Client Refusing to Pay

Davidtube

Long story, short. I spent 3 weeks making a website for a client. He kept putting payments off and eventually ignored my calls and emails altogether for 3 weeks. When I gave him a deadline to make the payment, out of no where he started claiming that my work was shoddy (despite it clearly not being shoddy, matching the designs we had agreed and never having problems while watching progress of the site being built).

When I mentioned legal action he said "if you ever threaten me again you will regret it ", and also claimed he had just received £7,000 from a client and was going to send me some as a good will gesture but after my email he said "go and f**k yourself".

He's a dodgy character. He shouldn't even be running a company since he has already been disqualified as a director. He is shadow director so the company is in someone else's name. I read the penalty for this can range from a fine to 2 years in prison.

Has anyone got suggestions on how to deal with this situation? My worry is that he probably knows every trick in the book to avoid paying. I am down almost a month's income just before Christmas, my family are suffering for it and I'm unable to pay bills.

Davidtube

A little bit of additional detail. While I was trying to track him down and before I told him I would take legal action, I let his ex-business partner have a look at the website I had built. Soon after I got an email from him (the first I had heard from him in a week) saying I would be hearing from his solicitor the next week because I was in breach of contract for showing a competitor the website. I have spoken to a solicitor myself who says he can't claim anything like that unless it has caused him damages. It has not and is clearly just and excuse and an attempt to intimidate me. Unsurprisingly I haven't heard from his solicitor.

DKLS

Do you still have the passwords to the website?, is it hosted on your domain/server space?

Davidtube

It's on my server. He's not using it. I think he just changed his mind about wanting it at some point.

PasturesNew

What about the domain, is it in your name still?

Davidtube

Yeah. I'm still in complete control of the website. It's hosted on a temporary domain.

motorguy

Davidtube wrote: »

Yeah. I'm still in complete control of the website. It's hosted on a temporary domain.

I would have thought the odds of you getting payment for this without massive hassle and costs of going to court are slim. Even if it did go to court he could have the company dissolved and start again.

You should probably write the whole lot off to experience and hope you can recover some of your lost time by re-using the code on another site.

Also, going forward, do your due diligence PRIOR to engaging with a new customer - you seem to have a lot of information at hand now that would have suggested this customer was to be avoided.

Also, you need to look at staged payments going forward - say 1/3 on agreement of design, 1/3 after presentation of a viable, but unfinished site, and a 1/3 on go live. something like that anyway - i'd imagine experienced developers could advise.

I'd certainly be doing formal contracts for the above too.

Mistral001

OP you have to have belief in your product. Just because a client says that your work is shoddy, does not mean that it is shoddy. What possessed you to breach confidentiality rather than go through with your threats of legal action.

Maybe one to right off as a learning experience as Motorguy has said. Have you thought of getting a partner, with whom you could discuss matters like this before taking hasty action?

Davidtube

Mistral001 wrote: »

What possessed you to breach confidentiality rather than go through with your threats of legal action.

Maybe one to right off as a learning experience as Motorguy has said. Have you thought of getting a partner, with whom you could discuss matters like this before taking hasty action?

I was just casually asked for a look at the site and I didn't see any harm in showing it. This was before any legal action had been talked about. I'm certain he is only complaining as an excuse to not pay me (remember he had been avoiding me for 3 weeks already).

The solicitor I spoke to said he doesn't have a case since it didn't cause him any problems, while not paying me nearly a month's wages does cause me trouble. She said "you can't just refuse to pay someone for briefly showing the website to someone else" and that his claim was like stumbling on a curb, not hurting yourself but trying to claim compensation for it. There is no confidential information on the website, and it is designed to be publicly available.

colino

As has been said above, put this down to experience, but do your homework before taking on a new client and reappraise the work you are doing. Three weeks work to build a website that is discarded out of hand seems way off and I'd be pretty peeved too if you decided to let any Tom, !!!!!! or Harry see anything you didn't have my express permission to disclose.

paddyrg

This money may just not happen - you're dealing with either a serially incompetent director, or a serial crook. Sometimes you have to write off bad debts from idiots and learn the lesson.

In the future as Paul says, get staged payments. I'd be more aggressive in them and go for 50%, 25%, 25% something like that. Basically use the first payment to cover your costs (so if you have to hire webspace, extra software, any stock materials, cover your 'wages') and the balance as profit. That way the worst that can happen is you stand still, not make a loss.