A web developer posted a payment shaming message on their client's site(joseph-smith.co.uk) |
A web developer posted a payment shaming message on their client's site(joseph-smith.co.uk) |
> Company status: Dissolved
> Dissolved on 16 December 2025
His other company:
> Company status: Liquidation
People are now attacking the guy on Instagram because I guess the developer or someone, made a Tiktok video about it.
It's dissolved by "compulsory strike-off", which means the registrar did it as a penalty for late filing of accounts about 4 months after their due date, and failing to send an email saying "the company is still required" to the registrar, which is enough to prevent the dissolution.
It happened before in 2021 to this company. The company was restored a few months later, which is permitted when it's been dissolved by the registrar for filing accounts late.
Restoring a company also restores its liabilities (debts), so it's clear they were not doing it in 2021 to get out of debts.
My guess is it's an oversight by the owner, who is prone to filing things late and doesn't have an accountant. It's quite common in the UK for single-person companies to not have an accountant, and to not know all the rules.
Plenty of health conditions or life events can cause an oversight like this, especially for someone who is already prone to filing close to the deadlines.
After the company is dissolved this way, it's unlawful to continue trading, which includes paying suppliers from company funds. The owner immediately loses all company assets. Their bank accounts may be frozen or closed quickly, so they might suddenly find themselves without access to their funds. That can be a awkward if the owner wasn't expecting it, or if they don't even know it's dissolved. Business banks in the UK freeze account access for other inscrutable reasons sometimes, so it's not always obvious when the reason is dissolution.
This doesn't excuse not replying to the supplier to explain, unless they are really unlucky and lost access to their paid Google account or similar as a side effect as well. Or if they had the kind of sudden health condition or life event that causes a person to miss filing deadlines.
Was it clear that wasn't the reason they were not doing it, or was it clear that the reason they were not doing it was to get out of debts?
Like a gambler they think the big win is coming any second and they drag it out too long, leaving a bunch of unpaid bills behind then.
With the above in mind, publicly changing a customer's website to something like this is *highly* unprofessional. Better to simply force the site down in a legal manner that conforms to a signed contract.
Also, our lawyer that day had the best advice: "If this goes to court, the only winners are me and their lawyer. We both get to have another vacation this year."
After one such "non-payment" incident, the next time they needed something they basically offered xx hours of payment for 15 minutes of work to get back on my good side. In general they'd end up "overpaying" for each project to make up for their tardiness in paying.
When I worked for a hosting provider, an overdue account would get daily emails for up to a month. After a month, the site would be disabled (404) or the VPS would be turned off. After three months, the site/VPS would be archived. After one year, the archive was deleted.
Astonishingly, there was always a fairly steady stream of customers who would come back over a year later and ask for their site to be restored, or to get a copy of it. I never enjoyed being the person who had to give them the bad news of the consequences of their choices.
If contract broken, sue them. Why throwing a scene?
Haha! tell me about it.
A client of mine ended his contract in 2010, pretending he did not use my software anymore. He had the source because I had to compile on site for technical reasons.
A disgruntled employed called to tell me and my associate he was still using it. It took me 3 years to find a proof, lawsuit started in 2014, the expertise began in 2016 and ended in 2021. I have a first trial hearing scheduled Feb, 12 2026. Expect 6 to 12 months before a decision, and of course, an appeal after that.
The guy had stocked up 5 million dollars net when I stopped him with the lawsuit [0], he is using the money to pay well known lawyers to delay the procedure every which way.
I'm out largely over 100 000 euros in court, expertise and lawyer fees, plus the countless hours spent responding to the endless, senseless dribble their lawyers produce.
As far as I'm concerned, my services are now hosted by me, and failure to pay shuts down the service, it's in the TOS.
[0 : he subcontracted for a big entity. I would never had gotten that contract myself, lacking the thief's network; said big entity never replied to our mails about our software]
Also, there's always some number of problem clients out there, never good idea to stray away from civility. There are problem merchants too, which is much more socially acceptable to shame publicly.
and doesn’t involve physical violence like the mafia
We haven't heard the other side of the argument, have we? Maybe it's not as simple as services delivered payment withheld.
I doubt anyone would work with this dev in the future, but lol it’s still quite funny.
A message like this on a client website doesn't do what you think it's going to do.
Normal people don't air petty grievances on the internet. They use the courts and other mechanisms.
According to another comment, the business is dissolved. They don't care if their site goes down. So this guy is looking unprofessional for nothing.
Airing dirty laundry is in some jurisdictions a legal offence. Which is exactly why there needs to be agreement spelled out in contracts upfront, that this could happen, and the client would just sign it.
And I am a fan of smart contracts and cryptocurrencies, see my suggestion below:
Far be it from me to hold them up as a beacon of moral value, but in business it’s fair to say you have to pay for service.
It’s not a humiliation, it’s just factual.
You're opening yourself to claims of defamation, tortious interference, disparagement, even coercion, depending on where you are. Not saying the client will win, but they can make it so you'll need to pay lots of legal fees to defend yourself.
