What’s on the iPod: The Wishing Well by The Airborne Toxic Event
Interesting day yesterday. Not bad, not great. Just….interesting.
If I had a nickel for every client who tried to use the old “had to fix numerous errors” message in an attempt to avoid payment, I’d never have to put fingers to the keyboard. Yesterday was no exception. Mind you, I found out about the topic of the project the day before it was due, and I managed a good project in relatively little time.
Naturally, I heard about “grammatical” errors – those ones that exist because someone thinks high school English is THE style guide for life. What I didn’t agree with was the client thinking because they embellished the project in their own words that I didn’t do what I was hired to do. Nonsense. The work I handed them was fine. They personalized it. Also fine. However, it is not a reason to penalize me by not paying, as I told them. Payment is now due. If it doesn’t come in 30 days, late fees. I have a collection process and I follow it with every client, no exception. I’ll make your project the way you want it, but that means I get the chance to edit. If you don’t give me the right to revise it, I can’t satisfy you.
This is a good point for beginning writers, and even those of us who haven’t yet had to defend work to a client. There are certain things we writers need to make clear in order to guarantee project success.
A project is a partnership. That means pleasing your client means having enough cooperation from your client so that you can deliver.
You need enough time in which to please them. Your goal is to please your client, but you have to be allowed enough time to do so. For example, if you have two days to complete a project (which frankly is a ridiculously short amount of time), you should be given ample time after the project to help the client with any revisions.
Clients adding their own prose is at their own discretion and does not affect your rate. If the client feels like adding to it after you’ve done the first draft, fine. But that is not a license for them to refuse to pay you. You provided that first draft. You did the work in the allotted time.
Revisions are part of the project. If you’re not allowed to revise for whatever reason, then the project fee is due from your client upon receipt of the draft.
We’ll see how the client responds to my note back to them. I’m glad they added text as they saw fit. I’m not glad they worded the note to me in a way that suggests I didn’t do the job properly. Not true. It was done according to the scant details I was provided. Additions are welcome, but will not count as a penalty against me. I’m happy to do the work if I’m allowed to – I can’t please them if I’m cut out of the process before I’ve completed all phases of the job.
Have you had clients not build revisions into their time schedules? How have you dealt with clients who frame your work negatively when you’re certain you’ve completed it as stated?
6 responses to “Stick a Fork in Me”
Sorry you're having to deal with that frustration, Lori. What a pain. I hope your payment is taken care of quickly without any more hassle.
I hate to say misery loves company, but I had a client try to refuse payment on a fairly large website project because of "errors." She had signed off on the draft copy and sent it to the 3rd-party web vendor, so I assume the errors were incorporated by the designer (who may have blamed them on me, for all I know). I combed my text multiple times and found nothing amiss; and the text uploaded to the web looked identical to what I'd sent.
More irritatingly, and to your point about "partnership," she never responded to my requests for clarification on exactly what the mistakes were, although she finally did pay.
Anyway, I hope they pay you without a whole lot of fuss.
This doesn't happen to me often because most are regulars these days and we have our process down. But I had a similar thing happen a few years back.
The client was a long-term one. He ordered a press release for news his company was putting out. He wanted it quickly. He got it. He approved the writing. Then he didn't pay. I kept following up. One day he finally responded saying that he wasn't going to pay because the company decided not to release it. They didn't decide that because of problems with the release I wrote. It was that they decided against the project / event the news was announcing.
I made it clear that wasn't acceptable. To this day I haven't collected on that account (it was worth far too little to justify suing at that point).
To make matters worse, the guy had the gall to come back to me quite a while later wanting another release. He also wanted it at 50% of my then-current rates (his old rate as he came in and negotiated a special rate quite a long time before). I told him I wouldn't take on any projects for him until his previous invoice was paid. I never heard from him again (thankfully).
Pissed me off enough to not get paid (the only time that's ever happened to me, and from a regular client no less). But to come back asking for special favors later? Wow.
Good luck with this one Lori!
Ashley, thanks. I responded the best way I knew – I slept on it, then responded to revisions they'd added, not to the accusations, which are nonsense.
There's the thing, Jake. You don't know if she meant something you actually did wrong (doubtful), something someone added, or worse – something one of her friends or one of the people in the chain said needed fixing. Don't discount the power of the posse mentality. They've killed more than one of my projects.
Jenn, I had a long-time client do the exact same thing recently. They decided not to use it, so my invoice was ignored. I waited. I knew they'd be back. And I was going to tell them "Let's clear up this invoice first" before touching anything else they asked for. But something wildly weird happened – their contractor, who apparently knew about what they'd done, waited until the right moment, then told them it was totally unacceptable for them not to pay me because they'd changed their minds.
The check came in just before vacation. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself.
More often I have clients just quit the project… not often, but it happens.
I haven't really stumbled onto this issue yet. I know it will come, but with the clients I have now, most of them want to personalize their own articles. Basically what I provide is an idea for an article, a general outline, and a few well-thought sentences to get them started.
I wish there was a way I could cut my words in half and still charge the same, but some of the articles they use word for word, which means I still have to write the full articles…