I Wasn't Paid

by laurenceputra • 14 years ago

325 185 14 years ago

e-dard• 14 years ago

I'd do something about the kerning of the h1 element, it's not particularly pleasant in my opinion.

While I sometimes wish something like this existed, it seems ripe for abuse and/or open to some sort of libel law violation should it get out of control.

akinsgre• 14 years ago

I think they should allow for rebuttals; like Amazon does with it's feedback. There are always two sides to a story.

gk16• 14 years ago

Even with rebuttals, the very name of the website suggests that the employer is in the wrong.

Alex3917• 14 years ago

Isn't it already explicitly illegal to post lists of customers who haven't paid in your store? IANAL, but I seem to remember that the case law is already pretty settled on this one.

stevoski• 14 years ago

illegal where? Perhaps in some juridictions - which one are you referring to?

chc3• 14 years ago

IANAL, but having been previously affiliated with a company that did this, my understanding as far as general US law goes is that while it's illegal for collectors to name names, the original creditor can name and shame all he wants as long as he doesn't disclose truly private information ("This is the jerk's SSN!") and sticks to facts he can prove if a libel suit arises.

swombat• 14 years ago

How long before this gets sued for libel?

dangrossman2• 14 years ago

The site wouldn't be liable. A lawyer would tell his client that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicatio...

Anyone could post libelous statements on the 50+ million blogs and forums out there, yet you've never seen "Warn HN: Monitor your blog comments for libel" -- that's because you can't be treated as the publisher or speaker, so can't be held liable for what was said.

getsat3• 14 years ago

This, and the fact that the truth can not be libelous. As long as you're not misrepresenting a claim, you're fine.

rglover3• 14 years ago

Not the best route to handle this. Make sure you have a decent lawyer on hand (and a good contrct) when dealing with delinquent clients. Something like this will guarantee that you'll never get paid.

ghc• 14 years ago

Very true. I've been in a similar situation with a lot of money not being paid, and the client didn't care about their reputation being damaged. What they did care about was my lawyer.

barefoot2• 14 years ago

At what point does it make sense to involve a lawyer? $5,000? $10,000? Isn't it expensive to legally fight for your payment?

gavingmiller3• 14 years ago

Stipulate in your contract that the losing side has to pay the legal fees for the other party. That way getting paid doesn't cost you more.

rglover3• 14 years ago

It really depends on your personal situation and how much. If you're in the U.S., you'll have to check to see the min/max for suits in small claims court (this is generally anywhere from $3,000-$15,000). One thing that works, though, is merely having your lawyer draft a letter to the offending client. Your less intelligent clients will jump when they see any threat of legal action (and for you, it's only a few hundred bucks to get a lawyer to draft a letter – maybe even free depending on your relationship). There's certainly leg work involved, but when it's your livelihood, you have to do what you can.

sunchild• 14 years ago

Use a collection agency, if you can.

cdr• 14 years ago

The classic: http://vimeo.com/22053820

rglover3• 14 years ago

One of my favorites. Actually where I developed this mentality from.

_k• 14 years ago

This video was the first thing I thought of when I read the article!

I once worked for someone who refused to pay me for my work and at first I didn't want to sue him because of several BS excuses: - I never sued anyone before. - He seemed like a nice guy. - It was the first time I worked for him but he wasn't a total stranger to me - He had offered me work before so I figured he's someone who's probably going to ask for my services again some time in the future. - I knew he had worked with other people and I never heard them say bad things about the guy. - It wasn't a lot of money.

Turns out this guy did it to everyone I talked to! How did they get paid ? By taking a haircut! One guy didn't take a haircut but he did for a future project. He needed the money.

I'm not here to tell others what they should do but have some self-respect. I sued him and I'm glad I did. He didn't get a discount at all. My lawyer doesn't come cheap, nor do interest payments.

Would I put that guy's name online? No.

Invest your time in a good contract. Ask a percentage upfront. Watch the video.

kahawe• 14 years ago

The sad truth is that there are customers doing that on purpose not just to protect their own liquidity and cash flow but they hope that by not paying and making you wait they will literally dry you out into bankruptcy and ultimately they hope they won't have to pay then.

Government contracts, at least in certain countries here in Euroland, are NOTORIOUS for doing that to small and mid-sized companies. So make sure you always protect your interests, if possible get some money up-front, a part after a significant milestone and the rest upon completion. And ideally work at having a good standing and connection to the instance who can actually sign off on and pay what they owe you.

unreal373• 14 years ago

This reminds me of ol' F'd Company. Can't be sued for libel if the story is true.

scott_s• 14 years ago

Yes, you can. You can't lose a libel suit if you're able to prove what you said is true, and it goes to decision.

I am not being pedantic. The difference between the two statements is huge, because the amount of time and money it may take you to prove your case could easily bankrupt a person.

unreal373• 14 years ago

Good point.

brador• 14 years ago

Anyone know what indian libel laws are like?

gk16• 14 years ago

A much more useful approach would be to educate people about protecting themselves from non-payers. Eg, use an agreement or contract, check references, etc. That would be far more beneficial than a collection of libel and rambling.

