuck..?
Client: Please add these names to the page. (List of names)
Me: Sure. Copy / paste... updated.
Client: Names are spelled incorrectly.
Me: ???
Me: I copied those names from your list.
Client: No longer responding.
- I once made a poster for a major marathon for a major running co. We included all 20k entries in the background imported from a spread sheet...fooler
- 1 of their sponsored athletes was spelled wrong in 3 pt type and she found it! Had to reprint the entire job.fooler
- O,,oimbecile
- hot damn. 3pt types lolpango
- shapesalad1
- It is like that. Nvidia GauGAN2
https://www.nvidia.c…
https://www.youtube.…imbecile
- It is like that. Nvidia GauGAN2
- canoe0
Me: (writing features & benefits for an automotive aftermarket product) Hey, I noticed on your marketplace page the product says it's 30 layers. I thought it was 19?
Client: Oh, well the competition said there's was 10 layers so I just put up 30 or 19 or whatever. Those numbers don't mean anything.
Me:
- _niko2
Bidding on work drives me crazy.
You give an estimate that is fair for your time, energy expertise etc and the client balks at it saying it's way too high.
after losing a few of these you start questioning your rates, so you come down a bit and you send an estimate to another client that's a bit lower so you don't lose another gig and they come back like you're too low and they would have paid much more.
FFS.
- Ya, that’s a bitch. One of the first things I ask is for them to give me an idea what their budget is. Surprisingly they will often chime in with a vague numberGnash
- Yeah I try to ask as well but more often than not they'll say not sure just tell us what it'll cost. But other industries like home-building or renovations..._niko
- client has no problem leading with their budget. Sometimes I find giving them 3 options of increasing complexity and costs helps. Ferrari, Audi, Toyota._niko
- Ya, the problem with the 3-quote approach is that you have to remove deliverables from the each quote so that it makes sense.Gnash
- I don’t have the answer, though. I kinda wing it each time.Gnash
- Did it for over a decade.
Get employed.
Work 9-5.
Engineer personal contentment.ideaist - Give them a quote in an obscure crypto currency, just for giggles.shapesalad
- 1, Give price: they baulk
2. Say "well what is your budget?"
3. They respond
4. Say "I can do that if I remove X,Y,Z from quote"Centigrade - Raise your rates so you don't have to deal with shitty clients. Rich clients don't care about rates, they just trust you and pay fastgrafician
- I agree with all points, done a bit of each in the past, except the obscure crypto lol_niko
- WhiteFace0
I've been chasing a client invoice for exactly a year now, with late replies, excuses and reassurance it'll be paid soon, still nothing. I still have control of their website and template I designed them is it justified to shut it down at this point?
- Yeah, especially if your terms for payment were specific (30 days, etc).evilpeacock
- maybe disable the css so the info is still there, but looks like shithans_glib
- Tell them you are going to shut it down in 7 days (make sure they can't access) unless paid. Once shut down a daily interest of 10% compounded, added to bill.shapesalad
- Actually... just take it down, put up a page saying 'this website has been hacked, send monero crypto to..."shapesalad
- 'to unlock your website'. then email them saying you've noticed the website has been hacked and you can't log in.shapesalad
- "Client did not pay?
Add opacity to the body tag and decrease it every day until their site completely fades away" https://github.com/k…grafician
- canoe1
I feel like a born-again virgin!
Renewed client is asking for me to work in,
The last time I worked on design outside of using Adobe products was when I used to steal time from kinkos in the 90s.
I'm sure I'm not the only one on QBN who would stay for 3 hours and pay for 15 minutes?
- Flexitive is a similar product a previous employer wanted to replace me with. It couldn't compete with my ~5 minutes to change a rate and compile 50+ ad sizesevilpeacock
- dang! that's some fast production feet ya got there!canoe
- Nairn7
I've just got rid of a long-term client.
They build robots and have always been interesting, but each new project they start is a new company, with a new engineer / point of contact, so I'm always doing the same old dance, bringing them up to speed. In and of itself, it's a little infuriating, but the projects have always been cute and I've always been kept in the loop and given enough time and info to turn around.
Latest iteration.. less so. New point of contact is infuriating to deal with - leaves everything to the last minute, never listens to what I say, insists upon specifying impossible materials and pushing the designs of possible materials too far, always sends the wrong files, set up incorrectly, etc etc.
