Ask HN: Dealing with a client who refuses to pay?
I have a client who hired me on a contract to hire kind of situation. After a while I determined I didn't want to work there (constant interruption, second/third/nth guessing, constantly changing objectives, etc).
Around the same time they stopped paying my invoices and started dodging my emails regarding it. After many many discussions, repeated emails, and many dodged phone calls they finally agreed to pay, kind of. They initially promised to pay within a week (in early Dec), then they reneged and went silent until recently.
Now they want me to sign a release of any and all past or future claims against them in exchange for a staged payment over an unspecified time period and are conditioning that payment upon the release, which seems to be illegal (adding conditions to an agreement after the fact).
Part of me wants to just sign the damned thing and recover what I can since I'm going to be short on rent, but the other part of me really wants to recover the whole amount since it represents more than a month's wages. They say they're in a cash crunch but they're still paying other bills that are significantly larger than the one they owe me.
Has anyone successfully recovered their money from a client like this?