Time frame for customer complaint?
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| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | | User | Thread poster: Mary Watson Time frame for customer complaint? |
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Mary Watson 
United States
 Member (2005)
German to English
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| | The latest installment | Jul 10 |
I just received the email reply to my questions from the agency -
The first thing that upset me was - the agency told me that the customer is entitled to a "2 year guarantee" for the translation and they can protest at any time.
The second thing that REALLY upset me was this:
They are sure since I always deliver a top-notch translation, I will not object to them giving the translation to another translator to be reworked and they will deduct the cost from my payment. They are awaiting my reply.
I really need advice. I don't know how to proceed now. I get a great deal of my income from this agency. They have a number of branches in Germany and each of them gives me work each week.
I don't want to lose this connection, but I am very angry that they've even made this suggestion. Aren't agencies supposed to proof jobs before sending on to the end customer? I posed this question to the agency yesterday, i.e. what sort of proofing they did (do) on my jobs and where their responsibility lay with this type of situation. No reply to this at all.
Do you have any suggestions? I feel as if I can dispute this, as I've worked with them for more than 5 years and believe they depend on me for a lot of last minute work. I just don't know what to think about their suggestion.
 
| | | | Mary Watson
United States
Member (2005)
German to English
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I calmed down and re-read the e-mail. Apparently, there was an indirect response to my question regarding their responsibility for proofing. The reply was that based on my experience, they expected 100% performance, so I assume this means that they did not proof this job at all, but just sent it on to the end customer.
They still have not provided me with any concrete examples of the basis for the customer's complaint.
| | | | Kevin Lossner
Germany
Member (2003)
German to English
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John Paul Weir wrote:
Kevin's two examples show just how hard it can be to pin something on the poor translator once all the relevant facts come to the surface. Or, to put it another way: don't sue in the first place if you haven't a leg to stand on. |
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An important consideration here and in other cases is court costs. In theory the losing party has to pay these, but in practice this does not always happen. At last count I have won three (maybe four) court actions in Germany involving personal matters subject to the Hague convention, and in each case I did not recover my costs. (As far as I can tell the only reason these matters finally quieted down is that I decided to start representing myself since I was writing the attorney's submissions anyway and the other party thought it was "unfair" that I would no longer be spending thousands on an attorney.) With professional liability insurance - which the translator (it was one person) in the two cases cited above was covered by through her agents - all court fees were covered.
But that does get to the other point you raised about intermediate parties and who must exercise due care, who is really liable, etc. Still, although I generally prefer working with agencies because I'd never have time to translate otherwise, I do enough direct customer business of the sort where I could get nailed for a big printing bill or similar, so I find a few hundred euros for professional liability insurance to be cheap peace of mind. It's also a good marketing tool - a few million euros of liability coverage sounds serious, and some customers expect it. I had never really thought about it (since all the translators I knew when I went freelance worked without it) until a very attractive direct client approached me one day and made it a condition of doing business. I am grateful to that client, because when others asked later, I was able to respond "of course" while others agonize over whether the insurance is worth the investment of the earnings for a day or two. Even if my coverage is as full of holes as a Swiss cheese (I doubt it - I put the insurance agent through Hell checking all the scenarios I could think of and making him point out the relevant clauses) it does me great good as a marketing tool.
| | | | Marie-Hélène Hayles
Italy
Member (2004)
Italian to English
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The fact that the agency has offered their client a two-year guarantee has nothing whatsoever to do with you. The agency's client is not your client. The conditions of the agency's contract with their clients are irrelevant to your contract with the agency.
I agree that one of the whole points of agencies is that they revise the work of their translators (or send it out for someone else to revise, which amounts to the same thing), ensuring that each piece of work gets seen by at least two sets of eyes and thus offering a greater guarantee to the client of a reasonable translation. If this agency decided that you always do such good work that your translations don't need to be revised (and this is in contrast with their normal practice), they've been making more money out of you - as you can bet they haven't been passing that saving on to their clients - but the risk certainly ought to be theirs, not yours. (Naturally, I'm not implying in any way that you should take less care because you're working for an agency and expect your work to be revised, and I'm sure you don't!)
It seems unreasonable to me that they want to save money on your translations by not having them revised but then dump the risk onto you if someone complains - regardless of whether the complaint is justified or not. If you'd done a bad job and they'd revised it, they would (should) have found out straightaway, not two months down the line, and the end client would never have seen it.
Having said all that, it sounds to me as if your main priority is keeping your client. I think you need to be pragmatic about this. Rather than having them charge you to get your translation "reworked", I'd suggest that you offer to send it to a colleague to have it checked over, at your own expense. If your colleague finds nothing wrong, then you'll have to reiterate that without concrete examples of the client's complaints, you can do no more and you expect to be paid in full. Or you may decide to offer a goodwill discount on this particular job. It depends which is worth more to you - your pride or this client. (Of course, in the longer term you may want to consider finding another client to replace this one anyway, as it's no fun working with someone you can no longer trust.)
Anyway, it's a horrible situation and I hope you manage to salvage something from it.
[Edited at 2008-07-10 22:09]
| | | | John Paul Weir
Ireland
Member (2007)
Spanish to English
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| | Get those concrete examples. | Jul 11 |
| They still have not provided me with any concrete examples of the basis for the customer's complaint. |
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You should keep at them to get to the bottom of that, if they are making claims about your work, you are entitled to know what those allegations are...so you can respond to them.
Also, to pick up on a point that Marie-Hélene referred to: if they were passing on your work - without revision - directly to the client, and saving themselves a few bob in the process, and leading you to believe that your work would be revised, which is [should be] standard procedure, before going to the client, then they have acted in bad faith and you should bring this matter up too. Do you really want to work with them after that?
Finally Kevin's points:
Court costs. Yeah, again, never straightforward. You could win your case and still end up paying a small fortune in court fees. Or they might allow some of it, but not all. There's even a whole raft of case law dealing solely with appeals and counter-appeals over who has to pay what, and to whom, relating to court costs - I'm not talking about awards for damages.
And, if you work with direct clients mainly, or exclusively, it's probably a good idea to have (decent, not just any old) indemnity insurance. For peace of mind if nothing else. That's yours and your clients'. I don't necessarily buy into this argument that "the vast majority don't have it so I don't need it either". Everyone's circumstances are different. In any case, business insurance is tax-deductible, so you can snip it off your tax bill, what could be sweeter than that? It would be a different matter if PII was compulsory, there'd be little argument except which is the best type to buy.
Speaking of which, must go, tax stuff to sort out. Ugh! Suddenly not so sweet.
| | | | Brandis
Germany
Member (2003)
English to German
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| | Short time frame is infact risky.. | Jul 13 |
Hi! Considering the size of the project short time frame is always risky. One could probably split the file and multiple translators do that job and re-compile the file and do the editing and go for revision. All these are costs.. May be the intention is also to increase the risk part for the translator and later come back with a corrected edition and not pay. This is a tendency I have been observing lately. The PO never says single handed finishing is needed and all of a sudden there are over 10000 words to be done overnight. So the delivery is bound to be errorprone. BR Brandis
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