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YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

318 points by venturebros 14y ago

MRonney 14y ago
This is fucked up. Not the only YC company I know that has done this to a designer, I really hope this gets voted up.
goronbjorn 14y ago
What company was it?
- ebzlo 14y ago
  Looks like eligibleapp.com
  - Bitwse 14y ago
    Maybe you could elaborate on why you think it is them instead of just claiming..?
    - benologist 14y ago
      Probably cause the screenshot says "Eligible" at the top in big letters. http://i.imgur.com/0wmVG.png http://i.imgur.com/0wmVG.png
      - ohashi 14y ago
        And it was xxxxxapp.com as the censored name.
    - kika 14y ago
      Compare the screenshot on reddit and their front page.
  - uptown 14y ago
    If it's them, maybe ask Katelyn Gleason if his version of the story is true: http://www.linkedin.com/in/katelyngleason http://www.linkedin.com/in/katelyngleason
    - untog 14y ago
      She's on Twitter, too. I'm hesitant to link to it, lest we unleash the internet lynch mob.
      - peetahb 14y ago
        Well her info is on the linkedin profile, so no need to make it easier for the internet lynch mob to find it.
    - presty 14y ago
      but the title says "YC S12" and her linkedin says "Y Combinator: W2011" .. but ye, the screenshots say eligible..
  - prezjordan 14y ago
    Uh they literally stole Path's design. Look at the bottom left corner.
    - cmelbye 14y ago
      A lot of people have attempted to copy that UI element from Path. There's a few open source libraries for the iOS SDK that will accomplish that. Of course, it looks much better in Path in this case.
Jonanin 14y ago
If hiring a lawyer doesn't work out, surely YCombinator itself could do something about it, since they are in the current batch?
javajosh 14y ago
Small claims court and a public shaming. Done and done.
brackin 14y ago
You get what you pay for I guess. Their mobile app looks terrible, tries to copy the Path sharing functionality in a completely strange context. When something like this could be created with a far cleaner interface. In a strange way I understand the position the CEO may be in. They may have thought because they weren't going to use it they shouldn't have to pay. In the past I've paid a designer for work only to change my mind on a product but that isn't the designer's fault. You still have to pay whomever completes work for you, even if you don't use it. Just sounds like across the board naivety, rather than malice especially with the legal department comment. It's always best to sort problems out immediately and directly or they get in the way.
- geekfactor 14y ago
  Based on the screenshot currently gracing the eligibleapp.com home page, perhaps the CEO specifically requested a Path knock-off. ("We really love the Path app, can you make it look like that?")
kika 14y ago
I don't understand this, people. They're YC funded, in the worst case they have how much now, 10k? Risk your reputation for a few hundred dollars, having a few thousand in the pocket, why?
- alttab 14y ago
  They didn't sign anything, and the "CEO" of any YC startup early enough to need to outsource product development isn't promising anything despite their words.
  - kika 14y ago
    I outsource my startup development heavily and I didn't bother signing anything either. Yes, I've lost a few hundred (probably even a couple of thousand) this way, paying for the job that went directly to the dumpster. It's a cost of doing business. And I didn't raise money this time, this is all my consulting revenue, I could have paid an income tax on it and put it in my pocket. But if you want to build a beautiful house there will be sawdust. These money is the sawdust.
    - kika 14y ago
      BTW, I'm looking for a designer. Contacts open.
  - Silhouette 14y ago
    the "CEO" of any YC startup early enough to need to outsource product development isn't promising anything despite their words. Well... Yes. Yes, they are. There is no probation period when you start a business and become a legal officer of a company. If you want to be a CEO, you'd better act like it from 9am on day 1, because chances are you have the power to commit your business to any obligation it can legally undertake. Once you do, your business will be on the hook for any such commitments you make, forever. And depending on where you are, you might get away with failing to honour a commitment if you made an honest mistake and the business failed, but if you were just blatantly negligent about your responsibility to run the company properly then your corporate legal shield might not be as solid as you'd like either, leaving you on the hook personally as well.
Estragon 14y ago
In the screenshot, what the heck do those pie and bar graphs represent? Also, seems strange that he's coy about the name in the text, but seems to show it on the screenshot.
ohashi 14y ago
It's the response that bothers me the most: >I figured :) It's hard for me to comprehend how little they value their reputation with such a response. $<1000 apparently. Shameful.
consultutah 14y ago
The op has, hopefully, learned a valuable lesson: don't work without a signed contract. That said, the comp should have just paid or, at very least, tried to negotiate the amount thought I don't think that's worth the effort either. This is such a paltry amount as to not be worth the effort to fight.
- veemjeem 14y ago
  Are emails legally binding in CA? See here: http://www.linkedin.com/answers/law-legal/corporate-law/contracts/LAW_COR_CON/678439-28722568 http://www.linkedin.com/answers/law-legal/corporate-law/cont...
- smackfu 14y ago
  The other lesson people may take away is don't do contract work for startups.
  - Silhouette 14y ago
    The thing is, this can (and sometimes does) happen with larger and better established businesses too. A common rule of thumb in the design industry is that if the amount of fees in question isn't going to be worth going to court over, then a 50% deposit paid up-front is a reasonable request.
- ww520 14y ago
  People have reneged on signed contracts. A signed contract is not a foolproof protection for your payment. You just have a better case when going to court, which will cost you money. Also a verbal agreement is a binding contract.
zachwill 14y ago
Pay the guy his money, but man, that design is pretty bad.
- lysol 14y ago
  The one on Reddit is fairly generic. The real one on the site is downright ugly: http://eligibleapp.com/ http://eligibleapp.com/
- incongruity 14y ago
  It's not so much bad, per se, as it is just... well... inert. There's no there, there.
  - learc83 14y ago
    Presumably there would have been some further iterations and back and forth between the client and the designer had the contract continued.
- cluda01 14y ago
  Could you please elaborate as to why you think so? I'm not trying to be a contrarian here. I'm asking because I'm a backend engineer so my opinions on design admittedly isn't very sophisticated.
_delirium 14y ago
I'm going to go out on a limb and register a slight discomfort with the increasing use of HN as a "court of public opinion" in very fact-bound disputes like this one. I can sort of see resorting to it out of desperation, but I'm afraid the Internet Lynch Mob has a very high ratio of outrage to effort spent actually investigating. This post has 84 upvotes in 21 minutes, which suggests a very quick investigation! So, the potential for erroneous snap judgments in such a Court seems high. The designer here may very well be in the right, but I don't feel qualified to judge or do anything about it based on the available information, any more than I do with the hundreds of other designer-client disputes that happen on a regular basis.
- javajosh 14y ago
