Okay here is Seven with the flashlight under her chin asking for all the webmasters, designers, developers and freelancers to give us your scariest story. BOO! Did you jump? Muhahaha -- You will at my tale of woe.

The Evil Clients Disguised as Sweet Little Old Ladies

My scariest story takes place about four years ago, when I was a competent webmaster but new to doing commercial work and freelancing.  I was working for a multi-million dollar corporation and the job was anything but straightforward!

I was hired by a loving sweet couple - both ladies (a'hum - different for around here but didn't bother me) They were in there late 70's and cute.  They had a pet turtle and ran a major mail order business.  Their web site was in shambles, the technology consisted of some 386 computers and they just really needed help.  By my estimate they were losing 10-20k per day because their web site was so poorly constructed (frames, fonts all over the place, 404 errors, no consistent navigation, no contact information for the company, strange flash files, hot spots that were not labeled etc.)

I thought they would appreciate the sleek new design, re-organized navigation and prototype I put up on my server.  The design mockups had been done with Photoshop and approved.  To make a horrible and painful story short I went through many meetings that always ended up with the larger of the ladies, an ex-judo champ, ex-military veteran screaming in my face, "what the h#ll are we paying you for? What is this sh1t? You think I'm old - You think I'm STUPID?!" 

As I would leave the plush offices visibly shaken one of the workers would quietly whisper, "you're doing good! She likes you! She wasn't nearly that nice to the other twelve designers." 

Yikes I was #13!

I had hired a partner to get the massive job done.  He showed them how with their simple little database hooked directly into a cable modem with no firewall, no protection of any kind that their listings of credit card numbers along with the names of doctors and nurses (all their personal info right there), that it was just a matter of time before they were hacked.

"Liars!"  She shouted.

Eventually neither him or I could take that job one second longer.  I sent them an invoice and got an invoice in return. 
I had bid the job as a whole project not by hour - but there was my invoice re-wrote with a note.  "This is how much time we think you actually spent on this."  It reduced 2k down to $400.00 the check was enclosed.  I called them and the nice lady said, "you are no longer allowed to call our toll free number, if you want to talk to the boss you will need to contact them through the long distance number."  I said to tell those little old ladies that I had a signed contract and I would see them in court.  The pleasant secretary said, "they said you might say that - and said to remind you they have two lawyers on staff.  Have a good day."

So at least my code had been on my staging server and I wouldn't put it up on their server until I was paid in full! Finally I pulled down the code and called it a day, about two months had past.  I had my $400.00 and a lesson about business. 

I was griping to a friend who told me, "well after you left they hired a really good designer and they had no trouble putting the site together."  Ouch - that was some dig at my ego!  I thought I was great with people, easy to work with, had someone else just come along behind me and more competently handled the outrageous behavior of the clients?

I returned glumly to my computer station and brought up their web site and said (well shouted probably) something very crude with a lot of very loud expletives, "WTF?!!!"  The nice little old ladies had hired a guy cheaply (no doubt)  to pull off the code from my server and all finished pages and transfer them to their site.  The CSS page even still had my name on it.  The entire site was mine - except for the lower right hand link back to my design company which had been removed. 

As an epilogue to my tale of woe they also let me know that if I ever used their site in my portfolio or tried to take credit for the web site that I would be contacted at once by their lawyers. 

Ah' a lot of lessons learned the hard way with that job. 


**Passes flashlight to next webmaster***

Okay I really hope you all have some good stories to tell because if I'm the only person who has ever had a scary client I'm going feel weird! :-D

-Seven

Oh Seven...can I just say...what an entertaining story...albeit a horrible experience... what you have turned it into here deserves pride of place in Creative Writing arenas across the world. Well done!

