Comment by fencepost | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fencepost | Hacker News Reader

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My suspicion is that this is being done because it's international. If Fitness SF is as I suspect in San Francisco while the developer is in Europe, collections will be a real headache. Sue? Sure, probably where you are, probably win. Then collect from the European presence of a California fitness club. I see a potential disconnect.

Sue in California? How much is THAT going to cost someone based in Europe?

And really, what recourse does Fitness SF have either? If they sue him, maybe they win. Maybe that makes it hard for him to come to the USA. Is that a problem for him? Can they legitimately go after him vs his company (and vice versa). It's a no-win situation all around.

I'd say that the big lesson to be learned from this is that international customers pay up-front and with a deposit if you're going to allow things that increase the price (e.g. rush changes). For most things there's not usually a good reason to add the expense and complication of 12-hour time differences and international borders unless you're planning up front to make legal recourse difficult.

Editing on a phone is quirky, so further detail: the AdWeek profile lists him as being in Germany. Also, of all the cities in the USA, Fitness SF was unable to find a designer they liked in San Francisco? Please.

They probably couldn't find a designer in SF that charged LESS than the designer in Germany. A company that doesn't pay invoices tends to go for the cheapest option.

Why would they care?

Because cheaper designers and developers are the ones that underrate themselves, usually because they're newer to the business and think it's pretty cool that they can get anything for what they're doing.

Which means they're less likely to be jaded, have up-front fees, verbose contracts and installation payments. As is obvious, in this case, when he talks about having 6 months of unpaid work.

Design is a global market to a large extent, there is no reason why they should choose a local one.

There's plenty of reasons to choose local though:

1. Keep money in the local economy. 2. Build a local network. 3. Have face to face meetings to get your ideas across more quickly - whiteboarding, seeing facial reactions to comps, hands-on testing, etc.

I've done remote work, and I've done work with clients in my local area. There's reasons for both, but most clients I work with want local, or at least want the ability to meet face to face on occasion. The few that didn't want to (or even declined attempts to meet f2f) either skipped out on their bill, or were wanting extremely commodity services (install wordpress on my server, fix this javascript error, etc).

Especially if they planned from the beginning not to pay.

That is a very good point. I feel badly for the developer. Losing 6 months of work must be a shocking ordeal. I recently had a client not pay me for half of month of work, and that was a bit of shock to my finances. I do think the developer is right close the site till they are paid. For the most part, lawsuits don't work in these situations -- the expense of mounting the lawsuit, and the risk that it might drag on for months or years, means that is often better to simply move on focus on new things. But it is still a sad experience. I wrote about my own experiences here: http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/a-sad-time-at-kaching... For me, because I am in New York and they are in San Francisco, and the amount of money is fairly small, it doesn't make sense for me to waste any time pursuing it.

If only there was some sort of a company that could try to collect on unpaid bills in exchange for a fee...

You'd only receive a fraction of the amount owed by selling the debt to a collections agency.

Better than none, and you don't have to put any further unpaid time into pursuing payment, so your loss doesn't increase.

They exist and are called "law firms."

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