We have been thinking about completely renovating our flat in London. Most recently we asked a young architect and her partner if they would be willing to work with us. Because there is a connection we were pretty informal about the engagement. What they presented were three variations on a theme, all of which had some very interesting ideas.
If you feel a "but" coming, well here it is. We had agreed a price for the work, but the invoice ended up one third more than we expected. It turns out they charged us for the presentation of the work. They also charged us VAT. The invoice also included a 1.5% per day interest charge for late payment. Taking a look at the invoice, it didn't include the right details for a VAT invoice in the UK. We were offended by the usurious terms for late payment; the fact that they didn't include the right VAT registration details was perhaps inexperience, but seemed pretty basic. The financial issue was that they didn't understand that paying VAT that we could not reclaim made a huge difference to the bill.
Sadly, the experience with the invoice left us with uncertainty about whether this very nice couple could in fact deliver work that was the right quality and could keep to a budget. The invoice triggered all kinds of doubts that had nothing to do with their professional qualifications, their design skills, their empathy with what we were trying to do. It is so easy to devalue your brand, and very hard to recover the position.
STOP PRESS - good news. I sent an email, they responded very positively, we cleared up a misunderstanidng, and got a solution that both of us could live with. So did they recover 100%? No, but they did achieve a successful outcome and the best they could hope for under the circumstances.
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