August 31, 2024

Unlimited Bug Fixes

Back when I was still doing dev work, I had a phone call with a client regarding a project that we were wrapping up after about four months of development.

Three people from the client organization were together in one room on a speakerphone. I was the only other person on the call.

After the opening pleasantries, they asked:

“Now that the system is live, what will the scope of your involvement be, if any, under the terms of the existing development contract?”

In other words, they were wondering:

“If we need your help, do we have to pay more?”

I replied:

“Under the terms of the current contract, I’ll fix bugs, do tweaks, and answer questions indefinitely. If you have any new feature requests, we can discuss them, and if need be, I’ll write up a new quote for the work.”

In other words,

“I’m going to make sure you’re satisfied with the outcome of this project for the price you agreed to initially.”

There was a long silence on their end.

I was about to say, “Hello? Are you still there?” when one of them said:

“Wow... we’re just not used to getting such a... decisive answer.”

(some muffled conferring on their end)

“Geez... This is great. I guess... we’re all set. Thanks!”

According to my iPhone, the entire call lasted 6 minutes.

You’re probably thinking:

“B-b-b-b-but!!! How could you offer unlimited bug fixes?!?!”

The answer is simple:

I priced it so I could.

To put it another way, I could do bug fixes for a year and still not feel like I was losing money.

But even then, I knew I wouldn’t have to do bug fixes for a year.

Why?

Because I knew bugs would just come back to bite me later so, I made sure I did a kick-ass job in the first place.

And guess what happened?

Maybe there were two or three bugs/tweaks and a half dozen questions before they decided to hire me for the next project.

Yours,

—J

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