  Actually I agree. That's why small claims court should precede the public shaming.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Small claims court? How many days outstanding is the invoice? You want to take a guess about the longest it's ever taken us to get paid for an invoice? Net-30 (meaning, let's just pretend we're going to pay you within 30 days of getting invoiced so we can stop talking about this part of the contract) is a standard term. Is it your expectation that when you don't have a contract, you can expect "Net-1" payment?
    - javajosh 14y ago
      Of course not! "Small claims court" doesn't mean now. To even file a claim you must have sent a demand letter. So he's still got some hoops to jump through. That said, I don't think he has to wait 30 days if the client has already indicated that they've decided to breach the contract. What he needs to do now is send a real-life letter demanding an agreement to pay within the week, and if that agreement is not forthcoming, then he should file in small claims court. Really, it's not all that dramatic either.
      - 14y ago
dr42 14y ago
I hope the screenshot is fake data and not violating anyone's HIPPA rights, otherwise this designer is going to be in a lot of very hot water over this.
- untog 14y ago
  If Eligible sent confidential data to a contract designer for the purposes of a mockup then they deserve everything they get. I don't- for a second- think that they did.
  - dr42 14y ago
    Well they (Eligible) have already demonstrated a flagrant disregard for other people with this whole incident.
    - bigiain 14y ago
      This is a good point - would _you_ trust your medical data/history to someone who'd screw over a graphic designer for $780? With no other indicators of reputation - what's everybody else's opinion on what this startup might do when a medical insurance company show up and says "$10,000 to see $persons medical history"? Maybe the designer is misleading us all, and there's a very good reason with the company are reluctant to pay $780 for some work the designer thought they'd asked for. But surely in the field they've chosen, reputation and appearance of trustworthiness have orders of magnitude more value that this spat?
faramarz 14y ago
Not handled professionally on the designers part. He could have turned this into a win by being their go-to-guy for future contract work or getting referrals to other YC residents instead. I don't think it was worth resorting to public shaming for a few grand. I guess Eligible got some free press out of this now. Well done!
- javajosh 14y ago
  If what the designer saying is true, then Eligible breached contract. Verbal contracts are binding in CA. And he is within his rights to get paid for his work. It should not damage his reputation at all.
  - faramarz 14y ago
    I I edited to say "public shaming" instead. You're right. His reputation I can't predict, but it might creep up somewhere on Google and potential hires may consider it a liability. Don't scare away the future prospects by making yourself untouchable.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Oral contracts are binding everywhere in the US. What's damaging to his reputation isn't pursuing the invoice based on an oral contract. What's damaging to his reputation is if he jumped the gun, whipping up drama about a receivable that he reasonably could have expected to get paid if he simply invoiced persistently. I suspect this thread might be a bit of a litmus test for people who have done a lot of freelancing. From working with designers a bit, I can tell that this is a hot-button issue for them: a lot of clients do shirk payment, and so they tend to insist on upfront payment of some sort before they commence work. But having said that, I have to believe every freelancer is familiar with delayed payments on invoices. Your most lucrative clients might pay many months late, and then only after persistent reminders.
    - javajosh 14y ago
      For once, I sort of agree with you. But I chalk it up to inexperience, not malice. It sounds like the OP was intimidated by the (probably meant to be tongue-in-cheek) referral to the "legal department, and genuinely doesn't know what to do. And, it's one thing to have a client drag their heels on a bill, it's quite another for a client to say, "No, we won't pay that, talk to legal if you have a problem with that." The former is a good opportunity to persistently invoice, the later is a good opportunity to explore the small claims court system.
arihant 14y ago
It's just 3 days of work. Did she seriously point to her lawyers to fight 3 days worth of wages? Not only is the CEO irresponsible, she sounds pretentious. Does Eligible have a legal team?
bmac27 14y ago
I've also been in the equally unenviable position of having to pay for someone who completed work according to a scope that was too vaguely defined. The guy I contracted to do the work did the work according to the broad outline I originally set out. Being young & stupid at the time, I blamed him for thinking he took shortcuts and refused to pay him all of what he was owed at first. But it was my fault for not being more specific in the original job. I eventually apologized and paid him the rest of the money. Lesson learned. I believe design work is especially prone to this. But none of this is an excuse. If you have a signed contract, you honor it. Period.
Dystopian 14y ago
Well. Your design looks nicer at least, and you're probably getting more than $XXX exposure now (Their current one.. doesn't - but it could be worked on as a first revision - hopefully their current designer iterates hard!)
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
nirajd 14y ago
Seriously? Please learn how to properly freelance before publicly flaming a bootstrapped startup. Always get your task/rate in writing before continuing..
- gorbachev 14y ago
  So just because he didn't have the foresight to have a signed contract, it's grounds for him to get f*ed by a well funded startup? Seriously?
venturebros 14y ago
Oh this isn't me by the way I just saw it on Reddit.
bocmaxima 14y ago
This happened to me as well with a YC company. I then found out that YC companies are known for this kind of thing since they're so early-stage. Always get a contract.
Cushman 14y ago
How much does it really matter in these situations whether or not you have a "signed contract"? My understanding is that any agreement to do work for compensation is a contract, and these days even a "signed" contract is likely to just be a PDF which is as easily faked as an emailed "$65/hr? Sounds good, go ahead and get started." Is it just one of those things where someone's less likely to try to rip you off if they put their signature on something? Or is it more to make sure you get the words in front of a couple of lawyers who are much less likely to lie than the involved parties?
- tptacek 14y ago
  It matters a LOT. A you-said they-said dispute over a verbal contract can be expensive to resolve --- almost certainly way more expensive than the total value of this dev contract. Startups who hire outside vendors should be very careful to foreclose on any potential verbal contract --- "do not start working for us until we have a signed master agreement and a statement of work" --- and that's for a lot of reasons, not just misunderstandings like this. Obviously, if a company operator deliberately leads a vendor to believe there's an authorization to start work, they're morally on the hook for billed hours. But in reality, consultants go into engagements like that knowing that they're on the hook if anything goes wrong. This comes up a lot in consulting, because legal negotiation over master agreements can take weeks and sometimes threaten to ice deals that can be kept alive by just starting ahead of the contract.
  - Cushman 14y ago
    But it's not a verbal contract if it's over email, right? It's right there in writing, we both have copies of it, it can (theoretically) be verified by a third party. If I go to small claims with a copy of an email, what can they say that they couldn't say just as well if I go in with a piece of paper I claim they signed? I've never seen someone say "Don't start working without a notarized contract", but that's the hidden message, right? Otherwise we're just playing at semantics. Edit: As above, I notice now the OP did have a purely verbal contract. I was referring to emailed agreement which is common in our line of work, though.
