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What being ripped off taught me

belief.horse

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Re: What being ripped off taught me

#181

Post by zem »

ilamont wrote: post #86
eckesicle wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh and another lesson! Ensuring that each deliverable invoice is small enough that it falls under the simplified claims procedure (in the UK it’s 10,000 pounds) greatly simplifies collection. It costs something like 80 quid to file for recovery in court and in our experience invoices are immediately paid up when a “Letter before action” is sent. You burn the relationship, but arguably you probably don’t want it anywa…

> simplified claims procedure I believe this is what we call small claims court in the United States. The threshold varies by state, but it is a very effective way to deal with recalcitrant companies both large and small.

recalcitrant companies with a presence within the court's jurisdiction, which in the OP's case doesn't sound likely.

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#182

Post by tombert »

tomtard wrote: post #180
lolforreal wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[dead]

Gotta admit that I do like the name "tomtard", I might steal that.

Yes, I'm the idiot in this conversation. Clearly the pinnacle of intelligence is someone going on Hacker News and interjecting a weird thing about how no one cares about them and how the world is rigged against them.

The problem is that I'm so stupid that I didn't realize the immense genius of such a maneuver, and as such the shear magnitude and girth of your intelligence went over my tiny head. Some day I hope to have even 1% of your giant brain and maybe then I will have the intelligence to bitch to strangers about how the world hates me and that therapy is stupid, but alas I fear I am not ready for that yet.

Oh by the way, it's still cowardly to keep making throwaway accounts because you're too much of a wuss to actually own what you say.

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#183

Post by yallknowme »

tomtard wrote: post #180
lolforreal wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[dead]

It is rigged, and everyone knows it.

Ivy League is supposed to be the “pinnacle of intelligence” but it produces only fraudsters and hacks.

Talentless idiot retards like yourself who can’t wipe their own ass without their mommy.

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#185

Post by tombert »

yallknowme wrote: post #183
tomtard wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

It is rigged, and everyone knows it. Ivy League is supposed to be the “pinnacle of intelligence” but it produces only fraudsters and hacks. Talentless idiot retards like yourself who can’t wipe their own ass without their mommy.

I didn't go to an Ivy League school. I was a college dropout (dropping out from a perfectly-fine-but-not-remarkable state school) for the first decade of my career, and my degree now is from WGU, hardly some elite fancy school.

I assure you I can wipe my own ass without my mom's help, and I haven't needed any financial help since that episode where I asked her to call in a credit card so they could do the pre-bill at the hotel, which again didn't actually cost any money.

You are really stretching this because you really want to be a victim and you really want to paint me into some yuppie trust fund kid, when that simply isn't the case. Sorry, life is more complicated than stereotypes you saw on television as a child.

Everyone knows it's rigged, but the amazing part from your comments is that it's rigged specifically against you. You said as much in your first reply. That's amazing. You're a very special person, the entire world has conspired to specifically make your life bad.

I may be an idiot, but at least I'm not a coward like yourself.

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#186

Post by ekropotin »

DamnInteresting wrote: post #145
rglover wrote: post #16

Never do anything on faith or as a handshake deal. Always ensure you get paid (hint: escrow is kryptonite for weasels). Trust everyone, just not the devil inside them. Also, mandatory: https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1

Back in my freelancer days, I learned this lesson the hard way, and I became strict about payments (half in advance, the other half required to turn over the final work). But when someone I'd known for years had an emergency, and needed their software patched over a weekend, I made an exception and delivered the work in good faith. And then they tried to get out of paying for it. I had to harangue them for months to…

Just reinforces the golden rule of not doing business with friends or family.

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#187

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ilamont wrote: post #86
eckesicle wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh and another lesson! Ensuring that each deliverable invoice is small enough that it falls under the simplified claims procedure (in the UK it’s 10,000 pounds) greatly simplifies collection. It costs something like 80 quid to file for recovery in court and in our experience invoices are immediately paid up when a “Letter before action” is sent. You burn the relationship, but arguably you probably don’t want it anywa…

> simplified claims procedure I believe this is what we call small claims court in the United States. The threshold varies by state, but it is a very effective way to deal with recalcitrant companies both large and small.

