Hi,
I did some work for a client a few months ago (call me naive) I didn’t take an advance, as I thought it was going to be a regular thing, also because they are a reputable company. After I finished, he said that once client had paid him he would pay me.
Its been a while now, before he used to respond to my emails and now he has stopped responding.
Any advice?
Im thinking of ringing the company up…but not sure what to say.
Write a letter (not an email) giving them one last chance at payment. Say that if you don’t receive the money within so-many days (say, 15) you will reluctantly have to take legal action.
After the 15 days, write a letter addressed to the company secretary. Say that you are about to start legal action in your local county court (state the name of the court), on a certain date (say, 7 days ahead), and that this will result in additional costs to them. Say that you will suspend the action if payment in full is received before that date. Send the letter by recorded delivery.
If that doesn’t produce a result, come back here for further advice.
(This advice applies to the England and Wales, not necessarily other countries. In Scotland, it would be the sherrif court, but the same technique applies.)
Mike
The only thing I am worried about is, that the the person who got in touch with me (Luke) contacted me on freelancer, it was something we discussed and decided to work out of freelancer.com. The only evidence I have are our email conversations and the logins provided to me by them.
Also, I have a feeling that the client they were working on the site for most likely cancelled with them hence there is no site now.
:S
I don’t think that’s relevant. The fact that you did the work for them, and they accepted it (did they accept it?), means you have a contract. How you communicated to them is not significant. Neither is the fact that their client cancelled.
On the other hand, if you think there is a chance that they will argue that they never really commissioned the work, then you’re on weaker ground.
If it ends up that you don’t get paid for this job, chalk it up to experience, and make sure you get it right next time.
Mike
Thanks, I will contact them.
Yes they did accept it and praised it too at the time…
However, whether I have enough on emails is something different altogether.
(Do you think its wise to put my experience on their twitter and fb page?)
Not unless you have indisputable and verifiable proof that any claims you make are true and accurate. Otherwise it could end up costing you a lot more than the fee for your original website.
Depending on the amount of $'s you are talking about, maybe just write this off (or at least don’t throw good money after bad), as previously suggested, and run a much tighter ship next time.
Next time make sure you at least consider:
provide a price and list what is and is not included in writing to your client
get a signed acceptance from your client
in your written agreement/contract include progressive payments as each project milestone is reached and a condition saying progression of the project will not proceed until each payment is received.
structure your progressive payments so that you have at least 90% of the total fee paid before you hand over any code to your client or publish anything on the net.
Personally, I wouldn’t bother. But if you do, make very certain the client can’t be identified in any way.
I still think you should send the letters that I described. If nothing else, it might encourage them to start talking to you.
MIke
I will note that there are reasons that sites like freelancer.com and elance.com have rules that advise against working outside of their system. Anytime someone is using a site like that but wants to work outside the system would raise a flag for me. Not everyone will have this problem, but just a word of warning, I would be cautious of situations like this in the future.
If you are still hoping to receive payment and receive communication from the client (outside of a legal matter) I wouldn’t advise posting anything negative on their website / twitter / facebook. Even though they may be in the wrong, certain types of people will react in an extreme way when “attacked” or confronted publicly.
Your first step should definitely be calling the company. Email and instant messaging are all easy forms of communication and can avoid confrontation (which a lot of people like to avoid) but it’s really not a formal method of communication. I would call (and continue to call) if you are not able to get through at first. If they are a legit company, it is more difficult to make excuses or avoid contact via phone than an email. Certified letters would be a next step so you have legal proof they’ve received notification of the invoices. From that stage you can try to proceed legally.
Only if you haven’t been able to get anywhere after all that would I resort to posting anything online about the situation. I believe only a small percentage of clients are going to respond well to something negative posted about them online and encourage them to send payment. I may be wrong since I’ve never resorted to that step, so if others have had success, maybe they can speak about their experiences?
What was your original, written agreement with this client? The only discussion of terms that I saw was that the client said he’s pay you when he got paid - what else was agreed upon?
The key issue is, what was agreed ‘before’ you started the project, not ‘after’. What was initially confirmed via email/IM by your client regarding when payment to you would be made?
Is your client in the UK as well?
And yes, of course you should ring them, email is easy to ignore.
If you do not have a contract or written agreement of some kind, then you may to chalk this one up to experience.
Start with a phonecall to the company or putting foot in the front door because the person who contracted you may no longer be there, hence the unanswered email. Pointing out that under UK legislation you have the right to charge intrest on the outstanding amount and follow that up with a registered letter tends to stir some action especially so when the phrase " when the amount exceeds £xxxx recovery will be outsourced to bailiffs (Bristow & Sutor) " is worked in.
If this friendly approach is met with reluctance, pull the site down or place a big splash banner on it saying the client has not paid. The latter tends to yield better results. When the abusive phonecall comes and believe me it will, stand your ground and say “Pay me my money”, they will probably threaten legal action but don’t panic as it tends to be an empty threat or backfires badly if they actually do when the solicitor is handed the contract.
Remember once they mention legal involvement terminate the call politely, and confirm that you will now wait to be contacted by a solicitor and that the site stays offline until the matter is resolved. Subsequent abusive calls should be again terminated politely “I’m waiting to hear from your solicitor and have been advised not to speak to you”. Time ticks on and all the while that banner on the website is hurting the clients business, given the cost of legal fees they quickly relent and pay up.