  - 14y ago
tptacek 14y ago
I don't understand what happened here. The CEO told him to submit his invoice to legal@. Did he do that? What did their legal say? Did the company formally decline to pay the invoice? Or did he just assume he wasn't going to get paid and jump the gun? But anyways: LESSON LEARNED for startup CEOs. Here it is, it's very simple: If you want to question or slowroll an invoice, direct it to finance@, not legal@. You have exactly the same set of options with finance@, and your legal can still review the invoice, ping the vendor, or what-have-you, but you haven't escalated the situation.
- qq66 14y ago
  Yeah, the whole story is missing the part where the legal email address says "we won't pay you." Could be that's the person who is going to pay.
- sudonim 14y ago
  Do most YC S12 companies have a legal department? Or a finance department for that matter? Im sure this particular situation is nuanced, and both parties seem to be unhappy. I haven't worked with many contractors yet, but my 2 rules of thumb are: Don't ask people to do work for you unless you plan to pay them for it. Pay promptly and in full. It's pretty simple. If the CEO was never planning to pay, the conversation shouldn't have gotten that far and the contractor shouldn't have had the idea that they should go and make something.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Most companies don't have "legal departments"; they have outside counsel they retain for random stuff. Like this. The onus was on the vendor to actually submit the invoice to the email address the CEO said to send it to. That's not a hardship. Try invoicing a Fortune 500 company for the first time. Goat sacrifice may be involved. Note that I have no idea at all whether he actually did do that. In the real world, it is actually allowed to question an invoice. You probably end up paying regardless, but you are in fact allowed to ask the questions.
    - 14y ago
f0untain 14y ago
Is this how PR disaster look like ?
bbit 14y ago
LOL this bitch Katelyn Gleason is going to get some serious hatin if she doesn't cough up this guys $$ LOL
il 14y ago
Hey everyone: can we hold on for just one minute before forming an Internet Lynch Mob and maybe try to get the other side's perspective? Because we only have one side of the story right now. How do you know the OP isn't lying? Or that OP isn't a competitor trying to destroy this company's credibility? Or, maybe this was just a simple misunderstanding/miscommunication? I'm not accusing the OP of lying, but there's zero evidence here right now. Think rationally and consider every possibility. I don't know the founders and I have no connection to the company in question (other than participating in a previous YC batch).
nwmcsween 14y ago
This is what you don't do if things don't work out. Go to small claims court, do not post it on the internet and open yourself to getting sued for libel.
- jbigelow76 14y ago
  If the same legal team that reviews the invoices would be in charge of pursuing the lawsuit the chances of the OP getting sued are pretty slim ;)
donnfelker 14y ago
My advice - Watch Mike Monterios talk: Fuck You Pay Me. http://vimeo.com/22053820 http://vimeo.com/22053820
taskstrike 14y ago
One key point is that YC is a great brand in the tech community. If you are a YC graduate, your have the credibility of it behind you as if someone was a Harvard grad. Doing stuff like this erodes the brand for an trivial amount of money. Work was done here, and if they weren't a YC company and some other guy, it is less likely that a designer would work for them without some kind of written agreement.
pdufour 14y ago
I wonder how long this post will be up before the designer gets paid.
jmharvey 14y ago
There's a lesson here on the other side, as well: when you're hiring any kind of contractor (designer, lawyer, etc.) you need to specify not just an hourly rate, but also an estimated number of hours. One person's idea of "getting started" on a project may be an hour or two of work, another's may be several dozen hours. Getting an invoice for many times what you thought you were agreeing to is an unpleasant shock, regardless of how it's resolved.
guelo 14y ago
This is off-topic and I couldn't really figure out what it is that eligibleapp does, but why would they not come out with a web app first? Restricting whatever it is they're doing to the iPhone seems shortsighted.
- xrty3 14y ago
  It's mint.com for health insurance. I'm trying to figure out what additional value Eligible's supposed to add that outweighs just logging into your insurance company's website. And how they're supposed to make a profit.
- dr_ 14y ago
  Agreed. But if it's not restricted to the iPhone, there are already competitors out there such as cake health and simplee. It could be useful for physicians who are in the hospital or skilled nursing setting and want to check insurance eligibility. But much of today's health care work is desktop related, and there's so much opportunity for disruption there that it's important not to overlook it all and head straight for mobile apps.
brudgers 14y ago
To the CEO if the report is substantially accurate: The cost of attorneys and more importantly the distraction isn't worth the worst case invoice for three days work. It's not going to cost you your shirt, just one sleeve. Be glad it's a cheap lesson.
bradleyland 14y ago
My advice? Get up, dust yourself off, and move on. These scenarios might result in a deluge of support from others in your field, but for a lot of managers, this puts you on a special kind of blacklist. We can't know all the details of the circumstance, but we do know for sure that you were willing to "name & shame" the client here on HN. For some, that's enough. Just to be clear, it definitely sounds like you got a raw deal here, but I've only heard your side of the story. Experience tells me that people who find themselves in this position are there because they cut corners (work order and statement of work), or trusted someone too early. Both of these are poor judgement calls. Take ownership of that, learn from it, and go find new clients. If you're not in a financial position to take it on the chin, file your small claims paperwork and have your day in court. I just doubt that the name & shame approach is the best thing for the future of your career as a freelancer.
- mrobataille 14y ago
  Shut up and deal with it? I really wonder what this world would be like if everyone who had a career, family, or life to risk over being a whistleblower took the safe, sure path and shut up and dealt with it.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Yes, because whipping up an Internet mob over not having an invoice instantly paid is exactly the same as leaking the Pentagon Papers. Sheesh.
  - bradleyland 14y ago
    Perspective! Freelancers are an army of one. How you spend your time will have a large impact on your success. No one likes to take it on the chin, but sometimes you have to step back, look at how hard the hit is, and decide if you really want to get in to a brawl over the matter. Think of this as a judgement call. IMO, it shows either lack of preparedness or poor judgement on the part of the freelancer in this case. When you run your own business, the buck stops at you. In any given scenario, you must be willing to accept your portion of the responsibility. It has been my experience that the more responsibility someone is willing to accept, the better they are at getting things done. It's a pretty good indicator of success. Those who always look to push the burden of responsibility off on others will dwindle their time looking everyone but at themselves. I'm not saying that the freelancer is 100% responsible here, but I am saying that it doesn't matter much. If your goal is to be successful, you can't be distracted by these stupid little hiccups. You have to get up, dust yourself off, and move on.
