So I had, or should I say, had a client who used to be a pretty nice guy, or at least I thought so until recently when he messaged me saying I was tampering with his business and how he can't think of any other reason his roofing company is now failing other than it being my fault and how I should expect a lawsuit or to hear from his lawyer in the near future.
I haven't said anything back to him despite having a pre-F*** off message in my drafts, but to give you some context, it wasn't always like this. I met him through FB when he messaged me after I posted some Google Business Results from another client of mine, and after some talking back and forth, he agreed he wanted to give it a go. Things were great, rankings were moving, client was very responsive. Essentially, everything I could ask for until eventually he decided to go against my word in favor of a buddy he knows. Whatever right it's his business, but this eventually became a constant theme and would leak over into our work. Before you know it, these "Suggestions" his buddy was making would move our rankings from number 2 in the map pack generating 50-60 calls a month down into the top 5 where calls were still good but nowhere near the same, and you could feel there was no bottom/end to this until eventually he fired me when I refused some of the vital changes he wanted.
I didn't take it to heart, aside from the friend stuff he was a good guy so we parted ways but I guess things continued to drop in ranking once I left. Now fast forward to a few months out and I guess he's convinced himself that I'm doing voodoo black hat magic against his business. Like I said interesting scenario but I can asssure you I'm not tampering or doing anything and it actually pisses me off a little that he would assume that, considering my only goal in the first place was to help him out and I even gave that little rat a discount when he first signed. I'm a little heated but what do you think the best way to tell him to F*** off is without escalating this any further?
Ex-Client Is Threatening to Sue Me Over Failing Business, How Do I Tell Him To F*** Off?
byu/RankingGBPs inEntrepreneur
Posted by RankingGBPs
19 Comments
Ignore him until he lawyers up. You’ll be fine even if he does. Only way you would be found liable is with absolute hard proof you caused his business to fail, which is still pretty hard to do. Don’t waste your energy on that clown.
“See you in court”. If everything you’re saying is true, it will get thrown out immediately. It’s really hard to weigh in on these posts where all you hear is one side of the story though, but again, if you’re being honest about everything here, just let him take you to court, and then counter-sue for this frivolous suit, and take him for all he’s worth.
Anytime someone say “sue” I shut up and refer them to my lawyer.
So he sent you an angry message, so what? 80% chance he’s just stressed and blown off steam and nothing comes of it.
Ignore it and move on.
If he decides to sue you then he decides to sue you and you deal with it.
There’s nothing you can say right now… Especially not a fuck off email… That’s going to help you if he does sue you. And if he doesn’t sue you it’s over. So just let it go until he actually does something.
Block and ignore.
Do not tell him to fuck off. Tell your lawyer whats going on and tell the guy to speak to your lawyer. Cut off contact. Do not put yourself in a situation in which your emotions take over and you say anything you can / could / should regret later. Anything you say can and will be used against you in case this goes to court.
Source: I’m a lawyer. We use people’s words against them. In one of my first cases, I used the plaintiff words against themselves to win a honestly impossible case.
Been out of the game for a long while, but I’d either ignore it or have your lawyer send him a cease and desist letter. Dude would be hard pressed to find a lawyer that would legitimately take this on to begin with. That said, the letter would at least put him in check and force him direct all contact to your lawyer. So it’d be off your plate regardless.
Don’t escalate the situation just stay quiet
I just had this same situation with a FFL retailer for a WebDev/Marketing contract.
I get a text that an admin was added to our system under “temp-user”. Immediately shut it down (3m response time) and message the owner. “lol it was me, I wanted to have someone else look at the website, it’s slow and I don’t get sales.”
He says this with a 15k product catalog and his insistence that it will work on a much slower hosting. (I highly recommend Azure/AWS… he chose the cheap VPS option)
My contract has exclusive rights to vendor selection because I work with startups, they don’t like vetting businesses, and this client is ATF regulated. I find that the vendor he was trying to use isn’t a valid registered business and my client just tried to give Admin with PII and 4473 info to a random.