For instance, the entry from Jan 31 says the person worked for _four_ months without being paid! Why would you work for four months straight without a single intermitent payment (or an advance)?

fredleblanc• 14 years ago

I agree with others on the legal view, but also, to me this site just focuses on sour grapes. As a result, I can't see anything positive of helpful coming out of it. I'm not going to search a blog each time I get a client to see if they've been written about here. And aside from that, this site will only ever tell one-side of the case.

What if the developer did really poor work, missed every deadline by weeks, or the client still says there's work to be done before being paid? All this site shows is angry developers complaining about less-than-ideal clients. For me, that's the kind of talk you have over beers at a bar — you say your piece and then you move on — not something you permanently record into a collection on the web.

derefr• 14 years ago

> What if the developer did really poor work, missed every deadline by weeks, or the client still says there's work to be done before being paid?

Then make a place for that kind of post too. Perhaps even create an index that correlates the two accounts, so that people can see both sides of each story, and weigh the evidence for themselves.

ljf2• 14 years ago

What if this happens:

I work with a difficult dev/designer for a couple of months trying to bootstap a product. In the end it's not working, we agree to go our own ways, but I keep the name of the product. For what ever reason they get shitty with me, and a month or two down the line when I'm working with someone else they post about me on 'iwasntpaid' - not just once, loads of times - they know a lot about me so they can make it look like a string of unhappy dev/designers are annoyed and I can never be sure who it was posting this.

Would the site owner let me/help me remove these? Will they be asking for proof? If not I can see them getting in some interesting legal battles pretty quickly.

I think something like: http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com/blog3/ is great - but it is totally open and honest - you state who you are and why you feel you've been ripped off.

This anonymous sniping isn't going to help anyone. If someone rips you off write a blog post about it, tell people you work with, or better yet talk to the offending party in person.

This feels like bitching-meets-4chan. At least http://www.grouphug.us tries to keep both sides anonymous.

gk16• 14 years ago

FYI: http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com/blog3 leads to a giant ad for some Canadian pill site.

ljf2• 14 years ago

Really - no adverts when I visit it?

Edit: Some sort of IE7 hack/virus/attack? (sorry can't reply to your message for some reason)

http://i.imgur.com/r8u2I.png - screenshot is with adblock turned on, but I also tried it with it turned off and didn't get it.

davedd2• 14 years ago

Yep, seems to be compromised there:

http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/youthoughtwewouldntnotic...

cbr• 14 years ago

With FF10 on OSX 10.6 I see the ad too: http://i.imgur.com/FdGJ6.png

stroboskop• 14 years ago

Anonymous accusations, no verification and guaranteed reputational damage to those accused: This is a bad idea.

If you have legal claims, press charges instead of going down this road.

Edit: the first post, an anonymous accusation (by the site's creator?), disappeared shortly after the site showed up on HN. Also, now suddenly submittals are subject to review (by whom?).

gpcz• 14 years ago

This fantastic speech by Mike Monteiro ( http://vimeo.com/22053820 ) explains how you can avoid ever having to use this site as a last resort to get your grievances resolved.

gavingmiller3• 14 years ago

This is an absolutely brilliant talk. And if you do any freelance or contract work you can learn something from it.

The quote: 'when you hire a lawyer [to handle contracts] you switch from being a design amateur to a design professional' really spoke to me, and it applies equally to programmers.

jebblue• 14 years ago

I was about to watch it but the page starts out with an F Bomb, if I wanted to aspire to that level of communication I could have stayed in the Navy.

Gustomaximus• 14 years ago

In an ideal world this is great but anonymously posted data only could increase problems with people posting one or many stories about others they just want to harm for personal reasons.

While self naming probably increases the chance of legal issues I think people should have the choice to say I am the person he did this to to help credibility. And if one have it all documented there should be nothing to be worried about.

lizzard• 14 years ago

It strikes me that the anonymity is mostly pointless here. It may be meant to protect the accuser of taking a hit to their own reputation, but the accused can just post the accuser's name and their own side of the story in comments or on another site. So in the long run, there wouldn't be much benefit to posting anonymously.

We had a discussion about this last weekend at She's Geeky. There are some women's lists that pass around information like, say, managers at {big company} who are known harassers and should be avoided. If we stick to backchannels to share this type of information, we aren't helping, perhaps, the very people (new to a company or a scene) who need it most. If we put the information in public, we suffer the blowback on many fronts; and our vulnerability is greater than that of the accused. I tend to come down on the side of greater transparency, but it may be that the most privileged person still "wins" -- except, as someone pointed out earlier, when 5 developers report similar experiences.

jkolya• 14 years ago

They should force the developers to put their names. That way people know which developers to stay far away from. Don't go near anyone that would post to something like this.

laurenceputra• 14 years ago

thanks, we have started to enforce it alr :)

dangrossman2• 14 years ago

> People who feel that they have been wrongly accused can now send in feedback that they have been wronged and we will look into it

That sounds like a bad idea. You either publish submissions through the website, or you don't publish at all. If you manually take the 'feedback' and turn it into a story, you're now the publisher and lose the legal protections of the Communications Decency Act.

Your site was a better idea, legally, before you posted that.

ramy_d• 14 years ago

Everyone here is saying it, anonymously calling others out by name is wrong and profesionally destructive.

This is why we pay lawyers: http://www.dvafoto.com/2011/04/fuck-you-pay-me-a-discussion-...

barefoot2• 14 years ago

How about making it a paid subscription service instead? I would subscribe to that.

