6 months ago I was hired to build a guy a website for his wifes chain of dentists offices. I was paid 1.5k upfront and proceeded to build it out, and was a few days away from turning it over to him and receiving the final 1.5k payment. I then got a notification from PayPal that he tried to reverse the original charges.

PayPal contacts me, I show them our chain of emails, and to their credit, they actually took my side. PayPal goes after his card holder, and of course they side with him, so now my PayPal is $1500 in the red because of some fucking asshole who actually owes me $1500.

Fuck freelancing.

> Fuck freelancing.

Nothing wrong with freelancing. Just something wrong with the way you're doing it. Screen your clients.

> 6 months ago I was hired to build a guy a website for his wifes chain of dentists offices.

You either did the job or you didn't. If you did the job, the work is good, and they're using your work ... well, then you can nail them pretty good. Especially since they have physical assets.

He "decided to have GoDaddy" build the site, after I built it in wordpress. They arent using it. He actually logged in to HostGator and deleted the fucking wordpress instance. (FWIW, I actually do really great work- Not like I did a shitty job- The guy is just a fucking idiot. Cant fix that.)

While you may be fine in this case, be careful with that sort of action. When in dispute with a client, even a deadbeat, you have to be really careful what actions you take. Their failure to pay may well be a breach of contract, but under the law your right to pursue that is in court, not by throwing a brick through their window or interfering with their business.

You cannot cause harm to someone because they stole from you by not paying you. That is not proper, legal recourse.

I have been in the situation where I decided the most prudent action was to "shake the dust off [my] feet" and learn to screen engagements better.

I think you may be confused - I read that as the client deleted the wordpress instance, not the contractor.

On second reading, you are right! I did misread that. Sorry, piratebroadcast for reading into your statement something that you did not do.

but of course they can cause harm to you...

> The guy is just a fucking idiot. Cant fix that.

Well, who's the idiot? The idiot or the one who took him on as a client?

Again, screen. Don't blame the client. Blame yourself for taking him on as a client and then do a better job of screening. This will come with experience.

Try to move up market if you can. That sort of really low behavior seems to go away as the budgets increase on projects. There are other challenges of course that come with bigger deals.

So much easier said than done.

Sue him in small claims court. You do have signed contracts right?

I think Ill just eat it and have the fucking guy out of my life. He really is a subhuman piece of shit. He knows he fucked me and got away with it. I really need/needed that money at the time. My mother is sick, etc. Client is a real garbage human being.

My favourite saying immediately came to mind: "You can't polish a turd".

PayPal is the largest turd on the Internet. They could rebrand and relaunch a thousand times and I still wouldn't put my money in their trust. If I were their CEO I would spend less time on my brand, and more time getting my operations sorted.

Any specific complaints you wish to cite?

Services such as Paypal are by their nature vulnerable to fraud, so the caution they sometimes show towards releasing money could be attributed to this reasonable doubt.

Agree - those are some of the most ignorant statements on HN. Any one whose ever been involved in a business like merchant services can sympathize more than those commentors

I hate to be this guy but could you please check your attitude? Comments like yours are pretty clearly a veiled attack on Stripe, and they don't belong on HN

Thanks to shitpal I discovered bitcoin and stripe. PayPal are The.worst.company.ever TM

I find it really strange that they interrupt the checkout flow to offer a Pay It Later option. I have a verified account, with bank account and credit card, and in all my years of e-commerce development experience, I've always worked hard to minimize cart abandonment. And yet, it's central to their cart experience. I suppose the upside of the profit on that feature is greater than the frustration and abandonment factor in even offering it, but it definitely feels like they're veering from their "payment service" brand experience to.. something else.

Which just seems weird. But knowing how EBay operates, they must have data proving otherwise.

Not only has this been out for a while, but it's only the marketing site. The actual "members page" is still out of the 90's.

Yeah this keeps happening. Lipstick on a pig.

yeah, I mean I get it if they want to make the marketing site look pretty, but cmon, put some effort into the actual site that provides functionality...

"We are even better in person"

For a moment, I thought they would be talking about their customer support, but no... ;)

What's new about it? It's been like this for some time now.

Yeah, for at least a month. I'm glad people are embracing HTML5 video tags.