Elizabeth

website built... looking good... boss liked it during the process.

site complete... boss disagrees... major structure changes... scrap and start again.

new site complete... boss is happy during design... i put site online.

site is online.... boss hates the site... cant believe i thought crap like this would fly.

build another site... again the boss is happy till completion... put it all up... receive 5 pages of changes that need to be made...

this is my horror story of 8 months on one website. Often i think the term "going postal" was deliberately put out there for me to use.

end

Sorry Ryan, you're not quite the storyteller that Seven is .  Me, I don't have a story.  This is my first web design (actually everything IT) job since retiring from the Air Force, and it's been fairly trouble-free (which is good, cause I'm not a good storyteller either )

the honesty... its killin me Na, im no good at telling stories, plus, thats the rerun that keeps on playong on and on in my head... its hard to add to re-run if you catch my drift.

perhaps next year i will have a more close to postal tale to tell.. a tale about an office full of ladies who cant figure out why their pc's wont work during a power out get savage splinters from a well placed stick!... till next year then

Seven, you should have sued them for stealing everything you did without paying! Because they really did steal from you.

When I have time (I'm going out of town Wednesday until Monday) I have some similar stories I can tell, but they did not get our content.

Julie

uuuyyyy.... just reading that pisses me off  7      


my worst horror story doesn't involve clients, but our own systems: basically our server and back-ups crashed at the same time- it took over 3 weeks and lots of $ i didn't have just to salvage our data- i was basically awake around the clock trying to coordinate the rescue effort

but much like you....good lessons were learned- too bad they have to be learned the hard way but better then never

[yea i know....my story level skills fall somewhere below Ryan's ]

Ok, here’s a really scary one for you; I’m still angry about it, but short of hiring a lawyer (which I can’t afford) there is absolutely nothing I can do about it – except  make it public.

A friend (ok, a FORMER friend) hosted a site for me when I first started out; I didn’t ask him to, he volunteered, in fact nearly insisted on doing it.  So I said ok, thanks much, and transferred one of my domains to his host.  That went pretty well for several years, then he decided he was tired of the “Adult” sector and wanted to break into “straight internet” and be a “real” host.  He knew that design was my forte and preference, I had done some design jobs for him that he was very pleased with, so he asked me to come up with a domain name for “straight internet” web design which he could promote through his webhost.  I offered to register the name myself, only $15/yr, right?  But he said, “no no, I’ll register it, no need for it to cost you anything.”  So I came up with a good name, he registered it at his registrar-portal, and I set about designing the site.

In the process of designing the site, I added some advertising, and it just so happened that some of the ads “competed” with this former-friend’s hosting service – unfavorably to him.  Though I had no idea whatever at the time, he took great umbrage at this, and – rather than talking to me about it and correcting my error -- he decided to freeze my domain name.  I couldn’t access it whatever.  When I tried, I ran into “password invalid” and all such as that.  Then, lo and behold, when I did a WHOIS search on the name, it began to show HIS name and info, rather than mine!  So I emailed him to find out why he had stolen it from me.  For a long, long time, he said nothing at all – dead silence.

Finally, I guess it was a couple months later, he did reply, “explaining” this action to me.  He still wouldn’t give me my domain name, and when the expire date rolled around (last year), he renewed it so I could not.  This year, when the expire date rolled around, I saw nothing happening and began to hope, but alas, when the name was finally deleted, it showed up as the property of one of those domain-hijackers that charge like $100k for good domain names.  So I guess it’s lost. 

What should I do, report this former-friend to the Better Business Bureau?  I have no lawyer and can’t afford to sue, so I don’t know what else I should do.

Just let it be a cautionary tale to myself and everyone else – if you think of a good domain name, don’t let any ANYONE register it for you!  Do it yourself!  At a registrar where you can control all admin for the name!

Wow Nic, I feel you with the server story!  THAT is scary!!!

I have a short, quick story about the scary stupidity of an art director.

I'm retouching a shot of a box on seamless, when the AD asks if I can rotate the box so they can see more of the side.

After making some wiseass comment and seeing his expression I realized he was serious.

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAA Ah, my day just got better

On the subject of horror stories and crap things to happen.. i now have to print out every page of my now almost completed website to the bosses wife so she can see if there is anything she would like to change before she goes to germany on thursday..... WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!

perhaps i should print out the generated source for the whole site and give that to her.... 

When i started up in this work, i had just made contacts with a company that deals with underwater discovery and diving stuff. They already had a site and they wanted to hire me to get their website redesigned.

they already had a pretty accurate idea of how they wanted the site to be, and there was a lot of work involved. However when they asked me to quote a price for them, (something around $700) they were like... WTF!!!! Since I was at the very young stage of my business, i wanted to build my portfolio soon, so i reduced the price heavily until it became something like the equivalent of 300$ - i'm sure they still said it was too expensive.

