David, That's a great analogy! I'm going to save it.
But of course the client being discussed will not understand how that analogy relates to her present situation. She'll be deaf to its meaning and will have totally forgotten that she said "this feature was not important and that scenario doesn't really apply to what we want" when the project was originally quoted, even if it is right there in front of her in writing. This is just a tough thing to deal with. It's not just a web development business disease. These negotiations go on in every business. It's really difficult to lose a customer and deal with the negative comments that will propagate, but if one customer is consuming a great deal of your business resources, you risk losing a greater number of customers. Ask yourself if you made a mistake when reviewing the project. Then do the right thing for you, your customer and all of your other customers. Then get ready to live with your decision. Greg Alton CFDev > Consider the following: > > A man walks into a restaurant for breakfast. After carefully reviewing the > menu, he orders a stack of 3 hot pancakes, 2 hot eggs over-easy, side of hot > hashbrowns, and cold orange juice. He then proceeds to read the morning > newspaper. His breakfast is served to him 15 minutes later. The breakfast > he receives is a stack of 3 hot pancakes, 2 hot eggs over-easy, hot > hashbrowns, and cold orange juice. He decides to finish reading the > newspaper before breakfast. When he gets around to eating, he has a stack > of 3 lukewarm pancakes, 2 cold eggs over-easy, side of cool hashbrowns, and > room temperature orange juice. He eats the breakfast. At the cashier, he > complains and argues that he should not pay his bill. The cashier calls to > the restaurant manager, who notices the order time on his ticket is 60 > minutes ago. Does he excuse this bill or not? After all, the breakfast was > served as specified. That time had passed and the environment altered the > food is of no fault to the owner. > > Now it seems you have two choices, > > a) Don't charge this person for the fix (assuming that you did not write > poor code to begin with), and just be the nice guy. In which case, the > scenario is likely to repeat itself over and over until the relationship > reaches its inevitable end in resentment and bad feelings... > > b) Charge her for the modifications. > > You don't have a choice in however, is how she responds. People will feel > how they want to feel, and sometimes even make critical decisions based on > those feelings. You just need to let them deal with that. I would be > making my business choices based on principals, not feelings. This is not > to say that I wouldn't occasionally drop in a token freebie for a good > client, but that I wouldn't do it for one that was not paying enough or > otherwise make it worth my while. > > For future reference, I would start making sure that anything you do is > pre-approved. That is, you have a written agreement for any fix, addition, > or modification that details the cost (that she must pay). > > It all comes down to this.... Document, Document, Document, Document.... > > Dave > > PS. You CAN pick your customers :) > > ______________________________________________________________________ This list and all House of Fusion resources hosted by CFHosting.com. The place for dependable ColdFusion Hosting. FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
