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YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

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Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#131

Post by gscott »

_delirium wrote: post #19

I'm going to go out on a limb and register a slight discomfort with the increasing use of HN as a "court of public opinion" in very fact-bound disputes like this one. I can sort of see resorting to it out of desperation, but I'm afraid the Internet Lynch Mob has a very high ratio of outrage to effort spent actually investigating. This post has 84 upvotes in 21 minutes, which suggests a very quick investigation! So, t…

It is possible that people expect YC funded companies to have high moral integrity and that drives the posts when YC funded companies do things that are against this purposely built-up group of persons moral compasses.

Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#132

Post by ww520 »

consultutah wrote: post #15

The op has, hopefully, learned a valuable lesson: don't work without a signed contract. That said, the comp should have just paid or, at very least, tried to negotiate the amount thought I don't think that's worth the effort either. This is such a paltry amount as to not be worth the effort to fight.

People have reneged on signed contracts. A signed contract is not a foolproof protection for your payment. You just have a better case when going to court, which will cost you money. Also a verbal agreement is a binding contract.

Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#134

Post by b1ind »

I'm the original Reddit thread poster. I did not intend for this situation to be posted on HN nor go out of hand. I will deal with the situation with the CEO privately, but for now I am chalking this up to a misunderstanding.

In the end, it was 100% my fault that I was not cautious. Please, no internet lynch mobs - there is absolutely no need for that.

Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#135

Post by nyar »

faramarz wrote: post #22

Not handled professionally on the designers part. He could have turned this into a win by being their go-to-guy for future contract work or getting referrals to other YC residents instead. I don't think it was worth resorting to public shaming for a few grand. I guess Eligible got some free press out of this now. Well done!

Being a go-to-guy by a company that doesn't pay is the worst thing you can do.

Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#136

Post by tzs »

javajosh wrote: post #26
faramarz wrote: post #22

Not handled professionally on the designers part. He could have turned this into a win by being their go-to-guy for future contract work or getting referrals to other YC residents instead. I don't think it was worth resorting to public shaming for a few grand. I guess Eligible got some free press out of this now. Well done!

If what the designer saying is true, then Eligible breached contract. Verbal contracts are binding in CA. And he is within his rights to get paid for his work. It should not damage his reputation at all.

The problem here is that it is not actually clear they had a contract. The timeline, as reported in the original post, appears to be this:

1. They email each other for a while.

2. They talk on the phone, and agree that he will do the work for $65/hour, and can start right away.

3. He emails them a contract, and they mail back that they will run it by their lawyers.

4. They contact him to say they have hired someone else.

We are told that #4 occurs after 3 days of work, which puts it 3 days after #2.

The key question, I think, is when did #3 happen? If #3 happened very soon after #2, then depending on exactly what was said in the emails and on the phone, it might be interpreted that #2 was just the negotiation, and the contract he emailed was his offer of terms and the work would not actually start until they accepted it.

To put it another way, I can easily imagine plausible fact situations where he is clearly in the right and they owe him for his work, and I can easily imagine plausible fact situations where they had no deal and he jumped the gun by starting work and they owe him nothing--and all of these fact situations would be consistent with the information we've been given.

Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#137

Post by edanm »

asto wrote: post #94
_delirium wrote: post #19

I'm going to go out on a limb and register a slight discomfort with the increasing use of HN as a "court of public opinion" in very fact-bound disputes like this one. I can sort of see resorting to it out of desperation, but I'm afraid the Internet Lynch Mob has a very high ratio of outrage to effort spent actually investigating. This post has 84 upvotes in 21 minutes, which suggests a very quick investigation! So, t…

Poor guy is hard up for cash and getting it up here might get someone in authority at YC to fix the problem. As for lynch mobs, her twitter profile shows no signs of such a thing. That's 1 for Reddit/HN and 0 for her as far as maturity is concerned. Lastly, I wouldn't care even if some internet lynch mobbing were going on. Between being broke for no fault of mine because x behaved irresponsibly and making x's life mi…

The problem with mobs is that they don't bother to first check that the complainant has a point. You've only heard one side of the story - why do you assume it's all you need to hear?

Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#138

Post by tzs »

Pedant point: a lot of people are writing about "verbal contracts" when they mean "oral contracts". A "verbal contract" is a contract in words--whether spoken or written, as opposed to a contract that is inferred from actions or implied by law.

Both contracts in this story (the one possibly agreed to on the phone, and the one offered in writing by email) were verbal contracts--one oral and one written.

Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#139

Post by miahi »

tptacek wrote: post #85
damoncali wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the legal@ was meant to be equivalent to fuckoff@. That was my reading, at least. Lesson: Get paid first when working with new clients. There just is no other way.

fuckoff@ is one interpretation. how_serious_are_you@ is another one.

Usually, startups are small. That means everybody knows everybody, and the CEO should know everyone. Why didn't she just forward the e-mail to their legal department/person internally, with a simple "thank you, your invoice will be reviewed"? Their response sounds like "Oh, you entered the wrong door, this is reserved for important persons. Go to the servant's door, just outside to the left".

Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#140

Post by ximeng »

ximeng wrote: post #97
_delirium wrote: post #19

I'm going to go out on a limb and register a slight discomfort with the increasing use of HN as a "court of public opinion" in very fact-bound disputes like this one. I can sort of see resorting to it out of desperation, but I'm afraid the Internet Lynch Mob has a very high ratio of outrage to effort spent actually investigating. This post has 84 upvotes in 21 minutes, which suggests a very quick investigation! So, t…

YC also seems discomforted, it's only about half way down the front page with 196 votes in an hour. (Top item has 117 points in 3 hours). Perhaps this is due to flags from people who don't like the story, or maybe mods have manually down-ranked it.

After 4 hours, this is top of second page with 269 points.

Top of first page has 201 points after 6 hours.

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