It's much smarter to just take the site down without any kind of message, or just something that says "temporarily unavailable". Play dumb with the client, say you don't know why it went down but to fix it but you need to be paid first. Or say it depended on cloud credits that were going to come out of payment, if you don't want it to look like the site went down due to your incompetence.
Making a big public stink might feel good, but it's not a smart business strategy.
My guess is if it was, the client wouldn't agree to it, but who knows (many people just skim over them anyways).
like what? contract says "money for stuff". no money, no stuff.
A neutral service suspended message or no response from the server is more defendable if the client goes after you. If you actively communicate on their website, it could be argued you tried to cause reputational harm etc.
Even if you're right, provoking a legal response from a client is more than a lot of creatives and developers can handle, especially if the client is big enough to retain legal or staff a GC.
I suspect that things will turn out fine for this particular developer since the client seems small and the message is mostly innocuous.
Taking the website down entirely or just blanking it out is a very, very different matter than replacing it with a different message; and doubly so when the different message is actively harmful to the customer. Unless the designer's contract with the customer explicitly allowed them to do this, this sort of thing is a slam dunk legal case of either vandalism (using a physical metaphor) or in the UK as in this example, a criminal violation of the Computer Misuse Act.
Not to mention that it's an enormous red flag that will scare away other potential customers for this designer; because it demonstrates that you're very willing to sabotage their operations.
No stuff is one thing. Different stuff deployed to client's url is quite another.
We have small claims courts in every jurisdiction in the US. It costs $50 to file, and you do not need an attorney. The courts will review the contract and generally reach a reasonable decision.
There's always a cost/benefit to things. I bet the courts have returned more money than Facebook posts have...
Evidence: just about every post on Hacker News about Google breaking that eventually attracts a personal followup from a Googler who reads HN.
If you're angry about not getting paid and your client has given you control over part of their public-facing persona, I can definitely see using that control to make it known that you are in a state of disunion with them. I can even see it being done with no harm to your reputation because other future potential clients know they will be able to pay you.
If you pay him, you'll have no problems.
You were planning to pay, weren't you?
That's how I talk, and admittedly some people find how I talk confusing when I think it's clear. Thanks for the amusing heads up on language interpretation!
In pseudo-code: (clear (not (eq (reason for doing it) (to get out of debts))))).
In the UK, the place where the site in the original link is, it's okay to state facts about a business transaction in public if it's not a malicious falsehood, a violation of contract, or a violation of privacy laws (e.g. sharing emails or recorded calls). But yes, I agree, the issues leading up to this should all be tackled by the contract up front.
There is also the long time friend you do a site for, with an agreed upon price. And he forgets to renew the bank transfer every year... for months.
I’ve seen a lot of things like that flip over the last 2 decades
Where the abuser doesn’t tend to be able to control reputation across an industry, so they can be called out
A freelance software developer wouldn't be affected by that, YMMV
This particular example is in the UK though.
It's even easier here!
You can issue a Statutory Demand (https://www.gov.uk/statutory-demands) which gives the receiver 21 days to either pay or reach an agreement to pay. Failing to do that can lead to them being wound up.
If, for some reason, you wanted to go the small claims route instead, there's an (ageing) online service (https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/web/mcol/welcome).
Unlike the US, the fee isn't a flat fee, and is tiered depending on the amount being claimed (still cheap though).
I've had to use both in the past.
The developer in this case really has no excuse for airing dirty laundry in public. If they're hosting and not being paid, by all means suspend the site, but don't deface it so there's a message about not being paid carrying the customer's branding.
I don't know what state lets you file for $50. It can easily reach $400 or more, especially because you might have to pay the sheriff to serve the defendant.
Most Small Claims in the USA allows the other party to bring an entire team of professional lawyers to destroy you. (Cook County for instance bars lawyers only for cases under $1500 IIRC)
That said, there have certainly been situations where builders have gone back to properties and taken back their property (like tiles from walls, joinery, etc.) but I have no idea how that pans out legally as it's outside my wheelhouse.
And in this particular case since they're a UK company, yeah, you can just look at their reported accounts.
2023
CURRENT ASSETS: £571
Creditors: Amounts Falling Due Within One Year: £28,051
----
That's not a client I'd take.
It's not complicated... I don't trust the judgement of someone that behaves this way. I have no idea what the contract said, or who is in the right. All I know is I'm not going to take the chance that they don't agree with the contract and now I'm litigating on Facebook....
If the domain is registered with the client named as the formal owner, the client may well be the owner even if they haven't paid for it yet.
I'm not going to interfere with your contract with a different party that handles your mail or DNS if that's how you manage your mail or DNS.
I'm a nice guy so I'll signal a temporary error and if you arrange payment (or at least claim that you will arrange payment shortly), hopefully your correspondents will retry and you'll just have delays and not lost messages.
The remedy for failure to pay is to seek payment or sue, not to sabotage the client's business.
There's no reason to respond to questions or points nobody is making.
If the money runs out, the service turns off. That's not sabotage anymore than the phone company turning off your phone or the electric company turning off your power. Although phone and electricity may have regulated shutoff procedures.