It pains me to write this one. I always give people a chance. Hell, I give them three and four chances. Sometimes five and six chances. When you stand up to people who aren't used to being stood up to (and are wealthy on top of it), you'll lose. Money always wins. Since you are insignificant to them, they can take the chance of not paying you because they have so many good relationships with wealthy people to fall back on. They can always say, "that guy is a liar, look at all these paid debts and long history I have." Then the little guy looks like he's hard to deal with and inevitably.. loses to the status quo of the monied community. After all, if you have more money than someone else, you must be the better person? Right?

Well, I disagree. I will stand up to people who can but don't pay their debts. Especially people who don't value anyone's time or effort but their own. These are the most despicable of all in my eyes. This guy is such a person. At least, he is to me.

He entered into an agreement where he would pay me monthly over a year. Being the fool, I did three months work in a month. I wanted to exceed his expectations and turn him profitable as quickly as i could. I appreciated the confidence. Little did I know i was being played.

Payday comes (the 15th) and no payday. I call and am put off a few days. no problem. After a few days I call and am put off another few days. No problem. After a few days i call back and am put off over the weekend. no problem. After the weekend I call again and am put off another day. no problem. The next day i'm told we'll meet in the morning. No problem. Then it's switched until the afternoon. no problem. Then I get a call saying I need to sign some paperwork first. No problem. I say when i finally get the check, i may have to cash it (or hammer it) because now I'm late on financial commitments I made from the previous week. now there's a problem, so he puts me off two more days. Then he decides he wasn't happy and didn't want the agreement anymore. Ok, no problem, just pay me and we'll nullify the agreement. Now he wants to put me off another day (until Friday) but will only pay me then by check and only then if I sign over everything to him today... in advance. Well, now i have a problem. it looks to me like i have to give up any leverage I have on the hopes that a guy who's already lied to me ten times will give me a check in two days knowing full well he'll stop payment on it if I'm lucky enough to get it in the first place. so i say no thanks. Now he says he'll never pay and i can go screw myself

I looked back over my emails from him the last thirty days and I have 82 emails from him. He never mentioned in one of those emails he was unhappy, didn't like how things were going, wasn't ok with the agreement anymore or anything negative at all. not once. just praise and some legitimate criticism i immediately responded to and fixed. never once did he bother to mention i was working for free and might or might not ever get paid. Hell, if he'd of just told me that payday might mean anytime in general two-three week period I'd of probably agreed to it.

But he didn't. he only decided he was unhappy after stalling me no less than ten times. Then (all of a sudden) he was totally unhappy with everything. gee.. what a shock. then has the audacity to tell me my bills are none of his concern. I assure you, if anyone works for you, their bills are a big concern of yours if you don't pay the guy for services rendered. I don't know about most of you, but i work for money first, love second.

Anyway, my experience with this guy has been one of the most miserable of my life. I'm sure many of you may have nothing but praise for the guy. I understand. That's how I felt before I did business with him.

love him all you want. Buy him candy on Holidays. but in my opinion, proceed at your own peril if you do business with him. To keep from paying the bill he is going to operate under a new name so be real careful.


This is my side of the story. I'm sure his is just the opposite. just know, before you lie... i have every single email.

is this Crude Dude??

Drock wrote:

is this Crude Dude??

Unfortunately

He needs to pay up for services rendered. The website looked good to me.

Doesn't he have a boat you could file a lien on? It sucks when people don't pay.

The website was great. Technically, maybe the best use of iframes ever and artistically, the best work of my life. Even a simple logo like the nike swoosh took weeks. Unless you know exactly how a logo is going to look, the shapes and colors are endless. In this case I did over 70 variations of logos before we finally settled on the one we'd use. It's no simple nike swoosh either. Everything was original and created from scratch. No clip art, no pre-existing art. If it was all I had done it was by far enough for 30 days. (actually 39 days). However, in that time frame I built two complete turnkey websites. Designed the logo. Vectored the logo for large printing. Designed business cards, designed letterhead. Researched the ice business from 1896 until present. Researched over 35 competitors. Read their site from cover to cover. Studied their code and key words. Ran searches on those key words in all major search engines and individually ranked each word. Studied google page rank of each page of all the competitions web sites and created a key word file. Created a two year online businees plan. And bought multi domains, set up accounts cpanel and email accounts for those domains. I worked from dawn to late into the night 7 days a week for 5 weeks. The thanks I get is ruining my wifes birthday, ruining my relationship with my landlord, losing my motorcycle, losing another customer I blew off for this asshole and stress beyond belief.

