I debated about whether to vent and rant here, about this, or to ask for feedback elsewhere in the Lounge, but, meh. Venting seems more appropriate.
4.5 YEARS ago, a woman hired us to convert her book. We set up her project, and she paid the invoice. Things happened, and she never got us the final book to convert.
....time passes....
In the fall of last year, she pops up again, with the SAME book, and now wants a quote to do a POD+eBook package. (The original contract was eBook only.) We quote her.
....time passes....
And now, she's BACK. Apparently, she wants us to honor the payment she made 4.5 years ago, against the work she wants done now.
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how I really feel about this. I offered, repeatedly, way back, to refund her paid monies. The delays were sort of never-ending. We had the project open for AGES (two years?). Emails to her periodically, yadda.
I'm probably going to end up honoring the 2011 payment against this new work, just to avoid hassles and bad publicity...but am I daft in thinking, "geeze, lady, I've probably used up that money in chasing you around, asking if the book was ready, requoting you, blabbety-blab?"
FYI, in our newer (than 2011) Terms & Conditions, we flatly state that paid or not, if a client disappears for X months, their job is considered complete and the project is closed and archived. But, to be fair, I did NOT have that in place in 2011. I do NOT remember how far we got on this in 2011. (And I can't find the bits and orts to reconstruct the history of whether or not we did the first leg of conversion, and THEN she disappeared, or if she disappeared from the get-go, damn.)
If you were the CLIENT, would you think that 4.5, nearly 5 years down the road, that the work is still owed, without any type of offset? Or...? I want to be fair about this, and
more importantly, I want to stop feeling
resentful about it. I mean, sheesh, this client is getting a damn lotta mileage out of a few hundred bucks.
Hitch