Giving vs. Taking

A couple rules of thumb about giving vs. taking:

Rule 1. If you give something away for free that your would normally charge for, then make it clear you are waiving the normal rules (and that you may not be doing so in the future).

Rule 2. If you didn't follow Rule 1, then be very wary of changing your policy of giving that something away (even if it is in the manual or contract or whatever). Why? It will feel like you are taking something away (rather than *giving* something if Rule 1 is followed).

This is all *especially* true if it's something that would be easy for the user/client to overlook.

It's very easy to point to the contract, or to the manual, about some policy. But if you have routinely been not following the policy, or not charging for something, then people will continue to expect that they will get it for free. Popping what appears to be a new requirement or cost on them will probably not go over well.

Example One: Let's say a contract stipulates $100/month extra for priority support. If you've silently been giving that priority support for 6 months for no additional cost, and then call up the client to say you'll charge it in the future, they'll be upset. It'll seem like you're suddenly charging them way more money. It's a lot better to just put on the bill in the first place something like "$100/month fee waived for initial six months" or something, so you're *giving* something for six months. Of course, if you mistakenly did not charge that extra amount, then you may want to consider giving a grace period before charging that again (so that the user has time to wrap their head around the idea, and they will also feel that at least they are getting something for free a while longer).

Example Two: Your product's manual says your content should be 600 pixels wide. But your product never enforced that, and, although larger pages didn't look perfect, wider pages didn't look horrible either. If you suddenly change the system (for other good reasons) so that these spurious pages inadvertantly look bad, just pointing to the manual to say they should have kept their content to 600 pixels wide will annoy the users. It would be better to in the first place enforce the rule or at least remind people that you are waiving that restriction but may in the future require it. After the fact of wide pages suddenly looking worse, you can also offer to help your users to review and change the size of their problem pages. Also, if you can somehow change the system fairly easily to be a bit more lax on the requirement, then it would be better to do so.

Obviously, these types of issues may arise because of an oversight on your part (you forgot to charge the additional $100/month in the example above), but in general the main things to try to keep in mind are: a) these types of details *are* important, so try to keep an eye on them, b) try to remind people when you are temporarily waiving a fee or restriction, and c) by all means, don't just flippantly point to the manual, contract, or other document. Of course, there may be times when you do need to fall back to pointing to the document/agreement, but carefully consider the options before doing so.