I may not have your money slick, but I have over 2 million readers and I am relentless. I never lie. I know your attorneys are reading every word. I know I will have to walk into court and prove every word. I know other graphic designers and web designers will look at my files and assess the amount of hours I put into it. I don't walk away crushed. I stand and fight.

Sorry to hear this. Pretty damn ballsy on his part. Are you going to take legal action?

HawgNutz wrote:

Sorry to hear this. Pretty damn ballsy on his part. Are you going to take legal action?

Of course. And to respond to a pm i received. I would never have done this had he not flat out said in no uncertain terms that I would NOT be paid, ever. I would have worked with him if he didn't have the money. I work with people all the time. I have people working with me because i don't have money. I know better than most that things can happen that makes payment on a bill literally impossible.

You are alot more forgiving than others in terms of working with the payment.

Since I never saw the website, what is the Ice Factory? Similar to Ready Ice? Just curious.

Here's what it looked like.

go criminal......Theft of Service....talk to a local prosecutor.

Justice doesn't move fast enough for me. However, i have an attorney on the case.

do both...the criminal system will give him a bigger aggravation than a civil suit. I do remodling work from time to time to make some extra money....I have learned the hard way about getting my payment, to include, tearing down a deck my crew built after the homeowner didnt want to pay full price...these days, I wont even put a tool in my truck without full payment for the job first.....I still have no problem getting jobs as people know my work is outstanding......

I have actually repoed firewood!

its just frustrating to put such effort into your work and then to get stiffed....and it always seems to be the one who has the money that stiffs you...perhaps thats why they have money......

I'll buy ice by the bag from here on out.

I would have probably taken the check and when it bounced go round up the local constable and go pay him a visit.
Passing a bad check is much worse crime that just not paying you. Harder to do in big cities but in smaller jursidictions its pretty easy to find an LEO to do this for you. At least its worked for me in the past.

His checks are good. he'd of just stopped payment. Payment would have probably already been stopped before he handed it to me.

Sounds like a lien is the only way to go then? But, are emails useable as a contract?

We have a contract. Don't want to go into that much on the internet.

Crude Dude's boat is slipped at Grandpappy Point, boathouse 28, 1st slip on the right It has a for sale sign on it. It's been there for maybe a month or two. I never see the guy, nor anyone interested in buying it... and just maybe the boathouse gate is left open LOL

Gearhead wrote:

Crude Dude's boat is slipped at Grandpappy Point, boathouse 28, 1st slip on the right It has a for sale sign on it. It's been there for maybe a month or two. I never see the guy, nor anyone interested in buying it... and just maybe the boathouse gate is left open LOL

We do not condone any type of retaliation and/or illegal activities from this website. Please keep that in mind.

G.

Win or lose. You gotta do it ethically and legally. Being sneaky on someone not only lowers you to their level but would be a hollow victory at best.

Great job on the website and design LP! I know that was a lot of hard work and long hours no doubt! I have done a bit of html myself. Sorry to hear you got screwed on this. I hope it turns out good for you in the end. I do NOT care for dishonest people period!!

Good Luck!

Gearhead wrote:

Crude Dude's boat is slipped at Grandpappy Point, boathouse 28, 1st slip on the right It has a for sale sign on it. It's been there for maybe a month or two. I never see the guy, nor anyone interested in buying it... and just maybe the boathouse gate is left open LOL

It was at Highport when I looked at it. Wonder why he moved it? Seems like he had a nice slip there with a ski boat as well?! big ole deck with a bar, etc. Would have been more interested in the boat but never covered it with cockpit cover or anything.