
Always pay your web developers - twapi
http://utilitybidder.co.uk/
======
patio11
As much as I like "Geek wins, hah!", I would suggest not modeling this as a
good practice for self-employed folks here. It is 2011: GoogLinkedBookTwitEtc
have ensured that you have exactly one professional reputation. You may think
future clients will see the righteousness of your actions. Consider whether
available evidence suggests that you are a good judge of the character of
clients.

Come back to this post in two months if you don't buy this prediction: it is
highly likely he doesn't get paid.

There are better ways to avoid nonpayment. Work with better customers -
reputation works both ways. Get references if required. For projects of
nontrivial length, agree to milestones and bill on successful completion.
Delivery of functional code should practically always be a milestone, which
would eliminate most of the downside risk here. Charge a premium, both to
scare away bad clients and to cover the _numerous_ sources of risk to your
ability to pay rent, of which total refusal to pay is only one.

~~~
bugsy
Really only a problem for clients that don't intend to pay. I believe it is a
very good thing to know if the client has grave worries about what you might
do if he refuses to pay. An honest client won't even be thinking of that.

There's a long established legal principle that if you don't pay a workman he
can place a lien on your property, which may even result in it being sold at
auction. You can also be charged with theft of services, a real crime for
which you go to jail.

If your new client is worried he might go to jail should he be committing
felonies, that is also a concern.

~~~
reitzensteinm
Sorry, but I wouldn't hire these guys, and I've never screwed anyone over.

We only know one side of the story. It could be that they added a whole bunch
of extra charges that weren't in the contract, and when the client balked, did
this as blackmail. Or maybe the work was of horrible quality. Who knows? I
don't want to work with people that could potentially go nuclear on me over a
legitimate dispute.

On the other hand, I'd have no trouble working with someone that has a history
of suing clients that don't pay up. Or even someone who point blank told me
he'd sue me if I didn't pay up (although I'd consider it mildly offensive).
Since I have no intention of doing something that'll make me lose a court
case, I don't fear getting sued.

Loose cannons, on the other hand, I do fear, which these guys clearly are.
Even if they're in the right, this time.

~~~
extension
_We only know one side of the story_

That's right, and you can go in endless circles second guessing which party
was in the right. If you decide that it was wrong to take the work back,
you're just siding with the client. It's not hard to imagine them having done
something equally drastic that we don't know about.

In many cases, contracting is effectively lawless and the stakes can be
arbitrarily high. There aren't many actions I would categorically rule as out
of bounds.

Keep in mind that there are people out there who are utter wrecking balls.
They do nothing but damage to everyone they work with, and sometimes to
themselves as well. The "professionalism" of their victims is what allows them
to keep going.

~~~
MrFlibble
I have a friend who is one such "wrecking ball". She would sacrifice pay and
reputation for the satisfaction of some quick payback and cheap drama. She is
however wicked skilled, but most who still deal with her do so with a grain of
salt large enough to satisfy a herd of deer.

Man, it's tiring just thinking about her drama.

------
jasonkester
Anybody who's done any consulting has run into this client before: Things are
going great, then for seemingly innocuous reasons, invoices start taking
longer to pay. Eventually you find yourself six weeks out and start asking
plain questions over the phone. Things rapidly go downhill from there.

The key in situations like this is to always stay professional. Stop working
immediately and make it clear that you'll start going again as soon as the
check clears, but stick to the high road. The client will turn petty on you,
will come up with all sorts of slanderous attacks on you, your work, and your
character. That's fine. Let him vent. Then calmly explain once again the
concept of "work for hire", and how you're perfectly happy to continue doing
work for him, provided he pays his bills.

This may or may not work. On the off chance he pays up, you get to put him on
weekly invoices payable immediately on receipt. If it doesn't, chances are
you're out a bunch of money. Either way, try to suppress your natural geek
sense of vengeance. You're the professional here. Never act otherwise.

