| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Poll: Have any of your clients requested adjusted payment terms as a result of Covid-19? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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Dan Lucas wrote:
No doubt she does, but at close to 50% of her income, she's between a rock and a hard place. Classic catch-22, as she acknowledges.
Dan
True. I think temperament also plays a crucial role.
When the predecessor of the, er, Lying Fridge took over our largest customer 20 years ago and asked us to lower our prices, I did indeed tell them where to go, and they went from £70k one year to £5k the next.
(We were a bigger operation back then, but that was still half our turnover. Looking back, yes it was a little impetuous, but it turned out for the best...)
| | | | | The vultures are out... | Apr 23, 2020 |
Hi all,
I've received the same "newsletter/letter" from "Work for Hire". I've never worked for them since they took over a former client but I received, months ago, a couple of offers from them with rates that were ridiculously below those agreed with the previous agency. Somehow I knew that some agency was going to use the excuse of Covid-19 to ask translators to lower their rates. So, in my case, "Work for Hire" opened the dance of the vultures.
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:45
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Q "Have any of your clients requested adjusted payment terms as a result of Covid-19?".
No. But I have one client who has suddenly stopped paying and isn't answering my emails. It's only a matter of time (not much time) until I take action on this.
[Edited at 2020-04-24 09:11 GMT]
| | | | Mario Freitas 
Brazil
Local time: 16:45
Member (2014)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Is the situation any worse for the agencies than it is for me? They better not do this, or they'll be showing a huge lack of professionalism.
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| Why long payment terms? | Apr 28, 2020 |
I have an agreement with the bank: they don’t provide translations for their clients and I don’t finance my clients’ business
| | | | | No (an update) | Apr 28, 2020 |
One of my long-standing customers (an agency) decided to shorten their payment terms. Over the years they have been paying like clockwork at 60 days but because of the Coronavirus they decided to pay their translators at 30 days…
| | | | | A bit late, but yeah. | Aug 28, 2020 |
Cut my rate by 10%? You get 10% less, i.e. you get what you pay for. Just today I was offered a job for 2 Euro. Not to be a snob, but WTF. Just firing up the software and setting up the TM is just not worth the while. Adding to insult 10% reduced pay. Fuck that.
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Anna Jaffe wrote:
One of my larger agencies (rhymes with "Work for Hire") just announced they will be applying a 10% mandatory discount to all their jobs until the end of August. Of course you're always free to reject the job, but that's the only choice you get.
Hi Anna,
As you might know, now they sent us another letter that this 10% reduction will be extended until the end of 2020.
This is too unfair but still don't know what steps I have to take.
Just like you, they are also one of my largest clients and keep sending me continuous jobs without any money problem.
What should I do?
Should I stop working with them?
How are you going to deal with this?
I would like to hear everyone's thoughts and advice.
Sophia
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Ten per-cent doesn't sound that terrible when in %. It's a 90 cm string instead of a one-meter string. Hard to see the difference, isn't it?
But 10% is a lot when you think about how hard it is to increase your unit rate from e.g. 0.10 to 0.11 with an agency.
Or think of this 10% as the amount of money you lose every year based on your past income with them. Is the amount higher than all the insurances you pay every year? More than your income tax? At the end of the day, so to speak... See more Ten per-cent doesn't sound that terrible when in %. It's a 90 cm string instead of a one-meter string. Hard to see the difference, isn't it?
But 10% is a lot when you think about how hard it is to increase your unit rate from e.g. 0.10 to 0.11 with an agency.
Or think of this 10% as the amount of money you lose every year based on your past income with them. Is the amount higher than all the insurances you pay every year? More than your income tax? At the end of the day, so to speak, this money will have to be found elsewhere, or cuts will have to be made in your hobbies or leisure activities or planned investments for your home.
Sophia Park wrote:
What should I do? Should I stop working with them?
Working for a pittance is better than no work at all if you rely on translation only to live. You can also knowingly decrease the time spent on their assignments by 10%. You might get told off sometimes because of rereading too quickly, minor errors or oversights, but what, do they deserve to get a service 10% more expensive at 10% less? We're not machines that you can keep plugged in at night to increase production and offset the 10% decrease. You reassign knowingly the time saved per week to a walk, work-out session, TV, marketing, translating for other clients, whatever.
If you know that your original rate minus 10% is now very competitive in your market, you may be able to find work at that rate pretty easily, and work at higher rates with only a bit of effort. In what I do, I know I can find a reliable stream of work within a handful of months at 0.08/0.09, including from previous agency clients who already know me.
So if you can afford to dump them, DO IT with my blessing, no strings attached! You'll have more time to prospect and a better quality of life if you're overworked. Just make sure that your other customers are able to fill in part of your newly acquired free time and/or you can have all your living and business expenses covered. Reschedule savings accordingly until this free time is back to earning time again.
How are you going to deal with this?
How would I deal with this? It's a business decision that only you can take. The economic environment looks a bit gloomy, and a stepped approach may be safer, like turning down one or two days of work from them each week and use this free time to actively test the waters and market your services to other prospects. And prioritize newly acquired clients, do the extra mile so that they become loyal returning clients. Let them take over time slots over your defaulting client until they fade away from your landscape.
My experience with unilateral "temporary" measures from agencies to absorb the blow in difficult periods is that "temporary" becomes "permanent". I've had this company wanting translators to extend payments terms from 30 days to 60 days in 2009 (sub-prime crisis). It's still effective today, I presume (I lost contact some years ago).
Before that, I also had a difficult choice to make:
I was working with this rather large European agency that used to give me tons of work, had very good PMs, offered interesting stuff, good support and everything. Up to the point that they meant about 60-70% in my gross income. And I used to turn down a lot of work from other agencies. After a number of years of intense cooperation, I decided in 2006 that it was time to increase my rates, from 0.084 to 0.09 (only 7%!). Not only I thought I deserved it, but I was working way too much and needed to slow down. Although I certainly know how to say Nooo!!! when a new offer comes in, increasing rates is a good way to get less work. So I sent a message to this end with ample advance notice to whoever was in charge. In essence, I was told that THEY decided when I could increase my rates. What? In the end, we agreed that they would have to count without me from the effective date of my new rates. I helped out the translation side a little while longer until my new rate date was reached, then let PMs know that I was "quitting" and why. They never ever sent me any more work.
I got plenty of welcome free time for a few months, until it gradually came back to a standard workload, albeit less hectic than before. Since then, I've never earned as much as what I used to when this company was a customer, but this radical change certainly increased my life expectancy by many years.
Dropping a massive client eventually worked out for me in that day and age, with the business situation at the time. I don't know if today, 15 years older, with far more "incompressible spending" and more carbon dioxide in the air, I'd be as bold as then in the same situation. Maybe I'd just say: "oh ok then, I'll wait until you tell me that I can increase my rates".
Or maybe not.
Philippe
[Edited at 2020-09-02 16:51 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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