Here is the question. Lets say you do some work for someone and then you do not get paid for it. No explanation, person just avoids you. Amount in question could be minimal and irelevant but the principal is not irelevant.

What would you do if you could? The things that come to my mind are:
signing up person for any mailist, magazine and free trial out there.
Applying with his identity for every credit card there is out there (i think that 50, 60 refusals do not look in someones credit history).
Making sure that any domain owned by the person becomes "high risk" for any hosting provider.
Subiting persons identity to any chat, "find love", "swingers looking for couples" , "lonely harts" site.

I am not saying that I could or would do any of these things, just wondering what would you do ?

Greetings:

One should take every practicle yet legal, ethical, and moral recourse available.

To do anything outside those boundaries would make the person doing so lower than the person from whom they seek justice.

Thank you.

I agree with legal part, but morals are a bit of gray area. Different people have different believes and are guided by different morals. In my belief once when someone harms me, or my property, or things I hold dear, I have hard time refereing to that person as the "person" any more, so considaration that I have for persons do not apply any more.

Agree with dynamicnet. I know it sounds a bit idealistic, but it's the way to go.

Even if you did what you suggest, your client is never going to be able to make the connection with all the junk email, subscriptions etc. So what's the point? You just wasted your time and perpetuated something you claim to dislike in the first place.

Sasha, I'm not the one to turn the other cheek. But you have to pick your battles.

Did this client hurt your family? Or personal property?

Any entrepreneur will tell you that in business, things like that happen. Clients are erratic, do unfair things like what this person did to you. But it's part of the territory. If you start holding personal grudges like this against a business client, you're doing yourself more harm than anyone else.

Originally posted by sasha
. . . . . . .I have hard time refereing to that person as the "person" any more, so considaration that I have for persons do not apply any more. Isn't that the way mass murderers describe their victims? They don't think of them as human? :eek:






*looking over invoices to see if he owes sasha money.

Software: IMO this is in a COMPLETELY different context.

dbodner: Apparently you don't know sasha.












:D :D and :D

I saw screw with him

Originally posted by davidb
I saw screw with him Huh ??

I mean do that **** to him, this prob isent the first time hes done it, its the principle, who cares if he dosent know its you, he will start getting pissed when he gets much more junk mags and more porn in his mailbox

I think that should read "I say screw with him"... :)

Gary

If principles are what is in question, then these actions are out of the question.

These actions are what people do to console their ego, not to uphold principles.

fine, then let him walk awa with your money, people will always get screwed if no one stands up, there is nothing wrong with an eye for an eye

if the reason is out of principle, then there is something wrong with this approach. This is not standing up for anything, it is revenge. It will not get your money back, it will only console your ego.

and the problem with that is??

(karma) He will get it in the end

i'm not saying that you should or should not do any of these things, just that he mentioned that it was out of principle that he wanted to do something. You cannot do things like this out of 'principle,' it goes against having principles to do these things.

principle

n 1: a basic generalization that is accepted as true and that can be used as a basis for reasoning or conduct; "their principles of composition characterized all their works" [syn: rule] 2: a rule or standard especially of good behavior: "a man of principle"; "he will not violate his principles" 3: a basic truth or law or assumption: "the principles of democracy" 4: a rule or law concerning a natural phenomenon or the function of a mechanical system: "the principle of the conservation of mass"; "the principle of jet propulsion"; "the right-hand rule for inductive fields" [syn: rule] 5: rule of personal conduct [syn: precept] 6: an explanation of the working of some device in terms of laws of nature; "the principles of internal-combusiton engines" [syn: rationale]


These actions do not fall under this category.

davidb,
Let's build on you are suggesting.

I just did all those things to my client. He's getting junk left and right. But he has no way of associating that with these incidents of him not paying his bills. He doesn't know that he's being punished for not paying his bill.

Will that change his behavior in the future, ie he'll pay his bills? The answer is no. Will I get my money? No. What did I accomplish by doing what I did? Nothing. I just squandered my time and effort signing him up for all the junk.

