Dealing with customers with scope creep.
So I got this customer, after finishing one deck, she asks me to take a look at her existing deck, which we had already discussed is in bad shape. She had hired a gutter man (lol) to work on it and he had covered up a lot of rotten wood.
This particular deck is big and fairly complicated. It's on the side of a hill with multiple steps, landings and levels. I start poke at the deck and the structural integrity is worse than I had previously thought. So I get her out there and let her know, this is going to be a big job. She tells me she doesn't have the money to replace the whole deck, so I suggested we do it a portion at a time. She agrees. I did show her where my estimate was going to stop, that very day.
So I get the job and get close to being finished, then she starts adding things to it. Installing three gates, replacing rotten wood, outside of the area I qouted. It snowballs an already tight figure, until I'm $600 over on material and about 35 hours over on labor.
I told her three times "sure, but just FYI, it wasn't on the original qoute."
In the end, I just billed her for that material and labor. Basically she got sticker shock. She paid me without any real complaint but told me in a nervous way "I only budgeted for the original qoute." It really made me feel bad, like I was going back on my word.
I realize, I should have communicated better and put my foot down about extra work. It just seemed so petty at the time "hey, I can't do this 30 minutes worth of work, you gotta pay for it!" It just snowballed into 2k more in work.