Developers have their identity confirmed (to avoid anonymous business-bashing) and can freely discuss bad (and possibly good) experiences with businesses.

The membership agreement could explain that no emotional or biased comments would be allowed and would encourage some level of explanation of why the client did not pay along with proof in the form of bounced checks, etc...

gavingmiller3• 14 years ago

Ultimately it's your fault as a contractor if you don't get paid. And a site like this does nothing to teach developers, freelances, designers, and the like how to avoid these pitfalls which is why I'll never use it.

Why is it your fault? Because as a professional you've not taken the time/money to have a contract created to cover your ass. Contracts exist to protect both parties from each other. And it is your professional duty to know what's in your contract (not a piece meal that you dug up on the internet.) You should be able to explain to your clients what is in your contract, why it's there, and how it benefits them and you.

pavel_lishin• 14 years ago

The stories I read on the site mentioned contracts, and people still refused to pay, causing the contractors to have to go to court, get a ruling in their favor, and then get the sheriff to go and collect - and that's assuming they have any money or assets left to collect.

singular• 14 years ago

Didn't he have a contract which he used to successfully sue the client with? It didn't seem to make any difference.

At the same time I am uneasy with this sort of one-sided public exposure, doesn't feel very professional even if true, and of course without knowing the facts of the matter we don't know whether it is in fact true.

cgh• 14 years ago

It seems that contracts are assumed. These are truly delinquent clients that attempt to weasel out of the contract any way they can.

One time, we had a client stiff us for $50,000, contract and all. We delivered a bunch of back-end work and he disappeared. We've never been able to find him.

Karunamon• 14 years ago

>Ultimately it's your fault as a contractor if you don't get paid.

Um.. what? It looks like, judging by the first story on the page, there was a contract which he successfully sued the delinquent client with, and it's just taking forever to collect.

It's not your fault that the judicial system is an inefficient mess and that people lie.

Kesty2• 14 years ago

Contract are only really usefull for big company and with big accounts.

For private freelancers and small/medium jobs suing someone for breach of contract will probably not be a viable option.

The amount of time, effort and money that you need to sue someone and win sometimes is seample not feasible.

Yes, having a contract written by a laywer may work as a deterrent for some clients. But if they don't accept you still need to file a lawsuit.

And there is also the problem that sometimes they simple can't pay. They look and act like they have all the money in the world, but they are actually betting all they have in a website because "making a website is easy and I will make millions with my great idea".

Then even if you win they are simply going bankrupt and you will never see nor your money nor the ones that you spent on lawyers.

feralchimp• 14 years ago

It is foolish to do "contract work" with no contract, period.

The other key deterrent is to keep a handle on your deliverables until the client pays you. That does not mean "kill switch" in an app running on someone else's servers, it means (whenever possible) don't put the deliverables on someone else's servers until they pay you.

If the work depends on their pre-existing code or assets, get the dependencies into your private and properly secured development environment (with a tightly scoped license and NDA to protect the client).

And make sure your contract says that until they pay you, everything you create is your property. You can't claw fees out of a bankrupt client, but you can at least keep exclusive rights to your work.

tomkarlo3• 14 years ago

"Contracts are only really useful for big company and with big accounts."

This is totally untrue, and incorrect. Not only because you can take even a tiny client to small claims court (but without a written contract, forget it) but because contracts are also there to protect YOU from claims by a client against you and your business. If you believe that your business is valuable, or you have any personal assets you'd hate to lose to a lawsuit, you should be using a written contract any time you're doing work for hire as a contractor.

crag• 14 years ago

One dangerous thing that stands out is this "kill switch". VERY bad idea. Now you are liable for damages.

The way to handle this is: When you get the judgement against your "client", slap a lean on his properties equal to the amount owed (and throw in your court costs). That inclues his accounts. All you need is an order from the judge. That's it.

That's about all you can do really. Is to go after his assets. Also I'd let the BBB and your local Chamber know. You'd be surprised how effective both these organizations can be.

driverdan• 14 years ago

The BBB is a shakedown and won't do anything about the situation, especially if the company in question is a member.

Zancarius• 14 years ago

> One dangerous thing that stands out is this "kill switch". VERY bad idea. Now you are liable for damages.

Agreed. Worse, since that information is now public, not only is he liable but the chances he might be counter-sued are markedly increased.

He may technically be in the right, but the law doesn't like vigilante justice.

shabble2• 14 years ago

I wonder if it's legal to state upfront in your contract that 'technical measures' are implemented in your work to prevent theft of service (or whatever you call the use of the work product without payment), and are to be deactivated & removed following completion/final payment?

The software licence-key approach seems somewhat similar, and I've yet to come across legal proceedings "because we didn't pay the guy and our 30-day demo ran out", although I'm sure it could get more complicated for services rather than actual shrinkwrapped products.

On the other hand, you've got the fact that it's laid out in the contract (which is presumed read, rather than just clicked through like a shrinkwrap EULA), and the interesting potential for DMCA/WIPO96'alike anti-circumventation proceedings against clients who refuse to pay and extract the kill-switch code to reactivate.

In that theme, is:

    final_invoice_paid = false;
    if (!final_invoice_paid) { exit() }

a valid "means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner"?

