8 ms·
A web developer posted a payment shaming message on their client's site
- johnwheeler 9mo agoGood (if legit)
- fabiensanglard 9mo agoAs much as I want to side with the developers I think they are exposing themselves to legal repercussions and made their situation worse.
- exe34 9mo ago> legal repercussions like what? contract says "money for stuff". no money, no stuff.
- azangru 9mo ago> no money, no stuff. No stuff is one thing. Different stuff deployed to client's url is quite another.
- tracker1 9mo agoIt's not the client's url if they didn't pay for it.
- jlokier 9mo agoIn the case of a URL it might be. If the domain is registered with the client named as the formal owner, the client may well be the owner even if they haven't paid for it yet.
- tracker1 8mo agoThen the client can move the DNS for the domain and use a server they control and have paid for.
- drysart 9mo agoBut this is very obviously not "no stuff". This is "different stuff". Taking the website down entirely or just blanking it out is a very, very different matter than replacing it with a different message; and doubly so when the different message is actively harmful to the customer. Unless the designer's contract with the customer explicitly allowed them to do this, this sort of thing is a slam dunk legal case of either vandalism (using a physical metaphor) or in the UK as in this example, a criminal violation of the Computer Misuse Act. Not to mention that it's an enormous red flag that will scare away other potential customers for this designer; because it demonstrates that you're very willing to sabotage their operations.
- exe34 9mo agoit's not the client's website yet, they haven't paid for it!
- 1123581321 9mo agoMaybe. A lot of freelancers and agencies have amateur or no contracts. A neutral service suspended message or no response from the server is more defendable if the client goes after you. If you actively communicate on their website, it could be argued you tried to cause reputational harm etc. Even if you're right, provoking a legal response from a client is more than a lot of creatives and developers can handle, especially if the client is big enough to retain legal or staff a GC. I suspect that things will turn out fine for this particular developer since the client seems small and the message is mostly innocuous.
- exe34 9mo agoif the company is big enough to have legal staff, said staff would probably have advised them to pay in the first place.
- 1123581321 9mo agoYou would think so! :)
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- SunshineTheCat 9mo agoIt would be interesting to see the project agreement to know if something like this was expressly outlined in it. My guess is if it was, the client wouldn't agree to it, but who knows (many people just skim over them anyways).
- petercooper 9mo agoIn the UK, this is less of a problem, though it depends a lot on the contract between the company and the developer. Assuming nothing exotic, that the statement on the site is true (and not a malicious falsehood) and that if the hosting belongs to the end customer they did not revoke the developer's access (i.e. no unauthorised access occurred), then the developer is in a reasonable position legally. IANAL, of course.
- EGreg 9mo agoNo unauthorized access but they would argue unauthorized vandalism by the developer, which blocks the entire site. Airing dirty laundry is in some jurisdictions a legal offence. Which is exactly why there needs to be agreement spelled out in contracts upfront, that this could happen, and the client would just sign it. And I am a fan of smart contracts and cryptocurrencies, see my suggestion below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46502285 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46502285
- petercooper 8mo agoAiring dirty laundry is in some jurisdictions a legal offence. In the UK, the place where the site in the original link is, it's okay to state facts about a business transaction in public if it's not a malicious falsehood, a violation of contract, or a violation of privacy laws (e.g. sharing emails or recorded calls). But yes, I agree, the issues leading up to this should all be tackled by the contract up front.
- elevatortrim 9mo agoSo if I'm a builder, can I build a wall in front of your grocery store's door if you did not pay me, as long as I do not lie and I do not break in?
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- true_religion 9mo agoWhen you don’t pay for your salesforce Licence it disables your integrations, and puts up a banner saying this has been done for non payment so you should contact an administrator. Far be it from me to hold them up as a beacon of moral value, but in business it’s fair to say you have to pay for service. It’s not a humiliation, it’s just factual.
- elevatortrim 9mo agoNot the same thing. Salesforce is a service provider, they can stop the service they provide. This developer could too. Salesforce should not be allowed to cite payment reasons though.
- crazygringo 9mo agoThis. You're opening yourself to claims of defamation, tortious interference, disparagement, even coercion, depending on where you are. Not saying the client will win, but they can make it so you'll need to pay lots of legal fees to defend yourself. It's much smarter to just take the site down without any kind of message, or just something that says "temporarily unavailable". Play dumb with the client, say you don't know why it went down but to fix it but you need to be paid first. Or say it depended on cloud credits that were going to come out of payment, if you don't want it to look like the site went down due to your incompetence. Making a big public stink might feel good, but it's not a smart business strategy.
