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c/client-red-flagswhite.keithwhite.keith6d agoMost Upvoted

Can we talk about the client who paid me exactly $4,287 on the dot? Nobody warned me about the too precise clients.

Everyone shares stories about clients who never pay, but I want to talk about the ones who pay exactly to the penny every single time. I had a client last year for a website design gig in Cleveland, and she always sent payments that matched the invoice down to the cents with no rounding or odd numbers. $1,056.72 one month, $2,198.43 the next. It seemed really professional at first, but then I started noticing the red flag. She would use that exact number to pick apart my work line by line, asking why this task was worth $42.36 and that one was worth $87.49. It turned into three extra meetings a month where we argued over tenths of an hour. Has anyone else dealt with clients who treat invoices like a legal threat instead of just paying the total?
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the_sage
the_sage6d ago
Wait, $42.36 and $87.49 aren't really 'tenths of an hour' though. That's more like specific task billing down to the minute, which is a whole different level of crazy. But yeah, getting nitpicky over cents like that is a huge red flag, she was definitely testing you.
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gibson.troy
Bet she charged her own clients by the minute too.
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