You could always give them the "box" and tell them to install it
themselves.
My point is that there is always time involved. Setting up someone's
website from scratch takes about a morning on a good day and longer on a
nasty day, then there is the cost of the project admin time - meeting
the client, quoting, and customer care. Hopefully all this adds up to a
happy customer with a working, tested website - I would not want to give
them anything less and the client is willing to pay for that and I don't
think it's dishonest to charge them for a product + your time making
sure it all works fine too. The alternative is as above - charge them
the cost of the product, they have to set it up themselves, customer
gets frustrated or realises they can do the job fine and assumes that
all the other services you provide are just as easy to do themselves, so
you potentially lose any future business from that customer.
I am not condoning handing off any old rubbish to the customer - I spend
ages looking at different "products" to see what the best one for the
job would be and I am honest about what the customer is getting - they
are often paying the price for the product that I pay then for my
services. If I give them a load of crap they are not going to come back
either.
Think about going to a number of hotels.
1. A bit shabby, cheap, well run with really nice staff.
2. Expensive, looks the part, well run with really nice staff.
3. Cheap, shabby and grumpy b*****ds running it...
4. Expensive, looks the part and grumpy b*****ds running it...
So you got 2 cheap hotels and two expensive ones - which one do you use
again? It depends on what your expectations were originally and maybe
what your circumstances are again - some people want luxury, others want
somewhere to kip, but either way, if you feel happy about your
experience, you would be likely to go back. Whether the price of the
breakfast at 2 is twice the price of 1, so what, I may have thought it
was worth it.
With this industry, it boils down to customer service most of the time -
that's what the people are paying for - your time and knowledge at
getting them the best thing for their money. Unfortunately there are a
lot of people out there who like to rip people off, but there are also a
lot of awkward customers who want the bees knees for very little too.
The aim is to keep the good customers, maybe be flexible and put
yourself out for them, be honest yes, but there is nothing wrong with
adding a cost to something you source from somewhere else - if you add
value, your customers realise that most of the time and you will have a
good relationship, but ripping off works both ways...
GLen
Jon Bradley wrote:
On Nov 14, 2008, at 12:27 PM, Carl Welch wrote:
using tools of the trade is far from ripping clients off. Ridiculous
statement.
It's not ridiculous at all. Read my reply to my initial email where I
elaborated a bit more.
The comment about a client being 'none the wiser' and the implication
that you're just making the extra dough by handing off some crap
someone else did is what's not cool.
The point was, if you're repackaging something that someone already
did without any value add, then that's dishonest. Hands down, end of
story.
- j
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Glen Pike
01326 218440
www.glenpike.co.uk <http://www.glenpike.co.uk>
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