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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"

#41

Post by joshuamarch »

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!

It's hard to judge any case without seeing the full information. But based on the post, the company agreed to pay him to do design work, which he then did. If they change their mind a few days later, that's their issue - they are still legally bound to pay. I would never not pay a freelancer I hired, unless they literally didn't do the work.

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

#42

Post by soup10 »

_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…

Honestly, that screen looks like 5 hours work, max. Summoning an internet lynch mob over a dispute like that is incredibly unprofessional.

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

#43

Post by shinratdr »

_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…

I think those votes convey a hope that someone of authority will look into the matter and voting will help bring the issue to their attention. I wouldn't just assume anyone who upvoted instantly agrees with OP and trusts him completely.

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

#44

Post by faramarz »

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.

I I edited to say "public shaming" instead. You're right. His reputation I can't predict, but it might creep up somewhere on Google and potential hires may consider it a liability.

Don't scare away the future prospects by making yourself untouchable.

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

#45

Post by untog »

dr42 wrote: post #20

I hope the screenshot is fake data and not violating anyone's HIPPA rights, otherwise this designer is going to be in a lot of very hot water over this.

If Eligible sent confidential data to a contract designer for the purposes of a mockup then they deserve everything they get. I don't- for a second- think that they did.

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

#46

Post by untog »

uptown wrote: post #14
ebzlo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like eligibleapp.com

If it's them, maybe ask Katelyn Gleason if his version of the story is true: http://www.linkedin.com/in/katelyngleason

She's on Twitter, too. I'm hesitant to link to it, lest we unleash the internet lynch mob.

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

#47

Post by mindcrime »

_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…

Well said. I think a good "public shaming" can be appropriate in some cases, but I'd consider it more of a measure of last resort. As we've seen in the past ( cough Duke Lacrosse Case cough ) trying people in the media can lead to some really bad situations.

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

#48

Post by tptacek »

Cushman wrote: post #35

How much does it really matter in these situations whether or not you have a "signed contract"? My understanding is that any agreement to do work for compensation is a contract, and these days even a "signed" contract is likely to just be a PDF which is as easily faked as an emailed "$65/hr? Sounds good, go ahead and get started." Is it just one of those things where someone's less likely to try to rip you off if the…

It matters a LOT. A you-said they-said dispute over a verbal contract can be expensive to resolve --- almost certainly way more expensive than the total value of this dev contract.

Startups who hire outside vendors should be very careful to foreclose on any potential verbal contract --- "do not start working for us until we have a signed master agreement and a statement of work" --- and that's for a lot of reasons, not just misunderstandings like this.

Obviously, if a company operator deliberately leads a vendor to believe there's an authorization to start work, they're morally on the hook for billed hours. But in reality, consultants go into engagements like that knowing that they're on the hook if anything goes wrong. This comes up a lot in consulting, because legal negotiation over master agreements can take weeks and sometimes threaten to ice deals that can be kept alive by just starting ahead of the contract.

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

#49

Post by il »

Hey everyone: can we hold on for just one minute before forming an Internet Lynch Mob and maybe try to get the other side's perspective? Because we only have one side of the story right now. How do you know the OP isn't lying? Or that OP isn't a competitor trying to destroy this company's credibility? Or, maybe this was just a simple misunderstanding/miscommunication? I'm not accusing the OP of lying, but there's zero evidence here right now. Think rationally and consider every possibility.

I don't know the founders and I have no connection to the company in question (other than participating in a previous YC batch).

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