Freelancers Anonymously Share Stories Of ‘Clients From Hell’, And Here Are 50 Of The Worst Ones (New Pics)
No, the customer isn’t always right! As much as we like to believe in the best of humankind and pandakind, the fact of the matter is that there are some very rotten apples here and there. They like to come in and ruin people’s day while feeding on their pain. They’re misery-spreaders. And they need to know that what they’re doing is so far from ‘okay’ that you can’t even see the line they crossed anymore because it’s merged with the horizon.
The ‘Clients From Hell’ project (now rebranded as ‘Not Always Right’) shares stories about the most memorable and hilarious tales of dealing with rude, entitled, or simply downright dumb customers. Today we're featuring the experiences of freelancers and designers. Remember to upvote your fave posts as you scroll down, Pandas.
Bored Panda reached out to businesswoman Aatikah Santos, the CEO and Founder of Khaila Beauty Bar, for a chat about dealing with difficult and frustrating customers, as well as how some people still fully believe that the customer and client are always right, no matter what.
"I like to remain calm and take a couple of minutes before responding because I am representing my business. I like to try and make everyone feel welcome no matter what they say. When speaking to rude customers, I try my best to resolve the issue, but sometimes customers can be so difficult that they don’t want to resolve it and would rather just keep getting upset," she said. Scroll down for our full interview with Aatikah.
Got any tales about horrible customers to share with us? Why not pop by our comment section at the bottom? When you’re done enjoying this list, you should definitely check out some more stories about employees of all kinds having to deal with ‘Clients From Hell,’ featured in Bored Panda’s previous articles here and here.
More info: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | NotAlwaysRight.com
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Businesswoman Aatikah, the founder of Khaila Beauty Bar, said that it's very rare that she'll ever have a customer complain. "I usually get flooded with emails from people who have never purchased from me saying there are problems with their orders. These people have usually come from my TikTok storytimes," she shared with Bored Panda.
In her opinion, sometimes the client knows fully well that they're in the wrong. However, they revert to the phrase 'the customer/client is always right' and this can be very hard to deal with. "I think businesses and consumers have overused the phrase too much and now it’s just become a way of buying and selling. For bigger companies, they can afford to write off products, but when you are a small business, it becomes an issue."
Aatikah was also kind enough to share some of the best and worst experiences that she's personally had with clients. "I have had so many of both, but the best customer experience I’ve had is someone coming out as gay to their family and used my eyeliners to tell their family. They were so thankful and happy to have finally done it, It makes me so happy that people can be true to themselves because you can wear makeup no matter who you are," she shared with Bored Panda.
"The worst customer experience I’ve had is someone claiming they had never received their package and they did in fact receive it. But this story circled back to the phrase 'the customer is always right.' I knew this person wasn’t being truthful so I took it upon myself to check her social media and sure enough, I found proof that she was in fact lying. After weeks of emailing back and forth, she finally admitted to lying."
The ‘Clients From Hell’ online project moved to ‘Not Always Right’ in mid-December, 2021. Founded way back in 2009, CFH, by their own admission, wasn’t getting the audience that it used to. So, in order to revitalize things, they rebranded. The CFH Twitter page has over 81.1k followers, while the NAR Facebook page has over a quarter of a million followers.
‘Not Always Right’ is “about leveling the playing field for those of us who toil and sweat every day trying to juggle demanding customers and often unreasonable corporate expectations.” The goal of the entire project is to entertain people while reminding them that everyone’s a human being. Whether they’re an employee or a customer (whether from heaven or hell).
They should sell to these people also other "premium" arrows, for a higher price, that point "UP" and "DOWN"
During a previous interview, Bored Panda spoke to Alexander Kjerulf, from the Positive Sharing project. We had a chat about store employees and how they should react to rude customers who treat them like trash. The secret lies in staying calm and cool despite being frustrated.
“Keep your cool and remember that whatever abuse they’re giving you is no reflection on you as a person. That customer doesn’t even know you, so there’s no way it could be. But on the other hand, don’t be subservient,” the expert told us.
Hell, I'm even willing to search another accountant for you as long as you tell this jerk that I made you switch accountants.
“Don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself and tell customers that abuse is not tolerated. And if it persists, hand them over to a manager as soon as you can and let them deal with it,” Alexander said.
According to Alexander, some companies train their customer service representatives to stand up to bullying customers. He shared how one of them, based in Denmark, operates. “First, they’d tell the customer, ‘We don’t accept abuse—please stop yelling at me.’” Then, if the behavior persists, the employee would hang up.
Whenever someone uses the "I'll sue" line, I always wonder if they'll actually follow through with it.
“If the customer called back and kept up the abuse, the call would be escalated to a manager, who would tell the customer, ‘There are over 20 other mobile phone companies in Denmark to choose from. We don’t feel you’re a good fit for us, so we will be terminating your contract.’
