Our process is as follows:

  1. Submit your manuscript to get a quote for the work done
  2. You are presented with the price, and you have the option to pay. We don’t have our customer’s credit card so the customer has the freedom to go to another company for any reason.

Specific to this customer’s case:

  1. He submitted a manuscript and we produced a quote of $120.
  2. Before paying he asked for a sample. We sent a sample and he made payment. Refer to the screenshot to see that he made payment AFTER seeing our sample, which I shall refer to as Sample A.

  1. Right after payment, but before we started any work, he asked us to follow a sample he had – referred to from now as Sample B. I informed him that it would be an additional $50 to follow his sample as it was a more complex design. More complex designs, longer manuscripts, manuscripts with more pictures cost more because it takes more effort. He told us to follow our own design. Screenshot proof attached.

  1. His complaint was that we didn’t follow Sample B. Which I let him know that it would cost an additional $50. This is the second time I am informing him.
  2. Thereafter, he says he is misled and wants a refund. We would be happy to refund him in full if he requested for it on knowing that it would cost an additional $50 (total $170) to produce his requested design.

Now to address some of his other complains:

  1. He wanted to know why we charged $120 instead of our starting price of $59. As explained, it’s a starting price and the actual price depends on the manuscript. My question back to the customer is, why was he happy to pay that price after seeing our sample and now claim that it is an issue?
  2. As this customer has submitted a request before, we didn’t view him as a serious customer. I just had a strange feeling about this customer and true enough something bad happened. Now I am happy all of this is over email as his requirements are recorded in written form and the timeline is also clear. The inability to speak over the phone did not affect our ability to comprehend his requirements. He just was not willing to pay for the extra, and wanted to squeeze us for more out of the initial $120.
  3. We cannot list every single pricing component because it’s not a simple mathematical equation, as I’ve explained to him. The same manuscript with the same number of words can be priced differently if it has many pictures as the pictures require more effort to format. Because we cannot list every possibility, such as quotes, off-grid formatting, advanced headers, we provide a quote to the customer and the customer has the freedom to accept the quote or not. We do not charge the customer $59 initially, and then go back to inform the customer that we need more money to continue. We inform the customer of the full price upfront, where the full price depends on the manuscript and the requirement.

In summary, the customer lists a few points that are irrelevant but could be deemed to be bad. For example, we refused to deal with the customer on the phone because we didn’t view him as a serious customer. However, we have charged him exactly $0 at that point. If he was not satisfied and insist on speaking, he could have left to find another company. Second, he chooses to omit the fact that we provided a sample and that he told us to follow our design.