DinghyMisunderstandings can happen from time to time with clients.
But what do you do if they refuse to pay you due to a misunderstanding?
Read on to find out how a talented cameraman called John was caught out by a misunderstanding in delegating responsibility and would have been almost left considerably out of pocket, if he hadn’t had protection from specialist freelance insurance provider, Dinghy.
John is a talented cameraman who accepted some freelance work which progressed into helping their client source other camera operators and equipment.
On the evening before the shoot, the rental company told John he was unable to rent out the equipment he needed.
So John chose a different route which involved hiring individual cameras from freelancers/owners. This also meant that John’s client was unable to use the vision mixer they had booked in.
The responsibility for the sound files was due to lie with the vision mixer. However as John did not have the equipment for her, and she stated she has no experience with sound wrangling only vision mixing, the sound recording method was changed the evening before the shoot.
On the day of the shoot this meant John decided to split himself between camera operating and collecting the footage from the other operators, with the sound recording device (that was attached to the soundboard) being controlled by an A.V. technician.
The A.V. technician was there to make sure the sound was running for the audience members who’d paid tickets to be at the event with a speaker.
John asked this technician to give him a thumbs up throughout the event to clarify that the recorder was still recording/ that it had battery, and that it had a feed coming in.
There wasn’t any delegated responsibility, so John took it upon himself to try and sort all of the files through his laptop onto the hard drive in-between the speakers’ talks.
After the event, John was asked to leave the hard drive with all of the files in a paper bag stapled together with the client’s name and date at the concierge of the hotel where the event took place.
However, as John hadn’t been asked to be involved in the sound and video editing, John did not make a back up of the sound files. The day after the event, John’s client told him that the sound files were missing from the first day.
The A.V. Technician hadn’t made any backups, and due to the lack of delegated authority, this responsibility had slipped through the cracks.
John’s client refused to pay John for the entire first day’s work, including the freelancers brought in; the client agreed not to take matters any further so long as John didn’t try and recover the missing invoice payment.
As John sacrificed his invoice to satisfy his client and prevent a potentially larger claim, Dinghy paid the invoice that he didn’t receive.
Do you have any questions about how to protect yourself so you don’t lose money with client projects?
Please leave them in the comments below and we’d be happy to answer them.
Dinghy is radically changing the way freelancers become insured, by providing fairer, faster and cheaper protection to the fastest growing workforce in the world.
Their new approach offers flexible on-demand insurance exclusively to freelancers. By allowing you to reduce premiums when you’re not working, you only pay for the coverage you really need.
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