They Are 100% Going To Regret Their Choices

I had a trophy-wife client who had a frozen yoghurt business paid for by her husband. They contacted me and asked me to design and build a new website for her business. I gave them a quote, and they asked if they could pay in three instalments. After we all agreed to the terms, I had written approval, and I received my 33% deposit, I got cracking.

We had regular check-ins, and they were happy with the progress until, one day, they just went quiet. They were already behind on the second payment and I was growing impatient. I was done with the site and just needed final approval and payment before launching it, but I couldn’t get ahold of either of them.

I eventually got hold of the lady at her day job after weeks of being ghosted.

Lady: *Calmly* “We found someone cheaper. We won’t be paying the remaining 66%.”

Me: “But the project is complete and all your feedback has been addressed.”

Lady: “You could just give me 33% of the files and move on with your life.”

Me: “Websites don’t really work if you only upload 33% of the files.”

She hung up the phone.

I still had the FTP (File Transfer Protocol) details for the brand domain that housed their current (old) website, so I decided to take revenge. I created a page with an animated fake loading bar that was stuck at 33%. Underneath the loading bar was the message: “This company does not pay their suppliers. They decided to pay only a third of the price, so now they have only a third of a website.”

I went as far as to download the website files, split it up into roughly three portions (file size), and upload a zip folder containing a third of the files to the FTP folder. This way, I actually gave them the 33% they had paid for and I could show the file size to prove it.

I also permanently deleted the old site’s files from the folder so they couldn’t restore from a backup — not that they’d have a clue how to do that.

They threatened to sue me. I’m still waiting.