On Mon, 4 Feb 2002, Jesse Lackey wrote:

> Why are you hesitant to name names?  If he is a deadbeat, in other words a
> *CROOK*, I personally want to know who he is, to avoid becoming his next
> victim.

I have decided to make a couple more attempts to collect before going that
far.  I'll call and snailmail the guy to see if there may be some reason
he's not responding.  I'd really, really hate to harm someone's reputation
if I was wrong.  He could be hospitalized, moving, God only knows what.
All I know for sure is that I get no email bounce messages and no
response, but that could be caused by any number of things.  I dealt with
him for over a year with no problems, so it's hard for me to accept that
he would just all of a sudden decide to break our agreement without
explanation.  On the other hand, we had discussed the amount and timing of
the payment that was due, so it's not like the guy is unaware of the
situation -- and he's got my address and phone number.

As for future jobs, I do plan to make some changes to how I negotiate the
job up front, as well as how scope & feature creep are handled.  In this
case I do have a string of emails documenting the agreements we have, but
I am really not willing to go through the expense and hassle of suing,
especially across state lines.  Since I'm out the labor but not any cash
or materials, I'll chalk it up as a tuition payment to Hard Knocks U. if I
never get paid.  Just to clarify, I *did* get some retainer up front, so
it's not like I got totally shafted, it's just the payment that was
promised on completion that never materialized.  I'll get by.  And sooner
or later, like I said, something's going to need tweaking, and there is a
pretty small pool of available tweakers for this kind of thing!

I think in the future I'll start with a written agreement of the project
scope and specifications, a retainer payment, and agreed terms of what
happens when scope or features change, when payment is needed, progress
reports, the works.  It will be a pain in the rear, but so is working a
few weeks on a project you're not going to get paid for.

Dale

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