My immediate thought is yes, assuming you're still the copyright holder (and you have a copyright assignment on payment clause in contract), but jurisdictional work-for-hire terms might screw you.

rmc3• 14 years ago

Reminds me of the talk "Fuck you, pay me", where they talk about how the client only gets copyright assignment upon reciept of final payment. Thus, if they stop/don't pay, then they do not have copyright on the work, and hence are guilty of copyright infringement if they use it.

ww520• 14 years ago

You can structure the "kill switch" as temporary licenses that expire after a while. Give them an 1-month license to try out things. Give them the full license upon receiving of full payment. If they want extension, give them another 1-month license.

patio112• 14 years ago

This is not a way forward.

1). Work with better clients. You can have invoice collection problems at $50k, too, but they're much less likely than at $500 and you have much better options for... escalation methods at that point.

2). If you're not a bank, stop taking on so much credit risk. Businesses can deal with substantially sterner payment terms than you'd think to offer. If your clients balk, see #1. (Thomas has some suggestions here, too, many of which reduce to "Work for Thomas' clients and charge enough that dealing with their purchasing processes is worth your headaches rather than chasing deadbeats for Snickers money.")

3). Showing up on iamachumpconsultant.com will not enhance your professional reputation, bill rate, or client pool.

edw5192• 14 years ago

Patrick, I completely agree with you, which is why I have never publicized my difficulties with problem customers.

But something in my reptilian brain really still likes this. Let me tell you why...

You say "Work with better clients." Working with better clients means avoiding the bad ones. Avoiding the bad ones means being able to identify them. Being able to identify them means being warned.

It's almost like seeing an obstacle in the highway and wanting to warn others going in the opposite direction. But how do you do that? I once had the idea of putting a giant tattoo "Avoid me." on my bad clients' foreheads.

The biggest problem with bad clients isn't that they took you, it's that they never go away; they just keep popping up over and over, only to take advantage of others.

One former client of mine is the perfect example. He never paid his bills, he was extremely abusive, he was often very unethical, and would do anything to make an extra buck. He would pop up all over the country with a different name, starting the cycle all over again. I recently noticed he just got out of jail with a brand new name and web site. If only I could find a righteous way to warn others, "Run the other way!"

patio112• 14 years ago

If you want to perform (for lack of a better word) a mitzvah for the community, rather than picking out a single abusive customer, use your experience and teach people how to pattern match.

Memo to young Rails developers: "I have an idea for a website. If you build v1.0 I'll pay you a whole thousand dollars and you might get equity if it works very well." has never had a happy ending. (Slight overstatement there, but it won't weigh on my conscience.)

zupreme• 14 years ago

I think by, "Work with better clients", Patrick really means, "Stop doing work for cheap clients". I agree with him that payment from clients in the 5-digit range tends to go much smoother than from those at the bottom of the barrel.

I would also add that, when you charge a higher rate, you also can justify higher initial deposits and milestone payments along the way. This gives your client more "Skin in the game" which makes them more likely to honor the contract terms so that they can receive the final deliverable.

When I first started doing freelance development I made a practice of undercutting everyone else to get the gigs. This did earn me a fair supplemental income, but it was not a business model as clients at this level (<$1k) tend to have very little vendor loyalty and will just move on to the next cheap provider when you eventually try to raise your rates. Since restricting myself to projects of $5k or above things have gone much smoother and I'm alot happier.

henrikschroder• 14 years ago

I like http://clientsfromhell.net/

Same idea as this, but funnier and more about learning to laugh about the stupidities of some clients and moving on.

mechanical_fish• 14 years ago

I recently noticed he just got out of jail with a brand new name and web site.

This is an amusing and dramatic example of why, while it's all good fun for one's reptilian brain, the tactic of trying to call out problem customers by name isn't going to help very much: People with negative reputations have nothing much to lose by starting over.

Whereas those with positive reputations do have something to lose. And the problem with throwing mud is that some of the mud inevitably gets on the thrower.

This is why the effective way to warn people about problem customers is in secret, generally over drinks.

benohear3• 14 years ago

Asking for something like 30% up front is a very good way to filter out problematic clients. I regularly don't even bother to collect the up front payment once they've accepted it, but if the client refuses then it's a red flag.

Often it's the client himself who chases me up to make the payment. That's a very good sign.

lsc• 14 years ago

while I agree that calling out unethical behaviour might be best for the industry as a whole, for an individual? calling out someone else is almost always self-destructive. There are two sides to any story, and just like how an insurance company will avoid a customer that gets in accidents even if it wasn't their fault, in business, people often avoid people that get in a lot of disputes, even if they were the wronged party.

tptacek• 14 years ago

Most of the customers that will pay you 20-40k for web work would never bother trying to stiff you; it would cost them more in process exceptions and legal review (which happens the first time the word "lawyer" occurs in an email message) than it does to simply pay you. But most of all, it's not their f'ing money. The company pays, not them.

So I might be substantially more wary about working for someone who's paying out-of-pocket than I would for a real customer.

alanstorm• 14 years ago

I'm not sure how useful public shaming and griping are, but I do think it works on the iamayoungconsultantandnoonetalksaboutthis.com level. I'd have found the stories super useful as an insecure 25 year old "forced" into the freelance market.

fleitz• 14 years ago

Fully agree with you Patrick, I've had some bad experiences with payments that turned out to be blessings in disguise.

