Hi,
Just to give a quick backstory; I spent years going back to school for design and at last I've finally acquired my degree. I now have a budding freelance business with a handful of small clients, all of whom are relatively civil, good natured and appreciative of my work.
Recently a long distance client I really get along with referred me to someone. He hired me to do a logo for his marketing startup. He was pleased with the end result and asked me to take on a second project, designing a mockup for a website that he could then turn over to a developer. He set a time limit of 3 hours, because that's all he could afford. Everything was going fine till about 2 hours in. He liked the direction I was going in, so while I was waiting to hear back I did some small revisions (off the clock), just to satisfy my own design sensibilities. I sent them to him to see what he thought. He suddenly calls me saturday afternoon and from the get go, seems to have an attitude. He wants to go over all the revisions I sent him. So I scramble for my macbook. As I'm going through my folders in search of the files he starts getting flustered and belittling. I offer to call him back in an hour after I've gathered everything and before one of us says something we'll regret, but he wants to stay on the phone and takes an even more offensive tone. I'm a laid back guy, but I had enough and firmly reminded him that I was trying to design a site for him within a 3 hour limit and had been good enough to not bill him for all the phone time he insisted on and had even stopped the clock a couple of times. He then startled to backpedal and complimented me on my work and how fair my pricing was ($25.00 an hour). The conversation went on for about another half hour as in the aftermath we awkwardly discussed the project. I think I did a pretty good job of remaining diplomatic. I've now just about completed the project and now he's talking about having me design a business card
The whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth. I know there can always be an element of stress with any type of work is, but that was a bit much.
Sorry for the rant, but I felt like I needed to vent to fellow designers. Anyone else have any horror stories?
Just to give a quick backstory; I spent years going back to school for design and at last I've finally acquired my degree. I now have a budding freelance business with a handful of small clients, all of whom are relatively civil, good natured and appreciative of my work.
Recently a long distance client I really get along with referred me to someone. He hired me to do a logo for his marketing startup. He was pleased with the end result and asked me to take on a second project, designing a mockup for a website that he could then turn over to a developer. He set a time limit of 3 hours, because that's all he could afford. Everything was going fine till about 2 hours in. He liked the direction I was going in, so while I was waiting to hear back I did some small revisions (off the clock), just to satisfy my own design sensibilities. I sent them to him to see what he thought. He suddenly calls me saturday afternoon and from the get go, seems to have an attitude. He wants to go over all the revisions I sent him. So I scramble for my macbook. As I'm going through my folders in search of the files he starts getting flustered and belittling. I offer to call him back in an hour after I've gathered everything and before one of us says something we'll regret, but he wants to stay on the phone and takes an even more offensive tone. I'm a laid back guy, but I had enough and firmly reminded him that I was trying to design a site for him within a 3 hour limit and had been good enough to not bill him for all the phone time he insisted on and had even stopped the clock a couple of times. He then startled to backpedal and complimented me on my work and how fair my pricing was ($25.00 an hour). The conversation went on for about another half hour as in the aftermath we awkwardly discussed the project. I think I did a pretty good job of remaining diplomatic. I've now just about completed the project and now he's talking about having me design a business card
The whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth. I know there can always be an element of stress with any type of work is, but that was a bit much. Sorry for the rant, but I felt like I needed to vent to fellow designers. Anyone else have any horror stories?
