Another type of client that you will encounter is one that we will call “the cheapo.” This type of client is a person who is always looking for the cheapest deals, while demanding a high level of quality at the same time. These people are usually cheap in all aspects of their lives, always hunting for bargains and discounts. While looking for a lower price is not always a bad thing, these people take things to the extreme. They are cheap, as opposed to being frugal, because they will often fail to spend good money on things that they should spend good money on, and in many cases, these people often end up spending more money later because of their cheapness.
To give you an example of this, I once rented a house where there was some water leaking in the basement. While having water leaking in your basement is bad, what made things worse is that this water was leaking near an electrical outlet, which made it a clear and immediate safety hazard. The owner of the house, who is a cheapo, tried to use a low cost sticky putty to fix the pipe as opposed to just having the pipe replaced. After the sticky putty failed to work, which I knew wouldn't, I had to call the landlord again to let them know they needed to get it fixed.
It finally was fixed, but after time and a bit of money had been wasted on a solution that would not work. In addition to this, I also notified the landlord that an electrician who visited the property warned that the foundation was sinking. Of course, the owner of the property, who is a cheapo, will likely avoid fixing it, but if the house collapses due to the sinking foundation, the price that they will pay to repair the house will be much higher than what they would have paid if they simply had fixed it beforehand. In addition to this, the price that they will pay will be even higher if there happens to be tenants in the house if it collapses.
In another situation, I rented an apartment from an owner who was a cheapo. Instead of buying a brand new fridge, they chose to buy a used one instead, which I didn't know about when I first moved in. A few months after moving into the apartment, I noticed that the freezer would become too cold, so cold that the outside of the door filled with ice, making it hard to close the fridge. Because it was hard to close the fridge, cold air was released, and the ice begin to melt, dripping all over the fridge and then on to the floor.
Despite warning the landlord about this problem during an inspection, he ignored it, until I had to call them and angrily demand that they fix it. They finally did fix it, but the problem is, in addition to the price they paid for the old fridge, they had to spend money on a new fridge, as well as spending time and energy moving the new one in and the old one out. All this would have been avoided if they had simply purchased a new fridge to begin with.
The problem with cheapos is that their cheapness often leads to unintended consequences later on. Because they're cheap with things they should pay good money for, they often end up having problems later on, problems which, ironically enough, could have been avoided if they had simply spent good money in the first place. While I do advocate frugality in my own personal life when it comes to clothes, electronics, cars, and other objects that rapidly depreciate in value after you buy them, I do not recommend frugality when it comes to matters which are business related. You should not be frugal when it comes to purchasing an asset, and this includes hiring the services of a freelancer.
For example, a client who is a cheapo, when needing a software program built, will hire the cheapest programmer they can find. For these type of clients, price is always factored in first, and quality is always second or even third. Then, once they get a software program that is full of bugs and other problems, they will complain and place all the blame on the programmer. While the programmer is partly responsible, since they did write the program, it is the cheapness of the client which ultimately is the root of the problem. If they had simply hired a good programmer from the beginning, someone who operated with a high level of skill, they would have in all likelihood wrote a high quality program.
Now the cheapo will have to scrap the software program they paid for, and hire a new programmer to write another one, meaning that they're spending even more money and wasting time simultaneously. These type of clients are always a headache, they are just as annoying as the perfectionist, because they will try to pay you the lowest price possible while expecting the highest quality. What is even more irritating is that in many cases, cheapos are actually well off, but their cheapness often blocks them from achieving stupendous wealth simply because they are unwilling to spend lots of money where lots of money should be spent.