untoldtech
Active Member
- Reaction score
- 225
I've had this client for a number of years. I've done a lot of work for them but since they moved to a new location they don't use me much anymore, in fact he hinted several times he thinks my rate is too high and seems to imply I dont do much. I'm one of the conservative billers, if it's 1hour and 15minutes I bill for an hour.
Since this client moved they become increasingly very rude and cause issues trying to 'fix' things themselves. Example: they had a tech that is closer to them try to 'takeover/fix(?)' the phone system, instead the dude wiped the configs (no idea how, likely did a 'reset pin') even though to login you just look at the label on the voip router written on it! Luckily I had a backup and could bail them out but again they acted like I did something to cause the issue. I hide nothing, you want to take it over you don't even have to ask me, it's your stuff, just don't call me when you break it and expect sympathy. Another example: they put themselves in a pinch when they moved where they didn't port their phone number which is on all their business cards etc. Luckily I worked it out so they got the number at the same time I reduced their phone pricing from 200/m to 20/m and email hosting through me so they get a real person to talk to if they have a problem.
I'm calling this strike 3. I told them probably 7years ago they were at high risk to running into an unfixable problem with their website if they didn't migrate ASAP from the cart program and old design. In addition, if we moved to one of these newer/more reasonable cart sites that integrate with a hosting provider we can easily fix any issues and switch cart providers when and if needed. I was going to let them do most of the work so in terms of pricing it would have probably cost them $300-400. They told me they had someone building them a site and they don't need that. Keep in mind, over the last 7 years they've had problems time and time again where the site would crash, have issues, etc need changes and I told them dozens of times they needed an upgrade AND that I was just barely patching it to work and they'd tell me the same thing about someone building a site. Fast forward to today. They're still running the same setup. The VPS provider has forced them to migrate their apache/mysql instances to a new version which of course is making their cart program crap the bed. The primary portion of the website is hosted at a different provider but there is an internal frame of the site that runs the cart off the VPS (I had to figure this all out myself, since the old developer they used went MIA because they fired his girlfriend). Anyways, fiddling with the cart program and making sure the frame still displays correct is not something I feel like doing, especially when the template they used for this cart program may need updates to work on the new cart program.
I try to talk to the guy about what I think his options are,
1) we get their pictures/items/prices and move it to a site that is working immediately and have the site back up within a few hours. May not be the prettiest but it's at least working
2) we try to do the upgrade but know it's going to cause problems with the way it works and it likely wont work.
He picks #2
He tells me he has a site being built and if I can just get the old site up he'd be okay then tells me once he has this new site built he wont have to call me anymore and pay me. Sorry dude, I'm done doing patch work, I know he wont pay me if I can't get it work. I'm not going to spend 2 hours figuring out if I'm able to do then be responsible for everything if it doesn't work. Do I wait 5 hours (mean) then say I can't help or tell em immediately
Since this client moved they become increasingly very rude and cause issues trying to 'fix' things themselves. Example: they had a tech that is closer to them try to 'takeover/fix(?)' the phone system, instead the dude wiped the configs (no idea how, likely did a 'reset pin') even though to login you just look at the label on the voip router written on it! Luckily I had a backup and could bail them out but again they acted like I did something to cause the issue. I hide nothing, you want to take it over you don't even have to ask me, it's your stuff, just don't call me when you break it and expect sympathy. Another example: they put themselves in a pinch when they moved where they didn't port their phone number which is on all their business cards etc. Luckily I worked it out so they got the number at the same time I reduced their phone pricing from 200/m to 20/m and email hosting through me so they get a real person to talk to if they have a problem.
I'm calling this strike 3. I told them probably 7years ago they were at high risk to running into an unfixable problem with their website if they didn't migrate ASAP from the cart program and old design. In addition, if we moved to one of these newer/more reasonable cart sites that integrate with a hosting provider we can easily fix any issues and switch cart providers when and if needed. I was going to let them do most of the work so in terms of pricing it would have probably cost them $300-400. They told me they had someone building them a site and they don't need that. Keep in mind, over the last 7 years they've had problems time and time again where the site would crash, have issues, etc need changes and I told them dozens of times they needed an upgrade AND that I was just barely patching it to work and they'd tell me the same thing about someone building a site. Fast forward to today. They're still running the same setup. The VPS provider has forced them to migrate their apache/mysql instances to a new version which of course is making their cart program crap the bed. The primary portion of the website is hosted at a different provider but there is an internal frame of the site that runs the cart off the VPS (I had to figure this all out myself, since the old developer they used went MIA because they fired his girlfriend). Anyways, fiddling with the cart program and making sure the frame still displays correct is not something I feel like doing, especially when the template they used for this cart program may need updates to work on the new cart program.
I try to talk to the guy about what I think his options are,
1) we get their pictures/items/prices and move it to a site that is working immediately and have the site back up within a few hours. May not be the prettiest but it's at least working
2) we try to do the upgrade but know it's going to cause problems with the way it works and it likely wont work.
He picks #2
He tells me he has a site being built and if I can just get the old site up he'd be okay then tells me once he has this new site built he wont have to call me anymore and pay me. Sorry dude, I'm done doing patch work, I know he wont pay me if I can't get it work. I'm not going to spend 2 hours figuring out if I'm able to do then be responsible for everything if it doesn't work. Do I wait 5 hours (mean) then say I can't help or tell em immediately