I’m pissed because he then said he hasn’t been making money and not getting traffic literally 16 days after I just sent him a full report saying otherwise.
Lawyers look over everything and send him a Breach of Contract with Remediation scheduled.
He sent me a “I just have been stressed and took it out on you… I have no way out of this contract”. Which is false, there is a convenience clause he could’ve ended with 60 day notice. (Not a normal thing for Marketing Contracts)
ONE DAY before the meeting… he schedules an appointment with the same people who I just said were not valid to work with AFT compliant businesses.
Client was immediately fired and my lawyers billed him for 6x the amount + my hourly to get things transferred and deal with ATF compliance burden.
Moral of the story: have a solid contract before doing any work. No matter how nice they are, the moment shit hits the fan, they look for someone else to blame. No contract = no work.
You can spend a few hundred to have a lawyer write up a response. People are often all bark until things actually get serious. If he already wants to threaten a lawyer, respond with appropriate seriousness.
All you can really do otherwise is deescalate the situation.
You could do a “Hey, it’s great to hear back from you. It’s been a while. Boy I sure don’t want to be the fellow this email was supposed to go to. Since we’re chatting, it’d be great to reconnect.”
But it might be beyond that point, and there’s no point.
The easiest is often not to bother and simply have a lawyer whip up something. A response on official law firm letterhead tends to be a gut punch to folks who just enjoy yapping. You can also ask the lawyer what makes best sense for the response, what to include or not include.
You may need a lawyer, but for now, refrain from arguing. Let the guy dig a hole. Email back and say, “I’m sorry that I don’t understand your concerns. What are you alleging?”
Chances are the guy hasn’t talked to his lawyer and has no idea what he should or shouldn’t say. He’s more likely to help your case than his own in his replies, such as saying his friend advised him on this or that or that you didn’t make clear how bad he was screwing up.
This strategy has been successful for me several times. Some people think they can manipulate people and facts and IME these are the people who are quick to yell “Lawsuit!”
The threat of a lawsuit turns a friendly conversation into a guarded conversation. This client has crossed this line. Do not respond to any threats. Do not even acknowledge it when you see him personally. If pushed, say, I gave all of this to the legal team. It is out my hands now.
He’s not suing you until you get a demand letter.
I’d be more worried about him bad mouthing you or bad reviews. I might see if my lawyer thinks I should respond with a simple message along the lines of “I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I think it would have gone better if you had followed my advice, but it was your right not to. I think it was right to end the engagement given you had different ideas, so there were no hard feelings. Of course I am not trying to harm your business, there is absolutely no basis for you to make that accusation.”
Do it in an email so you have it in the even that he does sue you, because he is slandering your business and there’s your countersuit.
A Senior Attorney once said to me. ‘Bad economic times are great for the legal industry, because when businesses start failing they point the finger at someone else and , “This is your fault.” IF he sues you he’ll hav eto prove it, stay away and don’t retaliate. Sounds like you know your stuff, lesson learned. All The Best, you sound like the adult in the room.
Why is it ALWAYS the freaking roofing companies that are ran by idiots. My advice is to take a real big deep breath, say what you think of him out loud, then type a well mannered response just factually refuting his claims and reiterating the fact that your relationship is over and you don’t have any current efforts that are contributing to his business. If you want to get ahead of things, provide proof that your efforts ceased and provide the date that they did so.
In all likelihood, they won’t lawyer up and even if they do it won’t go anywhere.
Silence.
“I understand you’ll be suing me? I can’t talk to you, have your attny contact my attnys.” {plural intended.}
Like most said, you should ignore everything after someone says they are going to sue.
But if you insist on saying anything at all, just point out that his path all started when he started listening to his friend. Tell him his success or failure as a business means nothing to you and you haven’t thought about him at all since you parted business ways. Does he have long standing thoughts about former clients that have moved on? Wish him luck in figuring out the details with his problem.
He’s in his own head thinking that he’s the main character of the story and it might wake him up to point out that he’s barely a side character in yours
In my experience, the Roofing industry is filled with pretty terrible people. I dealt with a similar situation. The guy was all talk. This guy likely is too.