suresk 14y ago
I don't get it - did he actually email legal@ and get a negative response, or are we just spawning internet lynch mobs the second we run into the slightest amount of resistance now?
inuhj 14y ago
I'm delighted to see that disputes are being solved this way instead of tying up the assets of our judicial system. Remember the days when we actually tried to resolve our problems and court was a last resort? Now the sentiment seems to be that you should file in small claims court instead of writing a post on reddit. I'm glad to see 'court of public opinion'(AKA reputation) make a comeback. The concept of reputation is, in my humblest of opinions, more important than our legal system when it comes to keeping people from behaving badly. Being publicly shamed is a deterrent for unethical behavior in a way that our courts can not be because of the ridiculously high cost of litigation.
clarky07 14y ago
Seriously? Who refers someone to legal for $780? Especially considering they are YC funded. That seems absurd. (Obviously only one side of the story here, but it seems clear they wanted the work done asap)
Aaronontheweb 14y ago
At $65 / hour, how big of a bill could the designer have possibly generated over three days? Just pay him and get it over with - anything under $1,000 is chump change.
pbiggar 14y ago
I feel really sorry for the CEO. She's inexperienced, she didn't know to just pay the money, and in her first disagreement with a contractor, she got an internet lynch mob on her back. She did the wrong thing, of course, but the cost was much higher than this merits. Even if she does the right thing now, there are many who will consider this a black mark on the company indefinitely.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
patio11 14y ago
Without saying anything about this particular situation, can I just point out for the four hundredth time that $780 invoices generate far, far, far more stupidity than $7,800 or $78,000 invoices do? This is the fault of both people who send $780 invoices and people who generate work likely to cause $780 invoices. Many of you will be able to pick whether you are either of these types of people. I suggest being neither.
- Silhouette 14y ago
  Without saying anything about this particular situation, can I just point out for the four hundredth time that $780 invoices generate far, far, far more stupidity than $7,800 or $78,000 invoices do? Your argument is a classic case of the correlation/causation fallacy. A modest invoice does not "generate" stupidity. Millions of freelancers around the world make a good living doing relatively small jobs for satisfied customers and submitting modest invoices that get paid on time. If you are in a position to work on higher-value deals, then naturally you will be dealing with other people of the same level. To get to that level typically requires a certain degree of professionalism, whichever side of the deal you're on. So sure, people working with higher-value contracts tend to have less hassle. But being messed around by someone who won't pay your invoice doesn't mysteriously become your fault just because the invoice amount was under $1,000. That really is akin to saying that it's your fault you were robbed because you forgot to lock your home, or that she was asking for it because she was wearing a short skirt and had a couple of drinks. Many of you will be able to pick whether you are either of these types of people. I suggest being neither. I usually agree with your comments, but in this case, I'm afraid your advice is like saying "Make sure you run a successful business and deal only with great clients!" If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. In reality, even those of us who are successful today were the new guy once, and I expect that almost all of us have made at least one deal we would have preferred to avoid, so that we could pay the rent or fund a side project.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    I'm really not sure I see how you're able to get 4 paragraphs of objections from such a simple point. We're talking about a $780 invoice. The invoice was generated before written contracts were completed because... it's a $780 invoice. The project was worth so little to the client and was so trivial to the vendor that it was able to commence with neither a full spec, nor a master agreement, nor a simple statement of work. This isn't about "pick great clients"; it's about avoiding the rats nest of potential projects where there will always be a temptation to work under fly-by-night terms like this. And once again, every time someone says "pick better clients", someone here has to come out of the woodwork to preach the gospel of the freelancer- who- makes- a- great- living- servicing- small- clients- and- we- can't- all- be- Patrick- Mckenzie. Well, with all due respect to my friend Patrick, but I have hung out with him many times and I can assure you he has not been bitten by any radioactive spider, at least so that I can perceive it. The guy built a bingo card generator --- a kind of Platonic minima for value derivable from software --- and parlayed it into his current business. For cripes sake, you're on the same message board as he is; do what he did, get better clients. Stop complaining when people in very similar situations as you, or who started in very similar situations to you, tell you how to do better. Look at the advice you're getting: none of it involves kissing the ass of some financier at a VC firm. (1) Pick a specialization more narrow than "software development" so you're not competing on oDesk; (2) Segment your market so you can identify the most lucrative clients; (3) Tailor what you get good at to that market; (4) Be choosier; (5) Get paid. More.
nmeiring 14y ago
pretty ironic that this is posted on reddit
b1ind 14y ago
I'm the original Reddit thread poster. I did not intend for this situation to be posted on HN nor go out of hand. I will deal with the situation with the CEO privately, but for now I am chalking this up to a misunderstanding. In the end, it was 100% my fault that I was not cautious. Please, no internet lynch mobs - there is absolutely no need for that.
tzs 14y ago
Pedant point: a lot of people are writing about "verbal contracts" when they mean "oral contracts". A "verbal contract" is a contract in words--whether spoken or written, as opposed to a contract that is inferred from actions or implied by law. Both contracts in this story (the one possibly agreed to on the phone, and the one offered in writing by email) were verbal contracts--one oral and one written.
forlio 14y ago
I wouldn't pay you for that design. It's mediocre and needs major refinement. I would tell you to redo it. Get over it and learn to hustle better, Otherwise you won't make it very long as a designer. Verbal agreements don't mean anything any more. Clients just don't care and designers are a dime a dozen these days. If we fail then our competitors pick up our mess. Again I will say, get over it and find some other work. If you are as good as you think you are then you should have no problem finding work, right?
- lancewiggs 14y ago
  I've flagged you as you've (so far) said this three times, and the abusive style is not welcome here.
douglascalhoun 14y ago
I believe this is what you're looking for: (a) http://www.eligibleapp.com/ http://www.eligibleapp.com/ (b) https://eligibleapp.desk.com/customer/portal/emails/new https://eligibleapp.desk.com/customer/portal/emails/new
wglb 14y ago
On a side note: If any startups are looking for part-time designers, I am now available. This coming at the end of the rant, may not push another potential client over the threshold of decision after all that came before it.

