Non paying customer

I did some work a few months ago for a customer, making various updates to his site but also his hosting renewal cost. We agreed a price and I set about the work, about halfway through the updates he decided to get another designer in to completely redo his site which is his choice. I decided to invoice him for the work I did and now he's avoiding all contact, although he is sending read receipts for the emails I send he isn't getting in touch.

I'm pretty much resigned to writing this money off but as he hasn't paid for his hosting renewal would I be within my rights to bring the site down, or put a non paying notice up on it? It's a third party host, we pay the hosting on his behalf and then invoice him for it. It worked well for the last renewal so I had no reason to assume otherwise this time.

The other designer has ftp access so I assume they have backups and it wouldn't take him long for the site to get back up so I'm maybe just being petty for the sake of it. Thoughts?

Didn't pay for hosting? Site comes down! That's very fair and it will get his attention. Make sure you don't let them access the site for their code. Until they pay, they can't do anything.

Cheers for that, my reluctance to bring the site down is due to the fact that he could easily access the code as it's a third party host and if I changed the FTP password all he has to do is call them up and request a password reset/new password. He owns the domain and the hosting is in his company's name we've just paid for it(foolish I know).

Unfortunately, this sounds like one of those situations that you will need to write off as a loss (and a lesson learned).

If any contracts were signed prior to you doing the work and renewing the hosting, then you may be able to threaten legal action. Even verbal agreements can be taken to court or whatnot, however, verbal agreements are harder to prove. Of course, threatening legal action may be as far as you want to go, as actually following through with legal action, may not be worth the time and money. Guess it depends on how much this client owes you as to whether you want to go through with it. If it's a couple hundred dollars, I would just write it off. If it's a couple thousand, threaten legal action.

Hope this helps.

Yeah I think writing it off is the best thing, I'd like to bring the site down even for a few days but it would just be petty and not very professional.

In the business world, you need to make sure you stay professional, regardless of the customer. There are many times I've been pissed off at certain clients, but I realize I can't do what I'd have done years ago just to piss them off.

If you stay professional, then the client can't badmouth you (or your company) to any other potential clients. However, if you take it down just to piss him off, he may tell others, who in turn wouldn't call you up to do work.

I pay domains for some of my people but I have control of both the domain and the host, so if they tried to pull anything like that you'd better believe their site would be down in a heartbeat and they'd be locked out. The magic bullet to get them back in would be, of course, the moolah.

I know this sounds paranoid, but you can never be too paranoid.
Most clients are honorable but a lot of us go on a pretty slim margin and one jacka$$ jerk can wreck it. If you're gonna pay a domain where you don't control it, have a contract. And for any web development, make sure that they don't get any of your stuff until they pay.

You might talk to the host. If they're one of those huge companies they probably will say too bad for you, but if they're local and /or you've ever given them referrals they might put the screw on the client to pay up before they reset the password or whatever.

Even if he changes the password, what if you just took all the code you made down, or set it back to non-working like it was before you started the work?

Thanks for all the advice. Pretty much all the work I did for him has been replaced by some other stuff, he's still using the logo but that's ok as the contract for the initial work said he could use it however he liked.

I think what I'll do is go round to his work and have a word with him, I always thought we got on quite well so I'd at least like him to have the balls to say he wont pay up but you never know I might walk away with a cheque.

Hi,

Depending upon the amount involved, you do have some legal alternatives. For example, if the amount is low enough, you can take him to Small Claims (depending upon your state) and seek a judgment without using a lawyer. If the amount is high enough (let's say over $10,000), you can seek a judgment, and if he refuses to pay, put a lien on his company which would force him to pay up, if and when, he seeks additional business loans, financial assistance, etc. Sometimes, you can find a lawyer to do this on contingency if it is a very cut and dry case. 30% contingency would be pretty common.

Hope this helps.
Rich