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Stop Payment - holding me hostage contract work verbal/email contrct

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egaus

Junior Member
What is the name of your state? CO

Hello.

I was contacted by a local graphic designer to provide programming to a web site to enable it to hook up to a payment gateway properly for e-commerce. I told her it would be 4 hours, I quote '...shouldn't take more than 4 hours on the outside. $80/hr.' - from an email.

I ended up billing her 4.5 hours. Here's the deal - she contracted me to do something that wasn't really able to be done within the verbal specification. I came up with a solution and emailed it to the partner of the woman who contracted me because the woman who contracted me was out of town during the time I was to complete the work. My solution involved implementing a totally new shopping cart interface that would look different but I offered to make it look very similar to the old shopping cart at no exrta charge. This solution was a major upgrade - she ended up getting a product worth about $2,000 for $360. I was totally fair and communicated that my only desire was to accomodate them however they wanted. The partner emailed my communication to the vacationing contractor and replied to me, "Dingus said if the changes that you have made utilize the existing merchant account that's fine. Otherwise please adhere to the guidelines Dingus indicated in her original directions.". Original directions were sketchy at best - verbal - and misdirected. This woman is not tech saavy and didn't know what terminology to use - I understood what she was getting at. 'Make this thing work so people can use credit cards to buy things. That is all.'

Being the good guy I am, I went above and beyond her spec and provided a complete shopping solution, blah blah blah. She got back and was totally pissed that I had made some changes to the site to accomodate the new shopping cart. She said she did not give me permission to change anything, that it was ugly, on and on and on - she cancelled the check (stop payment) that I collected from her partner. When I picked up the check I made it clear to the partner to tell Dingus that there were radical changes made to the site and when Dingus got back she should call me and I would be happy to do anything she needed to get the site to look how she wanted - no extra charge.

None of my communications were passed on to Dingus by her partner with any amount of accuracy, the stop payment is going to cause me to bounce my rent check (incur $50 to landlord and $32 to bank for NSF) which will cause eviction process. Also will bounce 2 other checks as a result of this. ($32 each). She is withholding any payment until I agree to re-fulfill the original agreement and not change the look of the site which requires me to rebuild from scratch as all the work I have done including my backup has been trashed by the woman when she restored the old site over the new one and purposely removed the backup directory I created. If she didn't trash my work I could have just made a few quick mods and showed her how easy it is to change the look back to how it used to be. . I am now being held hostage for $360 to do this whole job again. This woman thinks that I violated the agreement and tried to get away with murder when all I did was give her a gold-plated mercedes instead of a VW. Some prefer VWs but the mercedes give such a smooth ride man. I told her I would redo it (will take me another 3-4 hours) and then started thinking that what happens if I just tell her to GTH and take her to court to recoup and lost money as a result of NSFs, late rent, lost time I could have used to do another job, etc.. do I have any way to reclaim the money and any chance of recouping lost money as a result of her stop payment? I can't believe this woman. And she has the nerve to tell me that 'you don't give a client more than he can pay for' when the reason he can't pay for anything is because the original site she designed sucks so bad that no one trusts it, if they can even find it. There are so many problems with the original site it is laughable. What's that saying about looking a gift horse in the mouth? Maybe that applies here. No one gives anyone the benefit of the doubt anymore, everyone only wants to cover their own a$$. I could have solved this problem in an hour had she just asked me to make some changes instead of assuming I was some kind of criminal. I actually want to teach her a lesson or two about courtesy and assumptions, trust and integrity - as well as business practices.

I need some advice on this one please before I go crazy and do something strange to her unprotected servers.

Thanks so much.

e
 
Last edited:


djohnson

Senior Member
Stopping payment on a check and holding funds are two separate things. The check has been issued already, send her a letter CRRR stating she is responsible for the check and any fees you incur because of her fraudulently stopping payment on the check. Stop pays are not meant to be used as bargaining tools, but for people that really need them due to forgery or lost and stolen checks. If she doesn't pay, file a warrant against the person that signed the check (that is who the letter should go to also). If she wants to negotiate, she should do it legally. This way is not.
 

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