No more clients

If I've learned anything from the recent client that has been giving me so much trouble it is to make sure you document EVERYTHING. I've been working on this site since March, why? Because they refuse to simply talk through email or IM like normal clients. Now don't get me wrong I don't mind on-site visit or phone call once in a while, but these people wanted me to come to their shop for every little revision. It has gotten to the point they want me to call in every single thing that was completed or changed. It is insane.

But by far the icing on the cake is that they're threatening cancellation and legal action if the site isn't done by December! Keep in mind that I've remade the site twice, completely overhauled the database 3 times, made multiple small revisions to the site, gone on site at least 4 times, sent an un countable number of (unread) emails. I'm just plain sick of these people.

If I had enough money to return the original down payment, I would, and then I would ask them to never contact me again. But unfortunately the big disadvantage of being a college student is that when you get money, you have someone who wants it for a bill. Honestly, I've been looking to sell personal belongings just to get enough money to get them away from me.

Since I can't though, I've decided to take a more agressive approach. I'm going to call them everyday until I get the site approved and launched. I'm also going to be enforcing my times, generally I reffer clients to a time table on my site of when I'm available for a phone call, but I usually answer anytime. Not any more, I'm going to send any calls straight to voice mail until my normal hours. No more specially made manuals explaining basic computer skills. And no more running right over to help then when they don't understand something or their mistyping their password in the login form (yes, that really happened).

After this is all over, I think I'm going to take a nice long break, not take on any more clients and just mess around with my site.