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I worked for this employer for a month, and he only paid me for half-month then suddenly replaced me after I delivered the MVP. And he was okay with the result. Then he immediately cut me off without paying me the payment for the other 1/2 month.

So he made a Paypal buyer claim, because I don't have access to our messages (because he already cut me off in Slack and access to the company mail) on his satisfaction with the MVP, I lost the Paypal buyer claim and it was immediately refunded to his account.

I reviewed the contract - he didn't follow the contract on his terms.

He made me sign an NDA but it was in his home country, not mine. And I'm not thinking twice about breaking it because he himself did not follow the contract.

Actions I'm planning to do:

  1. Go public on this and be vocal about everything to warn other freelancers
  2. Make the product open source. (Since he refunded the payment supposed to be)
  3. Reported him to the platform.

I want to make sure no one can become a freelancer of this client ever again. Who takes advantage and rips-off.

Are there any actions I could take? I also sent him a warning already. I feel ripped off and frustrated.

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    Welcome to Freelancing.SE! Unfortunately, this is an important lesson as well to learn - you need to keep ALL copies of ALL communication between your employer and yourself, on YOUR own controlled system.
    – Canadian Luke ♦
    Commented Jun 30, 2020 at 15:33
  • What do you think about my actions that I plan to do?
    – dekt
    Commented Jun 30, 2020 at 15:37
  • At this point, not much. Unless you're willing to hire a lawyer in their country to represent you, the client knows they got their money back and your product.
    – Canadian Luke ♦
    Commented Jun 30, 2020 at 17:56
  • @CanadianLuke is it okay if I make the product public this time?
    – dekt
    Commented Jul 1, 2020 at 18:23
  • I am not the kind of person to do that. Be careful about what you say publicly, in case it comes back to bite you in the future. I make my business decisions based on "what are the consequences of this action? What would other potential clients think if they heard or saw this?". That guides me to be very cautious.
    – Canadian Luke ♦
    Commented Jul 1, 2020 at 19:51

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You seem to be acting out of anger rather than considering the most sensible course of action, which is to briefly report your unsatisfactory experience with this client to whichever site he found you on, and then move on with your life.

While you may gain some small measure of satisfaction from damaging their reputation or trashing their software product, the reality is that unless you have a huge megaphone (a twitter account with 100K followers, for example) your complaints will make only the tiniest impact on them and may provoke lawsuits, defamation claims and other forms of retaliation on their part. They may even use the same tactics against you to damage your reputation and future clients may be put off using someone who is happy to trash a client when the relationship doesn't go well.

Unless you plan to sue them (in which case your lawyer can bill you $90 an hour to tell you to shut up), the best course of action is to accept this as somewhat expensive lesson in client management.

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