Karen's Naughty List

Much as I love working with international clients, it does come with one risk: getting stiffed. I have been incredibly lucky; in eight years of making freestyles, I can count on one hand those clients who didn’t pay me in full, and there really are only two who walked away from paying me for their entire freestyles.

***News Flash***

Naughty List works its magic – a check arrived in the mail a couple of weeks after this page went up. There is now only one person who has not paid me. Since this person is in another country, my recourse has been limited to some imploring emails which received no response….but if nothing else, perhaps posting his name here will keep other service providers from being ripped off by him in the future.

***Update September 11, 2008***

Wow! When I decided (after long deliberation) to put this page up and post the names of clients who had not paid me for the freestyles they had received and used, I didn’t seriously expect them to suddenly change their minds and ‘show me the money’. But the second of the two individuals who were named on this page contacted me to say he would send me full payment within the next six weeks. He also implored me to remove his name. I have complied with his request, but watch this space. If he doesn’t pay me by the date he specified in his last email, you can expect to read about him all over again!

***Update December 9, 2008***

Well, Fernando Olivan de Roche, you are back on the list, and it looks like you are here to stay. It’s quite a distinction to be the first and only client in ten years of business to not pay me a single penny. In this case the product sought and delivered was a freestyle your daughter Maria and her pony Aristos used in European Pony Championship qualifiers in 2007. You promised me in two emails this fall that you would forward payment in full, but two months after the date that you chose as a self-imposed deadline, my bank account remains un-augmented by a transfer from Zaragoza, Spain. And you have disappeared once more into the lost world of cyber space, no longer responding to my messages. I don’t believe the excuse you gave that last year you sent a transfer which, after five months of non-delivery, was returned to your account. Nor do I believe that you sent me an email about it, especially when you subsequently said your email had been ‘down’ for a year after I forwarded you the messages I had sent around the same time that you allegedly contacted me about the failed transfer. I don’t believe anything you say, Fernando, not anything at all. And since I don’t expect to ever receive even a portion of what you owe me, I guess your name and ignoble story will sit here for as long as applausedressage.com occupies a place on the world wide web.