Not paid fee as agreed but don't want to lose future work

lisa110rry

Thanks for your commments Rosie, I will definitely look into it casually. It drives me mad some of the grammar I see "out there". I am somewhat infamous in my village for having corrected three signs outside the local high school from "please respect childrens safety" to "please respect children's safety" with the added comment "please respect the English language".

rosie383

You're a woman after my own heart. It really bothers me sitting in a restaurant for example, looking at the menu which obviously has cost them a lot of money to get printed and it has spelling and grammar mistakes. And don't get me started on shop signs! They must cost hundreds of pounds and you would think they would ask someone to just check the spelling before they get it made.
I did speak to a printer once and he told me that they just print what the client gives them, even if it is full of mistakes. Funnily enough it doesn't bother me if a greengrocer has a chalk-written sign for 'collieflours' or 'rasbries'. And I have seen both and more!

Mistral001

It is standard practice to quote in the currency of the client in my experience for this sort of work. It is not the same as say someone selling a product on say ebay where they will be offering the goods in their own currency.


Also. sometimes people in the Eurozone just do not know that the UK does not use the Euro so it might be just that.

rosie383

Thanks Mistral. I did quote in pounds but looking back over her emails she did say the cost was fine. She didn't have to go looking for the £ symbol to type in. It honestly didn't occur to me that if someone was contacting a service in the UK that they would not realise the quote would be in pounds. Ah well, you live and learn. I think in the long run it will pay for itself as we have communicated very well (apart from in currency symbols!) and she has lots of contacts.
I think in future I will quote in both £s and Euros so the cost will stand out a bit more.

Enterprise_1701C

Just one note on this - if you do not know which country the quote is for it may well be best to put on the quote something like all costs are in POUNDS STERLING, we have used this more than once to avoid confusion.

lisa110rry

This is what we put on our overseas terms:

1. All Rates are GBP sterling and all payments shall be made in sterling direct by bank transfer.


Hope this helps!

And yes Rosie, greengrocers don't bother me a bit, but schools! They really wind me up if they get something simple wrong. Typos don't bother me at all, we al doo tem!

I find the most common errors I have to deal with are noun/verb/pronoun number agreement and possessives.

Mistral001

rosie383 wrote: »

. It honestly didn't occur to me that if someone was contacting a service in the UK that they would not realise the quote would be in pounds.

I think if she was contacting you and only you for a quote and knew that the UK did not use the Euro, I think that could well be the case. However, with freelance work on the internet, usually the client is getting quotes from all over the world and will want everybody to quote in the same currency. If she was only getting a quote from you, it is probably she did not know that the UK did not use the Euro.