Should I Pay This Guy?

krishna876, what kind of due diligence did you do before you hired the web designer? did he have a portfolio?

There is too much info missing to make a fair decision. That YOU didn't get paid is immaterial. I once had to do something for a 3rd party customer, like YOUR programmer. And the CUSTOMER wanted me to use a special script. And they kept changing EVERYTHING! They EVEN had me working on graphics and text documents. They kept changing the contract the program should display, and wanted ME to do all.

The 3rd party had an agreement with a friend and I offered so many hours FREE to help pay for my friends server. So I didn't get paid a PENNY. If that agreement didn't exist, you can bet that I would have him pay for EVERY hour! I got out of it ONLY because he called me after I nearly died, and I told him I couldn't keep it up.

Steve

Now Steve....:p

me bad! :p

Did he do what he said he would do? No? No pay. Sounds like he agreed to do a specific thing a specific way and didn't do it - so why should you pay him?

Wish I could do contracts and not finish the work and screw up on what I did finish and get paid to boot. That'd be sweet.

I agree, we don't have the full story here. From what I have seen here, I'd say there were errors by client, web guy and middleman.

The web guy should have got at least half upfront and not be paid the final half. The middleman should have managed the job better. Most sites (and I do a lot of them) take no more than a week. The client made a mistake by hiring the middleman--he picked an unreliable web guy (perhaps) and for sure he did not follow up enough to get the job done in a timely manner.

These kinds of problems come up when people work cheap. If a job had a decent fee attached to it, everyone works hard to get the job done quickly. People abandon cheap jobs if they can, and that's what sounds like what happened in the case of both the web guy and middleman. There was not enough incentive for either of them to want to do the job properly.

He spent 2 months on it. Doing what? I would ask him to pay up for the script you bought for him.

I mean, he agreed to do it in 1 week. He didn't. He said the site would look like the mock up. It didn't. You even went out of the way to get this guy a script which was not discussed in the prior agreement. He still didn't get the job done. You lost a customer because of him. You lost rep because of him. YOU should be suing him, imo!

Sumit.

Don't give him a dime because he said it was going to be done in a week and it took him 2 months.

Something is wrong here.

I think Kay has a point that you let it go too far - but that guy knows he was breaching his own word on the project. I don't get where you said you'd work with him again though - didn't see it even after a re-read other than a mention that you hate to burn bridges. I would sure hope you'd never try to contract this guy again. He might have had "good excuses" but excuses don't get the work done, and when you have a client to please you have to worry about getting the work done and getting it done right - not whether your contractor is having personal problems. You want to be fair, but how fair is it to a client to wait for nothing?

The right thing to have done would have been dissolve the alliance when it became clear that the work couldn't be done right and in a fair amount of time. Babysitting this guy daily was not only unnecessary, it was counterproductive. Live and learn.

I went through the same thing on my first website - months after it was due in one form I was still waiting, had already paid the price given. Then after being months overdue he told me he wanted more money. I just told him forget it and got it done another way. It was obvious by that point it wasn't going to get done and if it did, it wasn't going to be right.

Once this kind of thing happens anyway - it's lesson enough to make future dealings much easier and more fruitful.

I wouldn't pay the programmer a thing! He delivered you a product that was not up to par. He didn't deliver what he promised so why should you have to fork over money? I would never pay this guy.

Why would that surprise you? He's not a partner - it's not his client - YOU are his client. He put time on the project and that's all he's concerned with.

Well, he deserves nothing since he already knew that he did not do his job.

He deserves what he gets.

Hi all,
Ken_Caudill I agree with you. Really a nice moral.

Hi Krishna
I thing that programmer quote you the low cost, So you didn't check his experience levels.

GOOD idea! HECK, where I am now, I would have billed for a week or so, and said "Sorry, you overestimated the work. I want to go where I feel I can do some work.". I DID do that in the 80s when I worked for myself. If I felt I worked at half the speed I should have, I charged half as much. If I felt the work wasn't there, I bowed out and left. Because I am working for another, I really can't do that. And don't even know where I will be next week.

Go figure....

