[tptacek]

Yes. It helps. You cannot whip up a storm of angry Redditors when you are told by a client "send this invoice to finance@", because that is where invoices normally go.

From what I've seen so far, this client did two things wrong:

* They scoffed at the invoice

* They told the vendor to send the invoice to legal@

If the client had declined to do EITHER of those things --- not both, just not do one of them --- there wouldn't be even half as much drama as there is now. "Send it to legal@" was just a dumb move.

[saurik]

No: all we have is that they said "please send your claim to our legal team: [e-mail]": key word being "claim". I can easily see the e-mail in the middle from the contractor being one of those massive supposedly-motivating "I will sue you if you don't do what I want, as I believe you did X and Y and Z illegally" e-mails.

If so, it wouldn't make sense to say "send your invoice to finance": the correct response is "send your claim to legal". I really don't think we can claim anyone in this situation can learn any lessons without the complete and full e-mail context, as I honestly have dealt with enough irritating people to not put even a single iota of trust that the contractor is explaining even the sequence of events in a way that isn't designed to make them seem like they didn't send a screaming pile of pain in their side of the conversation.