Didja ever do this?

Huh?
One of the best accounts ($wise) I ever had was a food service company that made consumer product. The art director called me and told me that the last photogprapher had lost the account because when he was delivering a job he noticed that the CFO had an 8x10 of one of the previous jobs hanging on his wall. The photographer mentioned it and the CFO told him how much he loved the image and was so proud of it and how everyone complimented him on it. He was very liberal in the praise of the photog as well.

Photog gets back to studio, fuming... and writes an invoice for un-negotiated usage and bills them $1000. When the art director called him (after being reamed by the company) the photographer wouldn't budge.

They paid him. They fired him.

Enter me. The AD wants to know my usage rights and I ask what they need. He tells me that they sometimes don't know all the uses, but most definitely they do not want to be hassled over someone making a print for their office.

Not to worry. I built that into the contract and we were off.

I did nearly 40K per year from that one client. The other photographer stood his ground, made his point. Could have handled it a thousand different ways, but chose to be bullish and arrogant.

In the 5 years that I worked on that account, they never reused a single image of mine. Most of the time they would lose them and I would charge a handsome fee for dupe transparencies (which I held at the studio).

Seth has it right. Lose a customer and gain huge negative goodwill for $4.

Morons.

Seth's Blog: Clueless: "Then, this morning, I head to the bank. Poor guy is arguing with the 'customer service manager'. The problem? He had $4 in his checking account as he was waiting to close it. The bank charged him a monthly $5 service fee. The fee bounced. Then they charged him $30 for bouncing the fee on an inactive account.

The manager was trying to explain the policy, but the bottom line is that all the real estate, all the ads, all the marble, all the computers... all wasted... because they were enraging the guy. Over $4."