Now, as a pro, you do have one option. Since your invoices are itemized and
dated, and source control is itemized and dated, you're well within your
rights to accurately roll back the deliverable to the state it was in after
the last paid bill. Tell the client that you don't want him to pay for any
work that he's not 100% satisfied with, and as such you have retracted your
invoice as well as the work it covered. You'll keep the associated changes
archived in case he wishes to purchase them in the future. You wish him the
best of luck going forward and regret that you'll be parting ways.

~~~
raganwald
_Since your invoices are itemized and dated, and source control is itemized
and dated, you're well within your rights to accurately roll back the
deliverable to the state it was in after the last paid bill._

Are you qualified to give legal advice? And if so, are you confident that this
advice is appropriate for all jurisdictions where someone might be reading
this comment?

~~~
jasonkester
No, and no.

If you're in this situation, chance are it's because you're working without a
clear written contract. The best you can do is work in good faith and hope
that your client does the same.

In my opinion, delivering the portion of the product that has been paid for is
acting in good faith. As is giving the option to proceed with the original
agreed transaction, should the client desire to do so.

~~~
raganwald
INAL. Of course, that acronym is always followed by bad legal advice. So for
entertainment purposes only...

I suggest that taking something away from a client is more trouble than it's
worth, even if they haven't paid for it. So to use your ideas with mine, don't
formally deliver the completed work until you are paid.

A few suggestions:

1\. Be very clear about the fact that the software is "in acceptance testing"
state until formally signed off as complete and monies have been paid. It is
not "In production." Agree in writing that when you are paid that you wipe any
databases involved and start from scratch. This establishes quite clearly that
the client is not expecting to run their business on software that is not in
production yet, they are just testing it.

2\. If this is hosted software, host development code yourself until you are
paid, at which point you can deploy it to their system.

3\. You're using source code control. Great! Establish a formal "production"
branch separate from development. Bug fixes have to be performed in both
branches. This is a good practice in any event, but when you're fighting with
a difficult client later, they will often complain that the software doesn't
work and you have to fix issues with software that is already in production
before they will pay you for work you're doing on new features. Now you can
fix issues on the production code while witholding new features until they
pony up the lettuce.

JM2C. Did I mention that INAL?

~~~
Vivtek
I'm not a lawyer, either, but these are all excellent, excellent points.
There's an underlying point:

0\. Get an explicit agreement up front about what you're doing.

Without that, you're sunk.

~~~
eftpotrm
Even with that, I've known clients come back a while later (disclaimer - I was
the grunt coder, not the boss) and insist there had been verbal agreement to
put in large extra features, or that the feature they'd spent some time
engaging with you to specify clearly wasn't anywhere near correct adn needed
completely replacing..... In one of those cases I knew exactly where the
person concerned lived. Tempation.......

A lot of clients are just fine, do what they're supposed to and pay for it. A
percentage will try to scam you even with an agreement if they sense an
opportunity - even with what you thought was a detailed bill of work - because
they realise you need them more than vice versa, they've screwed up and need
the extra to cover themselves, or because they're just plain crooks. Shouldn't
happen but it does; deal with it and move on.

~~~
Vivtek
I guess I should have added:

0.a. Get a legally binding signature and include a written-only clause. Make
it crystal clear that if something doesn't appear in that definition of
services that everybody signed and that has a price tag on it, that it isn't
covered by that price tag.

I've translated roughly 3.2 million contracts for services since switching
from programming to translation, and I'm pretty sure I could survive as a
programmer now, just from that alone.

------
tzury
I have once ran into a similar situation which the man simply refused to pay
the bill (of nearly $20K). I was simply not being able to reach the man on the
phone or get a response by mail.

Knowing taking this into the court of justice would take around 3-4 years, I
have simply set auto-redirect to random porn sites (picked the top 25 out of
Google).

It took about half a day since the man have had his lawyer send me a letter
saying something similar to: "we will pay you all what you asked for .... "

I am not sure this was the right thing to do, but I was quite young and
enthusiast by then, and I have invested allot of money in that project
(hardware and bandwidth contracts - VPS were not invented yet at that time
;-)).

------
noonespecial
If one insists on this course of action, it might not hurt to throw in a
little plausible deniability.

Instead of a landing page throwing your tantrum, have the site mysteriously
break and just show a cryptic error message, then just be too busy to fix a
problem for a client who hasn't paid anyway. Gently suggest that paying
clients come before deadbeats.

