Alright, well I SPECIFICALLY asked this guy if he does tableless XHTML/CSS valid coding, and he replied telling me yes, he does. So I said alright, cool. Asked how much he charged. He said $80. I was like okay, no big deal. I gave him a $50 down payment for him to do this for me. He started working on it, and I asked out of curiosity how long it will take for him to complete it. He replied and said quite bluntly "24 hours from now." Okay, so half a day goes by, and I asked for an update. He told me he was still working on it. Every time I asked for an approximate time it would be done, I only got a response like "I'm still working on it," or "You'll be the first one to know." Okay, I was patient and nice about it. They were getting annoyed by me for some reason. I was being polite and nice about it but they still were getting angry with me. 24 hours comes by and I ask when it will be ready. They tell me that it is done and I send the rest of the payment, forgetting to look it over. I looked at the source code, and what do you know? I see "<table>" RIGHT away. Okay, I thought, what the hell? I specifically asked for tableless. I ask him about it and he said "No problem, I'll do it now!" Cool, so I wait for him to complete that.. 24 MORE hours go by, and they're still not done with that. So I've been waiting for 48 hours for a tableless XHTML/CSS job and it is still not complete, regardless that they said it would only take 24 hours. A few more hours go by and I decide that this service is complete bullsh*t. I politely ask for a refund and they get really pissed about this. They start swearing and cursing at me and my brother (who was also involved, as he is the co-owner for the website I'm developing). I am confused as to why they are being so mean and rude about this. I demand an instant refund since their services were complete bull, and they said they will only refund $40. I tell them I want all of my money back, as I never received any correct coding and only received negative words. They tell me "You will be happy with what I give you back." They only sent me $40 back still to date, and I am pretty pissed about it. Is there anything I can do to get the rest back, seeing that they did not do anything correctly and were rude the entire time?
It depends on where you are and where they are and how you paid for the service. Your best bet is if you paid for it by credit card, then you might be able to do a charge back. If you did it through PayPal then probably not as they will see this as intangible goods. As far as legal recourse, if they live in the same country (or state in parts of the US) you might be able to take them to small claims court, but the amount is below the threshhold in some states and less than you would pay to file the claim in any state (not to mention your time). As far as them being rude, well there is no legal barre to rude businessmen. And as a former programmer, I would say that you were the one that started the rude behavior. You may not think so, but from reading your post asking for an update after 12 hours on a 24 hour job would be grating (though not really annoying) unless you had said that it was a time critical job (and if that was the case you should have been spending more than $80 on it). If it was a small job (and for $80 it was) what 24 hours means is I will get to it in about 21 hours and it will take me three. So you asking after 12 hours would start the annoyance. What would really annoy me is the "Every time I asked for an approximate time it would be done" which you later go on to state that you got the code (albeit not what you asked for) after the original 24 hours. That means that after the first contact at 12 hours you contacted and asked multiple times when it would be done when you had been told it would be 24 hours. Now, as a business person that does not excuse rudeness, that's just bad business. But if I had been the contractor I would have refunded you after the third time you asked for an update and sent you no code. But that's me. If you want the right to be annoying, you have to pay me way more than $80. I'm not saying that you're wrong (I don't know the whole story), just that your attitude was a little pushy for such a small job. But, like I said even if they no longer wanted to do the job for you they should not have been rude to you in that manner. As far as recourse, the only thing you can recover is probably satisfaction (unless you paid by credit card). In the future, I would ask for a sample before agreeing to pay. Also, I don't know how you worded your request but be specific. Asking if somebody does tableless layout and then asking for a page is not the same as asking if a person does tableless layout and then asking for a page with tableless layout. It may be more expensive initially to go with somebody with a portfolio and demonstrated work, but paying $200 upfront to get the work done right in a short period of time will be cheaper than going through several people charging $80 that may or may not refund the money after they give you what you didn't want and spending weeks before it finally gets done right.