318 points by venturebros 14y ago

MRonney 14y ago

This is fucked up. Not the only YC company I know that has done this to a designer, I really hope this gets voted up.

goronbjorn 14y ago

What company was it?

ebzlo 14y ago
Looks like eligibleapp.com
- Bitwse 14y ago
  Maybe you could elaborate on why you think it is them instead of just claiming..?
  - benologist 14y ago
    Probably cause the screenshot says "Eligible" at the top in big letters. http://i.imgur.com/0wmVG.png http://i.imgur.com/0wmVG.png
    - ohashi 14y ago
      And it was xxxxxapp.com as the censored name.
  - kika 14y ago
    Compare the screenshot on reddit and their front page.
- uptown 14y ago
  If it's them, maybe ask Katelyn Gleason if his version of the story is true: http://www.linkedin.com/in/katelyngleason http://www.linkedin.com/in/katelyngleason
  - untog 14y ago
    She's on Twitter, too. I'm hesitant to link to it, lest we unleash the internet lynch mob.
    - peetahb 14y ago
      Well her info is on the linkedin profile, so no need to make it easier for the internet lynch mob to find it.
  - presty 14y ago
    but the title says "YC S12" and her linkedin says "Y Combinator: W2011" .. but ye, the screenshots say eligible..
- prezjordan 14y ago
  Uh they literally stole Path's design. Look at the bottom left corner.
  - cmelbye 14y ago
    A lot of people have attempted to copy that UI element from Path. There's a few open source libraries for the iOS SDK that will accomplish that. Of course, it looks much better in Path in this case.

Jonanin 14y ago

If hiring a lawyer doesn't work out, surely YCombinator itself could do something about it, since they are in the current batch?

javajosh 14y ago

Small claims court and a public shaming. Done and done.

brackin 14y ago

You get what you pay for I guess. Their mobile app looks terrible, tries to copy the Path sharing functionality in a completely strange context. When something like this could be created with a far cleaner interface. In a strange way I understand the position the CEO may be in. They may have thought because they weren't going to use it they shouldn't have to pay. In the past I've paid a designer for work only to change my mind on a product but that isn't the designer's fault. You still have to pay whomever completes work for you, even if you don't use it. Just sounds like across the board naivety, rather than malice especially with the legal department comment. It's always best to sort problems out immediately and directly or they get in the way.

geekfactor 14y ago
Based on the screenshot currently gracing the eligibleapp.com home page, perhaps the CEO specifically requested a Path knock-off. ("We really love the Path app, can you make it look like that?")

kika 14y ago

I don't understand this, people. They're YC funded, in the worst case they have how much now, 10k? Risk your reputation for a few hundred dollars, having a few thousand in the pocket, why?

alttab 14y ago
They didn't sign anything, and the "CEO" of any YC startup early enough to need to outsource product development isn't promising anything despite their words.
- kika 14y ago
  I outsource my startup development heavily and I didn't bother signing anything either. Yes, I've lost a few hundred (probably even a couple of thousand) this way, paying for the job that went directly to the dumpster. It's a cost of doing business. And I didn't raise money this time, this is all my consulting revenue, I could have paid an income tax on it and put it in my pocket. But if you want to build a beautiful house there will be sawdust. These money is the sawdust.
  - kika 14y ago
    BTW, I'm looking for a designer. Contacts open.
- Silhouette 14y ago
  the "CEO" of any YC startup early enough to need to outsource product development isn't promising anything despite their words. Well... Yes. Yes, they are. There is no probation period when you start a business and become a legal officer of a company. If you want to be a CEO, you'd better act like it from 9am on day 1, because chances are you have the power to commit your business to any obligation it can legally undertake. Once you do, your business will be on the hook for any such commitments you make, forever. And depending on where you are, you might get away with failing to honour a commitment if you made an honest mistake and the business failed, but if you were just blatantly negligent about your responsibility to run the company properly then your corporate legal shield might not be as solid as you'd like either, leaving you on the hook personally as well.

Estragon 14y ago

In the screenshot, what the heck do those pie and bar graphs represent? Also, seems strange that he's coy about the name in the text, but seems to show it on the screenshot.

ohashi 14y ago

It's the response that bothers me the most: >I figured :) It's hard for me to comprehend how little they value their reputation with such a response. $<1000 apparently. Shameful.

consultutah 14y ago

The op has, hopefully, learned a valuable lesson: don't work without a signed contract. That said, the comp should have just paid or, at very least, tried to negotiate the amount thought I don't think that's worth the effort either. This is such a paltry amount as to not be worth the effort to fight.

veemjeem 14y ago
Are emails legally binding in CA? See here: http://www.linkedin.com/answers/law-legal/corporate-law/contracts/LAW_COR_CON/678439-28722568 http://www.linkedin.com/answers/law-legal/corporate-law/cont...
smackfu 14y ago
The other lesson people may take away is don't do contract work for startups.
- Silhouette 14y ago
  The thing is, this can (and sometimes does) happen with larger and better established businesses too. A common rule of thumb in the design industry is that if the amount of fees in question isn't going to be worth going to court over, then a 50% deposit paid up-front is a reasonable request.
ww520 14y ago
People have reneged on signed contracts. A signed contract is not a foolproof protection for your payment. You just have a better case when going to court, which will cost you money. Also a verbal agreement is a binding contract.

zachwill 14y ago

Pay the guy his money, but man, that design is pretty bad.

lysol 14y ago
The one on Reddit is fairly generic. The real one on the site is downright ugly: http://eligibleapp.com/ http://eligibleapp.com/
incongruity 14y ago
It's not so much bad, per se, as it is just... well... inert. There's no there, there.
- learc83 14y ago
  Presumably there would have been some further iterations and back and forth between the client and the designer had the contract continued.
cluda01 14y ago
Could you please elaborate as to why you think so? I'm not trying to be a contrarian here. I'm asking because I'm a backend engineer so my opinions on design admittedly isn't very sophisticated.

