Fixed price branding job, quoted for two rounds of revisions, no signed scope beyond an emailed quote. We are at eleven rounds because every request is tiny — move this, try it in blue, what about the other font. Individually reasonable, collectively about 20 unpaid hours. I do not want to blow up the relationship. What do I actually say?
The structural fix for next time is to define a revision as a consolidated round with a deadline, not as a change. One round equals one list of feedback delivered within five working days. Otherwise every stray thought is a round and the count means nothing.
And add a line about feedback being collected from all stakeholders before a round starts. Half of my scope creep came from one person who only saw the work in week four.
Look at whether the requests are actually the same problem coming back. Eleven rounds of small changes usually means the direction was never approved, only tolerated. Sometimes the honest move is to stop and have a fifteen minute call about what they are trying to achieve, and one round after that call ends it.
Uncomfortably plausible. They said the first concept was nearly there and it has been nearly there for a month.
Whatever you decide, do not do the eleventh round while you are writing the email. Send the email first, then work. Doing it the other way round tells them the boundary is decorative.
@vesting_cliff · 4d ago · 3 replies
Say it in writing, be boring about it, and make the next round the reset point. Something like: happy to keep refining — we have now gone past the two rounds in the original quote, so from here I will bill additional changes at X per hour in half hour blocks, or we can bundle everything outstanding into one final round at a fixed Y. Then stop typing. No apology, no justification paragraph, no explaining that you are a small business. The tone that works is the tone your plumber would use. Nine times out of ten the client says fine, and the requests immediately become more considered, because free changes are infinitely cheap and paid ones are not.
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@vesting_cliff · 4d ago
It genuinely helps. Nobody sends their plumber eleven small follow-ups, because they can feel the meter running. And keep the bundled final round in the email — it gives them a way to say yes that does not feel like a punishment.
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@thriftedtweed · 5d ago
The plumber line is going on a sticky note above my desk.
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