Life is hard at the moment. Working for yourself isn't a guarantee to job satisfaction though
this week I should finish two contracts, meet the bank manager and trip down to Kent for another meeting with a new client. Last week was plain hassle.
Six months ago I won a job to produce a new web site for a recruitment agency. The job wasn't worth a great deal, around 3k, and the owner manager of the agency gave us a complete brief with site map, page content - the lot. It wasn't a hard job so why, six months later did I last week get a visit from a six foot six gorilla demanding the guys deposit back?
It was like a scene out of Eastenders yet I can't blame my guys for this one. I was warned off dealing with this particular agency right from the start and I ignored the advice. Firstly, we provided a full quote based on the brief we'd been given. We were going to build a multi-menu web site with a couple a attractive 30 second videos, a demographics profiler and online CV creator. Nothing too taxing, especially as we have developed what is (in my opinion), one of the UKs best and most user friendly content management systems.
In order to proceed we always require a purchase order and deposit. The deposit is so we can pay our sub contract programmers. Anyway, the minute the client said 'go ahead', he demanded several web designs and no less than six lengthy meetings. No problem, except we had started working without the PO or deposit. Something didn't smell right!
We asked for the outstanding items and were told again and again everything was in the post. After six weeks we began to realise the post office must be in a worse state than we ever imagined. On top of that, the client told us the brief by which we'd valued the job was defunct, out of date and that he was hiring a body to create new content. Then, the eve before my film crew were due to film the clips for the site, we got a mail from the client, who had been 'brainstorming' and now wanted a 10 minute this and a twenty minute that. Talk about kicking the budget to pieces. I, politely as I could, informed the client that what he was asking would cost a deal more than we had agreed and... we still hadn't even received the PO or deposit cheque. I suppose the problem was we had already committed time and still believed things would come right.
Then, out of the blue, a faxed PO arrived and the deposit was made. Hey!
But, immediately afterwards, after having agreed a design for the site, the client promptle informed us that he didn't want the design any more and wanted us to do another. call us soft, but we agreed. To this day we have two complete versions of the clients web site sat on our servers.
We built the menu system from scratch (two weeks), built the demographer (1 week) and had no less than six designs in the client file (in total two weeks). But we had a problem. we had no content. Then the client went on holiday, then his newly employed 'bod' never materialised despite promises to the contrary. Then, as we had finally decided to put the work on the back burner, the client had the gaul to call up and say the project was taking too long!
I 'grew up' in customer service and know when to zip it for fear of letting my feelings show but even I was having trouble keeping quiet this time. The deposit cheque was £1400. We'd spent £1500 on the programmer (who gets paid as he completes stages) (the remainder of the job was my profit). Guess what, the client said the whole thing was too much trouble and he would like to have his money back!
True, the client paid money for something he didn't get but he cost us a great deal of time and effort and buggered us about from the start. We take deposits for just this reason and I thought I was quite justified in turning down his demand, offering to let a county court judge make the decision whether we should pay back the money or not.
The client didn't like that but we had a stack of paper and web based 'evidence' of work carried out and I've very little doubt a decision would go to us.
So, last week, a large heavily muscled man entered our office and demanded cash. Frankly its the first time anything like that has happened to me. I managed to get rid of him eventually and immediately phoned the Police. What happens next I know not. If my blogs stop arriving you'll know my immersement into this sad 'soap opera' lifestyle has done for me. Lets see