When the inevitable legal backlash comes, simply shrug and say you were
getting around to it and remind everyone that there might be someone in
arrears with a large payment or two. Plus interest. And late fee.

~~~
alecco
What for? Just move on. Don't waste more of your life on this. These people
shoot themselves in the foot all the time, there's no need to pull a trigger.

~~~
exit
no, the sleazy conniving wheeler dealers who run companies like utilitybidder
need to be excruciatingly punished for every transgression.

------
iwwr
Sequence of tweets:

 _anyone got any suggestions what to do when a client wont pay for increased
development costs for work you have already completed? 5:01 AM Jan 18th via
web

Should I change a bad clients site to a page that says they aint paid me and
then change the password? 7:08 PM Jan 20th via Twitter for Android

this is what I am reduced to <http://bit.ly/badpayers> 8:34 AM Jan 21st via
web_

Followed by about a dozen identical tweets, until it got picked up by HN.

Note the key section: _"when a client won't pay for increased development
costs"._

------
cubicle67
my dad (now retired) was an old school sign writer and had this sort of thing
(non-paying clients) happen to him on more than one occasion.

One I remember was a shop where he spent a few days signwriting the entire
front. Lots of work, most of it up on 14' tressels, and at the end the owner
refused to pay. Said he didn't have to, and there was nothing my dad could do
about it.

Except there was - dad went back one night with a roller, a long roller pole
and a large tin of white paint, and painted the entire shopfront out. Still
din't get paid, but it had two effects: one, the owner needed to get the job
done again, and two: the next guy hired would be asking some awkward
questions, like why did it look like the job had already been done but then
painted over...

~~~
lehmannro
I guess that caused more trouble for your dad than it did for the shop owner,
economically at least. Plus he would probably brag about your dad to other
shop owners. (I agree that just doing the job _for free_ is no solution
either, but do not have any better retaliation, except for proper contracts
and court claims, in mind.)

~~~
gscott
Courts are not a solution to most problems. You spend hundreds just to get
started with fees, serving the other side, then the time back and forth to
court over and over with the other side continuing the case. Now it is 6
months later and maybe the court will decide in your favor or maybe the court
will decide that you didn't do the work as specified by the client (even if
you did).

~~~
_delirium
Depending on just how big the unpaid invoice is, in some states small-claims
court is an option; it's cheaper and quicker usually. Here's a list of each
state's limits for a small-claims-court suit: <http://www.nolo.com/legal-
encyclopedia/article-30031.html>

~~~
raynimmo
yeah, that really wasnt an option as I am resident in Thailand where legal
proceedings are usually settled with big brown envelopes and such.

~~~
zeemonkee
If the company is based in the UK you could have had a local representative to
file a claim.

It may be of course that you have no legal recompense; however I'd exhaust all
possibilities in that direction before sabotaging a site.

Perhaps what's needed is a "name and shame" list of deadbeat clients somewhere
that developers can check before accepting work.

------
philiphodgen
As a non-web developer (I'm a lawyer) I learned long ago that there is a
financial point at which the balance of power switches from me to the client.

When the client owes me a trivial amount of money I can afford to walk away
from the job if I want to. If the client owes me a lot of money, now I am
shackled to that client (and the job) because I am chasing my own money.

The key is to never let the client owe you too much. For me this number is
about $2,500.

The way I solve this problem is

(1) by getting a substantial amount of money up front; if I get ANY guff from
the prospective client when I ask for money, I know how I will be treated for
the rest of the project and I may choose to back off at that point.

(2) watch the invoicing very carefully and if they are slow in paying, stop
work until they pay. Mr. Pavlov's ideas are in action here: the client is
rewarded for slow pay by halting of work with a message "Hey you owe money."

------
phylofx
According to his website, guy's a Scot and living on a small island in
Thailand, Koh Phangan to be precise. Good luck with taking legal action.

~~~
fungi
lovely place and cheep

couple of contracts a year paid in pounds/usd/euro/yen and you could sustain a
happy life.

visas are a bastard, you need to skip the country every few months to renew
your tourist visa.

~~~
raynimmo
yeah, its cheap for most, but when you have a work permit and a company setup
so that you are operating legally within Thailand it can become expensive
paying yearly company taxes and fees.

I have had Thai clients ask to see my work permit before and I am very proud
to be able to show them it as most foreign freelancers dont have one.

