In our weekly installment of Clients from Hell, a hilarious collection of anonymously contributed client horror stories from designers, we present “What website?” For previous posts, click here .
A client phones in to ask for some changes to their website.
Client: I want to make these changes to our corporate website
Me: Ok, what’s the address?
Client: ….
Me: The address of the website, the URL.
Client: ….
Me: It starts with “www dot…”
Client: Oh! That, sure, it’s “www dot [address].”
I go through the website with her and go through the changes they wants to make. It takes about forty minutes because they want a massive list of changes.
Client: Also we would like some changes on our charity website.
Me: What’s the address for that?
Client: ….
Me: www dot?
Client: Right! It’s [address].
We go through the changes they want on the second website, and they’re relatively minor. This process only takes about ten minutes.
Me: Ok, that is all fine, but I want to check something on your corporate site. It might be affected by changes on your charity website. If you can navigate back to the corporate website I will show you what I mean.
Client: What website?
Me: Your corporate website, the one we looked at first
Client: Sorry, I don’t know what you mean.
Me: You have two websites. You refer to them as your “corporate” and “charity” websites. Go back to the “corporate” website. It’s the first one we looked at.
Client: Sorry, I don’t know it.
Me: You just gave me the address, at the start of our call, remember? “www dot etc”?
Client: We only have one website.
Wondering if I’ve gone insane, I then read the first URL she gave to me back to her. Twice.
Client: Oh, THAT website! That’s not a “corporate” website. Actually, we don’t need that anymore. Can you please get rid of it?
Me: But what about the long list of changes you just asked for?
Client: We don’t need them anymore, we’re getting rid of that site.
Me: (screaming silently, forever)