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Rant: My scope creep clause went from lifeline to joke in 6 months
I used to have a solid clause that let me charge extra if a project went over 3 rounds of edits. Then I landed a big client in Phoenix who pushed it to 8 rounds on a $500 logo job. My clause said I could bill more but they argued it was 'minor adjustments' every time. Now I've rewritten it to define each round as a set list of changes. Has anyone else had a client test the limits of your scope language like that?
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abby_fisher3d agoTop Commenter
Why are you wasting energy on a $500 logo job that goes 8 rounds? That's not a clause problem, that's a client problem you should have walked away from after round 3.
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rowan_ross3d ago
...and my shiny new clause ended up looking like a contract from a paranoid novelist. I literally added a line that says "a 'minor adjustment' is changing one font size, not redesigning the entire brand identity." Guess I'm just a glutton for punishment though, because my next client still found a loophole - they'd make one tiny change per round but keep the email thread going for weeks, calling it a "new round" every time their boss had a thought at 2am. At this point I'm half tempted to add a clause that says "if you make me cry, that's an extra $200.
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the_cameron3d ago
minor adjustments" for 8 rounds on a $500 logo job? Man, that stings just reading it. I had a client once argue that moving a full paragraph to a different page was a "minor wording tweak" and tried to skip the revision limit. I rewrote my clause too, now I list exact things like "color changes" or "font swaps" per round. Did you put a hard cap in the new version, like after 3 rounds it's a whole new project?
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