Be sure to send a certified letter.  It only costs a few bucks and lets
him know that you are serious.

Dale Botkin wrote:

>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
>
>--
>http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us!
>email listserv@mitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body
>
>
>

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different
ways.  See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.