The expert told Bored Panda that employees need to understand that just because someone is rude doesn’t automatically make them a bad person through and through. “You have to remember that in many cases a customer who behaves badly is not necessarily a bad person. It can be a good person having a bad day and that’s why they’re acting out.”
Some people appear to have gone to school with their ears and eyes closed.
When you want something that everyone else has, but actually have no idea what it is 😂
However, sometimes customers are rude because of more selfish reasons, not because they’ve had a long, hard, and bad day. “The sad truth is that some customers act this way because they’ve learned that it works and will get them discounts or preferential treatment,” Alexander said.
Must be because they added them to the spam list. Rule 1: If message contains [ outstanding amount, reminder, past due, invoice, payment, legal fees ] move message to [ Spam] and [ Add sender to spam list] .
In Alexander’s opinion, we should change the motto ‘the customer is always right’ to ‘be nice—or at least don’t be a [jerk].’ “And this goes for both customers and employees. Whenever I’m a customer anywhere, I always try to be kind and positive to the staff—even when occasionally I have to complain about something. It’s literally the least I can do.”
C'mon. If Trump could change an entire weather pattern with a Sharpie, certainly you can change the shape of the lake.
Just for combinations using 30 eyes, 30 noses, 30 mouths, 30 hairstyles, 30 beards you are looking at 656,100,000,000 possible characters
Am I understanding he doesn't want POC in his poster? Or am I wrong?
Unfortunately very common. The more they're rich, the less they want to pay.
That happened to me a few years ago, and I work for a multinational company (thousands of employees), so not a small business... Client was looking at different suppliers and had the audacity to tell us: "I like your approach but I don't know if I'm having any budget, but if you're willing to do it for free, you could start tomorrow"
But they're stupid enough to tell you they make millions off of it. Lord.
MANLY PAPER. IT IS RED AND DRINKS BEER AND LIFTS WEIGHTS AND PICKS UP CHICKS JUST LIKE A MAN
I hope no artist would do that to another artist! I once wanted a photographer to scan a photo for me and edit it a bit, because I only had that one copy and I did not want to loose it to damages and I had no scanner at the time. The first thing they asked me was if it was from any other photographer or a private photo.
Similar experience. I had 4 TB of data and I spent almost 30 minutes explaining to someone that 64 GB flash drive is just not enough. Even if I zip it...
Me: Look, let's just settle the bill, and you can f*ck off somewhere else
That's like driving a car to make enough money to get a drivers license and to pay for the insurance.
It was, until I found that I could charge this much and make a living out of it.
a former boss when you did EXACTLY what she asked for (of course I wanted it written somehow) and she told that I was wrong, and I showed that was what she asked for - she used to say "I didnt meant that way".
They need it in four days, but without a deadline it's also fine if the job is done in 4 months. Just get it down in writing. Judges like agreements in writing.
True, your terms and conditions page must be like maximum 3 bullets in short sentences with the key sentence highlighted like so: Screen-Sho...3b7788.png 
I pity the trees that has to be sacrificed for that sacrilegious ramblings he calls a book.
If this is true, I can't help but think the client was taking the piss.
That's the norm for everything related to IT. HR: We need $15 million to train 2 of our people to interview applicants. CEO: OK. IT: We need $3 million to replace the 30 year old servers running on Windows NT. CEO: ARE YOU NUTS?
One of my office manager's brother-in-law pulled a murder suicide one weekend. She came into work the next day obviously distraught to get things wrapped up so she could go take care of business. Our boss proceeded to go into her office and ask her if she can do the billing real quick. By the way, billing is never real quick. We were horrified.
This all brings back way too memories of my 40 years as designer/writer/videographer. So many idiots and crooks out there.
This list of BS is the reason when someone asks me to do anything computer-related especially design I quote about 10x higher than my actual hourly rate, to make them go away.
Finding the work has always been easy . . . it's collections that took almost the same amount of time, and I didn't bill for that. My last resort was to dress in black, wearing silver chains and safety pins, then sit in their office as long as it takes for someone to bring out a check. Didn't take more than a couple of hours, especially when I would strike up conversations with anyone sitting in the office waiting area.
I'm still in business and meet these terribly clueless morons from time to time. Of course I cannot just call them out on it. I could only price them out. It's not that I don't want the business. But these are usually more trouble than they are worth. I simply refuse to spend more time at the courts and with lawyers to deal with the aftermath.
I worked on HIPAA claims processing solutions. A client asked for a custom system. We quoted a price. He said he had another developer who would do it cheaper. A few months later he called back (very near the government mandated deadline) saying the other developer couldn't get the system working properly and asked what we'd charge to fix it. We quoted the same price, which was generous considering the rush needed. He balked saying the code was written, it just didn't work. We said the safest thing was to start from scratch, not knowing what the existing system looked like. We never heard back from him.
