equipment malfunction as a freelancer

shaneoconnor · 26th August 2009

i work out of about eight different studios with varying price points and features.

yesterday, i booked a 10 hour mix at a very inexpensive room for an ITB mix using protools HD3.

the entire day was riddled with protools crashes, harware that wasn't being recognized, and mysterious latency issues (delay compensation wasn't reading correctly).

The studio manager had no idea what was wrong, so at hour six i told the client to go home and didn't charge them anything. i spent another 5 hours trying to get protools to even open up. lame.

i got almost nothing done, now the studio wants to bill me for 4 hours of studio time because "i got some editing done". i cannot bill the client for this in that they are under the impression that no mixing was done, which is pretty much true.

has this happened to anyone else? i find this so astounding that a studio owner would try and pull this on someone who is willing to bring in business.

cubivore · 26th August 2009

i've never freelanced at a studio that had such a major malfunction. at home i've had some of my own problems but would never bill a client for downtime. your situation sounds kinda crappy. you should at least be comped the time everything was down in exchange for the 'edit time'. hell, not only credit, you should send them an invoice for fixing their rig!!!

dfegad

shaneoconnor · 26th August 2009

i will probably end up paying them in that the owner is in a band with the guy that owns the main studio that I work at (which is really nice and completely professional about this kind of thing... which doesn't happen often).

ultimately, this is a people oriented business and if the studio owner is going to treat people as less important than their non functioning gear, than he is going to have a lot of conflict.

mr_d · 26th August 2009

They should comp you the time. It would be better for them professionally to eat the first session and get repeat business somewhere down the line.

shaneoconnor · 26th August 2009

i think i am done with this place. i just booked time on sunday at another studio to REMIX all of these songs.

26th August 2009	#1
shaneoconnor Lives for gear Joined: Dec 2006 Location: NYC/ Boston Posts: 802 Thread Starter	equipment malfunction as a freelancer i work out of about eight different studios with varying price points and features. yesterday, i booked a 10 hour mix at a very inexpensive room for an ITB mix using protools HD3. the entire day was riddled with protools crashes, harware that wasn't being recognized, and mysterious latency issues (delay compensation wasn't reading correctly). The studio manager had no idea what was wrong, so at hour six i told the client to go home and didn't charge them anything. i spent another 5 hours trying to get protools to even open up. lame. i got almost nothing done, now the studio wants to bill me for 4 hours of studio time because "i got some editing done". i cannot bill the client for this in that they are under the impression that no mixing was done, which is pretty much true. has this happened to anyone else? i find this so astounding that a studio owner would try and pull this on someone who is willing to bring in business. __________________ Shane O'Connor Recording: rock engineer/ producer www.shanemix.com shane@shanemix.com

26th August 2009	#2
cubivore Lives for gear Joined: Jun 2006 Location: houston tx Posts: 712	i've never freelanced at a studio that had such a major malfunction. at home i've had some of my own problems but would never bill a client for downtime. your situation sounds kinda crappy. you should at least be comped the time everything was down in exchange for the 'edit time'. hell, not only credit, you should send them an invoice for fixing their rig!!! dfegad __________________ ~cubivore~

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26th August 2009	#4
mr_d Gear Head Joined: Feb 2009 Location: Denver, CO Posts: 32	They should comp you the time. It would be better for them professionally to eat the first session and get repeat business somewhere down the line.