My 1st guest, asked for a discount. I agreed. He booked and then he immediately messaged back and said he needed to stay for more time without offering additional payment. It seemed really uncool to change the terms of the deal AFTER booking. I agreed, but I was not happy at being treated in this manner. If his extra time had interfered with a VRBO booking (which it could have), I would have been forced to cancel which would have stunk for everyone. Any tips on what to say to a budget minded film maker who wants something for nothing?
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Hi Ann. Never give stuff away for free. I am a video producer and I have my own space that we rent out when we are not shooting ourselves so I am on both side of the coin. We never do business like this on our own productions but there are TONS of crews out there that are shady like this. It is quite common.
95% of the people that send me a request through this site ask for a discount. Everyone is a struggling film maker, they only need the place for an hour, only need part of the place, etc etc… so can we pay you half price? (our place has a high hourly rate and a 4 hour minimum) That’s totally common. I get that way more than I don’t. If you want to offer a discount, that is up to you but extending the stay without getting charged more is absolutely a no go for us. That is a scam and they are robbing you of your rental fee. No chance they didn’t know exactly what they needed to shoot and how long they needed before they booked originally. Even if something did pop up, there is no way they should expect to stay longer without paying.
This kind of stuff gets me all riled up. I used to try to be the nice host, especially since I am often on the other side of the production coin myself. But I certainly don’t do business like that so I get especially annoyed at crews that do try to do business like that, and there are a lot of them. So one thing I learned on this site is you have to have no issues saying no to these requests no matter how persistent they are. Shooting video costs money. They know that.
I agree it’s sucky. I’ve gotten to the place where I casually explain “that a booking should include setup, breakdown and any other needed time - should you use more time than we agree, I will added it to the booking at the end”. And I do! 
I agree about people wanting something for nothing.
No discounts, no free time, no free extras, no free stuff that other rental spaces are charging for.
I don’t give anything away for free. They want extra time, they pay for it in 30 min increments. There is no grace period, no free time to load in, no time to stay extra for cleaning. They pay for every bit of time they’re in my studio.
If you give them one free thing, they will walk all over you and expect you to cave on other things. This is different than being nice to people you know or giving a little extra to a neighbor. Most renters are good but the crappy ones want to get away with as much as possible and pay as little for it as they can get away with.
Now is the time to define your rules and your fee structure. Think of overtime charges, cancelation policies, storage fees, after-hours rentals, etc. Comb through the forums here for situations others have faced and set your own rules and fees for those situations.
If you have things clearly defined and someone asks you to give them a break or discount, you’ll refer to your rules and know exactly what to do and how much to charge. At that time, you can decide whether to break your own rules or not.
Good luck!
I never budge on rental fees unless they’re booking for 3 or more days. Or its super last minute and the studio would have been empty otherwise.
I sometimes counter requests for discounts on bookings with the offer to use select in-house grip/lighting or free. Doing this doesn’t cost me anything as I already own my EQ several times over.
We tell all renters that inquire about discounts that they are already getting a heavy discount by using Peerspace which they are. Our corporate clients who book directly pay 3x as much since they have their own insurance, gear and usually understand the rules of booking a space. Since we also do our own productions we don’t offer overtime and tell renters to make sure to add more time then they think they may need when booking. We are usually fully booked most days so there is almost always another booking coming in. Even is there isn’t you can always say there is if it seems like a problem client. Best of luck.
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My favorite discount ask, was from a producer that had booked a 1 day shoot. Then, the following week, he needed to book again for some reshoots. This time he had a firm price for the shoot. I was flabbergasted. He absolutely needed me for the reshoots and insisted that his budget was firm and at a much lower amount.