I had someone buy something that was purple - but complained it was too purple
As a webdeveloper and webdesigner of 20 years, i have to say (at least here in Slovakia and Western Europe, from where my clients are), it changed. And it is not that bad anymore. People (clients) learned something. Payments in 50-50, no works before first half of payment is paid ☺️ But yes, some stupid requests are still in the game 🤪
Oh... The struggle of the freelancers... It´s universal... Yay! Happy times!
I have an artist friend of mine who does commissions. She's often complain about nightmare people like these.
Unbelievable. Except, sadly, many people making decisions are truly examples of the Peter Principle.
As a retired elementary school teacher, I invite you to consider what these people are like at parent teacher conferences, in e-mails, and on telephone calls. I'm positive I've met several of them!
It's exactly this kinda crap why people aren't rushing back to work for low wages now. The shoe is on the worker's foot for a change. I recall back in 2001-2010 all I heard day in & day out was "you just better be thankful you have a job!" . Also when you read this stuff it really does make you wonder how the human race has survived this long.
Before doing any work, I always discuss my fee. If the client is unhappy with my fee, (Example: I require $100, they ask if I can do it for $80) I now know that this is an unhappy customer and I will need to charge extra to deal with the extra time and resources they will require. So the conversation usually ends with "Thank you for the opportunity, good bye. Life is too short for unhappy customers.
I'm sure this never used to happen. I really can't figure out how/why it suddenly became okay to ask people to work for free. If people want to do volunteer work, all power to them, but when you want professional services, why on earth would it be free? I always tell people, I don't work for free and I don't expect anyone else to either.
One of my office manager's brother-in-law pulled a murder suicide one weekend. She came into work the next day obviously distraught to get things wrapped up so she could go take care of business. Our boss proceeded to go into her office and ask her if she can do the billing real quick. By the way, billing is never real quick. We were horrified.
This all brings back way too memories of my 40 years as designer/writer/videographer. So many idiots and crooks out there.
This list of BS is the reason when someone asks me to do anything computer-related especially design I quote about 10x higher than my actual hourly rate, to make them go away.
Finding the work has always been easy . . . it's collections that took almost the same amount of time, and I didn't bill for that. My last resort was to dress in black, wearing silver chains and safety pins, then sit in their office as long as it takes for someone to bring out a check. Didn't take more than a couple of hours, especially when I would strike up conversations with anyone sitting in the office waiting area.
I'm still in business and meet these terribly clueless morons from time to time. Of course I cannot just call them out on it. I could only price them out. It's not that I don't want the business. But these are usually more trouble than they are worth. I simply refuse to spend more time at the courts and with lawyers to deal with the aftermath.
I worked on HIPAA claims processing solutions. A client asked for a custom system. We quoted a price. He said he had another developer who would do it cheaper. A few months later he called back (very near the government mandated deadline) saying the other developer couldn't get the system working properly and asked what we'd charge to fix it. We quoted the same price, which was generous considering the rush needed. He balked saying the code was written, it just didn't work. We said the safest thing was to start from scratch, not knowing what the existing system looked like. We never heard back from him.
I had someone buy something that was purple - but complained it was too purple
As a webdeveloper and webdesigner of 20 years, i have to say (at least here in Slovakia and Western Europe, from where my clients are), it changed. And it is not that bad anymore. People (clients) learned something. Payments in 50-50, no works before first half of payment is paid ☺️ But yes, some stupid requests are still in the game 🤪
Oh... The struggle of the freelancers... It´s universal... Yay! Happy times!
I have an artist friend of mine who does commissions. She's often complain about nightmare people like these.
Unbelievable. Except, sadly, many people making decisions are truly examples of the Peter Principle.
As a retired elementary school teacher, I invite you to consider what these people are like at parent teacher conferences, in e-mails, and on telephone calls. I'm positive I've met several of them!
It's exactly this kinda crap why people aren't rushing back to work for low wages now. The shoe is on the worker's foot for a change. I recall back in 2001-2010 all I heard day in & day out was "you just better be thankful you have a job!" . Also when you read this stuff it really does make you wonder how the human race has survived this long.
Before doing any work, I always discuss my fee. If the client is unhappy with my fee, (Example: I require $100, they ask if I can do it for $80) I now know that this is an unhappy customer and I will need to charge extra to deal with the extra time and resources they will require. So the conversation usually ends with "Thank you for the opportunity, good bye. Life is too short for unhappy customers.
I'm sure this never used to happen. I really can't figure out how/why it suddenly became okay to ask people to work for free. If people want to do volunteer work, all power to them, but when you want professional services, why on earth would it be free? I always tell people, I don't work for free and I don't expect anyone else to either.
