How to protect yourself from inadequate customers?

Question

Web development

Hello.
Recently there was a situation, the customer needed to transfer the text from one site to another, I asked him if it was necessary to transfer the text in all languages, he confirmed, did the task.
A day later, the customer writes that it was necessary to do another task to transfer everything from another site. But at the very beginning, he gave a fuzzy TOR, I asked again, for sure, you just need to translate the text and duplicate the pages, he again confirmed.
Now he pokes me that I'm wrong and did not do the right thing. But I don’t understand how I should have guessed, although I asked him again what exactly needs to be done, he confirmed, but did not specify anything, he was allegedly very busy and in a hurry.
After completing the work, I wrote that let him review everything. A day has passed and he writes me his dissatisfaction, although I have not taken payment from him yet.
As a result, I had to refuse to cooperate with him because of the fuzzy TK. Lost my time and energy because of him.
How can you protect yourself from these?

Answer 1

without sensible TK, the result is HZ.
It's an axiom, not even a rule.
there is only one way: do not work with assholes.
but the "definition of assholes" is a very valuable skill. and it is produced only on its own cones. strangers won't help much.

Answer 2

at the very beginning he gave a fuzzy TK

Now he pokes me that I'm wrong and didn't do the right thing

Probably, to make a "clear" TK (drawn up on paper in person / with the guarantor online) + prepayment.
You agreed to the risk, your bet did not play (the customer used the "not clear" TK), so what questions can there be?

Answer 3

Write detailed technical specifications for small orders, only waste time, listen to your intuition.

Answer 4

On normal exchanges, there is a safe transaction.
In this case, the customer pays the exchange, and after the work is completed, he confirms and the money from the exchange goes to the contractor.
If the customer is missing or does not want to pay, the contractor writes to the exchange, where they look at the terms of reference (what the contractor signed up for) and if he did everything according to it, they transfer money, regardless of the mood of the customer. IMHO just like that.
ps The contractor pays about 5% to the exchange for such a thing (there are exchanges that charge more, but I'm talking about the weblancer now).