We did have one nightmare client, who we really wanted to help because she needed a site for her African orphanage. We ignored the obvious warning signs and offered her a great deal simply because of the site going to a noble cause.

She strung the project out over a year, continually failed to communicate, and tried to take advantage of us on a number of occasions and we were already doing the work for next to nothing. We lost thousands of dollars worth of time and effort and dealt with a great deal of stress for that client only to have to finally terminate the job for our own well being. We refunded her the little money she paid us in full and explained that we probably weren’t the right company for her since we were unable to meet her expectations. We had completed some smaller jobs for her (Custom email campaigns) and refunded those as well, even though we had done the work and sent the promotional emails out to her lists.

She received the refund, cashed it the day it arrived in the mail, then proceeded to immediately start calling our other clients to complain about us. Fortunately, we had kept a complete paper trail of each attempt to communicate and her “responses”, the amount we charged her, the refund, etc. When printed out, it was a stack about an inch and a half tall. We offered everything (with the client’s personal/private information removed) to any client she contacted. She did, after all, bring them into it, so we had no problems sharing the details with them.

In the end, everyone sided with us and the clients that had referred her to us apologized profusely.

Excellent writing, by the way.

This kind of thing makes me feel nervous. As I’ve said I’ll likely start working for actual clients in about a year’s time when I finish college (okay, a year and a few months) but I’m trying not to let this sort of thing put me off and I’m learning a lot from other folks’ experiences.

The key factor is that if you ask most web designers, they’ll be able to give you several examples of nightmare clients, not just one, it seems we have trouble learning from our mistakes and turning down work when we should! :)

I WAY under charged as the code was a mess and I spent a few hours sorting out what what what, then the client didn’t have the original .psd for treatemts to images. I had to recreate that. I only charged $150 for 5 hours of work.

She then came back to me (after I had to ask to be paid repeatedly) and wanted a change that “would only take about 5 minutes to do”. I realized that she was deciding what I should make based on her idea of what the job entailed. I replied that I was not the person to help her out and if she knew how long the job would take it sounded like she could handle it fine on her own.

She also complained about the sites creator endlessly, but I can see why he dumped her.

I have a day job in a web department and now all of my freelance is through friends and friends of friends so that I can get a feel for the client before I commit.

Three years ago I moved to a small island in the Gulf of Thailand, not really much chance of picking up local work so I force myself upon the freelance markets to make a living. The projects on some of these freelance forums range from $50 to $5,000+ with the majority of the full-site-projects posted to accept bids under the $250 mark. This sum is quite pitiful when you consider the time, effort and the years of education that go into making a decent designer/developer.

As is the norm on most freelance forums the bulk of the work goes to the Indian freelancers who do the job for a fraction of what a westerner would charge. This in turn means that the clients all seem to think that this is the norm when deciding upon a budget. I see many projects that clearly state that any bids from India will be deleted (for any number of reasons, unfinished work, low quality, extended timeframes), but they still post a project with a budget that only the Indian freelancers will submit bids for.

Personally I always over-bid for jobs within the freelance markets as you know they will come back to you for a slight reduction, often this reduction is what wins you the project.

@Helen commented that she waited over 10 months for the final payment after delivery, the easy solution to that is to insist on the final payment BEFORE the work is transferred to the clients server, possibly even allowing them a 10% retainer until the FTP transfers are completed.

My reply:”I play soccer 90 minutes, David Beckhams plays the same time. I get a beer at the end of a game, if I’m lucky. He get’s $100.000. I guess you know what I want to say.”

That works most of the time and they understand, quality has some value. But that doesn’t mean I’m a bad soccer player. ;)

Clients who are fighting for every Cent, they fight for every pixel to be at the right place they want it to be! Much work will be ahead of you!

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Now, In response to bad clients, 6months work, which got cut down to 3 months, for a quote of 300$AUD. Bad mistake, but client loves the site.

Being just a developer, for me nightmare clients are the ones who sign off a spec without reading it properly and then demand you implement additional features. For the short period that I did designs too, I got sick of clients who thought they knew how to design better than me. It’s why I don’t pursue designing for clients, it seems you can’t do it without selling your soul to the marquee-tag devil so I just stick to designing my own stuff :)

Clients have their nightmare stories too ;)

@Helena – Thanks for commenting, always good to hear from other people in the industry who’ve been in a similar position. It annoys me because as Rob said above, you don’t find this sort of money-dodging in other industries nearly as much!

I have a client a little different to your example – agreed to the price we quoted but I’m still waiting for the last portion of the payment, 10 months after the site was delivered. In that time, I’ve redesigned the site to salvage the relationship, and I have to say I’ve learnt an enormous amount about my business processes that I am implementing to prevent this from happening again.

Helena :)

that sir, is my quote of the week :) great article.

I’m sure you’ve already read it but this was a good post on the subject as well. http://www.sazzy.co.uk/2009/04/why-i-cant-build-a-website-for-500/ It is nice to see that other designers are taking the high road and continuing to respectfully treat clients.

Good article.

R

So great post it’s awesome!