Our first unhappy customer! My side of the story inside >>>> Dramas!
 

So this guy needs four flash peices done fast...

He only has a hundred bucks though, I figured what the heck, I will help the guy out....

So first thing that happens is he give me bad directions...

Leave very important details out...

So the first designs he recieves are not correct...

So I say no problem, I will take the loss and have it done all over again to your new directions...


Well I delivered all the files and everything is done they way he asked... He still is not happy!

There is a quality issue now...

But he never said they need to be top quality, he said they needed to be cheap and fast...

If he would have said he needed them top quality then I would have charged him five times what he was charged!


Anyway, that is my side of the story...

I won't issue a refund and I will not do the work over unless he pays what it is worth!



What would you do in this situation?

If you can not do a quality job at the lowest price you offer, you should not be offering such prices. Period end of story.

Well, that didn't take long. :1orglaugh

Post a sample of the work, or a link to it...

ADG

Price, speed, quality... you can only have two.

I would pay the guy back and be happy that my lesson only cost me $100.

Speed - Quality - Cheap

Pick two.

Ah come on all three can be balanced just fine. Unless someone really does not give a rats ass about their services.

You were faster. :thumbsup

I will leave that to the client....

He got a hundred dollars in work, that is it, nothing more, nothing less!

He expected five hundred dollars worth of work though!

The guy asked for 500 worth of work for 100 bucks...

Like a dumb ass I gave him the deal...

The job cost me more to have done then I was paid after having it done a second time...

Sure, the keyword is balanced. Like I said, you cannot have all two of the three.

Balance is a different issue.

That would be the professional thing to do. 100 bucks is not much to learn a valuable lesson regarding doing biz with cheap ass broke people on the net. It's actually a pretty decent price for that lesson, I know of many more people that lost WAY more than 100 bucks learning such a lesson..:2 cents::pimp

I say to heck with him...It's a lot easier to ask forgiveness than permission, e.g. It's a lot easier to try to get you to give him better quality after you've already done some work...

This guy has recieved the files with out a watermark, he has usable files for the hundred dollars he paid, I am not going to refund him...

I do that then everyone else think they can step on me the same way and get free desgin... Fuck that!

he sounds like a cheap sucker.. make him pay more!

So your saying he asked for 500 worth of work for 100 which you agreed to, and when he did not get the 500 value like expected and agreed on he is the one with an issue?

Personally I think it's your fault. You should always do good quality work, no matter what the budget. There should be no quality vs price factor, you should just do the best job you can and charge people accordingly. I think the problem is not charging enough for the contract you took on, and letting the customer "work you" too much to settle. This left you with a shitty job to do, for shitty money, and in turn you half-assed it because you were unhappy with the deal that you made.

Anyways now that you're in this position, I would try to work out an agreement that leaves both of you satisfied.

Even after he has been giving the goods...?

I do not have it posted anywhere that I offer a money back garrentee, I do not have it posted anywhere that I give refunds...

I have never had one client that was not happy untill right now, I am not about to bend over and let this guy have the designs for free....

I have a great rep around here for being honest and never ripping anyone off, but I also will not let anyone rip me off and that is what I would feel I was doing if I give this guy back him money....

By not refunding him I am not ripping him off in any way...

He has been delivered the full designs and files...

It was never agreed he would get 500 in work...

It was agreed he would get what he paid for!

And that is what he got..


The four .fla files he recieved are worth more then the 100 bucks he spent...

He can take them files to the next designer and he can have them tweeked to his specs...

Or he could pay us to do it...

But this guy has done nothing but curse me and talk down to me about this situation..

You are correct...

My fault for being a nice guy and working inside of his budget...

I have done it many times in the past and never had a problem, it will really suck for everyone else if I let this one person keep me from doing so in the future...



I tried to work something out with him that would make both of us happy, but he would not speak to me like a person to do that.. :disgust

I know it's a hard way to look at things, but it avoids these problems. You have to work at a rate you are comfortable with. If you are doing a better job than most other designers and don't have the time to take these small jobs, maybe find a young'un to outsource that work too for a small % of the work they negotiate. That way you can pass these cheap customers off to someone and still make a few bucks, and not have to do every piece of work that lands on your doorstep.

I would say we give him his money back or fix it if he was a reasonable person but he was unreasonable right from the start. first he gave us bad info on what he wanted we should have charged him for that but we were nice enough to go ahead and redo even though it was his mistake the first time. So we finished the job delivered the files to the specs he wanted then he again said he wanted it done differently (things he did not ask for or specify) again for free. That is not how business works sorry I do not see where we owe him anything else or where he has any right to say anything bad about us unless he is broke and thinks that this bs drama will push us to refund him money so he can save his $100 and get free design work. Am I wrong?

I'm on your side, but this line says to me that you owe him a refund and that you already know it.

Can't expect much for $100

Reminds me of dealing with Realtors for my mainstream work

A $100 lesson learned. Myself, I'd refund it and never EVER do anything for him again. Problem solved.

In this day and age it's more important than ever to prep each client fully in every detail of the job and the agreement, covering every contingency you can think of. Because sure as shit if you don't someone will try to pull something on you and cry foul where there is none.

It's a hassle when it's only over $100 bucks, but taking the time to prep even the smallest client is always worth it. Having ongoing headaches from one over something like this... isn't.

I agree , if you felt you couldn't deliver quality at that price.you should of not done it or said I will work with you. You can only get two for that price. Did you let him know before hand it would be inferior quality work because its so cheap?

