
I was owed $5k. I tried to hold them accountable - msrpotus
https://medium.com/@wudanyan/i-was-owed-more-than-5-000-from-late-paying-publications-47db55dfba2a
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GhostVII
I think a better strategy would be to send an email as soon as the payment was
late, saying a late fee would be assessed in x days if payment is not received
(or just include the late fee in the contract, I suppose). Attaching an
arbitrary late fee without any notice seems strange to me, but I don't do
freelancing so I guess I don't really know. It just seems like any fees should
be documented somewhere, and people should be allowed to accept/reject them
before entering into a contract.

~~~
phonon
In NYC, under the "Freelance Isn't Free Act" (which she mentioned in her
emails) paying later than 30 days gives an award of double damages (twice the
amount owed).

[https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/about/Freelanc...](https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/about/Freelance-
Law.pdf)

[https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/workers/FAQs-F...](https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/workers/FAQs-
Freelance.pdf)

[https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/workers/Court-...](https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/workers/Court-
Navigation-Freelance.pdf)

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jmathai
Disclaimer: I'm not sure what the legality of this was so I'm not recommending
it - but it proved effective in my case.

I was owed several thousand dollars by a client and they were several months
late in making a payment. They strung me along for a while but at some point
it was no longer worth my time.

Realizing I wasn't interested in any future work from the client I simply took
their site down and emailed the owner asking for payment. I suspected they'd
try to get the site back up (it was in their AWS account) but the owner
replied right away asking for my Paypal address.

~~~
EGreg
I was sooo tempted to do this with a client who owed me $30K

But I was worried about getting sued by that client.

~~~
charlesdm
Yes. What he did is generally not good advice / a good course of action.

What you do is let them know you expect payment in X days, and if not start
legal proceedings. And then you follow up on that.

~~~
jmathai
Meh. I wasn’t going to bother getting a lawyer involved for a balance of a few
thousand dollars. I did threaten legal action though it proved futile.

Out of curiosity, why was it not a good course of action? Did the client have
any leverage after being 6+ months past due on their payment?

~~~
charlesdm
I was more referring to the $30k example above. In your situation probably
fine for a few thousand, but if someone owes you a significant amount of money
then I don't think you should act in this way. You just sue them (if all else
fails).

~~~
hnzix
_> then I don't think you should act in this way._

What is your rationale? Netflix suspends your account for non-payment, the
same should apply to web infrastructure.

~~~
b_t_s
Netflix is providing a service. It's on their computer. They are certainly
entitled to terminate your access to it. Logging into someone else's AWS
account and deleting their stuff is, in the eyes of the law, more akin to
Netflix breaking into your house and stealing your TV to stop you watching
Netflix when your credit card payment is declined. Or remotely formatting all
your computers to make sure you can no longer access your Netflix account.
That is not the correct legal path to remedy the problem....it's a felony.
It's all well and good to play hardball with people who are not paying you,
but the correct way to do that is with lawyers. If you commit a felony first,
then they can tell you to go pound sand and your choices are now (a) pound
sand or (b) Get your 2 grand or whatever was owed, pay half of it the the
lawyer, and then go to jail when they report you to the police out of spite.

~~~
EGreg
Here is the real question...

Can you program in some code to display on the website “this website owner
needs to pay for their site” etc.

and if they don’t pay you, you don’t disable it. And it activates after a
while. Plus it would have redundant things so they can’t easily just hire one
guy to remove it.

Or it could be some thing that breaks the site in a less obvious way and they
call you to fix it.

It doesn’t seem to break any laws that I know of. Do you?

~~~
b_t_s
I am not a lawyer, and your scenario is getting into the gray zone where you
really ought to consult a lawyer to get an even remotely reliable opinion.
That said, my understanding is that: You shouldn't get convicted(no crime was
committed if you do it right). You might still get arrested(have fun
convincing officer donut that you remotely disabled some business's website
without hacking). You might get sued in civil court for damages. You may or
may not win the civil case depending on the wording of your contract,
implementation details of your sabotage, the mood of the judge, and the
alignment of the stars. I would still argue that a few hundred bucks to hire a
lawyer to send a form letter is safer, easier, and more reliable, assuming of
course that the client resides in a country with reasonably strong rule of
law. You're trying to use a hacker solution to a lawyer problem, which is both
unprofessional and generally frowned on by the legal system.

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BrentOzar
The late fee needs to be in your contract and clearly stated on the invoice.
(And even then, companies will sometimes push back against that at contract
negotiation time.)

If you don't have a signed contract, you don't have real receivables.

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ourlordcaffeine
A friend was once owed about $2k, and did not receive payment on time. She
phoned up the person processing payments, who told her that essentially the
person running the shop had instructed them not to pay her.

She sent an email to the head of the company (small media company that works
on documentaries), who told her that she would not get paid because there was
a "grammatical error" in her work, and if she continued to ask for payment
they would not hire her again (now I should mention the person she was working
with was happy with the work, she gave them the opportunity to ask for
alterations and they told her that the work was up to standard and she could
bill them).

She fired an email back quoting the contract, and how the company told her in
writing that they were happy with her work. Again she was told that she would
not get paid and should stop asking or they wouldn't work with her again. She
then got a lawyer to write to them and threaten legal action. They paid her
that day, along with what a phone call from the boss calling her a "useless
c*nt" along with a bunch of other insults directed towards the fact that she
was female.

~~~
not_a_cop75
It seems like a pretty regular phenomenon in business, that if they believe
you can be walked all over, that you will, in fact, be walked all over.

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charlesdm
It's pretty ridiculous to me to charge a late fee on net-30, especially when
you want to work with a client again in the future. My best paying clients
(e.g. multinationals) generally always pay late by one to a few weeks.

As long as you know they're good for the money and know they will pay it is a
cost of doing business.

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CodeWriter23
This is how I’ve handled it in the past. I remind them about being late, if
they pay immediately, I let it go. If they don’t, they get put on a retainer
agreement for all future work.

Only one time I had to go nuclear and send a dunning letter with the “If I
don’t receive payment within 45 days, I will have no choice but to pursue
legal remedies”. The check arrived on day 43.

~~~
goblin89
Being in the ongoing process of figuring out a billing arrangement that works
for my tiny consulting business, I’m curious about the retainer agreement you
mentioned. Does this mean you start billing a late customer lowered rate
normally used for longer term work? I thought in the same direction before,
seems to make a lot of sense.

~~~
brianwawok
No retainer: I do X hours work, I bill you for Y

Retainer: Pay us Z up front. I do X hours work. Y is deducted out of retainer
Z, which then must be replenished before more work. Basically a pay up front
method.

~~~
goblin89
Ah I see. I thought it was “pay X per month/week, work or no work, and some
hours are included in X”. Then the longer the client delays, the bigger bill
accumulates as a penalty for not paying on time. I guess it’s more of a “lost
post-payment trust on future projects” kind of thing here.