As one of my mentors said about taking people to court "How much of your time / resources would it take to sue them? How much would you gain? How long would it take you to generate that much rev?" When I realized that it took less time to generate the rev than to sue I decided to drop the matter and focus on finding better clients.

benohear3• 14 years ago

The way I tend to look at it is "paying for education".

paulhauggis• 14 years ago

This is one of the reasons I always ask for a percentage up-front (usually along the lines of 30-50%). A client that is willing to do this will more than likely pay you when the project is finished.

Before I did this, I had tons of clients that just wouldn't pay me or lie and tell me the "check is in the mail"..when it really wasn't.

When I was young and naive 6+ years ago, it put me out of business and I had to get a job.

guelo• 14 years ago

Sounds like you're threatening to put me on iamachumpconsultant.com while discouraging me from putting you on iwasntpaid.com.

Just like corporations can ruin consumers' credit ratings almost without recourse, the concept here is to ruin these delinquent payer's reputation via a registry everyone can check.

readme• 14 years ago

The problem is that everything on this website is absolute heresay. We have no way of knowing whether someone is posting truth or lies.

larrys• 14 years ago

"You can have invoice collection problems at $50k, too, but they're much less likely than at $500"

Where are you getting that from? From my extensive experience with both large and small transactions I don't find that to be the case. Assuming the profit potential is the same would you rather have the risk of 1 50,000 customer or 100 $500 customers? (Let's assume the $50,000 customer is reselling your product at the same margins).

"If you're not a bank, stop taking on so much credit risk. Businesses can deal with substantially sterner payment terms than you'd think to offer"

It's a risk that needs to be evaluated. Be to easy on credit you loose money. To strict you will loose business. Really no different than security policies or spam filters.

It also depends on your margin. If you have a large margin on your product you can afford to take a loss much easier then if you are selling Plasma TV's with very small markup.

Currently one of the products we sell is less than $50 and our cost is less than $10. If someone wants to mail a check, no problem. (Although of course we try and get payment by credit card.) We are making (say) $40 so if we don't get the payment no big deal. Not sure I would say the same if the numbers were 100 times larger though.

minikomi• 14 years ago

What about the reverse - They paid on time, they get a gold star.

edsull• 14 years ago

Created an MVP app to solve this problem based on a similar situation I experienced. http://app.g2link.com/

mgkimsal3• 14 years ago

Similar situation, but closer to $9k. Filed a lawsuit in court - still waiting 3.5 years later (NYC). I suspect it'll take a long to collect even after a judgement.

Yes, don't extend so much credit - lesson learned (the hard way).

I consulted with a number of people debating whether or not to blog about this situation with the person's name. In the end I chose not to at that time, but realized later that this person had another non-payment suit pending which had been filed the day before I started working with him. Had I researched a bit more, I might have found that (but then again, I might not have - you often don't think to do court record searches on potential clients). I ended up not disclosing his name in my blog, but did disclose the location I filed a suit. Anyone wanting to know can go check the public records and find out for themselves. Felt like a decent middle ground, and it's not irrevocably commiting myself to having been the "name and shamer". But without more naming and shaming, this behaviour by some people will continue. I found out later that this guy had also stiffed multiple other parties, who were then coming to me for advice about how to collect. "File a NY lawsuit" was the only answer I had.

Perhaps some public naming and shaming would either correct this person's behaviour or at least ward off others from working with him in the future. one person complaining about no payment can be written off as a crank. 5 devs in a 5 month period, all from different areas, would be harder to dismiss.

vacri3• 14 years ago

Another middle ground would be to name and shame just to thing that are factually part of the public record: "I am suing John Smith in court for non-payment of $9k for work done 3.5 years ago". Don't go into fiery detail, keep it to the facts that are part of the court record.

Of course, the hard part is keeping all the opinion stuff out of the blog posts around the fact-only one.

mgkimsal3• 14 years ago

right... well, that's almost what I did. saying where it was, letting someone google my name in nyc and look for court records. i've only sued one person in nyc - it wouldn't be that hard.

But, publicizing on my blog, yeah. In some ways I think the moment's passed. If/when we ever get to court, I'll release the name then, unless there's some gag order (am I being too dramatic?)

mikecaron2• 14 years ago

I have started to put a clause in my own contracts that's paraphrased like so: I do some work for you and submit it to you for verification. You have x days to verify it. If you fail to verify it or tell me a scheduled date for verification by that date, it goes on github for the world to see and use for free. I.E. "F* U, Pay Me."

kaffeinecoma• 14 years ago

Interesting approach, but what stops the client from using this to his advantage? "Hmm, if I fail to pay, the code becomes open-source, and then I can use it for free."

mikecaron2• 14 years ago

Depends on how much they want to deter competition. This particular company was a hardware video switch; competitors could easily port the same app to their machines and then the client loses the advantage they had previously.

motters• 14 years ago

Well, it's a nice idea but I think this is high risk. In the very distant past when I was young and naive there were occasions on which I didn't get paid for commercial work, so I can sympathize with that. However, naming and shaming rogue customers could just be a recipe for libel lawsuits.

Jayasimhan• 14 years ago

on the iwasntpaid.com site:

I was eager that the service would let me search for the client names and get reviews on them quickly. And providing a very basic template for each story for the author to enter metadata around the story. I think that would be a much better experience for readers and contributors.

iclelland• 14 years ago

> I was eager that the service would let me search for the client names and get reviews on them quickly.

