-
Firing a client – long post
-
What a touching story. That poor lady has more issues than anyone I
-
Hi Greg,
According to your contract she was to deliver a deposit by a specific date. As she had not, your contract may be nul and void at your discretion. Since you chose to accept her late payment, you showed more than good faith, though at any time you could then cancel the project if any of the other items noted in your contract were not met by your client.
I cancelled a job where the deposit was not paid before work began. The client insisted that a cheque was on its way but we needed to start work. So I did but no cheque came. I gave them 3 days and no cheque, so I cancelled the project and did not continue any further work nor deliver any elements until a cheque for the full amount of the estimate was delivered. Since they showed a lack of good faith with the deposit, I did not wish to chase them for payment upon completion, so demaned payment in full before ay more work was done, and since they had a severe delivery schedule they did not object.
GL,
Todd
Todd Morgan
Creative Director
Freelance F/X Inc. -
Great thread, guys. But from the link in the newsletter, I thought this thread was going to go into more about AFTER the project has started and the client keeps making change after change. Do any of you have clauses in your contracts for this? And if so, how are they worded? It’s probably not so cut and dry as, “client will be allowed 3 changes” because each project usually has several different stages. Changes are part of the job, I realize this. Things usually look different when realized than they do in our heads. I’m a compositor, and if I’m working on 20 shots, the client may make 3 (or more) changes to one shot. If this happens on all 20 shots (with a client who just can’t make up their mind) then it truly turns into the job that wouldn’t die. This is great for projects where a day rate is agreed upon, and the client is informed at each change about how much more time this would incur. But for flat fee jobs, the amount of opportunities for revision the client has should be specifically outlined before hand. Any thoughts on this from people who have had such experiences?
-Robert
-
Yep it all sounds like the mess I’m in now.
We are after shoot , and although budget was cut it went smoothly. Problems started during the edditing.
When client saw first drafts, she wanted to change a lot of stuff, and add other stuff that was not disscused as obligatory but an option which we did jut in case. We made that mistake and went along adding our selfs more work, but … good old client, being friends etc. 🙂
We send her all the new changes for consideration, and got back response that “Why we have not implemented the changes asked for?” , and that “the due date is nearing and we give them still unfinished product”. I was stunned and called back asking which of the changes we spoke of, or emailed about were missing. I got a hudge list of things they wanted to change again, and what they found missing. Some of the changes were impossible to implement due to the fact that during the filming those parts were scraped, or ‘ve not been taken in to the script.
We did what we could as fast as possible, but made mistakes in the process – spelling errors. The response was that they wanted to cut our contract money in half becouse we’r not making the dead line. We also recived a number of insults at our post production team calling them: imbecils and idiots. But all will be oKey – she said, if we change the mistakes and add some other changes they came up with. Finnaly after three weeks of hard work putting other procjects aside, we finished and made the final delivery just in time. All was fine , or so i though. Just a few minutes ago i recived a phone call tfrom my beloved client threatening again not to pay us becuse their animation is at the end, and she wanted at the end (yes) AND at the begining, which was stressed before in her phone calls, but the last email recived by my edditor clearly states “animation at the end” …
I dont know what to do now i do not recall ever them asking this. Is this te end of our long colaboration, have they found some other company, or they have some other problem with ther client ? Go figure, might be we’ll be droping this client 🙁Andrew
-
Hi Robert;
No, as you suggest, it would be impractical to limit it to “three particular changes”, but you *could* limit it totwo or three complete “approval screenings”, as in: “Whatever changes you suggest, we will implement, then you will either approve the whole version when we screen it or not”.
At that point they have paid for the time up to the revised screening; if they do not accept it yet, we must re-negotiate further work. I try to be flexible about this and if the additional outstanding item is relatively trivial and they hae been good people, I might go ahead and do it, maybe not even bill if it’s trivial, but only because I want to, not because I HAVE to. I have been burned too many times before to let things get out of hand like that, ever again.
My own rule is the client always get one free revision after seeing my first draft cut. Theoretically, the first version should be 90-100 percent what they expected, because I like to talk things out quite a bit before we start and to keep in touch as the first version comes together. Sometimes they sit in with me for all or part of the first draft, but most of the time, I’m given my head to work alone, and I kind of prefer that. But I have never had a situation where what I did was so horribly different from their vision as to be a complete wash. Sometimes it’s even better than they expected:-) Other times, we just have a creative difference of opinion. The client gets their way, that’s what they pay for, but I don’t feel it’s wrong to bill for a moderate amount of time spent exploring better options in the edit. That’s all part of the collaborative process.
I will screen the whole thing for them when done, they will give me a list of any and all changes, and if there are no particular problems, I execute the changes and we screen it again; at this point,it should be 100 percent right – if I satisfied everything specifcally on the list, they need to accept it. The only exception would be a technical flaw like a bad level, a missed flash frame, or video out of broadcast spec or something like that; you know, “pilot error”.
If they now want to do something else, something more, not a correction to an error but a new addition, that is going to be billed as a new, separate edit. There may be a discount involved, depends on the situation.
