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Good agency. Bad communication.
Thread poster: Miranda Drew
Fiona Grace Peterson
Fiona Grace Peterson  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 13:43
Italian to English
Couldn't agree more Oct 25, 2018

Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:

bad agency. There is no excuse for that... since you are not prepared to drop them, it looks like you will have to put up with their behaviour, because they are not going to change.


Good communication is absolutely essential, but often vastly underrated for some reason. What if a dream job from this "good" agency turns into a nightmare (confusion over deadline, refusal to pay...) because of a communication error?


 
Christopher Schröder
Christopher Schröder
United Kingdom
Member (2011)
Swedish to English
+ ...
OT Oct 25, 2018

jyuan_us wrote:
they don't acknowledge the receipt of your deliverable


Is it possible to acknowledge receipt of a deliverable? By that time it must be a delivered!


Michele Fauble
 
jyuan_us
jyuan_us  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 08:43
Member (2005)
English to Chinese
+ ...
Thank you Oct 25, 2018

Chris S wrote:

jyuan_us wrote:
they don't acknowledge the receipt of your deliverable


Is it possible to acknowledge receipt of a deliverable? By that time it must be a delivered!


Sorry for the error. I clicked "post reply" before polishing my post. I meant to say "It is particularly annoying when they don't even acknowledge the receipt of the file you have delivered."


 
Christopher Schröder
Christopher Schröder
United Kingdom
Member (2011)
Swedish to English
+ ...
Not at all Oct 25, 2018

jyuan_us write:
Sorry for the error. I clicked "post reply" before polishing my post. I meant to say "It is particularly annoying when they don't even acknowledge the receipt of the file you have delivered."


No, no, I’m not correcting anything. It’s just a joke/withering comment on the commoditisation of our beloved metier...


 
Maxi Schwarz
Maxi Schwarz  Identity Verified
Local time: 07:43
German to English
+ ...
"good agency" Oct 26, 2018

Well, to be a good agency (professional) the necessary attributes should be there. Paying on time is only one aspect. If they send urgent jobs and then can't confirm in time, that is not being a good agency. When you collaborate with a company that is disorganized in some way, it impacts on your life, and can also impact on your income and efficiency.

Sheila Wilson
Miranda Drew
 
Emma Gledhill
Emma Gledhill
Switzerland
Local time: 13:43
German to English
+ ...
CYA Nov 2, 2018

In my experience these things do happen and the best thing to do is to state the bleedin' obvious. "Yes I can do the job, I need a go-ahead by X to deliver by your deadline of Y, otherwise the deadline will have to move accordingly", "Yes I can do it if you confirm by return, otherwise it will be subject to other work I receive" etc. Set out your stall clearly to cover yourself so you can then act accordingly and let them deal with it as they please

Jennifer Forbes
 
Miranda Drew
Miranda Drew  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 13:43
Member (2009)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
Just an update Nov 22, 2018

The agency emailed me yesterday at 2pm asking if I could do a 500 word job for today. I wrote back that I could, if they showed me the files. No answer, so I just ignored it and went on with my other work.

At 6:30 pm when I was already out for dinner, I get an answer - here are the files to translate. They were a mess of revisions and a PDF document, so a very confusing job on top of everything else. I wrote back, sorry, but I got no reply from you for 4 hours, I have accepted other
... See more
The agency emailed me yesterday at 2pm asking if I could do a 500 word job for today. I wrote back that I could, if they showed me the files. No answer, so I just ignored it and went on with my other work.

At 6:30 pm when I was already out for dinner, I get an answer - here are the files to translate. They were a mess of revisions and a PDF document, so a very confusing job on top of everything else. I wrote back, sorry, but I got no reply from you for 4 hours, I have accepted other jobs for tomorrow and cannot fit this in.
Collapse


Dan Lucas
Colette Magalowski
Michele Fauble
Kuochoe Nikoi-Kotei
 
B D Finch
B D Finch  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 13:43
French to English
+ ...
When is a job "confirmed"? Nov 22, 2018

Miranda Drew wrote:

...
I do try to not worry when the job is not confirmed, and of course accept other proposals that I receive in the meantime. But they've acted this way with confirmed jobs. The last example I was talking about, the job was confirmed. At this point I guess I will let them know in each case that if they don't answer, I can't take the job....


A job shouldn't be treated as confirmed until you have been able to view and provide a price for the actual file(s) they want you to translate and a job order form has been sent and accepted. Up to that point, you can accept other work. If you get another offer that would stop you meeting the first agency's deadline, then it's only reasonable to tell them that, unless you get confirmation within a given time, you will accept the other work and tell them what the effect of that would be on your ability to meet their deadline.

Of course, problems can arise after confirmation of a job, e.g. you might find some technical glitch in the file, e.g. you might discover that text in some of the graphics isn't editable. But, that's another matter and needs to be negotiated.

Re your update:

If they are in the same time zone as you, then they are working late and were probably not setting proper terms and conditions for their client. Glad you had other work to do and hope you enjoyed your dinner!

[Edited at 2018-11-22 15:22 GMT]


 
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Good agency. Bad communication.







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