slander vs. satisfaction.

i have a story to tell you, about a dreadful client and his non-paying, ludicrous ways, that i can only hope will help you, the freelancer, avoid getting tangled up into his web of stupidity.

once upon a time, i freelanced full time. and one day, i was contacted by a VP at a company who offered me a tremendous deal--such a good rate, that had it panned out even remotely, would have made it so that i wouldn't have needed to take an actual day job. honestly, this should have been a tipoff for me; but, at the time i was desperate for work, and so i accepted their terms, and started on the first round of the project.

suddenly, it's mid-november: the work is in, the payment due. i get half of it the day i drop off the discs, in cash, with the rest to follow once his office gets unpacked and he finds his checkbook. fine. fair enough.

(as a side note, please don't judge me for rampant stupidity here--looking back, it was an entire bullfight full of red flags, but at the time it was something i'd never seen before. and i still had some sort of idealism left in me).

flash forward not one, not two, not even THREE months, flash forward to TWO WEEKS AGO. that's four months, if you're playing along at home. four months of constant emails, phone calls, nagging, the works. he finally deigned to receive me at his office and write me a check. i was thrilled--i could open my new bank account, and the whole sordid chapter was done. done!

which means you can probably guess what happened next.

go on. guess.

if you said 'the check bounced!' then you deserve a taco. go get one; i'll wait.

welcome back!

so when we left, the check had just bounced. i got on the horn immediately, telling homeboy that he had 48 hours to send me the money via PayPal, or he would be hearing from my lawyer. he wrote back to whine at me about how he doesn't have a paypal account, but he could transfer the money into my bank account if i were to give him the info.

let's repeat: he wanted. my bank account. information.

even with the appalling naivete i've displayed in this whole affair, i'm a little shocked that he'd asked me to give him my bank account info. what kind of a moron does he think i am? the man can't write a valid check; does he honestly think i'm going to give him the keys to my proverbial camero? shivvy don't play that.

and so, the step has been taken that i've been hoping to avoid--our lawyer has gotten involved. and while i shudder that it's come to this, i do get a certain amount of reassurance and satisfaction to know that the cavalry is coming into play. a cavalry who signs his emails to me: 'the revenger.'

if i didn't have such a healthy fear of a slander lawsuit, i'd divulge his details right not. as i have no desire to dip any more than a toe in the land of the law, let me leave you with this: if the offer seems too good to be true, and it's located on e 32nd street, and they don't give you your entire payment at once, and they contract you for work they don't end up using? run away.

i really do want to make sure these dudes don't fuck with anymore freelancers; can anyone suggest any good repositories where i can make this information known?