That's what I was expecting -- I tried to search for "Martinez" and "Padbury"; two of the names prominently featured in the front page stories right now, and got a "0 results" page for both terms.

jagbolanos• 14 years ago

We are currently bootstrapping our startup with some consulting work in iOS and Rails. This is the process that we follow:

1) We discuss the project with the client stating our hourly rates clearly from the beginning and that we also work in our startup so we won't be a "full-time" developer 2) We then make a clear estimation of time and deliverables for the project + time for testing/debugging/QA + time for calls + time to prepare for publication to the App Store. 3) If they accept we make a clear contract with several payments and deliverables. 4) We ask for 20% to 40% upfront payment and then the rest divided by time and deliverable completion. 5) The last payment is conditioned to App Store approval (in case it is iOS) 6) We only give the source code after the last payment is done 7) We keep sending weekly updates usually via TestFlight (when iOS) and use a Google Doc for any observations that they have 8) We have discovered that some clients also want time spent so we always use toggl as time tracking tool.

I know there are still risks but at least with the upfront payment and deliverable payments you always keep healthy cashflow, the clients feel they are protected and you feel protected too.

This way it's also easier to detect a red flag, in that case you can just stop your development until the payment is done (We actually did that once now and it worked really well).

Kesty2• 14 years ago

I completely agree.

That and a (very) detailed list of requirement and goals is the best way to go.

bradly• 14 years ago

ZenCash is new startup that is solving the problem the right way. It can connect with your invoicing service (FreshBooks, Harvest, Blinksale) and then they will contact the client when the refuse to pay. They work with a collection agency so now we the lone web developer can actually force someone to pay.

http://www.zencash.com/

corywatilo• 14 years ago

Actually collecting isn't that hard (in the U.S., at least). I won a similar case in small claims and the defendant didn't pay. All I had to do was file a form for the Sheriff's office to collect from him and pay the filing fee (I think around $45, which was then added to the amount to collect). I provided the defendant's bank account info, and when he was unresponsive to the police, they withdrew the amount from his account into an escrow account and then cut me a check for the amount owed and mailed it to me.

This can probably be a little more challenging if the account doesn't have sufficient funds in it, but I was happy to see that the system worked. It was a learning process for me (first time I had to do it, and thankfully, knock on wood, the last), but in the end, justice was done and I got paid.

frederico• 14 years ago

Upon reading this article I seem to think that in most cases it's actually the developers fault. Don't be retarded; create a contract for the work you do with your potential employer.

I've been doing freelance for quite some time; and did have two clients try to screw me over; however due to the contracts which I setup ahead of time, and having a lawyer send a simple note upon their threat of not paying, quickly remedied this non-paying issue.

1) Cover your ass 2) Setup a reasonable Payment schedule 3) Don't be stupid

benjohnson• 14 years ago

My Dad had a folder labeled 'Deadbeats' at this small consulting firm. It was in the conference room - anybody was free to look at it. In the field he was in, word got around quickly so there was a few tardy clients that paid but stipulated that he remove their transgressions from the 'Deadbeats' folder.

jacques_chester3• 14 years ago

Sounds like he also needed a "Deadbeats Who Eventually Paid Up" folder as well.

itsmicks• 14 years ago

This is basically a rite of passage for all freelancers/lawyers/service workers unfortunately. My rule of thumb: If someone doesn't want to give you at least 20% upfront for a project, you don't want to work with them. Always give yourself checkpoints in the project for partial payments instead of a lump sum at the end.

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

In general this sort of site gets sued a lot. For the exemplar site see RipOffReport which has almost more lawsuits than posts it seems. So if you run it for any length of time be sure to have a good legal team already in place.

The other thing is that there is an endless supply of bad business deals gone wrong so any individual deal that went south may make the person venting feel better (until they are sued) but they don't contribute to the overall success rate of other folks (except perhaps if they are also dealing with a specific individual or business mentioned).

Contrast this with the Nolopress (www.nolo.com) guys who, by example, provide both tools to successfully navigate what may be new territory and provide suitably anonymized examples which demonstrate the problems that you want to prevent. That is a positive outcome to a bad experience, which is shared learning and signs of things to avoid.

ohashi• 14 years ago

I worked on a similar project a while back and definitely got legal threats constantly. Not one ever followed through but I grew tired after a couple years of dealing with it.

junto• 14 years ago

This is what nasty bad ass debt collectors are for. They'll collect (really they will) and then take a cut. Carlos won't know what hit him. Get some recommendations for good debt collectors in your local area. You are wasting your precious time trying to collect this yourself. Employ them and then you can inform Carlos that it is longer his debt to you but his debt to some burly tattooed biker.

groby_b• 14 years ago

This strikes me as an exercise in futility.

If you can properly document that you should have been paid and haven't, go to court. Posting on a website won't do anything to actually recoup the cost.

If you can't prove that, you're setting yourself up for a libel claim.

So what exactly is the gain of posting there, except giving in to a temporary desire for revenge?

ryen• 14 years ago

I recommend to ask for payment at pre-defined milestones. Waiting to get paid at the very end is just asking for trouble.