~~~
kirubakaran
Can you share the numbers please?

------
iwwr
From the google cache:

Developer: <http://www.junglecreative.com/>

Linkedin: <http://th.linkedin.com/in/raynimmo>

Blog: <http://www.raynimmo.com/>

~~~
madaxe
Amateur developer, amateur clients.

------
callmevlad
This seems very unprofessional and amateurish - on the part of the web
developer. Yes, maybe the client didn't pay, but resorting to this type of
public lynching will a) kill any remaining chance of
compensation/reconciliation and b) probably damage the reputation of the web
developers.

I've had my fair share of clients who didn't pay for various reasons.
Sometimes, small claims court was in order. Sometimes, having patience and
giving a struggling client time (literally almost 5 years) led to a payment in
full (plus interest!) completely out of the blue. The guy's business picked
up, and now he's still a super happy client.

What goes around comes around.

------
Isofarro
"This website is in the mail. Coincidentally, the same mail that you, dear
customer, used to send the payment cheque. I'm sure it will arrive, any day
now."

------
raynimmo
I thought I had better write an explanation as my actions here seem to have
kicked up a bit of a furore, undoubtedly that was my intention, although maybe
not on this scale, more of an attempt to embarass them. I am not sure of how
much I should go into as I signed an NDA with this client although the
contract that it was attached to ended in October; maybe someone with better
contract law knowledge than me will know more, either way I will try to be
vague.

A little about me: I am a freelance developer, educated as a software engineer
in Edinburgh then started leaning towards web development a few years back. We
quit Scotland 4 years ago to come and live on a tropical island in Thailand
where I could take my time winning small jobs, enough to earn what I needed.
Indeed its been quite a successfull last few years, winning many jobs for web
development and graphic design, all of my clients have came back for more
work. The fact I havent updated my portfolio or blog in over a year is a
testament to how busy I have been.

The bare details: I very good friend asked me to help him build a website and
a backend system for his staff to use in their day to day business. I quoted a
ridiculously low sum of money compared to western standards but a worth that I
felt I deserved for the work considering I live in Thailand where the cost of
living is less.

The contract was for 6 months initially for a fixed fee split over those 6
months. With regards to the system, which has swollen to quite a full featured
product, something I am very proud of, possibly my best piece of work to date,
just a shame it wont appear on my portfolio now. The specifications for the
sytem over the course of the development had many more additional
specifications added to cover internal aspects of the system that were not
originally envisaged, obviously not fully taken into account when originally
quoted. My contact at the company was good, he understood the pitfalls of
custom software development and when I explained to him about why the project
has taken longer he understood and we carried on regardless. As I said the
contract ended in October, the same month they stopped paying me when they
suggested that they wanted to suspend my weekly payments and pay me a lump sum
upon completion. I understood their reasons then for doing this and since the
project was behind schedule I aggreed to this.

Now I find myself within 2 weeks of delivery of the full system, so I start
getting my invoices together for the last 14 weeks of development. I forward
them to the client and I am more or less informed that there is no way they
are gonna pay that amount. Lesser amounts are then offered, tied to some crazy
scheme regarding "support" over an extended period, god knows where the
payment for the "support" period was coming from.

In the end it was a stalemate, I felt I deserved my meagre salary, it will
cost them a lot more for a UK dev to finish this where their daily wage is
more than my weekly wage, so I always thought I would win through. This is
actually their second attempt at building this piece of software, the first
one was a non-event with an indian company.

The company even flew one of their guys out here to help me finish off the
system - my friend, the guy whose idea this all was, he wrote the 'spec' for
the software. He has tried to get the UK bosses to agree to this and that but
they wont budge, I feel there is apower struggle within the conpany but I wont
go into that as it is pure speculation. In an attempt to help them understand
software development, that sometimes you dont know all of the variables until
you start, etc, etc, I forwarded a number of websites and blogs that had
interesting articles regarding the development process and reasons for their
failure or late delivery, I was told it was pointless sending them as they
wouldnt read them as they dont care. One of them was even supposed to have
said "why do we need a website?" , now how am I supposed to convince this guy
about the trials and tribulations of building a customised piece of software.

So yeah, talks broke down, I felt pissed off, I then sent archives of updated
files for the system to my contact, not really updates but resetting the
systems development back to where it was when they last paid me over 3 months
ago. I then done the same on the server system that their staff were helping
bug test. I then; foolishly now I think, put their site into maintenance mode
and switched the maintenance page to say "You aint paid me, you suck". The
site structure that was there is still there, if somewhat unfinished, all I
changed was the maintenance page; I am sure any Drupal developer knows how
easy that is to switch off. I also added an extra variable with encoded
content onto the $closure that would display if they managed to get it out of
maintenance mode. Encoded it just to make it that bit harder to find and
remove :)

I do regret doing this, not because of my actions, but as I said before, the
guy whose idea this was is a friend, he is a third of the board, it was the
other two thirds that swayed the vote though, and I feel bad for him. I know I
am not getting paid, my money is long gone, I wouldnt have done this if there
was a chance of reconcilliation, I have known that for the last few days, they
wont agree to my demands and I wont agree to theirs - stuck in the middle.

I have now changed the offline message to simply say "You aint paid me" and
have removed the encoded $closure and I dont intimate that "they suck"
anymore, its amazing what the harsh light of day makes you see.

I see a lot of flamers and haters out there, no doubt a few of you will come
back on and berate me for doing this, as I said, my actions were harsh and
misguided, but if a client bumps me in the future I would probably do it
again.

As a developer you learn something new every day, be it a sweet bit of
javascript or some cutting CSS technique, this project taught me lots over its
course. The biggest lesson I take from this though is how to handle clients
that become problematic, how to word contracts to cover all eventualities
during development and that rash actions are usually regretted in the harsh
light of day.

So yeah, thats my 2 cents worth.

What would you have done, I would love to hear what actions others would have
taken.

