Unreasonable direction and feedback from client

[aliescott]

Hi community,

Work for a luxury print design.

I have recently done a lot of work 11 pages over 3 review submisions of clearly referenced boards with numbers and page refs to help the client give me acurate feedback on which designs he likes. Unfortunately he has given me extremely poor feedback on how to finalise this print design - see below

"I do need further revisions, could you go back to the original ones you did 
And expand on that please
We're almost there"

Each time he gives me feedback like this- no direction- fine if you are working per hour but this is a fixed price job

and I have spent 2 days on it already not 4 hours as quoted originally. You think you are almost there and he tells you to start at the beginning again!

Not sure what to do- should I end the contract as he has me going round in circles wasting time?

The fixed price is $162.

Many Thanks

Ally

[feed_my_eyes]

If you told him that you were only quoting for four hours and he's taken up way more time than that, then I don't see anything wrong with saying, "Sorry but I quoted you for four hours of my time and so far, the project has taken X hours; I am happy to continue making any revisions needed, but they will be charged at a further rate of X per hour. In order not to cause you any unnecessary expense, I would suggest that we have a brief phone call in order to clarify your needs so that I can wrap up this project for you." (Some people are just rubbish at giving written instructions and in these cases, a phone call might be a lot quicker.)

In order to avoid this situation in the future, I would suggest that you get a detailed project brief before you even accept a project, specify how many sets of revisions are included in your bid (I usually say 3), and how much extra it will cost to go beyond the number of revisions specified. I even go a step further - if I read a project description and it doesn't look like a client has given specific information, or if it seems like they have poor communication skills, then I don't bid on the project in the first place - it's not worth the aggravation. 

[aliescott]

Hi Christine, 

Thank you for you post

I will do this suggestion and all points are noted.

Another question that may arise -so I send him a request for payment suggesting he pay me for the 16 hours I have done and 3 revisions,and that any more work will be at $ XX extra per hour.  What happens if the client refuses? ends the contract etc - what legally do I have a right to.

1/ The designs I have done for him?

2/ Any re-inbursements? financially for worl done.

Thanks

Ally

[feed_my_eyes]

Ally - I'm afraid that you can't really bill him for the time that you've already spent - you need to clear any extra fees with the client BEFORE you do the work, not after. There's a reason that he posted this as a fixed price project in the first place - if he was okay with paying hourly, then he would have posted it as an hourly project. 

If you tell him what I said before (i.e. any revisions from now on will cost extra) and he says that he's not willing to pay extra (which I think is unlikely to happen - most clients are reasonable about this kind of thing, in my experience), then you have two options. Option 1: say that you'll do one more set of revisions only, and risk getting bad feedback. Option 2: finish the project through gritted teeth and chalk it up to experience. 

[feed_my_eyes · Accepted solution]

And if you really can't see any light at the end of the tunnel for this project, another option is to just plain lie: say that you're about to leave on vacation for two weeks, or you have a family emergency and have to fly somewhere tomorrow, therefore you'd really like to get this project wrapped up for him before you go. Then at least you won't have to work on it indefinitely! Good luck.:-)

[aliescott]

Hi Thanks Christine,

lets hope this approach works- the first option that is.

I would not bill him for hours done already, thats my fault.

Spoiler

Thanks for your help on this

Ally