[gregjor]

It's not brilliant, it's malicious and not a remedy for breach of contract/non-payment. If someone built a fence for you and then you didn't pay, that doesn't make it OK for them to enter your property and tear the fence down.

FYI civil breach of contract cases like this almost never go to a jury in the US. Mandatory arbitration or small claims for small amounts, heard by a retired judge or professional arbitrator. The process takes a long time, costs money and your time, and very often ends up with a "split the difference" settlement. Lawsuits are public record, the client will badmouth you to everyone, and you can't fix the damage to your reputation.

[loa_in_]

That's just false equivalence. There's no fence and there definitely isn't any property it's on here. This isn't translating the situation into an analogy, this is straight making things up.

[gregjor]

A customer’s web site qualifies as their property. Impairing or destroying their property, or interfering with their business, is actionable under multiple laws. Hacking, broadly defined, is a federal crime in the US.

Not exactly the same as tearing down a fence but not all that different either. Not getting paid for work doesn’t make it ok to punish the customer yourself. The remedy is to sue. If you do end up in court or arbitration, the customer showing that you delivered a disabled site won’t play well for your case.

[worthless-trash]

Just so i'm reading this right, The arbitration recommends "split the difference". This to me means that the client will not pay the agreed contract amount for the work.

If I was the person doing the work here, i'd much rather just take down the site and have them have none of the work, as it encourages this kind of behavior from the customer again, and other customers who know that this happened.

Is removing your work entirely an option ? Not paying the agreed price feels like theft.

Edit: if you are truely correct, why pay for anything ever again, just let it settle in arbitration and save money.

[gregjor]

You seem not to consider that in these cases the customer has reasons not to pay. Usually that’s because they don’t think the contractor delivered what they promised, or took too long, or got part-way through the project then jacked up the price. Given a “he said, she said” conflict with no compelling documentation to support either side, the arbitrator may choose to split the difference in some way. These lawsuits frequently turn into ego-driven battles to win at all costs, over relatively small amounts. The arbitrator will want to defuse that rather than pore over the details with a microscope.

The best protection for both sides is to document everything, in writing (email works), so there’s a trail of every decision, every update, and the beginnings of the conflict. A reasonable arbitrator can infer what happened if they have evidence.

Charging for defined deliverables rather than fixed fee for a big project, or hourly, mitigates the risk for both sides. That also requires the freelancer does real analysis and breaks the task into specific tasks and deliverables. I rarely see that when I get called to mop up.

You might be surprised at how many freelancers write a boilerplate contract with vague requirements and deliverables, cash the down payment, then stop communicating with their customer. I’ve made a good living cleaning up after those messes. The customer could have done things differently, of course, but they too often trust the contractor as an expert and don’t understand technical decisions or costs.

As a freelancer you run into unreasonable, crazy, cheap, and toxic customers. Usually lots of red flags. Part of professional freelancing is learning how to identify bad customers and walking away, not trying to draft the perfect contract.

[worthless-trash]

Ah yes, I'm only referring to the case of work clearly meeting deadlines, work clearly meeting specifications, clear paper trails, change requests signed off, then just bailing on the payment. Thanks for the response.