EGreg• 14 years ago

How about instead, we have a pool of customers which are GOOD CUSTOMERS but which you in the future might want to move on from, for various reasons? Other developers can pick up the slack -- and some work! They would also be able to have a transition period. This website could even make a small commission from the handoffs.

The best way to avoid bad options is knowing where to find a lot of good ones. Then the others have to prove themselves to you, and you can take them or leave them :)

gee_totes4• 14 years ago

I was involved in the case involving Carlos 'Storm' Martinez, who is an amazing post sound mixer and a stand-up guy. I am a little perturbed to see him mentioned on the site.

The design of the site in question was good, no doubt, but it was also riddled with a stolen Neutraface2 font face and the HTML didn't validate. And there was no RoR backend; the whole site was hosted on a GoDaddy shared server.

From my understanding of the dispute, the site was delivered many months late, and then the designer doubled his price. When Storm refused to pay double for late work, the designer linked in an overlay from a file hosted on Dropbox that announced 'This site was stolen'. That was the 'kill switch'. The designer also made a few blog posts and tweets bragging about his 'kill switch', which he later took down.

This lead to a panicked call from Storm to me to move the site over to my servers until the dispute could be resolved. A few days after that, I received a very aggressive e-mail from the designer threatening to sue me for stealing his work.

What iwasntpaid.com needs is links to conflict resolution and contract negotiation books, which are important freelancing skills that the designer sorely lacked. You never introduce yourself to a fellow freelance web programmer with "Hi, my name's Jeff, and I'm going to sue you over this dispute I have with another party".

Given the designer's history of posting complaints about how he's been screwed out of $500 and then taking them down once he realizes that it might be bad for his reputation, I wouldn't be surprised of that post about Storm gets taken down as well.

Also, from my web-stalking around this issue, I wouldn't be surprised if the hours that the designer put in trying to smear Storm across the internets, billed at the designer's normal rate, exceeded the payment he was expecting from Storm.

tl;dr: Settle on a rate before you start doing work, and if it's not a flat rate, keep the client up to date with projections of the final bill.

PS Carlos 'Storm' Martinez and his team at Creative Mixing are amazing, talented people and I would recommend them to anyone looking for post-sound work. It saddens me to see the post on iwasntpaid.com

jacques_chester3• 14 years ago

The ex-law student in me smells the sweet golden smell of defamation in the air.

john_flintstone• 14 years ago

>and the HTML didn't validate

Stupid as it is to go down the publicly naming route, what has the HTML validation status of the code got to do with anything? This is a measurement that only means something to guys who measure things - it has nothing to do with business generated, traffic, or the user experience of a website (the true yardsticks of good work).

gee_totes4• 14 years ago

True, it doesn't have anything to do with anything. It was just a pet peeve of mine.

We need to adhere to standards, dammit!

anthonyb7• 14 years ago

If a site doesn't validate, it might not appear properly in some browsers, reducing your customers' experience of your site. In extreme cases, it might also mean that they can't (eg.) see your buy button, killing your sales.

jenius2• 14 years ago

html doesnt validate if you put in a single facebook opengraph tag. css doesn't validate if you put in a vendor prefix. these tools are outdated and useless.

samlev• 14 years ago

Every time I hear the term "kill-switch", it instantly lowers my opinion of the developer. Something about it just irks me.

thoughtsimple• 14 years ago

You didn't mention if he really lost the case in court as noted in the post. Did he? Has he refused to pay the settlement? Was there a contract that he refuses to pay? Seems to me that you will have a hard time excusing the details if any are true.

gee_totes4• 14 years ago

Only Storm and the designer would be able to answer those questions about the court case.

But in my experience doing web work for Storm over the past five years, I have never had any payment disputes. We also have an ongoing relationship because he does post-sound work for my films. It's a shame to see him smeared in a public forum because I don't think he deserves it.

sheldonh• 14 years ago

I would like to see the following unfounded claim supported:

"Given the designer's history of posting complaints about how he's been screwed out of $500 and then taking them down once he realizes that it might be bad for his reputation ..."

gee_totes4• 14 years ago

At the time, I didn't bother to take screenshots of the tweets that were later deleted or the blog posts that were removed (since I didn't care enough and the designer had a relatively small audience).

In my heart of hearts, I was hoping the designer was just blowing off steam. I've been in the same situation before, where I think I'm right about a payment and the client disagrees, and it sucks, and I learned from the experience. I certainly didn't expect the designer to still be sore over it six months later, even after he claims he won the court case.

jenius2• 14 years ago

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen - since he forgot to introduce himself, let me introduce you to Lee Gillentine (http://www.fishburd.com/). He is the one who made the above post, and is a little angry that I called his design crappy, and that I caught him trying to steal from me.

I certainly do not blame Mr. Gillentine for the numerous errors he made in the above post since most of this was just regurgitated from what he heard from Mr. Martinez, but unfortunately, almost everything he said was wrong. I have very clear documented evidence that this is so, which is why I won the court case. Let's take it point by point.

- The font was licensed

- It was written in html5, cross-browser tested, and worked perfectly

- Mr. Martinez's previous site was hosted on a godaddy shared server, and that site was made by Mr. Gillentine. Since I know godaddy hosting is horrible, I switched his hosting to FatCow before putting up the site. So not only was this inaccurate, but Mr. Gillentine is the culprit for his own criticism.