_delirium 14y ago

I'm going to go out on a limb and register a slight discomfort with the increasing use of HN as a "court of public opinion" in very fact-bound disputes like this one. I can sort of see resorting to it out of desperation, but I'm afraid the Internet Lynch Mob has a very high ratio of outrage to effort spent actually investigating. This post has 84 upvotes in 21 minutes, which suggests a very quick investigation! So, the potential for erroneous snap judgments in such a Court seems high. The designer here may very well be in the right, but I don't feel qualified to judge or do anything about it based on the available information, any more than I do with the hundreds of other designer-client disputes that happen on a regular basis.

javajosh 14y ago
Actually I agree. That's why small claims court should precede the public shaming.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Small claims court? How many days outstanding is the invoice? You want to take a guess about the longest it's ever taken us to get paid for an invoice? Net-30 (meaning, let's just pretend we're going to pay you within 30 days of getting invoiced so we can stop talking about this part of the contract) is a standard term. Is it your expectation that when you don't have a contract, you can expect "Net-1" payment?
  - javajosh 14y ago
    Of course not! "Small claims court" doesn't mean now. To even file a claim you must have sent a demand letter. So he's still got some hoops to jump through. That said, I don't think he has to wait 30 days if the client has already indicated that they've decided to breach the contract. What he needs to do now is send a real-life letter demanding an agreement to pay within the week, and if that agreement is not forthcoming, then he should file in small claims court. Really, it's not all that dramatic either.
    - 14y ago

dr42 14y ago

I hope the screenshot is fake data and not violating anyone's HIPPA rights, otherwise this designer is going to be in a lot of very hot water over this.

untog 14y ago
If Eligible sent confidential data to a contract designer for the purposes of a mockup then they deserve everything they get. I don't- for a second- think that they did.
- dr42 14y ago
  Well they (Eligible) have already demonstrated a flagrant disregard for other people with this whole incident.
  - bigiain 14y ago
    This is a good point - would _you_ trust your medical data/history to someone who'd screw over a graphic designer for $780? With no other indicators of reputation - what's everybody else's opinion on what this startup might do when a medical insurance company show up and says "$10,000 to see $persons medical history"? Maybe the designer is misleading us all, and there's a very good reason with the company are reluctant to pay $780 for some work the designer thought they'd asked for. But surely in the field they've chosen, reputation and appearance of trustworthiness have orders of magnitude more value that this spat?

faramarz 14y ago

Not handled professionally on the designers part. He could have turned this into a win by being their go-to-guy for future contract work or getting referrals to other YC residents instead. I don't think it was worth resorting to public shaming for a few grand. I guess Eligible got some free press out of this now. Well done!

javajosh 14y ago
If what the designer saying is true, then Eligible breached contract. Verbal contracts are binding in CA. And he is within his rights to get paid for his work. It should not damage his reputation at all.
- faramarz 14y ago
  I I edited to say "public shaming" instead. You're right. His reputation I can't predict, but it might creep up somewhere on Google and potential hires may consider it a liability. Don't scare away the future prospects by making yourself untouchable.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Oral contracts are binding everywhere in the US. What's damaging to his reputation isn't pursuing the invoice based on an oral contract. What's damaging to his reputation is if he jumped the gun, whipping up drama about a receivable that he reasonably could have expected to get paid if he simply invoiced persistently. I suspect this thread might be a bit of a litmus test for people who have done a lot of freelancing. From working with designers a bit, I can tell that this is a hot-button issue for them: a lot of clients do shirk payment, and so they tend to insist on upfront payment of some sort before they commence work. But having said that, I have to believe every freelancer is familiar with delayed payments on invoices. Your most lucrative clients might pay many months late, and then only after persistent reminders.
  - javajosh 14y ago
    For once, I sort of agree with you. But I chalk it up to inexperience, not malice. It sounds like the OP was intimidated by the (probably meant to be tongue-in-cheek) referral to the "legal department, and genuinely doesn't know what to do. And, it's one thing to have a client drag their heels on a bill, it's quite another for a client to say, "No, we won't pay that, talk to legal if you have a problem with that." The former is a good opportunity to persistently invoice, the later is a good opportunity to explore the small claims court system.

arihant 14y ago

It's just 3 days of work. Did she seriously point to her lawyers to fight 3 days worth of wages? Not only is the CEO irresponsible, she sounds pretentious. Does Eligible have a legal team?

bmac27 14y ago

I've also been in the equally unenviable position of having to pay for someone who completed work according to a scope that was too vaguely defined. The guy I contracted to do the work did the work according to the broad outline I originally set out. Being young & stupid at the time, I blamed him for thinking he took shortcuts and refused to pay him all of what he was owed at first. But it was my fault for not being more specific in the original job. I eventually apologized and paid him the rest of the money. Lesson learned. I believe design work is especially prone to this. But none of this is an excuse. If you have a signed contract, you honor it. Period.

Dystopian 14y ago

Well. Your design looks nicer at least, and you're probably getting more than $XXX exposure now (Their current one.. doesn't - but it could be worked on as a first revision - hopefully their current designer iterates hard!)

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

nirajd 14y ago

Seriously? Please learn how to properly freelance before publicly flaming a bootstrapped startup. Always get your task/rate in writing before continuing..

gorbachev 14y ago
So just because he didn't have the foresight to have a signed contract, it's grounds for him to get f*ed by a well funded startup? Seriously?

venturebros 14y ago

Oh this isn't me by the way I just saw it on Reddit.

bocmaxima 14y ago

This happened to me as well with a YC company. I then found out that YC companies are known for this kind of thing since they're so early-stage. Always get a contract.

Cushman 14y ago

How much does it really matter in these situations whether or not you have a "signed contract"? My understanding is that any agreement to do work for compensation is a contract, and these days even a "signed" contract is likely to just be a PDF which is as easily faked as an emailed "$65/hr? Sounds good, go ahead and get started." Is it just one of those things where someone's less likely to try to rip you off if they put their signature on something? Or is it more to make sure you get the words in front of a couple of lawyers who are much less likely to lie than the involved parties?

