Ask HN: How to deal with a client who refuses to pay an invoice in full
I started a new contract with a small startup in February. We got off to a great start — communication was solid, collaboration was great and as a team there were no problems. I was always paid in full each month, and I was never notified that my performance was not up to par with expectations.
That is until recently when I was notified that the hours I invoiced for the month of May did not align with the output the company was receiving in return. On top of this, the company said that they couldn’t afford to pay me at my rate so they decided to part ways. At this point I felt pretty solid about my experience there; I had some disagreements with what they had to say but all was well since I have another job offer lined up.
I sent over my final invoice and thought we were moving forward, but the CEO reached out to me claiming that since my hours were greatly misaligned with the amount of work they received, they would only consider paying 50-70% percent of the final invoice. They are also of the opinion that the work I did was “completely unusable.” There’s no clause in our contract that highlights disputes, so I’m wondering what the best course of action is here.
I have proof that about 75% of the code I wrote was approved and subsequently merged into their Github repository. It is true that the last two PRs I submitted were unmerged. The first was merged but reverted after, then the second was never merged. Is it valid for them to claim they don’t have to pay me for my time on these features, since they were in fact never used?
It’s also super frustrating from my end because I know for a fact I was super dedicated towards what we were building, and in no way was I dragging my feet with the time spent on certain features. If anything since I was the one pioneering the codebase from scratch they should reimburse me for the time I spent thinking and troubleshooting the logic of their application. If it helps to strengthen my case this is stated in the contract, “The Client is of the opinion that the Contractor has the necessary qualifications, experience and abilities to provide services to the Client.”