~~~
dusing
It doesn't sound like you put a price (both in added time and money) on the
additional out of scope features. So instead it looks like your super late,
and want more money. Not a good place to be with a "why do we need a website"
client.

~~~
raynimmo
exactly, easily my biggest failing on this is intimating exactly what extra
costs would be acrued when the initial contract expired and adjusting end
dates. Then if they pulled the plug fine, at least I wouldnt have been working
for the last 14 weeks for no money and could have moved onto another project.

~~~
bradleyland
I'm a business manager who knows how to code (poorly). Rather than pursue
programming, I saw an opportunity for be to bridge the gap between programmer
and customer, so I have a lot of experiencing guiding developers away from
catastrophes like the one you suffered.

Two things to take away from this:

* If you provide a fixed price without a fixed spec, you had better be prepared to lose your shirt. Fixed work means fixed spec. Always. Any changes must be accompanied by a document (a change order) that spells out the impact to the bottom line, because that's what business managers care most about. The key is to make sure you clearly communicate the impact to the bottom line all the way up to the check signer.

* Never let a project get to 14 weeks without the check signer (not just your contact or stakeholders; the person who will sign the check) knowing that you're accruing billing. It doesn't matter how good your friend is, you don't want them in a position where they're having to act the odd-man-out in order for you to get paid. It may be the "right" thing to do, but you can prevent them from ever being in that position by setting up communication that reaches all the way to the person who pays the bills.

------
muppetman
He's pretty bitter!

He also changed the footer of the main site!