tptacek 14y ago
It matters a LOT. A you-said they-said dispute over a verbal contract can be expensive to resolve --- almost certainly way more expensive than the total value of this dev contract. Startups who hire outside vendors should be very careful to foreclose on any potential verbal contract --- "do not start working for us until we have a signed master agreement and a statement of work" --- and that's for a lot of reasons, not just misunderstandings like this. Obviously, if a company operator deliberately leads a vendor to believe there's an authorization to start work, they're morally on the hook for billed hours. But in reality, consultants go into engagements like that knowing that they're on the hook if anything goes wrong. This comes up a lot in consulting, because legal negotiation over master agreements can take weeks and sometimes threaten to ice deals that can be kept alive by just starting ahead of the contract.
- Cushman 14y ago
  But it's not a verbal contract if it's over email, right? It's right there in writing, we both have copies of it, it can (theoretically) be verified by a third party. If I go to small claims with a copy of an email, what can they say that they couldn't say just as well if I go in with a piece of paper I claim they signed? I've never seen someone say "Don't start working without a notarized contract", but that's the hidden message, right? Otherwise we're just playing at semantics. Edit: As above, I notice now the OP did have a purely verbal contract. I was referring to emailed agreement which is common in our line of work, though.
- 14y ago

tptacek 14y ago

I don't understand what happened here. The CEO told him to submit his invoice to legal@. Did he do that? What did their legal say? Did the company formally decline to pay the invoice? Or did he just assume he wasn't going to get paid and jump the gun? But anyways: LESSON LEARNED for startup CEOs. Here it is, it's very simple: If you want to question or slowroll an invoice, direct it to finance@, not legal@. You have exactly the same set of options with finance@, and your legal can still review the invoice, ping the vendor, or what-have-you, but you haven't escalated the situation.

qq66 14y ago
Yeah, the whole story is missing the part where the legal email address says "we won't pay you." Could be that's the person who is going to pay.
sudonim 14y ago
Do most YC S12 companies have a legal department? Or a finance department for that matter? Im sure this particular situation is nuanced, and both parties seem to be unhappy. I haven't worked with many contractors yet, but my 2 rules of thumb are: Don't ask people to do work for you unless you plan to pay them for it. Pay promptly and in full. It's pretty simple. If the CEO was never planning to pay, the conversation shouldn't have gotten that far and the contractor shouldn't have had the idea that they should go and make something.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Most companies don't have "legal departments"; they have outside counsel they retain for random stuff. Like this. The onus was on the vendor to actually submit the invoice to the email address the CEO said to send it to. That's not a hardship. Try invoicing a Fortune 500 company for the first time. Goat sacrifice may be involved. Note that I have no idea at all whether he actually did do that. In the real world, it is actually allowed to question an invoice. You probably end up paying regardless, but you are in fact allowed to ask the questions.
  - 14y ago

f0untain 14y ago

Is this how PR disaster look like ?

bbit 14y ago

LOL this bitch Katelyn Gleason is going to get some serious hatin if she doesn't cough up this guys $$ LOL

il 14y ago

Hey everyone: can we hold on for just one minute before forming an Internet Lynch Mob and maybe try to get the other side's perspective? Because we only have one side of the story right now. How do you know the OP isn't lying? Or that OP isn't a competitor trying to destroy this company's credibility? Or, maybe this was just a simple misunderstanding/miscommunication? I'm not accusing the OP of lying, but there's zero evidence here right now. Think rationally and consider every possibility. I don't know the founders and I have no connection to the company in question (other than participating in a previous YC batch).

nwmcsween 14y ago

This is what you don't do if things don't work out. Go to small claims court, do not post it on the internet and open yourself to getting sued for libel.

jbigelow76 14y ago
If the same legal team that reviews the invoices would be in charge of pursuing the lawsuit the chances of the OP getting sued are pretty slim ;)

donnfelker 14y ago

My advice - Watch Mike Monterios talk: Fuck You Pay Me. http://vimeo.com/22053820 http://vimeo.com/22053820

taskstrike 14y ago

One key point is that YC is a great brand in the tech community. If you are a YC graduate, your have the credibility of it behind you as if someone was a Harvard grad. Doing stuff like this erodes the brand for an trivial amount of money. Work was done here, and if they weren't a YC company and some other guy, it is less likely that a designer would work for them without some kind of written agreement.

pdufour 14y ago

I wonder how long this post will be up before the designer gets paid.

jmharvey 14y ago

There's a lesson here on the other side, as well: when you're hiring any kind of contractor (designer, lawyer, etc.) you need to specify not just an hourly rate, but also an estimated number of hours. One person's idea of "getting started" on a project may be an hour or two of work, another's may be several dozen hours. Getting an invoice for many times what you thought you were agreeing to is an unpleasant shock, regardless of how it's resolved.

guelo 14y ago

This is off-topic and I couldn't really figure out what it is that eligibleapp does, but why would they not come out with a web app first? Restricting whatever it is they're doing to the iPhone seems shortsighted.

xrty3 14y ago
It's mint.com for health insurance. I'm trying to figure out what additional value Eligible's supposed to add that outweighs just logging into your insurance company's website. And how they're supposed to make a profit.
dr_ 14y ago
Agreed. But if it's not restricted to the iPhone, there are already competitors out there such as cake health and simplee. It could be useful for physicians who are in the hospital or skilled nursing setting and want to check insurance eligibility. But much of today's health care work is desktop related, and there's so much opportunity for disruption there that it's important not to overlook it all and head straight for mobile apps.

brudgers 14y ago

To the CEO if the report is substantially accurate: The cost of attorneys and more importantly the distraction isn't worth the worst case invoice for three days work. It's not going to cost you your shirt, just one sleeve. Be glad it's a cheap lesson.

bradleyland 14y ago

My advice? Get up, dust yourself off, and move on. These scenarios might result in a deluge of support from others in your field, but for a lot of managers, this puts you on a special kind of blacklist. We can't know all the details of the circumstance, but we do know for sure that you were willing to "name & shame" the client here on HN. For some, that's enough. Just to be clear, it definitely sounds like you got a raw deal here, but I've only heard your side of the story. Experience tells me that people who find themselves in this position are there because they cut corners (work order and statement of work), or trusted someone too early. Both of these are poor judgement calls. Take ownership of that, learn from it, and go find new clients. If you're not in a financial position to take it on the chin, file your small claims paperwork and have your day in court. I just doubt that the name & shame approach is the best thing for the future of your career as a freelancer.

mrobataille 14y ago
Shut up and deal with it? I really wonder what this world would be like if everyone who had a career, family, or life to risk over being a whistleblower took the safe, sure path and shut up and dealt with it.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Yes, because whipping up an Internet mob over not having an invoice instantly paid is exactly the same as leaking the Pentagon Papers. Sheesh.
- bradleyland 14y ago
  Perspective! Freelancers are an army of one. How you spend your time will have a large impact on your success. No one likes to take it on the chin, but sometimes you have to step back, look at how hard the hit is, and decide if you really want to get in to a brawl over the matter. Think of this as a judgement call. IMO, it shows either lack of preparedness or poor judgement on the part of the freelancer in this case. When you run your own business, the buck stops at you. In any given scenario, you must be willing to accept your portion of the responsibility. It has been my experience that the more responsibility someone is willing to accept, the better they are at getting things done. It's a pretty good indicator of success. Those who always look to push the burden of responsibility off on others will dwindle their time looking everyone but at themselves. I'm not saying that the freelancer is 100% responsible here, but I am saying that it doesn't matter much. If your goal is to be successful, you can't be distracted by these stupid little hiccups. You have to get up, dust yourself off, and move on.

