I have this client that expects everything for free - he seems to expect that he can call whenever he needs and if I don't answer the phone, keep calling and callling until I answer the phone - which honestly makes me not want to answer the phone. They seem to think that I have nothing else to do but give them free support 24 hrs a day.
And most of the problems have been user error - can I bill them for it? sure but will they pay me for it - no.
It started with this: "I understand Ver 10 is new but if you recall your statement of work was preparation for a seamless migration. We don't want to be a Beta test platform and that's why we trust our consultants to guide us and provide us with the best solution!"
and my answer: I'm sorry, you are correct, my consulting agreement did state Tigerpaw CRM Software, Implementation and Training. However the estimated proposal was to clean up the existing Tigerpaw V9 and training in order for you to migrate to V10(CRM+) seamlessly. I did not proposal any additional hours for the migration or additional training for CRM+ since we were focused on cleaning up V9. You are not a Beta test platform and I understand you trust your consultants to guide you and provide you with the best solution but do you expect your consultants to work free of charge also?
and their response "Let me rest assure you my intention is always been to pay you but if you noticed there is lots of problem with migration and you said i said she said and as you know since you do this all the time we are looking for you to give us direction not us giving you directions so that said i am expecting you to tell us what is not there and yes you will get paid this week but i need you help me with different issues and one problem that i know you were going to create leasing document to print so we can do our leasing right out of tiger paw since you said v.10 will do that"
and my response "Instead of she said he said - what else besides leasing did I tell you I'd explain for CRM+?" with a list of specific things I would fix under warranty just to get paid and I spent 12 hours fixing a problem that was once again user error and gave them an update - "The GL Batch Import problem is fixed. Btw, this wasn't a Tigerpaw or QB problem - this was user error. Normally I'd charge you for something like this since it took over 12 hours to figure out what the problem was, check all the accounts affected both in Tigerpaw and QuickBooks and fix the numbers in QB but in the interest of good faith, I won't bill you for this one."
and not once has the guy said thank you for all the free work or anything - he's an ass. Yesterday I got a call from one of his employees - someone new he hired that has questions. She wanted to know how to copy an attachment from her email to her desktop to import it to quickbooks - WTF? She kept calling and calling like it was an emergency. Today was the last straw, I spent another ^%$# 5 hours working on something that was billable and he won't pay me for it either I bet even though I will be billing him and most likely sending him to collections soon. My last comment to him today - "please let me know what you want to do about the tutorials this week. I am losing valuable billable time working on your nonbillable items requests everyday. I have no problem helping you get the kinks worked out on version 10 however some of these requests are billable as it would be with anyone upgrading their phone system to a new version or hiring a new employee - I assume that you don't give free support for that either"
but my point is, screw this, I don't care if I lose the referrals from him or the reference, I have plenty of other customers out there that value me as a person, value my time and pay me. Oh and he had the nerve to tell me about being a partner with him for hosted VOIP services - like I don't have any clue how it works - I got plenty of other providers I'd rather work with that I know would actually pay me referral fees
No more free work for clients unless I screwed up on something - its all billable period and when I mess up, I'll admit it.
11:35:15 PM
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