Breaking up with a client: how and when to cut the cord
Breaking up with clients–agencies or direct clients–is sometimes painful, but it’s a necessary part of a thriving freelance business: if a client treats you poorly, a breakup is a must. If you’re ready to move on to better-paying or more interesting work, a breakup may be in your best interest. Whatever the case, you want to think ahead of time about how to end the relationship in a way that leaves you feeling like you did the right thing. Let’s dig in.
When to cut things off right away
In some situations, you don’t want to worry about diplomacy or sugar-coating or not burning bridges: you just want the client out of your life. These include:
- A client who does not pay you, or who unilaterally reduces your payment
- A client who unfairly criticizes your work
- A client who treats you in a way that feels abusive or harassing
In those cases, just cut the cord. “Effective immediately, please remove me from your roster of available freelancers. Please do not contact me for future assignments with your company. Thank you.” That’s it; you don’t need to say more than that.
When to give the client an ultimatum
In some situations, the client has just one problematic behavior. Perhaps they always pay in 60 days rather than 30. Perhaps they check in with you six times a day during a project. Perhaps they try to downwardly negotiate your rate when you’ve been firm about what your rate is. In those cases, it’s worth giving the client one more chance, but that chance must come in the form of an ultimatum that you are willing to stand by. Such as:
“Thank you for contacting me about this project. As I’ve mentioned before, your company has repeatedly paid me more than 30 days after the agreed-upon due date on my invoices. I value my relationship with you, but my payment terms are net 30, not net 60. I am willing to take on this project, but if I do not receive your payment within 30 days, I will not accept work from you in the future unless you pay in advance. Thank you.”
“Thank you for contacting me about this project. As we’ve discussed, my base rate is X cents per word. To save your time and mine, you don’t need to contact me for projects for which your budget is less than that amount. If this happens again, I will have to ask you to remove me from your roster of available freelancers. Thank you.”
“But they’re such nice people!” The worst reason for sticking with a client
If you, like me, have a bit of a doormat streak when it comes to breaking up with clients for purely economic reasons, stop what you’re doing and read this blog post by Carol Tice, on her blog Make a Living Writing (but it applies to translators too).
In this post, Carol mercilessly dissects the misplaced loyalty that a lot of freelancers have toward their clients–clients who don’t pay well, but are “such nice people.” She’s better at giving tough-love advice than I am, so I’ll quote her here:
“Don’t delude yourself that nice people who underpay you are still good clients. They’re not. They are sucking the life out of your business and putting your freelance writing business at risk of failure.”
That’s pretty blunt, but I agree: if you’re sticking with low-paying clients out of a sense of loyalty, you’re being loyal to the wrong side of the equation. You’re valuing your relationship with a low-paying client over your own financial security, your kids’ future, and your relationship with the people in your life who depend on you. That’s who you should really be loyal to–and that means working only with clients who will pay what you need or want to earn.
When to be eternally unavailable
Sometimes, breaking up with a client is unnecessary. In my experience the #1 reason that freelance translators or interpreters want to break up with a client is because they’ve moved on to work that pays better, is more interesting, or both. And that’s what should be happening over the lifecycle of your freelance business.
Before you write the breakup e-mail, as yourself if it’s necessary. With a direct client, it may be; most direct clients are not going to wait for you to turn them down 15 times before they find another translator. With agency clients, you may be able to just dodge their inquiries–or only accept their projects once in a while–while keeping the door open to working with them if you have a slow period or lose a major client. As an example, I know at least two translators who have taken in-house assignments that kept them busy full-time for six months or more. They decided that rather than burn bridges with their agency clients, they would simply respond, “Thanks for contacting me about this project; unfortunately I’m not available, but please keep me on your list!” And it worked; those agency clients enthusiastically sent work once those translators were available again. The same technique would probably not work with direct clients, but agencies (hopefully) have other translators to choose from.
Unilateral rate raises: make sure you mean it
Another situation that falls on the spectrum of client breakups is unilateral rate raises; when you inform a client, “As of January 1, my base rate will increase to X.” This is a fine–if abrupt–technique, as long as you mean it. As long as you are willing to stop working with the client if they won’t agree to the increased rate.