Steve

You need to talk to a lawyer. Much of this is going to hinge on the applicable laws and precident in your state; but don't discount either of these people, your client and the programmer, probably have enough of a case against you to tie you up for years in litigation, if they are so inclined, and bleed you dry financially drop by excruciating drop. And much of that may depend on how much of this you can document.

From what you've told us, you failed due diligence when you didn't fire the programmer for failure to perform his end of the contract within a reasonable time.
By not doing so you've probably shifted this from a fairly open and shut case in your favor into one that now leans in his favor. Now the question is, who's legally obligated to pay - you or the client? And it sounds to me like you are because you failed to fulfill your agreement with your client - the details are irrelevant, you are responsible. (I am not a lawyer and I don't play one on the Internet.)

Personally, I wouldn't worry about the programmer or pay him unless I had to. He can tell his side of the story to all his programmer buddies, and legally get away without slander. I'd bet that the other programmers blow off his horror stories as anecdotal and not necessarily hold it against you.

My main concern would be salvaging the relationship with your client. She'll be juicing up the story to her friends and associates - many of them potential clients - but I'd bet that what they hear is mainly against the programmer without completely absolving you for your failure. Eating half the original fee seems fair, but that's between you and the client.

Hopefully, you can work this out to everyone's satisfaction quickly, but given the current economy, our hyper-litigious society, and some of the unbelievably hare-brained decisions and jury awards, you may not be that lucky.

he sounds just like a amateur trying to flock his work off to make a quick buck or two.
if the work was up to the standards you asked then dont pay him,
It would be like going to a hairdressers and asking for a trim and they gave you a skin head, you got a hair cut but not what you wanted. I bet you wouldnt pay the hair dresser.

My two cents...

He shouldn't of taken the job if he couldn't deliver and whilst he has spent time I highly doubt he has spent two months on it, more like a couple of days over a period of a few months.

If you're really worried about ethics then you should pay him what you think is a fair amount, no point in losing sleep over it.

There will probably be mixed views on this but if I hired a writer from this very forum who claimed high quality articles and then delivered below par words on paper then he wouldn't get paid (by anyone with any sense) plain and simple.

This is pretty clear cut in my opinion. He didn't deliver what he promised, end of story. Don't pay him anything. He didn't care enough to deliver so why should you have to care enough to pay him. Seems like a fair trade to me.

Seems like there was a communication problem. I don't really understand why it took the client 2 months to complain...

He said okay to the mockup and then couldn't match it. He shouldn't have agreed and shouldn't get paid.

This is why contracts are set up to specify exact terms.

ALL Karen Blundell said is right! Let me tell you something. Last night, I had my hot water heater replaced. The guy was nice, TALKED a lot, and took a while, but I could tell I needed a new water heater, he did quality work, and he STILL charged me the price in the book! I just checked. I think I got a better water heater, and though I paid like $300 more for it, than I would have at sears, they took care of the removal, disposal, installation, and will take care of the warranty. Anyway, he told me about this one job where they worked about 9 hours, because the sewage lines went all over the place, violating code, etc... They had one final thing to do the next day, which was to cut the concrete, and fix the pipe below. The customer wouldn't pay them a dime. He had several horror stories like that. The charge was like $280, and it took a LONG time.

Was THAT guy right not to pay? If I were him, and they obviously didn't work, I wouldn't pay. I would want them to show me, and probably get something saying they would finish the job. But if I agreed, I would pay, just like here where I paid HUNDREDS more than I originally thought I would. Many things simply CAN'T be foreseen.

Frankly, what they SHOULD do is sue the original person that violated code.

I thought the problem with mine was a bad thermocouple. It WAS bad, and I had it replaced, but it turned out to be a leak in the flue part. Water came down and extinguised the pilot. Oh well, the new one is better. Looks cleaner, is sealed, has a piezoelectric ignition, and a light to indicate all is well and self diagnose problems. And it is NEW! I was hoping I would get more time out of it but c'est la vie!

Steve

I agree with most of the guys here. Why pay? Should I get this guy to work on my lawn but he does sweet FA, then says the lawnmower isn't working and I should pay him?

He agrees to take on a job, doesn't deliver, hurts your reputation. Now, he wants to get paid for ruining your reputation. I think the answer is pretty obvious.