how do you warn a client that you will not tolerate BS?

Yeah your a smart man.

With me its 50% deposit and 50% on competition.

If a client bitches about the deposit, I usually turn them down (nicely of course).
However I find these clients come back to me anyway (after a while) because they hire people who took no deposit and these people screwed up.....so i get the job etc.

So it can work in your favor.

grock said:

I probably work in another niche than most of you all (i own a print company) but i always ask for a deposit before doing any job either design or print and people who are being bitchy about 25% or so deposit are usually people not wanting to pay for what the job is worth and i'm glad they go somewhere else.

If you spend hours trying to deal with them and etc you are wasting time and money. Some people are paying more just to have a good service and good turnaround time.. i'd rather deal with them in the long run.

Of course we never tell them to *** off but that's the job price and that's it.. not happy? there are other company you can annoy.

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IM Ash said:

"Thank you for you interest in our services. We are grateful to have worked with you thus far but as a team we have decided you will be better served by another service provider in the industry. As such we will no longer be able to reply to your queries. All the best with your future SEO endeavors"

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+1 Just copy and paste that response above. Done and move on

skulquake said:

+1 Just copy and paste that response above. Done and move on

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Or show them how even Hitler got pi$$ed when confronted with shoddy SEO ...
[video=youtube_share;TqVDqPPGkZA]http://youtu.be/TqVDqPPGkZA[/video]

Scritty

I always avoid clients like those. I've gone so far as to fire clients if they get way out of line. Those are the type of people that will pay you and then file a chargeback 3 months later. Not even worth the effort.

You'll often find:

People with the smallest pockets have the biggest mouths.

Smeems said:

You'll often find:

People with the smallest pockets have the biggest mouths.

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Holy shit that quote is epic.

This post wins the thread.

You will find the smaller budget customers are more high maintenance because they don't have deep pockets. They are pinching pennies trying to compete with the big guys so they tend to micro manage their spending.

In my experience, leveling with a customer helps. Assure them you're on the same team and you want to help their business grow and dominate but X takes time and you have multiple other clients that demand an equal amount of your attention.

Be sure to shoot them out an email once or twice a week or give them a ring and give them some sort of progress update.

You may decide you are just too busy to deal with the extra customer relations for the money but, if you are doing your job well, small clients turn into big clients.

If the client is verbally abusive then there's no question, drop them.

i think this pretty much sums up how I feel about a lot of the clients from offline promos, that i bring in.
i've never needed to use something like this, but if I need to later in life, I will definitely do something similar to this one.

Reyone said:

If it is your own business, you are the one who needs to set the standard.

When you need to get rid of someone (employees or customers), do it in the politest possible way. Try to be diplomatic, use the sandwich tactic (works for me) and hit them with the bat at the very end without them noticing.

"I am tremendously thankful for all the xxx so far; it has certainly been a pleasure dealing with you/company/xxx and although I would definitely consider you/company/xxx as a (business option) in the future, given circumstances cannot allow me/company/xxx to keep up with this contract/deal/xxx; nice goodbye phrase"

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I have had clients like this in the past. They mainly are the ones who want something for nothing. In my experience you will also find that that will mess you around with payment.
My advice I ask them what products they sell and what value they are then ask them the price.
Then ask them would they sell that product for half the value they quoted.
If they say no then I just say to them yet you have asked me to devalue my product its the same principle.

I'd just tell them to go away, politely. I've had a number of these clients over the last couple of years (easily 5+) and though, as I said, the best way is to tell them that you can't serve them politely, you won't get them to go away that easily if there is any value in what you are providing.

It's near impossible to not run into such clients if you are selling anything <$50.