Problems arise when you backpedal. Let’s say the client responds, “Thanks for letting us know. That’s outside our budget for your language pair, so we won’t be able to work with you anymore. Just let us know if you change your mind.” That’s not at all out of the question, so envision that situation before you send the e-mail. The issue is that if you backpedal, the client knows that you were bluffing all along; it’s completely legitimate to tell a client that you are busy all the time at your increased rate, so you won’t have room for them in your schedule if they can’t pay more. But you really don’t want to pull a “just kidding” with a client once you’ve put a higher rate out there.
Annoyance fees: also worth considering
Another common situation is high-maintenance clients–clients who pay well and pay on time, but who take up a disproportionate amount of your time with phone calls and e-mails and special requests that exceed the bounds of what would normally be expected in a freelancer-client relationship. If you hate working with these types of clients, don’t do it. Life is too short and your time is too limited to work with clients who cause you to cringe every time their number pops up on your caller ID. However, another option, particularly with direct clients, is to find a way to charge the client enough that the annoyance is worthwhile.
I speak from personal experience when I say that this technique can work with clients whose budgets are ample and whose need for personal attention is high. For example, you might tell the client that your rate includes one five-minute phone call per day, and all additional phone calls will be billed at your regular hourly rate, in 15-minute increments. If you read this and think, “My clients would never, in a million years, agree to that,” I say, simply, “Try it.” If your direct clients work with attorneys or accountants or auditors, those people do not sit on the phone for 45 minutes without charging for it, and neither should you.
Readers, over to you: have you broken up with a client recently? Let us know how it went!

Thank you Corinne! I think I’m going to frame this one and hang it in my office for frequent reference.
Great, glad you enjoyed it!
This post has dropped into my inbox at just the right time, thank you Corinne! I have not yet had to break up with a client, but will have to I think in the near future as I am chasing a payment that is 30 days overdue and the client has dropped off the face of the earth completely. I guess this is a classic case of being very easy to communicate with while the project is underway, and then disappearing as soon as the invoice hits their inbox. Just crickets so far. I have a feeling this may be the last time I work with them, although as such they are (were?) “nice people”.
Right, they’re such nice people 🙂 That blog post was a real eye-opener for me, because I’ve been chronically guilty of that over the years. Glad this post was helpful to you!
Sure. ended up canning a 3 year client, that had become 60% of my business after ample warning and many suggedtions to improve things. Use the same revisor and make sure he/she reads the Client’s instructions and implement them. Please explain to your DTP people how to properly reorder alphabetically various lists in the target language. Please extract the text to be translated in a bilingual column format as you say you would, as it is not up to me to decide what needs to be translated. Please make sure the project info gets shared when PM leave go on vacations, etc. So, after countless hours over several months of dealing with this I said bye bye. Even did a debriefing with their Executive Manager at the ATA Conference.
Thanks, Daniele!
I fell very lucky. I have not “yet” had to confront the three things you mentioned under “When to cut things off right away.” OK, there has been a payment issue or two, that is probably unavoidable. But otherwise customers have always been friendly and respectful. See what the future brings.
Great, let’s hope it continues that way!!
We once had a client who sent us workly directly or through her advertising agency. No matter who did her translations or what the subject was, she was unhappy and would call to complain. She was curt and dismissive. Once, when she detected an English accent from the English translator she was talking to, she switched into English from French, saying that he obviously struggled with French. He was shaking with anger when he told me.
One day she called me about a letter she had had translated. Not an entire letter, just part of a letter, because “I already have the other part from last year.” Our very competent translator had noticed egregious errors in the part she didn’t want us to translate, so out of the kindness of her heart and at no charge, she corrected the mistakes. Noticing this, our client flew off the handle, saying everything had already been approved and we couldn’t go making unilateral changes to her texts. She also had a list of complaints about the actual translation, most of them related to her imperfect knowledge of English.
So, I calmly explained that we would not charge her for the letter because she was obviously unhappy. But I also said we would not at all address her complaints or make any changes to the letter. She was on her own. I also said we would no longer accept any work from her, and that I was going to call her advertising agency to say that they couldn’t forward any of her work to us, and that I was also going to call her boss (who I knew as a personal friend) to tell him that we were resigning the account.
When I announced the news at the office, one of the translators did a little dance, singing “the wicked witch is dead.”
Three months later, she was fired from her job.
Oh my gosh, what a great story! That’s a great example of how to deal calmly with a problematic client in a factual way, but without being a doormat either. Thanks, Grant!
If it’s obvious that a client intentionally paid later than the 21 days I allow, I request advance payment for the next assignment.