We also finally agreed for the hosting prices too, i would have charged them about $100 per year for the hosting and domain. (they diddnt complain much as their older privider charged them $120)

Besides the fact that one of the managers was really fussy and wanted everything how he wanted (even if i told him that it wouldnt look good) once they discovered that for my hosting service i was making 30$ of profit... and all hell broke lose!

I used to buy hosting from a company at 70$ and i used to resell it at 100$ - they called me up and they told me that i was highly overcharging for my work and that they were going to file a report with the business bureau! They were not realising that i had over 150 e-mail accounts to setup to move over from the other hosting provider they previously had! They complained back and they wanted to cancel everything and wanted a refund back.

I was never so glad to get rid of a client - im sure it wouldnt have ended in a nice way anyway.

i have another horror story, but im gonna pass the torch to somebody else for now. I'll write the other story later

i think it is rediculous how people seem to fall under the impression that they deserve to have someone who spent hours/weeks/months/years becoming "good at what they do" work for them and pay just enough to cover the costs. Its bullS##T in my opinion, some people just rub me up the wrong way like that, especially when we are charging way below the market price. It almost pushes me to the point where i want to send my prices through the roof and give people the quality of site that matches their business ethics.

I have (and still am) ignoring a client who i charged waaay less than any other company (i charged 3000... other quotes were between 14 000 and 23 000) and yet he still will not stop harassing me to make stupid changes and he bitches about not liking things he asked for. A few weeks ago when i put a test gallery up for him, he looked at it and made a snide remark about my intelligence because the pictures hadnt been ordered and resized (for a fishing test!! - to see if he liked the layout and interface) so after that point i decided to give him the global Finger and now he is lucky if i make a change once every two weeks.

Crap like that falls under the category of people who ask for help and then call you a stupid prick when you reply... imagine if i asked everyone for a site review and afterwards called you all tossers because i didnt like the answers i was getting... it would be ludicrous and i probably wouldnt be able to appear here ever again simply because i cant imagine embarrasing myself in such a way. Yet there are people out there who pull crap like this in the business world and still expect to have the job done with a smile... SCREW THEM!

/rant (sorry all, im having a really bad few weeks with the above mentioned situations)
I reckon im gonna have to join up with griff in finding a good ranting area.

My dream is to start a web site where we can all post about our BAD clients with enough information so that no one else will ever take them on as clients, but we can't be sued by them if they find it either because there's not quite enough information to prove it's them.

< evil grin >

This is more of a pet peeve than a scary story:

We prepare a very, very detailed quote to potential clients. We also give a range to the price so there is room for changes and adjustments. While we don't go as far as to give change orders during a project, we are very clear when clients ask for something that was not in the original quote and tell them it will be more and try to give them an estimate of what it will cost extra. But it never fails to amaze me when a project is done and we bill them and they are surprised to get billed for something "extra". They will swear it was in the quote, that they asked for it originally and we have to send them a copy of the quote AGAIN to get them to actually read the whole quote. All they ever look at is the $$ and see if that is OK or not and don't read anything else. Our quote is our contract and they don't care what it says until something isn't exactly as they think it was supposed to be.

Nice to know im not alone... it never ceases to amaze me the lengths we try to avoid these situations from the very start. Yet regardless of the plans we still get screwed

you can try to get around this by trying to get their corrispondece by e-mail - i hardly ever conclude deals over the phone or in meetings, try to get  their yes or no trough email and keep a backup of it!

njak wrote:

My dream is to start a web site where we can all post about our BAD clients with enough information so that no one else will ever take them on as clients, but we can't be sued by them if they find it either because there's not quite enough information to prove it's them.