- The site was not delivered late, and my price wasn't doubled. I charged hourly, and made the rate clear in the contract that Mr. Martinez signed. I have documents in which he says that his time constraints are "asap", and that he doesn't have budget constraints. No final price was ever discussed, I just recorded my hours worked, put them on an invoice, and sent it.

- What Mr. Gillentine did was attempt to steal the site for Mr. Martinez by removing the stolen notice and re-hosting it on his own servers. Whenever you find yourself ripping someone's html and hosting it on your own website (much like Curebit did to 37signals), you must know that you are clearly doing something wrong. And yes, if you find someone trying to steal your work, you do typically send them an aggressive note telling them to take it down. And it worked.

- There was a rails back end, it was hosted elsewhere because (as I assume most people here know) you need a different server setup to handle a rails environment. The other host was mapped to a subdomain on the site.

- I never took down the site. In fact, I didn't even have access to the site, since Mr. Martinez tried to change all his hosting passwords and steal the site from me (that was why I triggered the stolen notice). Mr. Martinez took his own site down and parked his domain because it was better than facing the embarrassment of having a huge notice over your site telling everyone that you are a thief. I would have loved to have that notice stay up for longer.

- I have no "history of posting complaints about how I have been screwed out of $500 and then taking them down". This is 100% baseless, and makes no sense, I don't even know where he came up with this. Everything I post has and will stay up until I receive payment.

- I have spent, by my estimates, about 30 minutes in total telling this story over the web. In fact, I would assume that Mr. Gillentine's time "web-stalking" the issue far exceeded my time spreading the word about it. The bulk of my time spent on damages from this was spent waiting around in the courthouse, which takes forever.

And for the person who asked below, I did win the court case, I have the court order saying he has to pay me, and it has been over a month and I still have literally not heard a word from him. I didn't want to have to call the police, and I even reached out to his friends to ask them to put me in contact with him so I didn't have to do this, and they said no. Too bad.

nfriedly• 14 years ago

Just a friendly word of advice from a former contractor: if you ever feel the need to put a kill-switch in a site you're developing, it's time to stop, cut your losses, and find a new client to work for. It just isn't worth it. Send them a bill for the work completed so far if you want, but don't expect it to get paid and don't worry about it when it doesn't.

As for how to do that and still make a living: double your rates and require 50% up front. That way you've gotten "full" payment by your current rates if the work goes sour, and a nice bonus when it doesn't.

In our line of work, there are a lot of good clients out there. Life's too short to deal with the bad ones.

k-mcgrady• 14 years ago

I just read the first story on the site. Taking someone to court over $1000 is a waste of time. $1000 may be a lot of money to you (it is to me) but I have faced this problem twice and you are much better spending your time on new projects and forgetting the client.

I have found the key to getting paid is milestones. I will not work with someone unless they are willing to pay 50% of the total before I start. This way if they cancel the project you are getting some money for your time. I also make clear to the client they do not need to pay the final 50% until they have the project from me. This way they need to trust me enough to pay the first 50% and I need to trust them that they will pay the final 50%. I've been using this system for the past 12 months and haven't had any problems with clients since.

There is a good thread on Programmers Exchange about charging clients (particularly for freelancers): http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63042/recomme...

davidpoarch• 14 years ago

I think this issue is very significant these days, with the boom of outsourcing and remote freelance work. For scenarios with no down payment requirement, there's no guarantee the service provider will receive payment at all (and no guarantee the rest of the payment will be paid for the down payment scenario either). And for scenarios where a down payment (or full payment) is paid, there's no guarantee the service will ever be delivered to the requester. And how about scenarios where the wrong service was delivered? And how about if the service provider and requester are not in the same country (how do you go about taking legal action)?

I am a co-founder of a nascent third party payments aggregator (TPPA) called PayGuard. We are currently building our Beta, but our system specifically targets such scenarios. And with such capability, our system inherently solves the same issues with material products as well (a market PayPal currently dominates, though it does so extremely unsatisfactorily).

tomkarlo3• 14 years ago

One of the big problems with web consulting and clients that don't pay is that unlike other business situations, these clients often lack physical assets and storefronts that can be used to collect on a judgement from a court. Traditionally, if you had a small claims judgement and it's not paid, you could have the Sheriff or the like serve notice or even put a lien on assets.

When a client's business is entirely virtual, there's a risk they'll simply change their mailing address or otherwise dodge a judgement, and it can be very difficult to enforce the claim (or at least not economic to do so.) I've seen this happen a number of times in recent years in situations where the amount ranged from $1500 to $10,000.

meapix• 14 years ago

How about freelancers who never complete work but still get paid? it happened to me.

dgunn• 14 years ago

Just build a kill switch into the code. If they don't pay, use it.

Simo• 14 years ago

just for argument sake: 1 - freelancers union is working very hard to pass the Freelancer Payment Protection Act (S4129/A6698) that grant freelancers the same wage protection as traditional employees and require the Department of Labor to pursue freelancers' unpaid wages holding deadbeat executives personally liable for up to $20,000 and jail time. 2 - on the union website you can find the Contract Creator, a free tool that allows you to easily create a strong (and nationally accepted) contract to protect yourself. my2cents

joshfraser• 14 years ago

The lesson here is never piss off someone with a blog and an audience. His name will forever show up in Google as the guy who didn't pay up.

I Wasn't Paid

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