- jabroni_salad 9mo agoI agree, if only because the UK seems to be the florida of goofball defamation cases. And while I do think the developer would win their case, having to field one at all really sucks.
- intellix 9mo agoI did this like 20yrs ago. Would ask him for payment and he would go quiet until he needed changes. I made the changes and he would be like oohhh I need to pay you don't I! I give the details and he goes quiet again until he needed more changes
- munchler 9mo agoWhy would you do additional work after he failed to pay?
- neogodless 9mo agoI had a client like this. It was easy work, easy money, even if a bit delayed. After one such "non-payment" incident, the next time they needed something they basically offered xx hours of payment for 15 minutes of work to get back on my good side. In general they'd end up "overpaying" for each project to make up for their tardiness in paying.
- josefresco 9mo agoI build websites for a living and sometimes people don't pay their bills. Their website going down is usually not a big deal (sometimes they don't notice for months!). But their email, now THAT is a show stopper every time (instant payment).
- EGreg 9mo agoHow do you get their email to go down exactly?
- dstroot 9mo agoWell… if you control their DNS you have their MX record…
- ecb_penguin 9mo agoDisable the account or change DNS records are the easiest.
- smt88 9mo agoThis is illegal in most places unless the contract says otherwise. You don't have a lien on a website or domain the way you do for a car.
- ecb_penguin 9mo agoI didn't say anything about the legality... They asked how to block email. Both of these would work. There's no reason to respond to questions or points nobody is making.
- smt88 9mo agoYou don't think there's a reason to say someone's illegal advice is illegal? OK.
- 8mo ago
- reedf1 9mo ago301 to a competitor site.
- mrtksn 9mo agoI see such behavior from time to time but feels off-taste IMHO. It's almost as if would be more professional if they worked with the Italian mafia to coerce for payment(not that I approve such thing). If contract broken, sue them. Why throwing a scene?
- yieldcrv 9mo agobecause social shaming is faster and cheaper than the legal system and doesn’t involve physical violence like the mafia
- mrtksn 9mo agoI guess its something you can do if you don't care about your reputation and you need the money now, this is because It's very uncomfortable to work with people who throw a scene just like that. We haven't heard the other side of the argument, have we? Maybe it's not as simple as services delivered payment withheld.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- yieldcrv 9mo agoI’ve taken risks like that, bucking “reputation” scare tactics, and people respected me more I’ve seen a lot of things like that flip over the last 2 decades Where the abuser doesn’t tend to be able to control reputation across an industry, so they can be called out A freelance software developer wouldn't be affected by that, YMMV
- petit_robert 9mo ago>If contract broken, sue them. Why throwing a scene? Haha! tell me about it. A client of mine ended his contract in 2010, pretending he did not use my software anymore. He had the source because I had to compile on site for technical reasons. A disgruntled employed called to tell me and my associate he was still using it. It took me 3 years to find a proof, lawsuit started in 2014, the expertise began in 2016 and ended in 2021. I have a first trial hearing scheduled Feb, 12 2026. Expect 6 to 12 months before a decision, and of course, an appeal after that. The guy had stocked up 5 million dollars net when I stopped him with the lawsuit [0], he is using the money to pay well known lawyers to delay the procedure every which way. I'm out largely over 100 000 euros in court, expertise and lawyer fees, plus the countless hours spent responding to the endless, senseless dribble their lawyers produce. As far as I'm concerned, my services are now hosted by me, and failure to pay shuts down the service, it's in the TOS. [0 : he subcontracted for a big entity. I would never had gotten that contract myself, lacking the thief's network; said big entity never replied to our mails about our software]
- EGreg 9mo ago[flagged]
- NikolaNovak 9mo agoI genuinely don't know if this is a sarcastic/troll post or a honest one. I assume it's sarcasm, but I have seen people earnestly suggest such complex and orthogonal solutions to a solved problem, so I have to check (I neither up voted nor down voted fwiw. As sarcasm it's kind of funny. If genuine, I don't even know where to begin - our axiomatic frameworks may be too far apart:)
- EGreg 9mo agoThis is an honest one. There are not many reasons to use a cryptocurrency and a blockchain, but this is one of them. It models the incentives properly. In general - smart contracts can prevent a huge class of disputes, increasing clarity at scale and decreasing the costs of litigation after the fact.
