

Help What should I do in this situation? - eeps

Hi,<p>I'm stuck in a bit of a freelance-payment type of mess, and I was wondering how to tackle the situation.<p>So, I started (about 4 weeks ago) on a project which involved moving a fairly large website from a certain platform to a newer version of that platform for $1800.<p>I was on Skype with that guy constantly, and he seemed like a very nice person at the time, and was quite helpful and understanding.<p>So, in about two weeks, I was finished with the project, and we tested it together on a test server he had set up, and it seemed to be working perfectly.<p>So, I pushed in the code to Github, and he said he would be testing it "in a few days", and he would pay me $200 of the $1800 to keep trust, and I agreed.<p>After a day, he told me he had to talk with the investors in order to get the $200, and he delivered that money.<p>Then (this is where matters complicate), in about 3 days after that, he told me he had some urgent work he needed done for the website, and he needed my help urgently.<p>And, he payed me in advance for this project ($400), and I agreed to do it.<p>Now, I finished it in about a week, however, he, apparently has still not gotten around to finalizing the first project to release my payment (and said he would not for another month).<p>He has not responded to me over the last few skype messages or the last email I have sent him.<p>Now, this strikes me as two things:<p>1) He's not going to pay me.
2) He made some commits during the time that I made the Cake 2.0 port, and he's trying to merge them in there, which is taking time.<p>What's going on, and how would I tackle this situation?<p>The last time I asked him "when he would test", he said he didn't know why this kept coming up, and he had more important things to do at the moment, and it would take another month.
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RexM
"it keeps coming up because you haven't paid me, yet." is the correct
response. You can't let people jerk you around as a freelancer. You have to
eventually cut off anymore work until you are paid.

You shouldn't release the source until you're paid in full. Also, google "fuck
you, pay me" for a humorous but insightful talk about contracts. I think the
person giving the talk is named Mike Monterro, but I could be wrong.

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eeps
Okay, but, how should I go about contacting him?

He gave me a live dump of his website, and I have his phone number (along with
that of the CEO), should I use that?

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PythonDeveloper
Do you exclusively control the github repo? If so, cut off access and don't
give it until payment is made in full. You have an implicit copyright on the
code, and he has no right to it until he's paid you in fill.

I'd go a bit further and tell him that if he doesn't pay you within 15 days,
the "interest" is $100 per week. No reason you should not get interest on your
debt.

Just FYI, I always let customers see "features", but not code, until they've
paid in full.

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eeps
Alright, but, I don't have access to the main repo (he has a fork which has
all the code) :(

