Unpaid invoice, suspended services possible legal action against me

[clearedforlanding]

Only their old website is live, I have not provided this for them I do not know if I am obligated to forward the DNS to their old server.

I would just send them a tarball of the work that they have indisputably paid for, and offer to facilitate transferring the domain from your side. 7 days would be reasonable.

Make no admissions to anything, be polite & firm, and move on. Judging by the CR posted here I wouldn't worry.

[Boney M]

Cheers guys, I had no time to reply to the OP so sent him here from Reddit

[piotrkula]

Doing work like that requires down payment.
I am a contractor but do allot of private work. (basically work contract, get back to my home office and carry on working.. yea, some days I get £1000 a day, some days £250 a day but I filter out time wasters like this)
My initial investment is 5-10 hours doing a specification, mock ups and timeline of estimates and then present it to the client. I don't count it as expense, I don't want to get into that accounting legal issue, I just want to make sure I can recoup this cost at the end.

The terms are 50% upfront cost for beta. Functional "thing" within the specification guidelines but with bugs that the client has some room to adjust things (also worked into my plan)
They sign of the beta and they need to pay the next 25% and I carry on working to final draft with no changes.
Upon paying the remain 25% I make it go live or give them the software (ah, never give them source code! This is your honey pot, if they want the source code, it costs 10k! but that rarely happens - needs to be highlighted in contract/agreements in a nice way, like you providing them software, or functional website, this automatically excludes source code.)

about 75% I get NO upfront payments, the clients avoid me. Nah, another time waster. It only cost me some hours of my time to make a spec and mock but didn't waste many man hours and other resources for a total no pay and nice product that is useless to me.

If you have someobdy to spec things for you, you quickly make a estimate plan, request a downpyament for specification first. If client pays you got them on the hook and no time wasters, you make a nice spec, sign it off with them and do similar payment plans.

Saved me ooooodles of pain with cowboy companies that want it all but wont bring out the cheque book.

These are the pains of "running your dev house" and my advice is from tens of years of prooven track record form other successfull dev houses. I kind of made a hybrid system for my self, works well and keep me out of IR35 by million miles due to this. Ie, some days I dont go into my "contract" role but go and do onsite visits with my private clients.

I am somewhat of a workoholic and I love developing, so once I got the good clients in.. they keep comming back and now I can cherry pick the big boys.

Good luck.

[Vurso]

Hello, I have been directed here by reddit's /r/legaladviceuk I hope someone could advise me.

I have had an issue on going with a client since the 10th of September 2015. Keeping to the facts, I am a 3 month old startup company registered as a sole trader in the UK.

I raised an invoice to a client who approached me after creating and finishing the project from their brief. The clients company is a father and son operation with both registered as directors with companies house....

Wow sounds like my first freelance work! I about to wash my hands with a similar father/son business who have an ageing POS Property Management web application that they asked me to do "a few bits" but dragged the work out and now they are trying to delay paying me.

I learn't an important lesson, record everything you do, on paper, verbal conversations (legitimately as meeting records) and if you agree to anything get it (or put it) in writing.

Good luck.