eCommerce Tycoon

**amtriska** · 09-11-2010, 01:16 PM

I’ve been working with a client for more than a month. The design process has been terrible, as he’s been incredibly rude and unreasonable—I won’t go into details, but I wouldn’t work with him again if he paid me double.

Now he’s refused to pay me part of what he owes. Thing is, after a week of working with him, I knew it was going to be a tough job, so I put a line in the CSS that would black out the site if he got difficult when it came time to pay. I didn’t plan to use it, since he’s a friend of a friend and I didn’t think payment was going to be a big deal (things were going more smoothly toward the end), but I’m contemplating it now.

He sent me a long, obnoxious, profane email detailing why he shouldn’t have to pay me the full amount that we agreed upon. My co-designer and I sent him back a short email requesting he pay us the full balance, and we’re waiting to hear back from him.

If he doesn’t pay after this, is it ethical to black out the site? How would you handle this? Should I warn him?

**chrishirst** · 09-11-2010, 02:09 PM

Maybe you could change the FTP password "accidentally" as well.

**amtriska** · 09-11-2010, 02:17 PM

He's already changed the password, so that option's closed.

**chrishirst** · 09-11-2010, 02:25 PM

Sounds like there was never a plan to pay you in the first place.

A 50% deposit usually weeds out those "clients"

**amtriska** · 09-11-2010, 02:41 PM

He actually did give us a deposit, but he disputes the last half. He does agree that he owes us some money, but not near what he actually owes us. We got it all in writing, so we're on clear legal ground, but we don't know whether blacking out the site is a realistic way to get him to pay us.

**pingpipe** · 09-13-2010, 05:30 PM

As long as he agrees he owes you something I'd negotiate before blacking out the site. Propose you meet halfway, 50% of some additional revenue is better than 100% of no additional revenue. Tell him you'll settle for less if he agrees to make positive forum posts about your service.

**wayfarer07** · 05:56 PM

Next time you have a client that you don't know, have him contact you on Odesk, register a credit card, and pay you that way. As long as you work by the hour that way, your payment is guaranteed, even if he doesn't end up paying. If he hadn't paid you after all this time, Odesk would have canceled his account and paid you anyway.

I do this with new clients. I've never been stiffed, or even paid late. If I get to know them, assuming I met them somewhere else (besides Odesk), I'll move them to a more "normal" method of payment. I've found it's a great way of building relationships with clients.

**TWD** · 09-17-2010, 01:37 AM

You need to review the way you set your contract terms.

I never hand over the passwords to a site until the final payment has been
received. Any reasonable client would be happy to accept those terms.