[Genea Padilla]

I’ve been reading this thread over and over again for the last couple of days because my itty bitty company is in the same fix.

We make booklets for one of our clients. We do the writing, editing, and layout for them. The y provide info, and other materials–product shots, graphs that we have to recreate. We’ve dealt with them before and overall, it has been a pretty good relationship.

It’s pretty weird timing for us because just when we updated the contracts (to define our deliverables and what would cost extra i.e. layered files) the client asks for layered files.

Client was ticked off that we didn’t just hand over the files. Even after long, clear, and calm explanations why. We even offered to do some minor editing for them for free (they asked for the files, telling us that there were some changes to be made on the technical page–which turned out to be a bogus ploy to get us to turn them over). They resorted to throwing a hissy fit on the phone, accusing us of being unreasonable and denying them something that was theirs (being quite rude, making it sound like we’re making up this thing about layered files) and threatening not to hire us again (to which I replied “that’s your prerogative”–when I really wanted to say something else).

Soon after that, the client came to her senses, she found out that we weren’t lying about layered files, she offered to buy them. Hmm…

Based on all the research and consults with friends and colleagues in the business (and even all your replies on this thread) we computed the cost based on hours as opposed to client’s underling’s suggestion that we charge by file size (to be perfectly honest, we didn’t find anyone who did that). The rate we used was the lowest one–from all our sources–in our area. We sent the info to the client.

Client exploded.

More threats ensued. More insults–luckily by this time, I have been exempted by my partners from talking to this person.

Was there anything we could have done differently without handing over the files? I’m not worried about losing this particular client (I should, but not after how we’ve been treated) but I cannot help but worry about my partners.