Low-balling

Even with the economy in an upswing, there are still a fair amount of cheap clients out there. This will never change because people don’t realize the value of paying top dollar (getting top dollar results). Sure, people will shell out the money for a few goods, but when it comes to something as important as corporate identity or usability, most owners balk at paying more than a friend’s cousin can do it for (with Microsoft Paint and Frontpage of course).

There is something to be said for finding a bargain, and I also that understand everyone doesn’t have the capital to hire 37Signals, but generally you get what you pay for. I’ve heard, “I’ll just go to India” from clients a lot lately. It doesn’t anger me at all… I wish them luck. If they put price over everything else, I don’t want to work for them. Hopefully they will get a great site, but the odds aren’t that great. Think going after a prick programmer in the states is hard? Try going after an Indian programmer.

The same thing goes for customer service. The first time I hire a customer service rep, I am going to be extremely picky. Too many [otherwise] great companies have horrible customer service. As a customer, I don’t want to be put on hold, go for days without email replies or hit a dead end. I don’t care if, “the system is down” or even if there is a gun man stalking through the office. I just want my problem fixed. As an employer, I’ll pay 2, 3 or even 4x the going rate if you can do that [efficiently].