- NikolaNovak 9mo agoCan you elaborate? My thoughts: * Typically, payment issues like this are at small scales - not a massive enterprise website for a multinational corporation, but a small businesses that need web presence. * In such cases, scope management is key. Client typically underestimates the work required, so education and clear expectations are both a must and an uphill battle * Anything that expands the scope without clear requirements tracing, risks derailing. Adding "tokens" and crypto, not just as a smart contract between web developer and business users, but with all the customers and users, seems like a huge expansion of scope, and likely orthogonal to the limited "web presence / small eCommerce" requirements * Meanwhile, the traditional/boring commerce and law have this covered - a little bit of work ahead of time by the web developer to draft and sign appropriate contract / payment terms (which can and should be standardized once for all clients), can provide appropriate safety guardrails; in particular, far less overhead than building a whole new (possibly unbilled?) crypto/token facilities. What are your thoughts on A/B comparison here? Thanks for your time!
- KomoD 9mo agoThis probably explains why they're not paying: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12253393 https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c... > Company status: Dissolved > Dissolved on 16 December 2025 His other company: > Company status: Liquidation People are now attacking the guy on Instagram because I guess the developer or someone, made a Tiktok video about it.
- hinkley 9mo agoThe thing about dissolving a company is that they generally should have done it before getting a bunch of services without paying for them. Like a gambler they think the big win is coming any second and they drag it out too long, leaving a bunch of unpaid bills behind then.
- slowmovintarget 9mo agoOr worse, planned on not paying in the first place and made off with investor cash while maintaining the appearance of moving on their venture.
- hinkley 9mo agoI want to be a producer!
- SoftTalker 9mo agoAs a contractor some of this is on you also. Before extending credit to a client you should do some due diligence on their ability to pay.
- Forgeties79 9mo agoBut how? Make them show me their books? Aside from a downpayment idk what else there is
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- ecb_penguin 9mo agoI have no idea what the contract says, what was paid, or any of the other conversations they've had. All I see is someone complaining publicly about a private matter. When that happens, I assume they're wrong. Normal people don't air petty grievances on the internet. They use the courts and other mechanisms. According to another comment, the business is dissolved. They don't care if their site goes down. So this guy is looking unprofessional for nothing.
- JohnGB 9mo agoYou say that as if the courts are a reasonable solution for most people. In many cases the cost and time render them useless and often cost more than the invoice that is due. In some jurisdictions you may recover this, but in many you can't.
- ecb_penguin 9mo agoYou say that as if airing your problems on the internet is a reasonable solution for most people. We have small claims courts in every jurisdiction in the US. It costs $50 to file, and you do not need an attorney. The courts will review the contract and generally reach a reasonable decision. There's always a cost/benefit to things. I bet the courts have returned more money than Facebook posts have...
- btasker 8mo ago> We have small claims courts in every jurisdiction in the US. It costs $50 to file, and you do not need an attorney. This particular example is in the UK though. It's even easier here! You can issue a Statutory Demand (https://www.gov.uk/statutory-demands https://www.gov.uk/statutory-demands) which gives the receiver 21 days to either pay or reach an agreement to pay. Failing to do that can lead to them being wound up. If, for some reason, you wanted to go the small claims route instead, there's an (ageing) online service (https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/web/mcol/welcome https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/web/mcol/welcome). Unlike the US, the fee isn't a flat fee, and is tiered depending on the amount being claimed (still cheap though). I've had to use both in the past. The developer in this case really has no excuse for airing dirty laundry in public. If they're hosting and not being paid, by all means suspend the site, but don't deface it so there's a message about not being paid carrying the customer's branding.
- etchalon 9mo agoIf someone doesn't pay you, stop providing the service. A message like this on a client website doesn't do what you think it's going to do.
- newresearcher33 9mo agois it legal? turn it off instead of doing that, because it damages the brand
- biglyburrito 8mo agoWhy should the person they didn't pay for services rendered give two poops about any damage they do to the offender's brand?
- bityard 9mo agoLess-than-fully-reputable shared hosting providers have been doing a variation on this for decades. Although normally in the form of a pop-up or banner at the top of the page. When I worked for a hosting provider, an overdue account would get daily emails for up to a month. After a month, the site would be disabled (404) or the VPS would be turned off. After three months, the site/VPS would be archived. After one year, the archive was deleted. Astonishingly, there was always a fairly steady stream of customers who would come back over a year later and ask for their site to be restored, or to get a copy of it. I never enjoyed being the person who had to give them the bad news of the consequences of their choices.
- TheChelsUK 9mo agoThis is why as an indie business you need business insurances that would pay out in cases like this. I doubt anyone would work with this dev in the future, but lol it’s still quite funny.