I never charge clients for my mistakes: if for example some titles are spelled wrong, and the printed sheet they gave me has it right, I eat the cost of fixing that. If I screwed up levels while digitizing, I eat the time. I think such policy is pretty much standard with editors everywhere. If they GAVE it to me wrong, and the piece of paper in my hand they gave me proves that, Sorry, THEY are paying for the extra time to fix it. If they pause the edit to clear something with remote bosses over the phone or we have to wait for a new element to get delivered, they are eating that time. I make this very clear up front, I charge extra for mind reading:-)
What if you are in a situation where you’re not billing for cash? Like a revolvng or charge-back system in a school, government, or corporate setting? Well, you can still create an invoice that describes the time, tools, and effort put in, and you can assign a reasonable average local market value to those hours and tools, to show what they would be paying if they took the project elsewhere. Combine this with a stated policy that each “free” client is charged against a monthly quota of “virtual hours” or “virtual dollars”, then it becomes easy to say this:
“We have to stop, I’d like to continue, but we’ve run out of the alloted hours for your account this month, and we now have to give prioty to the paying clients. If you want to take this project onto a cash basis from this point, we can continue now. Or, I can pick this up again for you at so-and-so date, when we’ll gladly re-set your free-hours clock for the new payment cycle. We do this for everyone so we can be fair to everyone with our time and tools”.
Such “virtual billing” not only helps you keep control of the calendar, and the grinder clients, it may give your clients data they can use for tax or other accounting purposes. You’d have to ask an accountant about that, but I know people who are writing off something as a charity usually need something more formal than just a figure scribbled on a note pad for the bill.
-
I had a situation in which I had to walk away from.
It was a documentary. We shot some in-studio interviews to start off, then went on a trip to shoot some material on location. It was to be a bunch of standups and scenics to establish some of the historical places involved in this bio.
Once we got there, I found out the producer had no script. Had no map to the locations we needed to shoot. Wasn’t familiar with some of the places we were going to see. And he didn’t even call ahead to schedule interviews with some key people there. He just winged it.
And to top it all off, on a long drive to one of the locations, this guy decides he wants to have a beer. WHILE DRIVING!
That was it.
When I got back I wrote a very detailed letter explaining why I was backing out of that project, and sent copies to the producer and exec producer. We worked out a fee for the time I spent on the project and that was that. I wasn’t about to harm my reputation or myself in the process.
The producer and I are still on good terms but I’ll never work with that guy again!
Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com
-
Our legal systems are different I’m sure; and my current problem is pretty low budget in comparison with the original post, but I wonder if you have the same sort of problems I am encountering?
In UK it seems to be current buisness practice to a) not respond to correspondence, b) not reply to emails, c) never under any circumstances use headed company stationery, etc etc.
I have a job going pear-shaped, absolute idiots, no responses to requests for scripts, no feedback etc etc.
I have no confidence in them so I’m using what we call ‘small claims” court (maybe upto $10K).
It’s a sad one because I did 2 great jobs for them some time ago.
I don’t have a contract (foolish I know) but I do write letters, emails, phone log etc. I have a dossier with maybe 2 email replies in it 30 or so from me.
happened once before and my records did the trick, I got paid before it came to court.
Is my gut feeling that there are a lot of unprofessional people out there just the same over in your neck of the woods ?
cheers, alan in uk -
Usually if it smells like shit, it is shit, so in my opinion, I would write this one down as experience. I know what you are getting into, you just don’t want this client to badmouth you all over town. That is the worst that comes from this. I have had instances in the very near present that occurs when nothing is signed, the clients don’t want to pay. Here in Australia, there are several free avenues I can take before I throw a court order at her, but at present a couple of clients are reluctant to pay, which I need to stamp down on immediately. In future, I won’t be doing anything until I get something in writing. No mun, no fun as they say.
So unless you have it in writing and you have some cash, forget about it.If you can’t be good at it, then don’t do it.
-
Alan, I don’t think that it’s necessarily the case you fear. While business school grads have been getting more ruthless since the eighties, I don’t think it’s a given yet that ALL businesspeople are now “Enron types”.
It could perhaps be a statistical bump caused by the ever-dropping cost of the tools bringing in more and more people who are not necessarily streetwise as the more seasoned video pros. So they fall for more of the old cons and are less wary to start with. The real professionals have not changed their way of doing business honorably. But that doesn’t make the news, only the crooks and crimes do. So maybe your impression that it’s overall getting worse is is subjective, not objective.
Also, the ever-downward pressure on prices versus performance means client expectations (especially uneducated first-time clients) keep becoming more and more demanding; expecting Lucasfilm quality on a handycam budget. In such an atmosphere it becomes hard not to over-promise and under-deliver. When the new clients are used to commoditizing everything, they have a hard time grasping that this is not identical, mindless assembly line work we do, it’s hand wrought a piece at a time by a craftsma
Whether you are right or I am, the solution is the same: spend more time vetting the client and coming to a meeting of minds BEFORE the project starts. And don’t be afraid to pass on the iffy ones. Then get everything in writing and get the down payment first. Never work 100 percent on credit. Ever.
-
Try to keep instructions and the number of people giving and receiving instructions as simple as possible. If you have the slightest inkling that you have a problem client never let them instruct more than one person. Who said what to whom is the biggest cause of arguments in this sort of case.
Looking at your post she may have had a point about the spelling though.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up