Around this time last year, I was approached by a small London agency to create a Flash-based website for their client. The brief was simple - I would be provided with a variety of assets and a storyboard, and all I had to do was to assemble the project and add some transitions and interactivity.

Communications with the agency were good - emails flowed like running water and our terms of engagement clearly set out and agreed - which included being quite clear about the platform I was working on and the file format requirements.

Easy money

When the assets arrived a couple of days later it was clear that the job would not take more than a day to complete. Easy money, I thought. And with a delivery deadline of a few weeks it wasn't going to clash with a much larger project I was already involved in.

Initially communition between both parties was normal, but after a few days my main contact went on vacation leaving his business partner in charge of the project. That's when the trouble began.

Communications breakdown

One part of the concept was to create an discrete but interactive preloader using the end client's logo.

"Can you do something with the logo. There's already a symbol in the library you can work with." was the instruction. So I did. Calling on quite my library of animation classes that I've developed over the years I rattled off three variations and sent them to the client within a couple of hours. Their initial response was good, but I should wait for the end client's response. Fair enough, I thought.

Over the next couple of evenings I put together what I could with the assets I was given.

The only impediment was that I'd been given a Mac font and needed the TT version instead. But it wasn't a showstopper and I carried on using the closest font I had at my disposal until I was supplied with the correct one. But the font was not forthcoming, despite several emails and unreturned calls over the next few days.

Towards the end of the week I finally received an email with an attachment but no body. There was no word of explanation as to why my attempts to contact them had gone ignored, or what the attachment was for. When I opened it, it was exactly the same set of files I'd been sent at the beginning of the project.

Unable to progress but needing to complete because my other project was reaching a deadline, I sent a polite, but firm email to the client.

Three more days passed before I heard anything, but when a response finally arrived I wasn't best pleased with what it said. To summarise a lengthy and frequently misspelt reply...

• they were unable to provide me with the correct font format, and that "proper designers only use Macs"
• in their opinion I should have purchased the correct font format at my own cost
• they didn't care for any of the animated preloaders I'd provided, although they'd already said they loved all three and couldn't choose between them
• the content transitions were "butt ugly", despite being given exactly what they'd asked for
• as their client was not happy, they would not pay me a penny.

Enough is enough

By this point I'd really had enough of the job, the apalling communications, and the shoddy treatment I was receiving.

The next day, I wrote back. Calmly and politely I documented every aspect of the project from the outset, giving dates and times of requests, responses and those that were ignored.

I also terminated the contract, according to the conditions we'd mutually agreed. But the agency were not having it - responding with a demand to complete the project at my own cost, with completely new effects and transitions, and to do it within 24 hours.

Instead of responding, I went directly to the end client who, to my surprise, were just as unhappy with the agency as I was.

They hadn't seen any of the work, so how could they think it was "butt ugly"? Nor were they particulary pleased that I was not going to complete the work, but respected my reasons for pulling out.

Gathering evidence

Last week while I was clearing out some bookmarks, I came across the client's website. To my absolute horror, the work I had done almost a year ago was being used on their site.

Gathering as much evidence as I could, I contacted the client. They were equally disgruntled since the agency claimed they'd had to find another designer and had increased their costs - which of course wasn't true. Despite acknowledging the fact that I should have been paid even pro rata, they wouldn't be paying me anything - or take down the site.

The project was only worth a few hundred pounds to me, yet to pursue any legal action against my client would have cost thousands. Out of pocket and with a slightly bitter taste in my mouth, I wrote to the freelance network site that had brought us together in the first place.

Unhappy with what I'd told them and not wanting any more users to suffer the same treatment, the agency were blacklisted and a sense of satisfaction returned.

Protecting your copyright, and your reputation

Thankfully this was a one-off, and hasn't damaged my reputation in any way. But since then I have completely revisited my Terms of Engagement and the protective steps I take before engaging with any client - no matter how simple the brief might seem at the time.

I'll be going into that in detail in another post. If you're a novice freelancer or someone fitting in small projects around the day job, you might find it useful.