Client didn't pay? And then this happened...

If you do that, just be prepared in case they decide to sue you. It can get costly and ugly in a hurry, especially if they are better equipped for a legal battle than you. It could even backfire on you.

Link-bait. He has gotten a lot of publicity and probably a lot of people interested in his development skills.

I wonder if any Offline Warrior has contacted Fitness FS and also Frank Johen to offer "Reputation Repair Services".

I think both of them will need it in very large doses !!

Seriously though, I really question the wisdom of Franks's actions.

If Fitness FS lose market share then innocent employees could lose their jobs and their livelihoods.

Has Frank thought through all the implications and repercussions properly?

The fallout could cost him his business and land him with a huge legal bill. Cases like this can take years to resolve, and in the meantime if a client hires Frank, at the back of their minds, they will think, will Frank hijack our website too, if we fail to pay him on time.

I suspect that as this has gone viral, Frank will become un-hireable, although it could cause the opposite reaction by giving him a massive amount of free publicity worldwide.


Another thought....Frank could also have given his client a huge amount of free publicity (PR), worth $millions - especially if they are seen by the public as being the "victim" held to ransom by the "evil" webmaster.

Time will tell, but this is not someting I would ever do to a client.


It will be interesting to see how this case is resolved.

Basically you're using your skills to talk shit about someone online (that's the simplest way of putting it). If they sent it to their attorney you might get a lawsuit against you for slander. By the time everything is said and done you've wasted a lot of your time and money and it might be hard for you to prove everything you wrote is 100% true.

You just have to be careful how you do it.

I have a client that wanted to sue everyone that made negative comments about the old company he owned maybe 8 years ago. He has spoken to attorneys and they have told him he could have sued for slander, but the statute of limitations was only a couple of years for a case like that.

I guess you can do it anonymously but that wouldn't motivate them to pay. I just suspend the website wait a bit and when they call me and send payment their sites go back up.

The whole story isn't out. There is no proof in either direction so who knows who's telling the truth?

Right now the only villain I see is the web developer for how he handled his billing problem. I think it was courageous of him to do it (if he's telling the truth), but I also think it was handled very irresponsibly.

I've been stiffed myself on several occasions. I don't post stories about the company being a deadbeat on their own website.

That's like someone putting vinyl siding on your house, then you don't pay them, and they rip the vinyl siding off and spray paint "DEADBEAT THIS PAINT IS ON HERE BECAUSE JOHN SMITH YOUR NEIGHBOR DIDN'T PAY ME. MY NAME IS BILL DOE CALL ME AT BILL DOE PAINTING AND SIDING AT 555-555-555" all over your house.

An alternative course of action for Frank (he may have already done this) would have been to create the same holding page, but to have put it onto a SUB-DOMAIN instead.

He could then have written to Fitness's accounts dept. cc'd to the Finance Director, the MD and Chairperson, (and even perhaps the Shareholders/Stockholders !!!) and told them that if they didn't pay the balance as agreed, then at precisely 11.15am EST on Feb 15 the page on the sub-domain would be transferred over to the main domain for the whole world to see and emphasise that this was NOT a threat, but a PROMISE !!!

If the deadline comes and goes without any communication or payment from Fitness, then the holding page goes up.

By using this method, Frank would be more likely IMHO to get paid, and secondly, Fitness would have less recourse to legal action.

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I have heard about freelancers writing to their client's biggest clients and telling them what has been going on ref. non-payment, and explaining their course of action and how their supplier's stubborn action could jeapodize their very own businesses.

In this case, Fitness's best clients and partners (i.e. the gyms etc.) may start piling on the pressure for Fitness to pay their bill's - if they fear losing business as a direct result of this dispute.

In other words, there are other methods for Frank to deploy in order to embarrass Fitness without risking being bitten by horrendously expensive legal action.

As stated before, we don't have all of the facts and don't know who was or wasn't paid.

My point is, because he is in Europe and SF Fitness is in the US, Frank doesn't have any legal recourse available to him. Therefore, neither party can be "sued into oblivion."


Maybe Frank had one too many clients who had done credit card chargebacks, after receiving thousands of dollars in services. You know the kind of clients, often discussed here in the WF. Maybe enough was enough and Frank was just fed up?