Is it true that a one-year bug fix guarantee is standard practice?

Question

Freelance

There is an order and they stubbornly tell me that it is necessary to state in the contract that in case of detection of shortcomings or errors, I have to correct them for free for a year. I wonder if they hang noodles on my ears or is it really common? And do they always make a contract at all? The customer of the LLC (under an agreement that has not yet been signed), but in fact, of course, is a manager who works in the company. The order was taken not on the freelance exchange.

Updated
I marked those answers that I found most useful. The other answers are also important and interesting if they answer the question.

Answer 1

This is the stage of negotiating the text of the agreement.
You can either accept or not accept any clauses of the Customer's agreement.
For your part, you can equally put forward your own conditions (clauses of the contract), which the Customer can also accept or reject.
Advice: tell (point of the contract for technical support after the project is put into operation) that within two weeks you will make all the important bug fixes that prevent the basic functionality of the project, prescribed in the TOR, from working.
Note that this does not apply to any visual changes to the user and/or graphical interface (it must be checked and tested before the project is accepted by the Customer).

Answer 2

Any whim at the expense of the client.
Write: in case of detection of shortcomings or errors, we fix it free of charge, but no more than 100 hours / hours.
Include these 100 hours/hours in the cost of work under the contract.
and usually in the contract they write the procedure for accepting and testing the software for compliance with the specification. TK respectively signed by the customer.

Answer 3

Mdaa, an order for half the salary and a year of support? Is your client asking for too much? I don't know what exactly you do, but I would never sign up for something like that. Once I was working on a website. I only had one role there - a back-end programmer . But it so happened that not very literate guys did the design, then even less literate guys made it up. As a result, in many places on the site, when filled with real data, everything floated and went. It started to slow down, because in those places where you need to do Autocomplete there were ordinary selects, and so on and up the chain. As a result, the customer spent two months trying to convince me that everything was smooth in the design, that he checked the layout and everything was clear and blah blah blah. As a result, when I threatened him with a court, he nevertheless accepted that this was not my joint, BUTstubbornly did not want to pay me for my work done and saying that he would pay me for it when they retype it, and then I would transfer the layout again. Why you need to pay for this work again, he didn’t understand (well, or didn’t want to)
So that’s what I was talking about, in my case there was no point like yours, but the juices were practically squeezed out of me. Imagine what will happen to you. If I were you, I would agree only in one case, if the customer pays extra for 1-2 months of work in advance. Otherwise I would send away

Answer 4

This is a common practice. In more or less large projects, a year is the best time. In small ones, you can limit yourself to a month. Usually depends on volume.
Please don't subscribe to this. It is better to increase the testing time. A month is enough to check in combat mode. If there is not a strong connection with dates. For example, generating monthly reports.

Answer 5

I somehow gave an eternal guarantee for a free fix of bugs, with the note that bugs are behavior and a form that contradicts those. task or interfering with the work of the application. And provided that the left uncles did not dig into the code, after which it stopped working. That is, most of the improvements and changes through me, and not for free.
You can simply prescribe the response time to a request for correction is large. Will the client wait 2 weeks until you implement a 10-minute Wishlist for him?)
So, it all depends on how you agree with the definitions.
I would not call such general conditions as you described standard practice. More like a slave contract.

Answer 6

In the life of every employee there comes a moment when he begins to be interested in the terms "warranty service", "maintenance", "Technical support", "technical support" and what is the difference between them. A little later, they come to realize the importance of the documents “technical passport”, “operating instructions”, “preventive work”.
It's your turn too. You are only asking for a one year warranty. You can google warranty service agreements for sorting offices.

Answer 7

It can be stated in the contract that if the total number of fixes takes no more than X hours, then they will be fixed, otherwise it will be a new functionality that must be paid separately, because you can fix it endlessly. If the client does not have confidence that you will do everything right and you cannot convince him, then this is not your order and not your client.

Answer 8

Well, yes, what’s the problem, the guarantee is always included in the price of the order, and if necessary, its volume and term are prescribed in the contract, that is, the more the guarantee volume in hours and in the period of its use, the more expensive the price, this is the right approach, I’m generally surprised how without a guarantee then work.

Answer 9

The treaty is highly recommended in your own interest.
A year of free edits is complete nonsense, there is no such thing anywhere.
PS If you sign such an agreement, send me your contacts.
I will personally place another order for you. For a year at least.