suresk 14y ago

I don't get it - did he actually email legal@ and get a negative response, or are we just spawning internet lynch mobs the second we run into the slightest amount of resistance now?

inuhj 14y ago

I'm delighted to see that disputes are being solved this way instead of tying up the assets of our judicial system. Remember the days when we actually tried to resolve our problems and court was a last resort? Now the sentiment seems to be that you should file in small claims court instead of writing a post on reddit. I'm glad to see 'court of public opinion'(AKA reputation) make a comeback. The concept of reputation is, in my humblest of opinions, more important than our legal system when it comes to keeping people from behaving badly. Being publicly shamed is a deterrent for unethical behavior in a way that our courts can not be because of the ridiculously high cost of litigation.

clarky07 14y ago

Seriously? Who refers someone to legal for $780? Especially considering they are YC funded. That seems absurd. (Obviously only one side of the story here, but it seems clear they wanted the work done asap)

Aaronontheweb 14y ago

At $65 / hour, how big of a bill could the designer have possibly generated over three days? Just pay him and get it over with - anything under $1,000 is chump change.

pbiggar 14y ago

I feel really sorry for the CEO. She's inexperienced, she didn't know to just pay the money, and in her first disagreement with a contractor, she got an internet lynch mob on her back. She did the wrong thing, of course, but the cost was much higher than this merits. Even if she does the right thing now, there are many who will consider this a black mark on the company indefinitely.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

patio11 14y ago

Without saying anything about this particular situation, can I just point out for the four hundredth time that $780 invoices generate far, far, far more stupidity than $7,800 or $78,000 invoices do? This is the fault of both people who send $780 invoices and people who generate work likely to cause $780 invoices. Many of you will be able to pick whether you are either of these types of people. I suggest being neither.

Silhouette 14y ago
Without saying anything about this particular situation, can I just point out for the four hundredth time that $780 invoices generate far, far, far more stupidity than $7,800 or $78,000 invoices do? Your argument is a classic case of the correlation/causation fallacy. A modest invoice does not "generate" stupidity. Millions of freelancers around the world make a good living doing relatively small jobs for satisfied customers and submitting modest invoices that get paid on time. If you are in a position to work on higher-value deals, then naturally you will be dealing with other people of the same level. To get to that level typically requires a certain degree of professionalism, whichever side of the deal you're on. So sure, people working with higher-value contracts tend to have less hassle. But being messed around by someone who won't pay your invoice doesn't mysteriously become your fault just because the invoice amount was under $1,000. That really is akin to saying that it's your fault you were robbed because you forgot to lock your home, or that she was asking for it because she was wearing a short skirt and had a couple of drinks. Many of you will be able to pick whether you are either of these types of people. I suggest being neither. I usually agree with your comments, but in this case, I'm afraid your advice is like saying "Make sure you run a successful business and deal only with great clients!" If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. In reality, even those of us who are successful today were the new guy once, and I expect that almost all of us have made at least one deal we would have preferred to avoid, so that we could pay the rent or fund a side project.
- tptacek 14y ago
  I'm really not sure I see how you're able to get 4 paragraphs of objections from such a simple point. We're talking about a $780 invoice. The invoice was generated before written contracts were completed because... it's a $780 invoice. The project was worth so little to the client and was so trivial to the vendor that it was able to commence with neither a full spec, nor a master agreement, nor a simple statement of work. This isn't about "pick great clients"; it's about avoiding the rats nest of potential projects where there will always be a temptation to work under fly-by-night terms like this. And once again, every time someone says "pick better clients", someone here has to come out of the woodwork to preach the gospel of the freelancer- who- makes- a- great- living- servicing- small- clients- and- we- can't- all- be- Patrick- Mckenzie. Well, with all due respect to my friend Patrick, but I have hung out with him many times and I can assure you he has not been bitten by any radioactive spider, at least so that I can perceive it. The guy built a bingo card generator --- a kind of Platonic minima for value derivable from software --- and parlayed it into his current business. For cripes sake, you're on the same message board as he is; do what he did, get better clients. Stop complaining when people in very similar situations as you, or who started in very similar situations to you, tell you how to do better. Look at the advice you're getting: none of it involves kissing the ass of some financier at a VC firm. (1) Pick a specialization more narrow than "software development" so you're not competing on oDesk; (2) Segment your market so you can identify the most lucrative clients; (3) Tailor what you get good at to that market; (4) Be choosier; (5) Get paid. More.

nmeiring 14y ago

pretty ironic that this is posted on reddit

b1ind 14y ago

I'm the original Reddit thread poster. I did not intend for this situation to be posted on HN nor go out of hand. I will deal with the situation with the CEO privately, but for now I am chalking this up to a misunderstanding. In the end, it was 100% my fault that I was not cautious. Please, no internet lynch mobs - there is absolutely no need for that.

tzs 14y ago

Pedant point: a lot of people are writing about "verbal contracts" when they mean "oral contracts". A "verbal contract" is a contract in words--whether spoken or written, as opposed to a contract that is inferred from actions or implied by law. Both contracts in this story (the one possibly agreed to on the phone, and the one offered in writing by email) were verbal contracts--one oral and one written.

forlio 14y ago

I wouldn't pay you for that design. It's mediocre and needs major refinement. I would tell you to redo it. Get over it and learn to hustle better, Otherwise you won't make it very long as a designer. Verbal agreements don't mean anything any more. Clients just don't care and designers are a dime a dozen these days. If we fail then our competitors pick up our mess. Again I will say, get over it and find some other work. If you are as good as you think you are then you should have no problem finding work, right?

lancewiggs 14y ago
I've flagged you as you've (so far) said this three times, and the abusive style is not welcome here.

douglascalhoun 14y ago

I believe this is what you're looking for: (a) http://www.eligibleapp.com/ http://www.eligibleapp.com/ (b) https://eligibleapp.desk.com/customer/portal/emails/new https://eligibleapp.desk.com/customer/portal/emails/new

wglb 14y ago

On a side note: If any startups are looking for part-time designers, I am now available. This coming at the end of the rant, may not push another potential client over the threshold of decision after all that came before it.