Some clients have also been known to change the FTP & hosting account access codes upon initial delivery however if you set up the domain registration and web hosting on their behalf as is often the case then your credit card details are tied to the respective accounts and a quick call to the web service providers billing department can get those passwords reset.
Finally one tip that may webdesigners use to safeguard themselves (apart from a good contract) is have one or more files that are vital to the sites operation hosted on a different domain under your complete control eg: Your Portfolio site such as the CSS layout or database connection files. This way the site can be shutdown remotely without any fuss should a dispute arise and you can put them back where they should be once final payment has been recieved.
What sogo7 describes may fall under the ‘Computer Misuse Act’, which is a serious criminal offence in the UK. Trying to solve a civil dispute by committing a criminal act seems odd, not when you have plenty of perfectly legal avenues to pursue if need be. Regardless of the fact that the client may or may not owe you money (and they may dispute that any debt exists), you cannot effectively hack into their site and deface it or take it offline. Nor can you start contacting their hosts to have passwords changed.
As for hosting pertinent files on your own servers so you can switch them off at your fancy, well good luck with persuading any potential client to sign your contract in the first place (assuming you are actually informing them of this rather extreme ‘insurance policy’ in your contract!).
Anyway, back in the real world for a second - make sure you know exactly what was agreed, and assuming you are still comnvinced they owe you money, ring them, and if no joy, send a letter by recorded delivery with 30 days notice to pay. After 30 days, you could give them another 7 days ‘last chance’ notice, and then simply submit a small claim, assuming the money owed is within the limits set by small claims.
However, if it’s a small amount, don’t get too stressed about it - if the letters fail, move on and learn the lesson.
Try walking into a car showroom and saying “that one over there is mine give me the keys!”
Until the client has paid they do own or have any rights to the material created/ built by the designer,
that’s copyright law 101 reluctant payers often aware of this and so the last thing they want to do is get a
solicitor let alone try arguing the point in small claims because they know they don’t have a leg to stand on.
Nor for that matter does a non paying client have the right to change the passwords for a hosting account that you paid for.
If anything it is the client guilty who is guilty of breaching the computer misuse act because they have manipulated
a webserver to which they have not paid for permission to use.
Ownership and usage rights are dictated by the terms and wording of the contract. And in this example, there is no official contract, so everyone relies on general chatter via email and IM. Anything could have been implied during those communications. For example, the implication could have been that ownership was transferred when the web site was ‘delivered’ to the client.
Also be aware that pulling down a site and replacing it with some kind of message about the client not paying could just as likely lead to a defamation lawsuit.
Of course, then there’s the wonderful reputation you’ll gain for yourself, I bet the clients will be queuing up to sign up with the developer who publicly humiliates clients, blackmails them, and drops clauses in his contracts that give him remote kill switches and the right to contact the client’s domain registrar and hosts to have passwords reset in their favour.
This is not as clear cut as the rights of a web host to terminate hosting accounts of non-payers. Let’s try to give somewhat more down to earth, sensible advice on these matters, because for a start, there are always two sides to these cases and quite often they can be quickly resolved with a calm, focused phone call.
How much money did he not pay you? If it’s anything less than 200EUR then I would just put it down to bad experience and leave it as that. You’re better off focusing on your current projects than chasing over dead clients.
For the future do the following:
You can ring them up, or you can send them an email explaining the situation followed by an invoice for your work. If they fail you can threaten legal support based on the email correspondence, and see what they say. I would not go down the confrontational root if it’s for small money.
That is a very bad idea. In fact, it’s probably just about the worst thing you can do.
Not only is it possibly illegal (as Shadowbox rightly says, it could be against the Computer Misuse Act in the UK, or its equivalent on other countries), but it’s a good way of discouraging future clients. Think what it says about the person who does it. It says that your working relationship with your client is poor, mutual trust has broken down, and your only recourse is through what is, by any standards, highly unprofessional behaviour.
Mike
An alternative is to put their site offline after a two-week grace period for payment. Send them a polite email warning them that you will do this, and they you’re set to go. I know many people who do this and they’ve never got in trouble with the law for doing so.
Most people drive fast, that doesn’t mean you get can’t a ticket if you do too. The devil is in the details…
If you host a site it’s much easier to take things offline using a standard billing cycle and a reasonable notification claim [i.e. if you agreed to 30 day terms and they never paid, after 30 days they’d go down]. But if when you’re built something you suspect isn’t going to be used you’re left with demands and actual legal action and not much else. You can keep bugging, you can make the bugging look more serious or if it’s enough value, you can hire someone to make into a real dispute but finding ways to take things down or going out and making claims, if if you end up within the limits of the law, defending yourself from a suit is not free and people all too often forget that.
The smaller the bill the less reason you have to push and they know that, so think about what you stand to lose and then decide how aggressive to be in pursing it with them.
While there’s certainly lots of options available, when you don’t have a formal agreement or legal counsel it’s best to err on the side of caution rather than turning a lack of a payment to you into a claim against you.
Its £300.
Thank you for the advice I will keep that i mind for anything I take on in future, however, I assumed that I could trust him.
Good point