I am a freelance programmer. I was hired by Nick (I never got the last name) at 1hourmail.com to help secure their server after they were hacked by a company in India that had done previous work for them. I performed over 35 hours of work and they refused to pay. The agreed upon rate was $45/hour.
After the first 10 hours of work, I asked them for a payment. No problem the told me. But their paypal account was messed up, it would take a few days. So I kept working and kept checking back, no payment yet. Finally, I stopped work entirely and demanded at least 50% of the payment before I would continue. There was still a lot to be done to secure the site as the original code was very sloppy and prone to security holes (*note, I had nothing to do with creating the original code).
At the time I stopped work, I told them that the next thing I'd needed to do was to replace the code that was used to upload files to their site for processing. At that time, I had turned off that functionality in order to secure the site. Some time AFTER I stopped working, Nick changed the file permissions back in order to allow files to be uploaded. The were promptly attacked again and their entire site was deleted.
In subsequent emails to 1hrmail.com where I interacted with both Nick and Mark (the owner) I was told that they're not paying me because they got hacked again. After I explained my position, they did finally agree to pay me. I was giving them a discount and only charging them for 20 hours.
However, they never came through on the payment. I gave them an extra two weeks to come up with even some money or a payment plan. I was very patient with them. So after multiple warnings I decided that I would publish a report here.
Please note that I have retained all the emails to back up my claims.
Nick and Mark have both lied to me repeatedly. Nick even sent me an email one day telling me he got fired. I found out later that was a lie through my own research. It was an attempt to throw me off the trail so I would quit trying to collect.
In summary, 1hrmail has admitted they owed me money, told me they would pay and then ultimately cut off communication and refused to pay.
If they can't be trusted to pay for legitimate work, how can you trust them with your mail and documents?
0 comments