[consulting] Gouging Stupid Clients

[Christian Pearce]

----- "Fred Jones" <fredthejonester at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: "Fred Jones" <fredthejonester at gmail.com>
> To: "A list for Drupal consultants and Drupal service/hosting providers" <consulting at drupal.org>
> Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2012 11:26:52 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
> Subject: [consulting] Gouging Stupid Clients
>
> Now I have a client myself who has no understanding whatsoever about
> what I do. When they ask for a change (and I even ran a training
> session with them (twice) to tell them how to do little things
> themselves, but anyway they like to ask me) they ask how much time it
> will take and what's the price. Usually I say it looks like a half
> hour job and so I will charge you for a half hour. I don't want to
> discuss rates here, but let's just say my rate is 100 Yen per hour.
> So
> I charge them 50 Yen.
> 
> But I realize now that if I would say two or even four hours, I am
> fairly certain they wouldn't flinch, and even if they did, I could
> whip out a few big words and explain why it's complicated and they
> would accept that. They would then pay me four hours for a half hour
> of work. So what I could do, to be honest, is to say, "This will cost
> 400 Yen" and not mention that it's a half hour job. They don't really
> care about the time--just the price.
> 

Put simply, this is unethical.  You need to explain them them it is 30 minutes and I charge 400 yen an hour.  Clearly they will balk and you know it.  In your scenario you said they ask how long it will take.  But then you suggest that all they care about is price.  I don't think that is true.  I competent person wants to know how long.

Now if you think it isn't worth you time, tell them you have a 4 hour minimum to do requests.  For us and our steady clients it is a 18 minute minimum.  We take the good with the bad and have virtually 0% customer turnover.  Think about it.

> I'm sure others have such clients.
> 

We all have sweetheart clients, the last think you want to do with them is be dishonest.


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