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Webmaster Forum / General / Web Design / July 2008Clients treating you like tech support
I sort of have a conundrum and, being someone rather prone to acting rashly (I know, you're all surprised), I want to check my reaction. I have someone I made a web site for about 2+ years ago who I also host on my VPS. They've been mostly trouble free with the exception that every so often I get an e-mail from them about "the sky falling" - mostly related to their e-mail. They seem to think I have some sort of control over how much spam they get, for example. Or they'll ask me how to set up their mail client. Most recently, it was that they weren't getting any e-mail. I set it up to forward me all of their mail and they definitely ARE getting e-mail and they've probably f'ed up their mail settings again. The way I see it, I have three options: 1) Tell the client I will no longer be responding to any such message if I feel the message is likely to lead to a problem "between the keyboard and the interface" 2) Tell the client I will charge them my normal hourly rate for my time investigating any support request that winds up not being an issue with the site or hosting. 3) Tell the client I appreciate their previous business, but that at this time I think they need to find someone else to host them. I realize that laypeople aren't likely to understand how web sites & hosting works and that there may be times when things get blurred and so you have to expect some requests for support that require a polite response reminding them of what does and does not fall within my responsibilities, but there comes a time when they need to understand that we are NOT their in-house tech support and that their mail client is NOT our responsibility. What's your take? How would you handle it?  SignatureKarl Groves http://www.thehotrodclassifieds.com http://www.grayscalecms.com http://www.karlcore.com And lo, Karl Groves didst speak in alt.www.webmaster: > The way I see it, I have three options: > 1) Tell the client I will no longer be responding to any such message if [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > What's your take? How would you handle it? If you're still on good terms with them, I'd go for #2 definitely. Tell them that the time you spend investigating their problems is time taken away from spending time on the rest of your clients, time you can't get back. Either they will understand and pay you for your time, or they will get one of their grade-school nephews to do email support and then still pay you when everything goes horribly awry ;) Seriously though. A sensible person should understand that they can't take advantage of your charity forever without turning the relationship into a bitter mess. Grey SignatureThe technical axiom that nothing is impossible sinisterly implies the pitfall corollary that nothing is ridiculous. - http://www.greywyvern.com/orca#search - Orca Search: Full-featured spider and site-search engine GreyWyvern <spam@greywyvern.com> wrote in message: op.tvnyz1lwsl6xfd@news.nas.net, > Seriously though. A sensible person should understand that they can't > take advantage of your charity forever without turning the > relationship into a bitter mess. > > Grey Would mind explaining this to all of my family, friends and neighbors? :-) SignatureRed And lo, Red E. Kilowatt didst speak in alt.www.webmaster: > GreyWyvern wrote in message: > [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > Would mind explaining this to all of my family, friends and neighbors? > :-) Well then, obviously your family, friends and neighbours are not sensible people :) Seriously again, if family, friends and neighbours balk at paying you for doing something which takes up your valuable time, and which you didn't volunteer to do for them in the first place, then they aren't very scrupulous people. Have you even asked them if they would pay you? Or are you just wary about potentially insulting them by asking? After being called over to my Dad's office once too many times to install more software, I once mentioned off-handedly that "I should be getting paid for this". Surprisingly, I had to convince him I'd only been joking when he insisted on paying me out of good faith! [1] You never know until you ask, and until you ask, you'll always been living in uncomfortable tension. Grey [1] Sure I could have taken the money, but I've cost my parents enough over the years already ;) SignatureThe technical axiom that nothing is impossible sinisterly implies the pitfall corollary that nothing is ridiculous. - http://www.greywyvern.com/orca#search - Orca Search: Full-featured spider and site-search engine GreyWyvern <spam@greywyvern.com> wrote in message: op.tvn962assl6xfd@news.nas.net, > And lo, Red E. Kilowatt didst speak in alt.www.webmaster: > [quoted text clipped - 29 lines] > [1] Sure I could have taken the money, but I've cost my parents enough > over the years already ;) I definitely charge the neighbors, but they rarely are willing to pay for all of the actual time it takes me to fix their software problems. They whine and carry on, so I end up giving them a break and then I'm pissed off about it afterwards, because I didn't want to do the work in the first place and I spent so much time on it that I wasn't paid for. My family expects me to drop whatever I'm doing and get their computer working right away. My friends want free advice, but I almost always get sucked into doing the work for them because they can't follow simple instructions. I used to do repairs and networking as a business but I got out of it because I was sick and tired of trying to fix other people's Windows problems--more often than not caused by trojans and whatnot because they don't practice safe computing. I want to tell everyone to leave me alone. But the people who ask me for help get all pathetic because they don't know where else to turn. Most of the time it's some stupid software issue that no repair