It's a Drupal site, so you can get an idea of what it looks like non-offline
by going here: <http://utilitybidder.co.uk/user/>

~~~
Luyt
And that page has another footer: _"we ripped off our web developer for this
site and never paid him for work he done, if we knew where he put this bit of
code then we would remove it, but we cant find it, we suck. maybe its better
you just go to Uswitch"_ <http://www.uswitch.com/>

This is encoded in the web page as
'&#119;&#101;&#032;&#114;&#105;&#112;&#112;&#101;&#100;...'

------
dusing
My company deals with university sports teams, so often this is a state
institution paying us. Most invoices are paid net 60-90 despite the terms in
whey contract being net 30 + fees after. Occasionally and predictably we have
clients in the net 120 or worse camp. There is no dilute about the work or the
billing, just the finance office not doing their job, not getting the correct
POs etc... We have one Job right now we did in august and have not been paid
for despite having a PO to start. Did I mention this is the third year we have
done similar work for them?

If we did something like this we'd be out of business. At large companies the
person you sell to is not the person who pays you and creates all kinds of
problems. All you can do is work the system and try to plan for it in your
pricing. We just give less discounts and charge more for the hassle up front.
Puts a hurting on the cash-flow though. We never not been paid.

------
qlewty
You may wonder why this site is offline, if you are reading the source then
you are most probably a web developer that has been paid to change this.

    
    
    					I put this here as the company in question broke our contract and left payments outstanding, 
    					as a last resort I put their site offline, what else could I do.
    					
    					Make sure you are paid up front, even if you have a contract, they aint worth shit.
    

\-- Source code comment, haha.

------
ndl
I'm still not sure why I upvoted this. I think because it was surprising -
high entropy. I'm not sure if I consider this "right," but you have definitely
made waves.

------
axod
They're hiring!

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EkZUHRV...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EkZUHRVJhs8J:www.utilitybidder.co.uk/careers+site:utilitybidder.co.uk&cd=15&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

------
westbywest
It would be kinda funny if this were all actually a viral advertisement for
USwitch.

------
guynamedloren
That's brilliant. I didn't catch it at first, but then I returned to the page
and read the copy and it's very, very clever.

~~~
vog
In how far is this action "clever"? It isn't even original.

As far as I know, it is a common fear among small companies that some unhappy
third parties like unhappy web designers misuse their server credentials to
get up to nonsense.

The web designer intended to demolish the reputation of the company. (Who
wants to work with a company that doesn't pay the bills?)

However, if the web designer becomes publicly known, it might be a much
greater damage to him. Who wants to work with a web designer who has proven to
deal with payment issues in a totally unprofessional way, and who has proven
to be somewhat proud of misusing trust?

~~~
noonespecial
The google cache for the site has:

 _Site Content Copyright © 2010 Utility Bidder Ltd. | All Rights Reserved |
Website Development by Jungle Creative (www.junglecreative.com)_

It looks like a one man act from Scotland. If its not him, but someone else
later down the line, he'd better get on the stick because right now, the ugly
is pointing at him.

Edit: Actually poking around, he seems like a decent fellow, rocking the nomad
developer dream on a little coconut island. Doesn't seem like something he
should/would have done. That might make this doubly ugly. "Utility Bidder" may
have hired someone else for further work who took the whole thing down over a
dispute about their little part. That would be most uncool.

~~~
maushu
Scotland? Jungle Creative mentions Koh Phangan, near Thailand, as their
location. Did Earth change while I wasn't looking?

~~~
noonespecial
The developer is from Scotland, he lives and works on the island. Sounds like
a nice life.

------
cafebabe
By looking at the guys "recent work" and his blog, I tend to understand the
behavior of his client...

~~~
Luyt
Maybe he's getting his 235th visum? ;-)

~~~
cafebabe
Maybe. Nevertheless, I'm wondering, whether his web "design" and behavior is
common among people living on a small remote island. I really like to see some
statistics about that ;)

------
venti
You should also have a look at the comments in the HTML source of the site.
:-)

------
jes5199
Hoax?

------
shareme
The problem here is not non paying clients..

Its refusing to do proper pre-client interviewing to weed out non paying
clients.

------
marcuswestin
kudos

------
mmaunder
Groovy, I hope they don't sue your ass. What you've done is not dissimilar to
what the US did to Guantanamo prisoners when they suspended habeas corpus.
Sentence without trial. In future I suggest you take your lack of payment up
with the relevant authorities rather than demolish the building they paid you
to build.

~~~
jrockway
_rather than demolish the building they paid you to build_

The problem is that they didn't pay for the building. If they had paid for it,
he wouldn't have demolished _his_ own building.

Just because you ask someone to do something for you doesn't mean that you
have to do it. In this case, someone asked the web developer to build a
website. Instead of doing that, he just made a "this person sucks" website
instead. A great business move, perhaps not, but legally questionable? Also
not.

~~~
j_baker
Even if his contract stipulated that he owned the website due to nonpayment, I
seriously doubt that it's legal for him to put up "This company sucks" _at
that company's domain and with that company's logo_. And this is in the UK
which has (I believe) notoriously stringent defamation and libel laws.

