Never Mess With a Web Developer
When I have the time and come across interesting projects or clients, I take on one-off assignments to create websites, graphics, applications, etc. for said clients. I recently had a client for whom I created a website. Their old website looked like it was created in the early 90s, but it drew a lot of traffic, so the need to update was clear.
Like always, we first agreed on the scope and design, and my client showcased his competitors websites for me, explaining what kind of things he absolutely wanted for his site — “but better” as he put it. I then had him sign a standard contract and pay a small up front fee. Everything went smoothly and I got to work.
After the project finished and I sent an invoice to my client, he told me that he won’t be paying anymore. During the few days that I had worked, he had watched some YouTube videos about creating websites and he had come to the realization that he, without any prior experience in web design or programming, could create an equally impressive site in pretty much the same time as I had, and so he didn’t feel like he should pay me anything extra. I reminded him of our contract and he flat out said that I am free to take him to court, but he won’t be paying me.
Obviously I had no intention of taking him to court because it would result in more headache than it’d be worth, but I wasn’t just going to let this slide. The website was already live and teeming with visitors, but my client, although they were a newfound web design professional, hadn’t realized that I was still the only one who had access to the site’s back-end, which meant that I could make any changes to the site and he couldn’t do anything about it.
So, I remembered how he had told me about all of his competitors websites. I figured the appropriate response would be to write a script that replaces his company’s contact details and opening hours with those of his competitors. Every time the site would load, the script would randomly show one of the competitor’s contact details instead. I also made it so that the contact form requests would be sent to a randomly selected competitor’s email.
I chose not to inform my client of this and went on to enjoy my vacation. Within a week, I received several emails and a call about my client’s concerns that something was wrong, that he hadn’t received a new client through the site in almost a week even though the site’s visitor count is much higher than before.
I let him know what I had done and I told him that I would undo it, but it would take me about an hour, for which I would be charging. Since I was on vacation, I’d apply the rush fee stated on the contract for that hour. And of course, I told him that this would all be added on top of the original fee that he owed me, plus interest for late payment.
Naturally, this led to insults and threats being thrown in my direction, to which I calmly responded that I will begin work once I have the money in my account and if he doesn’t want to lose any more customers to his competitors, he’d best man up quick. He tried to call me immediately and I just declined the call. After the second attempt to call me again, I sent him directly to voice mail.
I received an express payment to my account the very next morning.
Story credit: Reddit / _XeduR