I got a new batch for another job from him late on Friday and I scanned it and thought "Fuckit, I'll deal with that tomorrow". Thankfully, as he re-sent all the files again this morning as they were all a bit wrong. That in of itself would have been a grand waste of my time had I started last night. I take a better look at the specs - three materials I don't cut, one of which I'm not even sure exists; The designs have technical details that are Bad that I've mentioned to him previously (repeatedly) and on top of all that, they have a stupidly-tight deadline, despite the fact he first mentioned this batch about two weeks ago, but made no mention of the materials, etc. If he had, I might've been able to squeeze it in. But no, he's basically sent a job that I couldn't start until Monday, at which point I could only order materials which wouldn't make it in time for his mid-week deadline, never mind my being able to do my thing and then mail back. Just really ill-considered.
Me being me though, I fretted about how I'd accomplish this for longer than I should this afternoon, a stressful lump growing in my stomach as I appreciate how Hard this would be until I realise - "I don't have to do this, do I? This isn't actually my problem". So I'm not. Bye-bye old client. I'm sure I'll get a call from his boss on Monday asking WTF, but hey.
- oops that was a long whinge! Sorry.
Ignore.Nairn - so you got your hands on multiple companies or its always one just the brand and the contact changes?sted
- well... you're a single point of possible failure, eg, if ill or injured. Perhaps tell them you can off work ill.. please send grapes and whiskey...shapesalad
- @sted - it's one 'organisation' that sets up a new company and employees for each new project which then gets sold on if successful (last one to Bosch)Nairn
- as I say, it's always been a bit faffy, but interesting. This time around the contact's dismal and I've not been kept in the loop so I'm not emotionallyinvestedNairn
- Good for you...I've "let go" a few clients over the years when the cost they were incurring just didn't make sense.yuekit
- gotcha. and you never felt like going with the projects they let go, or craft out some long term solution for yourself?sted
- oh, it's an interesting thing to have a small thalidomide hand in, but it's not at all my focus.
I have no idea what my focus is.Nairn - to be clear - i'm merely a minor, replaceable part of the flow of these people. A small cog. It was just an interesting relationship, whilst it lasted.Nairn
- oops that was a long whinge! Sorry.
- canoe4
...after first review of making, as asked, the exact same layout as their competitor, they took it a step further,
"Use the same colors."
ftw
- happy holidays graf, tnx for the dvcanoe
- of course the client said it looks like the competitor. how can someone run an agency for over 10 years and still not understand basic brandingcanoe
- So mister canoe we've established:
- you know shit about fonts
- you know shit about handling clients
- you probably know shit about everything elsegrafician - actually gaffe, you recommended Neutraface when it was Josefin Sans and then threw a tantrum when you were wrong.canoe
- actually I called you out for coming here beggin for help everytime
canoe - the font begger!grafician - and for the record I UPVOTED YOU out of pity for having to deal with such bad clientsgrafician
- It was the agency that was giving the poor direction... and believe me I brought up the issue of looking like the competition... but agencies are never wrong!canoe
- Look, I don't have a problem asking other designers about a typeface. You've asked for help on QBN. What gives? What's the problem? Can you move on?canoe
- For clarity, I've been here since 2002, canoe handle is 10 years old, since then 12% of my topics (20/165) have regarded typeface identification.canoe
- Do those statistics match up to your posting standards? Anyways, I checked out your insta and I love how much fun you have with your work, makes me yearn for...canoe
- ...the years my mind wasn't bogged down in the dynamics of handling commercial work, ya know, like this Mazda campaign I'm working on.canoe
- Sometimes I wonder how I got this far without 'knowing shit about shit. Buy why question it? I landed a job at BBDO 20 years ago & still work on national brandscanoe
- You understand irony? My point is, you don't know me, and you're not going to make me feel a certain way about myself by projecting your insecurities my way.canoe
- Or whatever it is that compels you to keep harassing me and my worthiness as a designer.canoe
- I just assumed you're taking a piss at us and our time when given this much experience you still don't know basic shit.grafician
- Then again I know veteran CDs with awards that only know how to use Photoshop and nothing else...grafician
- I'm sorry you feel that way, but your trolling and judgements land on deaf ears. You're better than this...canoe
- oey_oey1
New client wants a website. Client is an Illustrator.
Front page should be like a blog with sidebar where there's info and news and links to other projects plus image of artist working in Studio and information about services.Portfolio should have not more than 9 images and there should be an extra page with all work.
Despite the actual portoflio now being divided by three pages containing each page 14 portfolio images.
I should not design mobile first.