place would ever bother with beyond erasing the hard disk and reinstalling Windows. I know I should be a hard a.s about this, but when you've given people free stuff for so long they develop a sense of entitlement. They'll all turn on me and think I'm being a selfish prick. But I guess that's the price I have to pay to get out of this now. SignatureRed > And lo, Red E. Kilowatt didst speak in alt.www.webmaster: >> Would mind explaining this to all of my family, friends and neighbors? >> :-) [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > volunteer to do for them in the first place, then they aren't very > scrupulous people. I'm in the retail business and it irritates me at times how family and friends expect an automatic - and significant - discount just because they are family and friends. After all, I don't ask them to give me part of their wages! To be honest, close family and friends don't bother me too much as I'd give them a discount anyway, it's the indirect ones that get to me. I had a guy a while ago whose son is married to a woman whose sister is married to my brother; he asked his daughter-in-law to ask her sister to ask my brother to ask me if he could get a special discount. What particularly irritated me was that he's a wealthy guy and owns a business where we occasionally buy stuff. I sent him back a reply asking if we could get a special discount every time we buy something from his business :) >I sort of have a conundrum and, being someone rather prone to acting rashly > (I know, you're all surprised), I want to check my reaction. [quoted text clipped - 31 lines] > > What's your take? How would you handle it? #2 then just VNC, or one of those web based remote tools, and fix it. in and out in minutes >I realize that laypeople aren't likely to understand how web sites & >hosting works and that there may be times when things get blurred and so [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > >What's your take? How would you handle it? Do you charge them for hosting? If so they probably assume it comes with some level of tech support. If not start charging them a monthly hosting fee and include N amount of tech support with it. If you really don't want to be their personal tech support, tell them so and tell them if they want hosting with support you'd gladly recommend them a company who can do it =) -- If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger. ~Frank Lloyd Wright - www.cynode.com | (NSFW) www.cynbabes.com (NWS) > 2) Tell the client I will charge them my normal hourly rate for my time > investigating any support request that winds up not being an issue with the > site or hosting. Definitely, charge them time and materials for support issues. If you jack up your basic rate, and try to cover it there then your basic rate will be non-competitive. Additionally, by charging them time and materials, they will only call when they need something fixed. If you bundle service into your monthly hosting cost, then they won't have any incentive to user your time wisely. SignatureGeorge Sexton MH Software, Inc. - Home of Connect Daily Web Calendar http://www.mhsoftware.com/connectdaily.htm > 2) Tell the client I will charge them my normal hourly rate for my time > investigating any support request that winds up not being an issue with the > site or hosting. > What's your take? How would you handle it? #2 or #4, depending on how happy you are at doing it. #2 is to become their paid tech support. They have problems, you fix problems, they pay you to fix these problems. #4 (which personally I'd prefer) is to recognise that "you the developer" aren't a good choice for delivering ongoing tech support. So instead you recommend that they deal with some other body who specialises in this sort of thing (and probably shouldn't be a development competitor!). They will bill them like #2. If they're in London, I'd probably suggest <http://runpcrun.com> > I sort of have a conundrum and, being someone rather prone to acting rashly > (I know, you're all surprised), I want to check my reaction. [quoted text clipped - 26 lines] > > What's your take? How would you handle it? I had a similar problem with a customer of mine. His office is right down the street from my post office, so he thought nothing of calling at least once a week asking me to stop by and check out a computer problem he was having. It was always a stupid thing - once he had accidentally unplugged his DSL modem, another time he hid all his desktop icons, his son was playing a game on his computer and it locked up - always a quick 20 - 30 minute fix, but after a month or so I grew tired of it and told him that I didn't have the time to do this on a regular basis. The calls continued. I finally sent him an invoice for my last 4 visits. I calculated that I had spent about 2 hours there at $50 per hour, so I mailed an invoice for $100. He called me again the following week. When I arrived, he told me that he would gladly pay for my time, and added another $100 to the check before he handed it to me. I know my experience is probably unusual, but try invoicing these clients, you may be surprised at the results. Best case scenario - they'll think twice before calling you if they know they have to pay. Matt Probert wrote: >Web page authors have lots of rights. They can also insist on only >writing the text of their page in Mala, but I should tentatively >suggest that English might have a wider potential audience? Indeed. The web page author can get away with deciding to use a few non-standard fleemishes and the reader will still be able to gloork the meaning from the context, but there ix a limit; If too many ot the vleeps are changed, it becomes harder and qixer to fllf what the wethcz is blorping, and evenually izs is bkb longer possible to ghilred frok at wifx. Dnighth? Ngfipht yk ur! Uvq the hhvd or hnnngh. Blorgk? Blorgk! Blorgkity-blorgk!!!! SignatureGuy Macon <http://www.GuyMacon.com/> |
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