On my podcast you’ll hear me speak over and again about the red flags clients can present with.
Today I’ll tell you the story of my worst client to date.
I should have been warned by the fact that the client’s name made an anagram of ‘Narc’ in fact their company name contained Narc in it.
This should have been the first clue. It wasn’t. The client presented as capable, professional and had a relatively clear idea of what it was she wanted from her custom build website. The only thing she didn’t have was a brand.
To speed things along I offered the services of my branding specialist and we congregated with the client on a branding brainstorm call. Things became a little challenging as we couldn’t pin down any colours, concepts or visions for the brand. I eventually said ‘let’s wait for the copywriter and see if that inspires us’.
That poor copywriter.
When he submitted the approved copy for the website it was version 8. Yep, you read that right – the client had gone back and forth 8 times before signing off the copy. And it’s not like the copywriter’s a rookie. He’s been doing it for years, won awards, written campaigns for huge, high-street companies, and yet he was put through his paces by Narc.
Narc sent the photos from her photoshoot, which was great. Until she told me not to use them and replaced them with iPhone photos 🫣. Despite her working in the HR sector she basically wanted photos from her holidays to show she’s well travelled.
We still couldn’t agree on a brand so, in the end, unconventionally, in a move I’ll never make again, I said ‘let me get started and we can tweak it along the way. I usually wouldn’t recommend this but Narc had been on random logo generators and various AI tools and had decided that she wanted to use all natural images, soft colours and a handwriting font. It was enough for me to get started.
Then the ghosting began. Narc was pretty much always too busy to give feedback. Or reply to emails and took several reminders for each communication.
This dragged on for 18 long months until we got to the point where I sent the final invoice and it was ignored. A month later I sent an email telling her she was in breach of the terms of service and the project had been cancelled.
She did reply to this one. Within a couple of minutes.
I have never seen a client go into a narcissistic meltdown the way Narc did. Spamming me with emails saying I’d told her it would be ok to ghost me(!) That I’d worked well with her for 18 months (despite my website turnaround being 9 weeks) why was I doing this now? That I was trying to claim money from her that I wasn’t entitled to.
For someone who was having a website built around her HR support and Mediation services it was a pretty impressive show of bullying, lying and general meltdown.
Each time I replied I was polite, professional and offered solutions (pay up and I’ll give you the files for someone else to finish). I explained that as she was in breach of my contract I would settle this legally if needs be.
She then started to threaten me to try to avoid legal action and in the end I filed court papers. Once I did this she emailed saying ‘it’s a shame you felt the need to do that Holly’. I think she thought she could just go on like this forever.
The rest of the story is that I had enough evidence to nail her to the wall with having sent the terms of service at both, quoting and invoicing stages and she had expressly agreed to them. Narc had to pay the final invoice and the court fee and I released the website files, along with the website user manual, ready for the next designer to finish.
The lesson here….. Have watertight Terms of Service – if you don’t have ones you’re confident in, you can purchase my website designer’s contract pack which will have you covered. Make sure you stick to the Terms of Service your end and always act in accordance of how you say you will. Keep records of everything and, if you have a website request from someone with the name Narc in their company, steer well clear!
Have you had a similar experience? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
