You are approached by a person requesting a website design. He goes ahead with your 50% deposit to start the site. You start creating and designing until your heart is bleeding. Once you finish he requests other details to be done, which is carried out.

Once complete, the customer has already agreed to pay off the other 50%, maybe in instalments, depending on the money arrangement and how costly the job is.

...days go by and you don't see any payment. :(

I sent a few e-mails over the week kindly requesting information in to what's going on and if there's a delay in the payment, then just let me know. - But no contact is made. :(

That is, the cheater! :mad:


My latest customer has just done this. It has never happened before, as I always thought this 50% deposit was a clear sign that the person was reliable in paying his way. It just makes me unhappy that all the hard work goes to waste, and its such an easy task for the customer to do this.

I'm just unsure what to do now?

Kind Regards,
Leigh Hewitt

what you should do is place an iframe in every page thats 1 pixel by 1 pixel - hide it somewhere where he won't even notice it.
Have the iframe point to a page on your site.

Have that page have just be blank and have it match the color in which you hide the iframe. If they don't pay, change that page to have lots of pop ups forcing him to pay you to remove it.

Originally posted by xnet
what you should do is place an iframe in every page thats 1 pixel by 1 pixel - hide it somewhere where he won't even notice it.
Have the iframe point to a page on your site.

Have that page have just be blank and have it match the color in which you hide the iframe. If they don't pay, change that page to have lots of pop ups forcing him to pay you to remove it.
In design, you don't generally (I really hope this is the case here as well) turn over the finished product until payment is received. The issue here is more the time that was "wasted" actually designing the site. That time could be spent on a paying client.

-Dan

[xnet] - That is a solution, but for me I don't find it an appropriate one. I feel I should be able to do the work, and go ahead with the payment, instead of inbedding a code which messes up with the site if it isn't paid for.

[serve-you] - Your first point brings up the statement of not turning over the finished product until payment is received. In this case, the 50% had been paid, so finishing off the payment didn't seem like a problem. But still on this point, most, if not all customers, will not go ahead with a design by paying upfront if they have not done business before.


This in my eyes is still a problem, and solving it isn't going to be easy. I don't want to make customers pay up front for the work. I want them to feel happy about it, like I have done throughout this career. Its just a majority can spoil such a system. If there are any webdesigners, or graphic designers who have had this trouble in the past, please post your comments, they are warmly welcomed :)

Thanks,
Leigh Hewitt.

Hmmmm

The way I have always done it is this...

I pay full upfront.
Get template.
Happy.

BUT only because I trust Relyc (he's the designer I use).

If it was a new company, I would prefer it to be like this...
Pay half
See template
Approve template
template complete
pay the rest owing
receive template.

Not sure what I can advise you to do - other than seek legal advise - but that will cost more than the template is worth, so urm... learn from it.

James

I am not a designer but what I would do if I was, is get 50% upfront to start the project, after completing take screen shots and post them at your site, if the design is acceptable then kindly ask for the remaining payment and you will send them the completed html version. Unless you are dealing with a reputable company, and one that has been in business at least 2 years, I personally would be very hesitant on giving a web design away for just 50% down.

Just my 2 cents on the issue..

I have actually gotten burned by this before as well, I had contracted a php programmer to program a customized version of a help desk they offered to the public, for us, he required 25% down which I gladly sent them (note this is a well known company!!) About 3 weeks into the project I received an email stating that a newer version of the of the public version was going to be released shortly and if I wanted to wait and get a customized version of that, of course I said yes as the newer version included a few nice added features. About 3 more weeks went by and got another email saying the project was nearing completion, and would be posted on the authors site for review and approval and asking for the remaining 75% of the money. I replied stating I would like to see the demo before sending the remaining money, it appeared this was acceptable but I have yet to see any working demo or any return emails and it's been over 1 year now. I had contacted my attorney to send them a letter and come to find out the person no longer works there. The original contract was signed by him. Even though I could go after the company he represented I chose to just take my losses as it would be much cheaper losing out the $125 I paid them versus the $300 an hour for my attorney. :)

As for your next question as to who this was.. I will not post this publicly as I try to make it a habit in not doing things like that and I dont believe the company is at fault just the person working for them, plus I could have gotten my money back but it wasnt worth the cost to me. Sorry :(

We NEVER turn anything over to the client until payment has been made. Until full payment is received, it's all screenshots. This is a risk that you must take if you follow these practices. Quite frankly I'm surprised that it has not happened to you before this. As much as we'd ll love to believe that people are all honest and good, unfortunately they all are not.

People will pay upfront for design, this is standard practice in the design business.. Like others have stated here, get your deposit, do an initial design & give a screenshot, if they approve it, either take full payment if you charge a flat rate, or finish the design, and send another screenshot, if you are charging hourly. Once the design is completed, bill them for your time, then turn over the site once you have received payment.

-Dan

Taking screen shots has been an issue in the past. Most of my customers that I design for at the moment are clients who have come back for work due to successful projects in the past. But with new customers, just showing a screen shot at the end is a bit dodgy for them, and they run along the same line as the designer in that to trust or not to trust area; as the example DigitalXWeb provided.

This may be my only option now though, to provide screen shots of the final draft, until the customer is happy, and then the final payment can be paid.

Kind Regards,
Leigh Hewitt.

I totally agree with you .
It's unfortunate that we have to work this way, but try doing a $50,000 site as opposed to the few hundred maybe thousand, that you probably do now.and getting burned on that. Might change your outlook a bit.

-Dan

A bit OT, chewnet do you go by the name HotGalaxy3000 or somthing ever?

yeh we know each other from irc :D


Just an update on this.

It does seem that the client has done a runner, as no payment has been made. People keep telling me to "name & shame", but I beleive that is no answer to the problem, just creating another one.

Best Regards,
Leigh Hewitt :)

Sorry to hear of the bad outcome to your problem, hopefully you will learn from this and prevent it from occuring again in the future.

Well it seems if you do work for hire and you don't actually get paid, that you would still own the copyright.

Let them know that it they use the copyrighted material, they will be violating your copy rights.

Oh, and keep calling them once a day, collect, until they pay.