A client threatened to “ruin my reputation” unless I refunded a non-refundable deposit.

Then came the one-star Google review and the plot twist that made my reputation stronger.

Welcome to another episode of Websites Made Simple with me, Holly Christie!

In this episode I share the whole story, how I responded, and what to put in place so one angry client can’t tank your business.

If you’re a website designer or dev who’s ever ignored red flags (yep, me too), this one’s for you.

Skip to the good bits:

00:00 "Client Conflicts and Resilience"

06:15 "One-Star Reviews Often Misleading"

09:00 "Responding to a 1-Star Review"

11:39 "Phoenix Program: Transform Your Career"

When a client threatens to ruin your reputation, here’s the exact playbook to protect your brand and flip the narrative—fast.

For web designers/developers dealing with scope creep, 1-star bombs, and refund pressure.

Handle non-refundable deposits without panic

What to write under a 1-star review

Turn a bad review into social proof on LinkedIn

Red flags: endless meetings, too many stakeholders

Boundaries in contracts & terms that actually hold

Chapters:

00:00 When a client threatens your reputation (nightmare setup)

02:00 ‘Go-away pricing’, red flags & endless meetings

05:00 Stalemate, terms, and the non-refundable deposit

06:15 The threat + the 1-star review hits

08:18 Posting it on LinkedIn—community flips the script

10:00 Why it strengthened my reputation

12:00 Lessons: boundaries, meetings, and saying no

13:00 Phoenix Programme can help with this

My site: https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk

Phoenix Programme: https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk/phoenix-programme

Podcast page: https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk/podcast

Mentioned in this episode:

Remember to sign up for our blogging masterclass!

Go to https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk/masterclass

Blogging masterclass

Today we're going to talk about when a client

threatens to ruin your reputation. This

is every website designer's absolute nightmare.

And generally we always want our work to go well. We

always want to feel good about the work that we're doing, and we always

want our clients to feel very good about the work. But sometimes

that just doesn't happen. It could be that your processes aren't quite

tight enough, or that you're a little inexperienced

for the type of design that the client requires, or something like

that. But in most cases, it

is always the client and the situation that they're in

that leads that kind of bad feeling that you can get with

the relationship, the design, just the way things are going.

And every developer has a story who can tell you about this as well,

where, you know, everything's been absolutely fine, and then the relationship

has soured and they don't really know why. I have my own

stories where I can say I've stuck to my processes, I've stuck to what I've

said I've done, everything's going well. And then slowly,

kind of emails from the client become more abrupt, or there's just

a general layer of dissatisfaction around them.

And sometimes we can't get those things back on track,

other times we can. And if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you'll

know that I've done other episodes about how to handle tricky clients

like this, but today I wanted to share a story with you

about the client who threatened to ruin my reputation.

And I hope for you that it is a story of hope, a story

of resilience, and a story that helps you

not end up in a similar situation that I did. This

happened a year ago, actually a year ago this week,

so it's very appropriately timed. I had a client come to me

for a website rebuild,

and they explained their reasons why they wanted to rebuild

particularly. And we walked through it and I thought, I

don't think I'm a good fit for them and I don't really want the work.

But they had also been recommended by someone I know

very well, someone I respect, and I didn't

want to just turn them flat away, which

in hindsight is what I should have done. But I didn't.

And instead I quoted what many people

call go away pricing, or the more upfront of us

would call asshole tax, and thought, well, if they pay

this, then I will build it. And just to state

here as well, it was quite a big website project, so I

could justify the price. So everything started well,

but I had a little bit red flags because it sounded

as though this company were kind of in

trouble financially. I didn't worry about their ability to pay for

the website, but sometimes when that happens, you have people

who absolutely just hinge everything on the website. And

that can sometimes be where that relationship I was talking about

can turn sour because they've just got so much

riding on it and so much riding on you. And with

websites, often the client's kind of out

of control of it. You know, it's up to the designer to bring the design

and everything to the forefront as well. So it can leave the clients

feeling a little bit vulnerable. So I had gone ahead with this website project.

I was building it alongside one of my designers who worked for me as

well. Everything was well. And then this client just

repeatedly asked for us to go to meetings. And that's not really part

of the process and it's not really helpful. And every meeting,

they didn't really say anything in the meeting,

anything that had a reason for us to be there or for leading

the design or anything like that. But each time they kept saying, oh, we want

to include more and more and more and more people in the meeting. And again,

I think it was from where they were under so much

pressure that they were just trying to get everyone's opinion. But all

it meant was that we were going into meetings about a meeting, about a

meeting, about a meeting. It was a waste of everybody's time. And

my terms of service are very, very clear about how many meetings you get with

the website project as well.

Got to the point that we reached a little bit of a stalemate because they

wouldn't approve the further stages of the design

without having a meeting with nine other people on there.

And we just weren't getting anywhere. So in the end we

agreed that we wouldn't continue the project together.

And there are a couple of reasons for this. One is that the clients had

repeatedly asked us and acknowledged that they were asking us to work

outside the terms of service. And the other was

we just couldn't agree on the design.

And they kept adding different layers into it. So we decided that we were all

going to part ways. The client then came to me and said,

we acknowledge that we've paid a non refundable deposit and

we also acknowledge that you've essentially used that deposit to

get us to this stage. But we'd like our money back now because we're not

going ahead. So I pulled up terms of service and said, you're

right in acknowledging that this is Non refundable and I can't refund it.