You are an idiot and just proofed it again by creating such a thread. You should have refunded those "only hundred bucks" right away and would have saved your company a lot of drama! Now everyone remembers your company name with a bad story.. so in the longrun you will loose a way more money now. Congrats :thumbsup

Cliffs: Affordablesitedesign sucks

You get what you pay for, JC is a pretty honest guy when it comes to his work & I'm sure he didn't go into the deal with intentions to make the guy pissed off. $100 job is a $100 job you take it or leave it if you're already getting a deal.

We don't, I was just being nice and giving him a deal...

I am not a designer myself, I have three on staff...

Not hurting for work either, I just was in a good mood and figure I would give him a good deal...

Pretty sure I have addressed this issue with you before. If not, here goes: Why bother offering crap work at reduced prices? Only offer quality and then you won't be dealing with the drama.

I will never understand businesses that use shortcuts. As I recently wrote in a piece, do you want to deal with the type of customer that shops at Nordstrom's or Walmart?

Yes...

It was clear he would get a hundred dollar job...

He is the one that needed it done on a budget... We did the work twice...

The design of the page the flash goes on is not of high quality, the flash we gave him fits nicely with the design itself...!!!

Yeppp this is so true. We deal with this a lot in my line of biz also and this is a good analogy.

"I am not a designer myself" - soo true

"I have three on staff" - bullshit

He got more then anyone would expect for a hundred bucks in flash work...


Four animations, with the .fla so they can be edited in the future... That is a steal...!


There is no reason this guy should not be happy...!

I frequently get requests to adjust our rates to that of the competition. Won't ever happen because we are not providing that level of service. We recognize our value, as do our clients.

I will gladly send the Walmart people to Walmart. There are great deals there . . . if you can handle the lead poisoning. ;)

I know, we have talked about it before... And I have been staying away from giving out to good of deals for the most part, but I failed on this one, lol




BTW, here is some work we just did for a client that paid what was asked, didn't try to cheap us and is more then happy..

http://www.affordablesitedesign.com/...com/index.html
http://www.affordablesitedesign.com/...free-chat.html
http://www.affordablesitedesign.com/...hat-large.html
http://www.affordablesitedesign.com/...om/loader.html
http://www.affordablesitedesign.com/...odeltaken.html
http://www.affordablesitedesign.com/...vate-chat.html
http://www.affordablesitedesign.com/...hat-large.html
http://www.affordablesitedesign.com/...sound-off.html
http://www.affordablesitedesign.com/...sound-off.html
http://www.affordablesitedesign.com/...m/timeout.html


He paid more for the little "Go to private" animation then this guy paid for all four of his...







I am gonna go with BD's advice here...

No more deal from me, you either pay what I tell you for a job done right or we will not do it from now on...

I do not have time for stuff like this to happen!

Another solid point.

asm is on a roll tonight.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions !!

Sucks, but this is how I will have to do it from now on...

And I actually like being the nice guy and giving away deals...

But one bad seed ruined it for everyone!

That business model results in lousy feedback and the cheapest of customers.

There is no question, we are not an inexpensive hosting company, but our customers know what they are getting and are more than willing to pay for it.

Do quality work and you will get quality customers. Do things half-assed so you can do it cheaply and you will end up with customers that do nothing but complain privately and on the boards.

You will also end up having to charge lower and lower prices as you try to keep under-cutting the competition. Not a great way to run a business IMHO.

Yeah, I agree and I see now where it is a problem, it never posed one before, but now that it has my eyes are opend to it...

We will remain affordable, but we will not be doing anything cheap anymore..

For everyones information... I am willing to still work with this guy to make him happy, but only if he is willing to talk to me like a human and not curse me...

I started this thread only because he said he was going to ruin me on the board... S

o I wanted to be sure my side of the story was here so that the community would know both sides of it...

M-Rod... Read the thread before you talk...

He recieved a hundred dollars worth of files from me! I am not ripping him off at all, I would be ripping myself off by giving him his money back... We do not work for free!

all this for $100? have you guys checked how much $100 is worth these days?
time is money, so by now you have already wasted $100's of time and you still dont feel good about him complaining about the job...
remember you are NOT in the business to make quality design, you are in the business to make money doing quality design...
Next time, quote higher or leave the job to some poor sucker who really needs the $100.

100% correct... It is not the money at this point... I

f he would have asked like a person this morning and agreed not to use the designs I gave him I would have put thought into it...

Or I would have giving him a fair price to improve the quality...

But that is not the case here.. He went on a rampage!

I would have explained from the beginning that $100 would only buy him so much work and that you could do something but it wont be the kind of quality you are capable of. Or....you should just have told him that you couldn't do it for that price.
When they are in a rush AND have no money....you can pretty much expect it to go bad regardless.

Very well put. You need to build a reputation of quality, not of cheapness. Not everyone is after the cheapest deal out there. Successful people want to work with successful people.

I let him know...

I will not be doing any arrangments like this again...

I will be sticking to my long term clients and a few choice new clients..


We have tried to keep our branding away from "cheap" and be known as "affordable" there has been a few time like this that I gave people a super deal and this is the one time it backfired... All the other times the clients where more then happy and showed appreciation for me giving them a deal that meets there budget...

time for damage control, bring in the plummer and flush him... oh wait thats only in the movies..
in my business of producing content, if there is a money problem with a model, an agent, a customer i pay the money, only way to do any kind of damage control in the real world.
it is much more important to you that there is no bad talk about you than the money, trust me on that..