To quote a question asked by Peter Griffin: You know what really grinds my gears?

Lots of things, actually, but today my gripe is about digital agencies who financially rape their clients.

I’m talking about charging unconscionable fees for blitheringly simple things.

“But Craig!” you may protest, “it’s the fair market at work!”

No it’s not, it’s taking advantage of clients in an extreme way, and it’s wrong.

Here’s an actual example from this past week:

A client of mine has a fairly robust site. There’s a content management system in place, but either the system isn’t flexible enough to handle absolutely everything or no one in my client’s company has the time or expertise to figure out absolutely everything. Because here’s what I heard from the client: “Yeah, Agency X is gonna charge us $1,400 to change the graphic on the home page, but then when the graphic needs to be changed back to what it is now, it’s another $1,400.”

Really? Okay, I took a close look at this work and maybe — maybe! — it’s a half hour, tops. Graphics and programming combined. I wish I could provide a link to the specific site in question, but you’ll have to trust me on this one: We’re talking very boilerplate stuff here. Create the graphic, name it and upload it to the server so the current graphic is overwritten, ba-da-bing, ba-da-bum. Done.

To change it back is even easier: Nothing new needs to be created. Upload the old graphic. That’s what, a minute or two?

And the agency is raping the client $2,800 for what amounts to less than an hour’s worth of work, all told.

That’s about as reprehensibly scummy as it gets.

Takeaway for marketers: If you’re screwing your clients to this degree, remember: Karma’s a bitch.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 9th, 2010 at 6:00 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Marketing Stuff, Marketing Takeaways, Rants 'n' Such.