Thank God that we have dealt with people that have good business ethics over the years.....for the most part.
My company performed web work for a client that was very uncooperative. They did not provide material on time and after months of dragging out a contract that was then in breach because it had gone past our Scope of Work due to their inactivity, I simply closed the book on work until a new contract was negotiated and we were paid for the original contract. 6 months of missing material from them to work on, and the client called several times a week wanting other work not contracted for - well, it was just a really bad situation and quite frankly, I personally was relieved that I just turned my head concerning the $2500.00 still owed to us just to have this guy OUT of our lives! Yes - he was THAT miserable.
Much to my surprise, when I was about to open our door and send my young children off to school, the Sheriff knocked on my door and served papers on me in front of my tenderly young children. This guy had the nerve to file small claims against me for $400.00.
I am extremely meticulous when it comes to documenting work, so I counter-sued for the amount he owed us and marched into our court date with 180 pages of documenation, emails, timelines, correspondence with my programmers including access to my computer hard drive records for timestamp verification and validation of documents. He had 2 pages written out.
Needless to say, we won the counter-suit.
It is going on 2 years and he still has not paid the judgement. Does anyone have any nuggets of wisdom or experience in cases where you've won a judgement and the other party still refuses to pay? Of course, I always get referred to "talking to a lawyer", but that would just mean that the judgement would go to the lawyer instead of US
<<<grin>>>
I've looked into the services that "buy" judgements for .50 cents on the dollar, but the ones I've found so far have a minimum of $5000.00 which discounts our collectible.
This whole incident just happened to cross my mind - I'm not terribly bent out of shape over it. I had written this guy off a long time ago even before the whole small claims insult and never expected to get the money due from our contract anyway. He didn't know exactly who he was dealing with though when he tried to pull the small claims against me!
Just thought I'd throw this out here in case anyone else is going to contract problems, experiences with clients and small claims judgement collection options.
Cheers!
Karen
My company performed web work for a client that was very uncooperative. They did not provide material on time and after months of dragging out a contract that was then in breach because it had gone past our Scope of Work due to their inactivity, I simply closed the book on work until a new contract was negotiated and we were paid for the original contract. 6 months of missing material from them to work on, and the client called several times a week wanting other work not contracted for - well, it was just a really bad situation and quite frankly, I personally was relieved that I just turned my head concerning the $2500.00 still owed to us just to have this guy OUT of our lives! Yes - he was THAT miserable.
Much to my surprise, when I was about to open our door and send my young children off to school, the Sheriff knocked on my door and served papers on me in front of my tenderly young children. This guy had the nerve to file small claims against me for $400.00.
I am extremely meticulous when it comes to documenting work, so I counter-sued for the amount he owed us and marched into our court date with 180 pages of documenation, emails, timelines, correspondence with my programmers including access to my computer hard drive records for timestamp verification and validation of documents. He had 2 pages written out.
Needless to say, we won the counter-suit.
It is going on 2 years and he still has not paid the judgement. Does anyone have any nuggets of wisdom or experience in cases where you've won a judgement and the other party still refuses to pay? Of course, I always get referred to "talking to a lawyer", but that would just mean that the judgement would go to the lawyer instead of US
<<<grin>>>I've looked into the services that "buy" judgements for .50 cents on the dollar, but the ones I've found so far have a minimum of $5000.00 which discounts our collectible.
This whole incident just happened to cross my mind - I'm not terribly bent out of shape over it. I had written this guy off a long time ago even before the whole small claims insult and never expected to get the money due from our contract anyway. He didn't know exactly who he was dealing with though when he tried to pull the small claims against me!
Just thought I'd throw this out here in case anyone else is going to contract problems, experiences with clients and small claims judgement collection options.
Cheers!
Karen
