[thelist] how do you manage/respond?

[Bob Meetin]

Joel D Canfield wrote:
>> Next time I end up in that situation I've got the
>> contract to cover it: I tell them that the relationship is no longer
>> tenable, deliver what work has been done and ask for payment. The end.
>>     
>
> our contract includes a clause that says, essentially, if you haven't
> given us all the data within 60 days after the contract is signed, we
> can consider the contract fulfilled and bill for the balance due.
>
> thus far we've never enforced it, primarily because we're screening
> clients more carefully than when we had The Client Who Caused the Clause
>
> joel
In this case the problem is perhaps more/less complicated and perhaps 
self-induced by not being a little more business-savvy and enforcing 
requirements at the onset (like Joel and many of you have responded).

Business owner wants to convert his current website into an eCommerce 
system. I am charging by the hour, so this part is fine. Unfortunately 
other than pointing me to a similar type website he did not want to go 
into specific requirements.  I chose a general eCommerce solution.  Back 
to Business owner, he comes to grip with the fact that he is not focused 
or interested in populating the database, so hires a guy who knows their 
business to help but is tech unsavvy and requires handholding.

In addition to me becoming a personal assistant, as they start to 
populate the cart they come up with a variety of pricing/quantity needs 
that can only be described as unique/custom. I've solved most of the 
issues through research and tinkering, but these type of solutions are 
very distracting, take undivided concentration and I find it hard to 
simply drop what I'm doing and dive in.

As a side note - the guy assigned to populate the cart work incredibly 
slow, seems to be a one-finger typist.  I hear frequent feedback abut 
the project taking much longer than expected.  Well, of course.  This is 
not a rant, but really a learning experience.