HELP! Should I do voice over sample requests?

[cbvoiceover]

I'm a new seller who does voice over. I've being doing "buyer requests" to try to get some business. However, I've had some clients come back and ask for "samples." I do have demos on my page, so I've generally sent people there. However, I have one person who wanted a character voice over. The voice type they wanted wasn't a specific one I had on my demo reel, so I felt a sample request was reasonable. I did not, however, go off their script, but gave them the tone/voice they wanted so they could see if it fit what they wanted. 

They came back asking why I didn't go off their script sample (my thinking was, if you just want a vocal sample to get an idea if I can do the voice type you want, then it shouldn't matter if it is your script or not) and wanted another sample off the script with the vocal accent tweaked. 

Being new, my question is this a reasonable request? Or are these major red flags? I know in "regular acting" you can do multiple auditions to get a role, but I'm not sure that's the way it works on here. If they are already being this picky, when they haven't paid me 1 cent, I don't know if this is a sign of things to come. Are they going to want me to redo an entire voice over once I record it and then give a bad review if I don't? This does appear to be a legitimate company, but since I'm new I really don't know what I should realistically expect. Any advice, particularly from voice over actors, would be much appreciated. Thank you!

[imagination7413]

On 9/21/2021 at 7:20 AM, cbvoiceover said:

Being new, my question is this a reasonable request? Or are these major red flags?

Yes, your approach was reasonable, and YES, those are red flags!