On 1/24/2014 5:13 AM, Frank Cazabon wrote:
Thanks Ken,
On 23/01/2014 09:34 PM, Ken Dibble wrote:
Bugs in my code are my responsibility. They are product defects,
which I believe common law in most places, and morality everywhere,
requires me to make good, at no additional cost. I will track down
and fix any bug that can reliably be reproduced, for free, as long as
anyone who is using software that they paid me for asks me to do so.
If I develop something for a customer, I generally give them 3 to 6
months free support as a guarantee and fix any problems they encounter
within that time for free.
How do you handle "bugs" that only appear after the client has added a
new version of Windows or some other hardware which breaks your code?
Of course, I am the in-house developer for a social service agency,
not a for-profit software consultant. We do sell my products to some
similar agencies though, and those are the policies I use for them.
OK, that's one difference there. :) I am a sole developer and need to
keep some sort of income coming in, or both my customers and I will
lose out when I have to shut down. Having worked with a similar
business model to you for about 20 years my observations are:
On the old (fix all bugs free) model I do well (financially) if there
is a lot of new development coming in. Of course, this then reduces
my response time to existing customers/projects as I have to give
priority to the source of the income. I do very badly if there is no
new work coming in (thank goodness my wife works!).
Switching over to retainer fees/software as a service helped me to be
able to give priority to supporting existing clients and maybe I won't
have to stop eating when I stop working :)
Frank: How much is your retainer? Not $ amount but in relation to the
entire project? My friend the CPA does that. If you pay the retainer
you get preferred service. If you don't, you go last.
--
Jeff
Jeff Johnson
[email protected]
SanDC, Inc.
623-582-0323
Fax 623-869-0675
http://www.san-dc.com
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