Also, I'm making a bunch of assumptions here. First off, I'm assuming that if he didn't pay my bill, he doesn't pay his other bills either. Do I know that for a fact? No. Is it likely that present behavior is indicative of past and future behavior? In general yes. Do I know that for a fact in the particular of this client. No.

For all I know, my client might be in some financial trouble and just wants to avoid the embarassment of talking to me.

I'm all for eye for an eye, but it has to serve a purpose. In business though, things like this happen.

sasha,
Every business cover themselves for estimated loss in normal business activity and they cover themselves with insurances for other kinds of unexpected losses due to disaster, theft , fire etc.

In other words their profit markup will cover losses by defaulters to a certain extent. I suggest you adopt a similar policy for your business.

There are many reason for a customer to default and most times it is not out of some wronged policy of cheating. It will be due to cash flow and payment delays from their debtors.

There are business bureaus who certify the credit worthiness and realibity of business firms. If you having a large contract it would be better to look them up first before entering into any deals.

It's really quite simple. The one you should take it all out on is yourself for not following this basic rule. Give yourself 10 lashes and remember next time. As to taking actions such as you described against the non-payer, I strongly advise against lowering yourself to or beneath his level. Take any legal remedy available to collect. Otherwise, just walk away and charge the loss to "lesson learned."

Originally posted by sasha
Here is the question. Lets say you do some work for someone and then you do not get paid for it. No explanation, person just avoids you. Amount in question could be minimal and irelevant but the principal is not irelevant.

What would you do if you could? The things that come to my mind are:
signing up person for any mailist, magazine and free trial out there.
Applying with his identity for every credit card there is out there (i think that 50, 60 refusals do not look in someones credit history).
Making sure that any domain owned by the person becomes "high risk" for any hosting provider.
Subiting persons identity to any chat, "find love", "swingers looking for couples" , "lonely harts" site.

I am not saying that I could or would do any of these things, just wondering what would you do ?


How about sending Pizza and callin' a cab to his house at 3:00 AM on a regular basis? would that work? lol

We get the odd jerk sending stuff to our public addresses. Occaisonally though the porn sites include lots of nice details like IP addresses in the signup email and then you can go to work on that and things go quiet for a while :dgrin:

We do appreciate there are lots of baddies out there however and we're very careful with things like formmail scripts on our servers...

Originally posted by Webulex

How about sending Pizza and callin' a cab to his house at 3:00 AM on a regular basis? would that work? lol

And I hope that you are the owner of that pizza shop and your brother/sister is the delivery person. What have they got to do with your vendetta?

Sasha, just move on, write off the bad debt, it's part of having business. If you spent all that time getting some work done instead of thinking what to do and finally doing it, you would have made more than what he owes and the time taken for revenge. Karma will get him.

Have you tried a debt collector? They normally add their fees to the amount he owes you, hence you might not be further out of pocket.

Originally posted by tn3


And I hope that you are the owner of that pizza shop and your brother/sister is the delivery person. What have they got to do with your vendetta?

Sasha, just move on, write off the bad debt, it's part of having business. If you spent all that time getting some work done instead of thinking what to do and finally doing it, you would have made more than what he owes and the time taken for revenge. Karma will get him.

Have you tried a debt collector? They normally add their fees to the amount he owes you, hence you might not be further out of pocket.

That was a joke tn3, lighten up...sheesh

the most effective way to screw with them and it is the correct course of action is report the incident to your local credit reporting agency. these are powerful resources avaliable to all vendors that dont get paid for services rendered. it may sound like an insignificant thing to do but remember our lives are dictated by these agencies, unpaid debt will prevent the person from obtaining loans, leases and even credit cards in the future.

Steve

Originally posted by Keeg
the most effective way to screw with them and it is the correct course of action is report the incident to your local credit reporting agency. these are powerful resources avaliable to all vendors that dont get paid for services rendered. it may sound like an insignificant thing to do but remember our lives are dictated by these agencies, unpaid debt will prevent the person from obtaining loans, leases and even credit cards in the future.

Steve

That's a good idea, however, there's a shortcoming. Some clients in this business are located overseas, I don't think collections agencies work outside North America, not even Mexico for that matter and that's north America (well technically!)