Hello dear Fiverr forum, I just wanted to share with you this recent story with a buyer that really annoyed me. Maybe this kind of story happened to you too, it’s always nice to be able to release pressure by talking about it.
So I had this request from a buyer last Tuesday to transcript a French audio to a French text. It was a panel discussion that was supposed to take place on Friday. So I was like “no problem, here is my quote, if you give it to me on Friday night I can deliver on Tuesday”. 90 minutes audio, $90 Gig.
Then on Friday she tells me the client actually wants the transcription of the French audio into English text. So I said “it’s basically no problem, I only have to make the transcription first and then I can make you an offer for the translation of the French text into English”. I also told her my rates would be $0,02 or $0,03 per word depending on the subject. She said ok.
I got the audio only on Monday but still managed to deliver the transcription on Tuesday evening (the audio was so bad quality I couldn’t use the help of any software so I had tu use the good old method - and it was 100 minutes, not 90, but well, doesn’t matter, I do my thing). Right after delivering the transcription I make an offer for the translation. The subject was quite easy, so I chose $0,02 per word and made a reduction of almost 1000 words because of the many repetitions (like “ok”, “yes”, “alright”).
On Wednesday she messages me and says “but I told you I wanted the English TRANSCRIPTION” (note that she always talked about transcription, but my dear lady, transposing a text from one language to another is called a translation), so I calmly explained to her what I already explained on Friday which was, summarized: transcription first, then translation (there were 11 people on this panel, there was no way I could make a translation without using a transcription as a work basis). She said ok, accepted my gig ($320, 7 days delivery, which is in my opinion, a quite fair quote for almost 17.000 words).
On Thursday morning she messages me again, asking me when I would finally deliver the transcription (that’s a translation…), because I said it would be done on Tuesday, and she wasn’t very happy about the fact that I charged her 2 times for the same thing (of course it’s the same thing if you’re not able to differentiate between translation and transcription), and also I was much more expensive than the original price I said, which was, again, only for the transcription.
I started to lose my temper, especially considering the fact that I make translations that are quite cheap in comparison to some other translators on Fiverr. She also told me to check my message again, as I didn’t communicate clearly the prices and delivery time. So first of all: I told her right away the translation would be $0,02 or 0,03 per word, and she accepted the Gig where I indicated a 7 days delivery. I couldn’t do much more. So I re-read everything and told her I was clear in my communication, wrote quite a long message to explain all that.
Then she responded “ok” and asked me something but without a questionmark, and since I was already so angry at all of this, I didn’t get it was a question and thought SHE was going to get back to me tand tell me if we continue to work together. So I messaged her 2 hours later asking her basically “ok so what now?”. And she got mad and said I have to cancel the order. No way, I had already done half of the translation, so there was no way I was going to cancel if, and I called her disrespectful for the work of freelancers like me. Like $320 for 50 pages isn’t that much, and I checked the prices on Fiverr, they went up to $700, so calm down when you call me expensive and also don’t treat me as your slave. Translations can’t be done in 2 minutes - only google translate does.
So is rushed and delivered it yesterday afternoon, that was quite an intense session. She accepted the order but of course I got no feedback, which is probably better than a bad review.
And do you know what’s the worst about it? I thought “someone so stubborn who doesn’t understand the difference between transcription and translation or at least read correctly what I explained to her concerning gigs and delivery time can’t be so high positioned in a business”. Well I googled her and she’s the executive director of her business. So either she tried to scam be by trying to make me feel guilty, or she’s really that s**** and in this case I wish good luck to the business she’s running.
). He even sent me a backing track and a text in Russian.
-)