Images in Lightbox should be clickable to open in same window and zoom in the max possible for visitors to see details.
I'm glad I have work to do!
- lolnb
- Are you complaining?
This would make a very effective folio for an illustrator.grafician - Maybe for some inspiration, this new folio for Handsome Frank illustration agency is very simply great: https://www.handsome…grafician
- no no grafician, the client doesn't ant something like that at all. when i mean sidebar it's not navigation. it's like links, news, recent work picturesoey_oey
- and other stuff to be quickly linked.
besides the main content on the front page.oey_oey - all white, which is no problem at all.oey_oey
- navigation menu on top under centered logo. menu items are illustrations, also in mobile.oey_oey
- Projectile0
I'm making an animation, the two main charcters are circles. I'm making them grandma and grandpa on a Zoom call.
The feedback:
"hmm grandma and grandpa... a bit of a cliche. How about two grannies?"So now I'm expected to somehow make it clear that a circle is a lesbian grandma. Any suggestions?
- sted7
- At least they know how to use Figma.zarkonite
- Not to mention usually at least one if not many of those changes really affect also some of the other pages, so double or triple the changes overall hahahaaagrafician
- Or a nifty and (too) smart assistant.sted
- sted you have an assistant?! woaahgrafician
- me, no. well sort of, but she isn't doing stuff like that. our contact has one.sted
- Technical Writersmaquito
- This made me want to create a world map made of Figma comments. Never gonna do it though. Bye.maquito
- Pack your things and say bye!!OBBTKN
- i would never share my open designfiles to review. A pdf. is enough to give feedback that matters.milfhunter
- when you have a workflow where the clients team is integrated into the design process these things are natural.sted
- they did a review without interference or supervision from our end, and went for it big time pushing everything into one session.sted
- 80% will be obsolete after the next QA.sted
- Interesting way of working.milfhunter
- removes a lot of additional resource requirements from our shoulders, and makes things like research easier.sted
- plus don't have to pay for legal review,
or specialized 3rd party consultants.sted - 191 comments ain't badnb
- slappy2
Overheard this when walking past the boardroom today
"The client doesn't have time to ruin it.."
Sometimes tight deadlines are good.
- Nairn1
I asked about material requirements for a small job for a fairly regular client in case I need to order more in for them as it's all very last minute. Client sent a few photos of the model they're working on, and I started swearing a bit as there was absolutely no context for its actual size from the very clean and professionally-taken photos, so all a bit useless. Until, that is, I scrolled down to the last DIY photo in which my client had dangled his daughter over the model, letting me know exactly how much material I'd need... .
- His daughter is 36.Nairn
- 36 what? Inches? hectares?Fax_Benson
- Bloody non-specific clients.Fax_Benson
- She was 9 months, that was me trying to be funny. I can guage the size of a model based on a dangled 9 month old.
It made me smile. This time.Nairn - made me smile too. I was being deliberately dim.Fax_Benson
- ha-nairncanoe
- Salarrue9
- too nice, why sorry?Beeswax
- Because he didn't stoop to the other guy's level.Nairn
- Sorry he had to let the job go. Client didn’t have to do this, it’s on him.monospaced
- Must be nice to say no to a bankroll of 5200.dibec
- sted1
me sends business proposal, schedule and all that crap to new client after a party together a week ago.
client email:
"cut corners, sounds formal, we are informal, like a gorilla"hehh, awesome :D
looking forward for the next 2 months working with these guys.
- Hayoth0
Client: our case studies are going to have 5 bullet points. We want it super simple.
Me: cool, that sounds perfect for real estate
Proceeds to send 30 case studies with 20 bullet points each with all them consisting of 4/5 of the bullet points being the worlds longest paragraphs.
- Sounds about rightGuyFawkes
- Comi bastards...everytime...utopian
- it's capitalism in action...growth is the only way.uan
- Deal with it, snowflake.face_melter
- True of all clients. They seem to all have anxiety when it comes to points of communication - they jam everything into it, anxiety of customer confusion.shapesalad
- With out realising that jam all you product/company info into a single point of comms is just going to confuse and turn away customers. less is very much more.shapesalad
- anyway.. just as long as i'm not proofing their comms it's all ok.shapesalad
- cnaps19700
Presenting wireframes to the client. We are all on the phone, looking at PDF's of wireframes.
Client: Why isnt the text animated on the home page.
Me: Because this is just a wireframe????!?!?!?!?!?
Client: Yes I understand, but cant we make it move or something!
