Re: FN-FORUM: Forum Digest, Clients from Hell

date posted 30th January 2004 14:18


----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Marshall" [EMAIL REMOVED]
To: [EMAIL REMOVED]
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2004 12:30 PM
Subject: RE: FN-FORUM: Forum Digest, Clients from Hell


>
> Hi everyone. Hope you don't mind my replying to multiple messages in a
> single post...
>
> Carla wrote:
> > I know there's a load of value in reality horror stories about the
clients
> we all hate, is there any scope for balancing 'clients from hell' with a
> small amount of 'clients we love so much we want to have their babies'?
>
> You know how it is, bad news is always more readable than good news.
> Particularly in this case: there aren't many laughs in "client is great,
> pays on time, everyone's happy." :-)
>
> > web designers have been portrayed as rip-off merchants and whingers who
> hate their clients
>
> I'd hate to think that was the case, and it's certainly not what I'm
trying
> to do with this story: according to the high heid yins a huge proportion
of
> our readers are pro web designers and developers, so my angle is more of a
> group hug than anything else.
>
> That said, I think around the time of the dotcom boom there *was* a
problem
> with rip-off merchants, and that's something I wrote about at the time:
> firms charging £300 per page for scribbling a bit of body text into a
> template. But I certainly don't think the odd cowboy is representative of
> designers as a whole, and as clients have become more clued up the cowboys
> are being edged out of the market. Although you'll always get the odd
client
> who expects amazon for ten quid on the grounds that some daft sod on
elance
> is willing to say anything to get a commission.
>
> Tony Crockford wrote:
> > I'd add my 2p and say the reason I haven't sent a list of 10 things I
hate
> about my clients is because I'm tired of reading those stories.
>
> Fair enough.
>
> > Why not focus on how to get the best from your web designer?
>
> A care and feeding kind of thing? That might work, but I reckon it'd be
more
> appropriate for Internet Works or one of the more business-y titles. I'll
> suggest it to my ed, though, and I may well return :-)
>
> > There'd be no clients from hell if this business was treated with
respect
> in the same way that graphic design / marketing / Print media is/are.
>
> I have to disagree with you there. As a freelance hack I could bore you
for
> hours with horror stories about the way print media freelances are treated
> by far too many would-be employers, or the ways in which - reputable -
> publishers have developed new and innovative ways to screw writers.
>
> > The reasons we have clients that have unrealistic expectations is
because
> all they read in the magazines they find at the newsagents is how easy it
is
> to build your own web site and how many cowboy web designers there are
(both
> of which are not necessarily true!)
>
> To an extent, yes, but I do think magazines differentiate between building
a
> wee home page about your cat and, I dunno, creating a massive
> database-driven ecommerce site. I think much of the problem is the same as
> in other sectors of IT: a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. That,
> and some people are just weird :-)
>
> Richard Watt wrote:
> > Incidentally, the last time I got a whole bunch of timewasters was when
I
> was quoted in that last .net article about freelancers... I thought it
> couldn't do any harm to get quoted (free advertising and all that), but
> unfortunately didn't get a single bit of business.
>
> I'm sorry about that - obviously we can choose our writers but not our
> readers. I would have thought it might have chucked some potential
employers
> your way - that's why most people agree to talk to us, after all - so it's
a
> bit disappointing that you only got timewasters.
>
> Carrie wrote:
> > at a minimum to stop your clients doing it to you...
>
> Would you mind if I quoted you on that? It's good advice.
>
> Cheers
>
> G

Gary
OK I see your point which was my original one that Reality Media is very
fashionable and thrives on the horror stories.
I think we would all agree that there are clients from hell who have to be
dealt with, I reckon we run at about 10% difficult projects which is pretty
good really..
To make it a useful as well a 'group huggy, we all love each other don't
let the turkeys get us down' article I still think you ought to include a
few bullets about how avoid that customer from hell. I am quite sure that if
you asked people here to submit 4 most important bullet points to safeguard
against your clients becomeing customers from hell you would get some good
replies.
Blah blah, work to do
Carla
www.naughtymutt.com