< evil grin >

This is more of a pet peeve than a scary story:

We prepare a very, very detailed quote to potential clients. We also give a range to the price so there is room for changes and adjustments. While we don't go as far as to give change orders during a project, we are very clear when clients ask for something that was not in the original quote and tell them it will be more and try to give them an estimate of what it will cost extra. But it never fails to amaze me when a project is done and we bill them and they are surprised to get billed for something "extra". They will swear it was in the quote, that they asked for it originally and we have to send them a copy of the quote AGAIN to get them to actually read the whole quote. All they ever look at is the $$ and see if that is OK or not and don't read anything else. Our quote is our contract and they don't care what it says until something isn't exactly as they think it was supposed to be.

njak wrote:

My dream is to start a web site where we can all post about our BAD clients with enough information so that no one else will ever take them on as clients, but we can't be sued by them if they find it either because there's not quite enough information to prove it's them.

Someone has started a site of rants like this for the web/graphics designer:

http://www.clientcopia.com/

What a time sink, but essential for sanity!

Years ago I wrote a web application for a financial services company I used to work for.  One day one of the vice presidents calls me on the phone wanting to know why she can't access the web application.  So I tell her, well its easy open a browser, type the URL etc...  She says, I can't do that, etc...  So I'm all confused like "What ?  You just type http://etc/webapp in the browser"  she says I do and it just goes wild.  So I go down to her office to see what goes wild means for myself right ?  She's got her "Internet for Dummies" book propped up on her keyboard with the space bar depressed!!

Amazing how well it worked when there wasn't a book holding the space bar down.

The scary part of the story is how hard I worked compared to how much she was paid.

Time for another horror story turn. This one made me feel back for a couple of weeks and when i remember about it i still feel a bit angry at the guy... but oh well...

I had a meeting with a guy that was starting a business. He wanted the business website and company logo together with print materials such as letter heads and business cards etc..

After he told me all he requires and i had a pretty good idea, we agreed on price and we started working on stuff.

the first thing i usually start with in those cases is the logo.

I went ahead to try some sample logos (i did about 5 different concepts) but he diddnt like any of them, and he told me that he had a very clear idea on how he wanted the logo, so he went right ahead to design (on paper) a sketch for me to work on. - it wasnt actually a sketch - it was more of a hyper detailed super sketch - he instructed me to follow his example very closely cos thats what he wanted his logo to be.

i did exacltly as he said, plus i tried to make several different variations so as to try to please him, instead... he phoned me about 3 days later, and he told me...

"I'm very disappointed at the logo, i honestly didddnt like it at all, your lack of creativity is astounding and i cant imagine how my website would look with such an un-appealing design sense" he ended the call with "consider our deals cancelled"

for a minute there, i was like shocked and totally embarassed - i never got a comment like this, and with over 20+ happy clients before him, i was really not expecting this. - i was completely out of words - and even now i cant really explain how terrible i felt and i spent about a whole week trying to get it out of my head.

7 months past this case, the guy still has no website - and he diddnt even get started in the business - i guess he diddnt find a designer good enough for him.... oh wel good luck to him, i'm happy that im not working for him now!

Wow... lotta "I'm getting screwed" stories in this thread. I feel bad for you all, cause I've been in those situations on several occasions.

But, that's exactly what it takes to grow, and everyone here is lucky to run across these problems early in their career. In the case of Seven, it'd be a real bummer if she'd had a huge company, that she built herself over 25 years, and got rolled over by Mercedes Benz, or some other high profile/money job. Knowledge is power!

To summarize -

1) Don't ever let your design work be accessable via the internet, or any other medium that will allow any user to just copy and paste. If you're work must be out there flying around in cyberspace, then you'll need to find a way to 'watermark' (and I mean that in a general way) your work, so that  you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt in a court of law that it belongs to you, and you didn't get paid. Create an open-and-shut case so you're not burning lots of money on attorney fee's.

2) Quoting people is difficult. As long as you know that your skills are superior than most out there, and offer them at a competitive rate, then you got nothing to lose by telling them "That's my going rate". You've got skill, and you deserve to get paid for it. If they're not willing to pay, then let them walk.... you've got a business to run. Trust me on this.... keep your quotes short and sweet, yet positive. The worse thing you can do sometimes is 'Over Sell' your product/skills. When that happens, you start to bring yourself down to their level, letting them treat you like you're just some average Joe, and what you do can be bought for $2.99 at Wal-Mart.

3) Your boss will always suck, and there's nothing you can do about it.