We call it "small claims" in the UK too. In England & Wales it's officially a "court claim". In Scotland I think it's "simple procedure".

https://www.gov.uk/make-court-claim-for-money

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#188

Post by doctorhandshake »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #166

Author - I don't think you learned the correct lessons here. The most important thing is that you weren't "ripped off" - you were taken advantage of. Ripped off is when you buy a TV that's supposed to work and it doesn't. Or you just don't get one. You were taken advantage of - which requires your active consent. Nobody made you do all these things for them on faith. You could have left after a few days. You could ha…

I’ve worked on these terms or similar ones on every job I’ve ever done, for 20 years. They’re the norm. How do I know? I’ve been in this industry for 20 years. I’ve been on both sides of freelance contracts in that time. I moderate a discord of 8000 of my peers. I speak at industry events. We compare notes. We all work ahead of payment, and honestly nothing about the fact that this was a rescue job was particularly out of the ordinary either. This is the case in which I wasn’t paid. If you’re suggesting we as a labor force attempt to change things en masse, it’s an interesting idea. If you’re suggesting I personally could have succeeded at getting payment up front in this case, you may be right, although I didn’t know how desperate they were until ~2.5 weeks into the run. If you’re suggesting I should demand payment in full before every job, you are suggesting I should win zero jobs.

Edit to note: I took the contract’s enforceability on faith. That was not what I thought it was. Had I known the contract gets you jack shit in the way of justice, I’d have taken more seriously the possibility that these guys would rip me off, which they did.

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#189

Post by thaumasiotes »

tombert wrote: post #160
avoidyc wrote: post #57

[flagged]

Back in 2015 I worked for a startup. I turned down a job at a more stable company because this startup had me doing Erlang and I really wanted to work with that. The job worked fine for about six months, and then one week my paycheck (which usually was on the second and fourth Wednesday of the month) wasn't in my bank account. I go the CEO of the company and mention this and he said something like "Oh yeah, something…

> and then one week my paycheck (which usually was on the second and fourth Wednesday of the month) wasn't in my bank account. I go the CEO of the company and mention this and he said something like "Oh yeah, something got fucked up with payroll man, don't worry we'll give you a double paycheck next time, with interest man".

> I was young enough in my career to just accept that

This reminded me of two much smaller-scale events from my personal life:

1. I engaged a Chinese tutor. After several weeks of lessons, one day I found that I had forgotten to bring my wallet to the lesson and couldn't pay her. I considered this a huge faux pas, but she treated it as a non-event, brushing it off with "no problem, just pay me next time". (Which I did. The inability to pay that week was just an accident on my part.)

2. Living in China, I arranged for someone I knew through a board game club to help me order an air purifier online. She would buy and receive the air purifier and then hand it over to me.

She notified me that she had received the air purifier and I went out to pick it up from her. We had a short conversation and I took it away. As I was riding home, I got a message from her: "It seems we both forgot the money."

So I offered that I could either come back right away to hand over the money, or give it to her the next time I saw her (presumably at a meeting of the club). She wanted me to come back right away.

I did, because obviously I have the obligation to pay for my thing. But in that case I was slightly hurt by the implied lack of trust.

---

The incident with the tutor occurred in a context where I had already built up some payment-related trust, so I can understand why things happened that way.

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#190

Post by iamleppert »

I once worked for a founder who gave me a “raise” from a W2 to a 1099 contractor. Except the raise was just not deducting any of the taxes from my pay. I was 24 and was naive.

I sued him, and won reclassification as well as two payments he never paid me, but both the state and IRS could care less that I’d been taken advantage of. They happily added their fees, interest and penalties for something I was the victim of. Years later, the debt resurfaced in the form of aggressive levies directly to my bank account after no contact for over 10 years and no collection activity. By then, the fees and interest were 3x what was “owed” to them. They actually told me it’s standard practice to wait until the debt grows and then collect on it. After so many years I didn’t even have the records from the lawsuit.

I learned that the government doesn’t care about you, especially if you’ve been scammed you have to be extra careful because that’s a signal to them you’re someone they can get even more money from. The process of disputing it will waste more of your time and mental health than it’s worth in all but the most extreme cases, and that is 100% by design.

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