Extremely difficult client - need advice

enrimdesign

New Member
I got myself in a very sticky situation and I am basically trying to figure out what to do now.
I have worked with this client before, every time it wasn't smooth, but every time I got her and myself through it. But the other projects were relatively small. She is also a family friend, so I had my guard down with her. Normally, I would have a contract signed, this time, I figured I knew her, she knew me, I never thought I would get into this much trouble with her.
Anyway, it's a pretty long story, but to make it short: I had a 3 hour meeting with her. We talked about her website in detail. I was going to set up a Magento ecommerce store for her, with a templatemonster theme, about 20 products, a gallery for her press section, hook up a payment gateway and shipping stuff from ups or usps... We set the price, I got the 50% deposit from her. Started work. Few days later her friend calls me, starts asking me questions about what I am doing and why I am doing it. I told him about our agreement with the client and everything I was doing for her. Then the client calls me back, says that she also wants a Wordpress website with 25 pages (that I would have to do), also connected to Magento via fishPig. Since there is no matching theme for wordpress that the current Magento store has, that means that the wordpress theme has to be custom. I said, sure, but that it'll cost more. Then she said that the friend (that called me before with questions) will do it all for the same price as she is paying me already... that she wanted her money back. I said deposits are non-refundable. She said she was going to put a stop to the check... However, even though check didn't completely clear, my bank made the funds available for me... Christmas, birthdays, rent, New Year... the money is pretty much gone. I pretty much had no choice but to agree to her demands, because I could not give her money back. But the money is miserable. What do I do? Any suggestions/advices? I know I should have signed a contract, I normally always do... but, like I said, I had my guard down since she was a family friend and I've known her for years... but where do I take it from here?
 
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DHDdirect

New Member
Somehow gather up the money to refund her and graciously wipe your hands of it. There is always a friend that "knows more" about web design that is willing to work for free or next to nothing. Either the friend will never finish the project or end up with a craptastic layout. She'll continuously be asking the friend for things to be changed because it's will never be quite right. So I say pass on the problems to that sucker.

Who knows maybe she'll end up coming back to you in which you can have a very detailed contract in hand and even charge more.

Most importantly you can learn from this. I'm sure most of us here have dealt with it in one way or another and they can share their experience . Contracts need to be detailed to the point where they have a starting point and a definitive end and also details for your situation where things can go sour.

It's also a good idea to treat money generated as revenue and not income.
 
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