And that's when the client started to get nasty and

he told me that if I wasn't to refund his

deposit, he would ruin my reputation and he would make sure that

I would not work in a website capacity in the

space that he worked in, which is the HR space. It's always the

HR guys, people. Every client is a nightmare. I've had

hr. So I said, I'm sorry

you feel that way and best of luck for the future. And then I sat

and waited and nothing really happened. And then one day a few weeks

later, I received notification on Google of a

one star review. This is often people's

absolute fear is that they're going to get something like a one star

review that's really going to damage their reputation.

So the first thing I would say is do not be afraid because often

one star reviews are so preposterous

that they just don't really count to other people's experience.

Especially this one star review was nestling amongst, you know,

45 star reviews that I had as well. So

as I say, it didn't feel like a big deal. And if you want to

kind of verify this as well, go onto Amazon and look at any

product on Amazon and anyone that has quite a lot of

reviews and look at the five star reviews and what they say and the four

star reviews and what they say and then look at the one star reviews and

they will usually say things like, the product didn't turn

up, the product was damaged, I tried to

return the product and I didn't hear back from the seller. Usually

the one star review is not generally to do

with what the product was and how well it works. It's usually to do around

the service or whatever else. So there's not a huge amount

of credibility with these things. The client had

written on Google that we wouldn't go to any

further meetings with them. They had to cancel the project. And I responded

and said, yeah, I'm sorry that it hasn't worked out, that the delays

had come from their end, that we tried to resolve all of this amicably.

Sorry it hadn't and good luck with your next project. Then I

did something which could be seen as either really brave or

really stupid. And I'm going to put it out there, I'm going to say brave.

Are you a website designer looking to have a great career, get more clients,

have strong processes and so much more? Well, I've

got you head over to

websitesmadesimple.co.ukemail

and I'll send you resources directly to your inbox every week

to ensure that you have the career that you have always dreamed of.

That's websitesmadesimple.co.uk

email and I'll see you there.

Then I did something which could be seen as either really

brave or really stupid. And I'm going to put that there. I'm going to say

brave, especially as someone who has spent a long time

building my reputation. So we're going with brave people.

And I put the one star review on

LinkedIn and LinkedIn is where the majority of my community is.

I screenshotted it and then I layered

it in canva on a background of my brand colors and then

I put five gold stars and filled one of them in.

And then I put this post on LinkedIn and I said,

Guys, I got my first one star review here.

Everyone have a look at it. And boy did this post blow up.

So people clicked on and saw it and they could also saw I had her

also put what I had put there. There's my response. And in

the hey, guys, I've got this one star review. I also explained what

had happened, that the client had repeatedly pushed to the

boundaries and I had really held them and

clearly they hadn't liked it. But what happened next I was really surprised

by, and that is that people went onto my Google

profile and they saw the review and they saw who had left it

and then they clicked into that person's review. And this

was not just one person, this was a group of people and they were like,

wow, this guy only leaves 1 star reviews for people.

This, you know, this doesn't feel massively credible. And then they clicked

in more to who this guy was and they were like, wow, this

guy works in the HR space and he

has essentially, you know, kind of fired your company because you couldn't

repeatedly make these meetings after you and your colleague

had explained your working parents, not you couldn't make like 5:30pm

meetings at the end of the working day. Like, this is pretty special.

And then people who had worked with me and who hadn't

up to that point left a review, went on Google and they

left me five star reviews and said, we worked with Ali and she was amazing.

So this guy, in trying to ruin my

reputation, actually ruined his own and

strengthened mine. And in preparation for this episode, I

went onto the page and I was talking about this. I did a webinar with

Neil Valio, the Podmaster the other day and we were talking about this.

And if you weren't there for the webinar and you would

like to watch it. It's all about storytelling within your business. Drop me a

[email protected] and

I will send you the link to the webinar as well. So we were talking

about it then I thought Neil said do an episode about this.

I went to check the reviews and I saw

that this guy has gone in and edited

his review. So there's gone back to the top of my Google list because it

says it's the newest review. Even though you can see that my response to him

was like 50 weeks ago. And all he's done in this

edit of the review is he's just repeated a line and put a spelling

mistake in there as well.

I really wanted to assure you that this happens to me. The best of us,

you know, you can't win them all. What I would say is

use it absolutely as an opportunity that if a

client comes into you with red flags, do not

think I have the experience to deal with this. As I

thought, do not think, well, I'll charge them a whacking amount of money

and then at least I'm compensated fairly for this. You will

lose more time, more sleep, more energy

trying to a get it back on track, trying to be

amicable and then, you know, referring back to the courses in your terms of

service and all that sort of thing. And if you just scrapped these people

with their bad energy and all that sort of stuff in the first place,

let that be your lesson. If you're a website developer or you were a

website designer and you're really, really looking to take your career to the next

level. I have a program that I am launching,

it's called the Phoenix Program because it's all about transformation.

And if you feel that you've got the skillset there and you've got the tools

for building websites, do you really, really want

to, you know, double, triple your income? I'm not going

to make a huge claim here, but I do know generally how much website

designers earn when they're not working in any form of mentorship or

coaching capacity. So if you really want to make a difference to your

income, if you want to have tons of support, nail your

messaging, not end up with the one star reviews. If you can

help it, then come and check out my Phoenix Pro program. It

could be absolutely the right thing for you. So head over to

websitesmadesimple.co.uk, you'll see the Phoenix program there.

Put it right in the middle there under the logo so you can see it

and book a call with me. I'd love to see you. And if you

are not quite there yet, but you have your own one stop review story that

you would love to share, or you have your own a client has tried to

ruin my reputation, do get in touch again. Drop me a line

hellobsitesmadesimple.co.uk or head to the

podcast page on the website and you can drop me a voice note in that

as well. I would love to hear your stories.

I love to comment on your stories and I can share them on the pod,

obviously anonymously if you would like me to. So until

next time, thanks for listening and have a great

website career.