An entitled Karen refuses to pay me for the site I built for her, literally screwing me out of thousands of dollars all because she wanted to keep all the money for herself. So I decided to get some revenge by pretending to be the hacker that took down her website very recently, resulting in her paying me what she owes me for the work I did for her website, as she assumed that I was the hacker that took down her site, despite the fact that I definitely wasn't. Here's what happened. Okay, so this is basically about a freelance revenge story that happened about eight years ago, and it was one of the first times I was ghosted without paying. Now, for a bit of context, I created a landing page for this lady that would promote her Elven Symbol jewelry store. It was a bunch of esoteric BS, but I was young and trying to break into copywriting, so I took any deal that I could.

We agreed on a... Elven Symbol jewelry store. It was a bunch of esoteric BS, but I was young and trying to

break into copywriting, so I took any deal that I could. We agreed on a pure performance deal.

So I got nothing up front, but we settled on a 5% performance fee. Her WordPress store was really

small, and I was aiming to get about $800 out of it. But honestly, at some level, I would have been

happy to just do it for practice and for my

portfolio. Well, long story short, I wrote the landing page and I built it inside of her WordPress site.

She started running some Facebook ads on it, and I was shocked to see that it was actually converting.

On day one, she got $120. On day two, $200. On day three, she got $150. And on day four,

$360. And this kept going and going. And by the end

of the month, that landing page brought in about $6,000 in revenue. And I honestly thought that I struck gold.

$300 in royalty in the first month. Like, are you kidding me? I was going to make bank from like two

days of work. Well, predictably, she disappeared the moment I mentioned first invoice. Three months go by and I get nothing. No replies to emails and calls go unanswered. She's still running ads. I mean, I can see all the sales coming in because I still have access to her website. Then out of nowhere, I get a panic message. My site is down. Are you doing this? Please stop. Now, for the record, I had nothing to do with her store going down. Probably just her cheap hosting. But after being ghosted for months, while she made thousands off of my work, I knew this could be my one and only shot at getting paid. So, you know what? I just played along. But I had to be careful. I couldn't just admit in writing that I'm the hacker and threaten her to pay up. Like, what if she went to the police and showed them the messages?

No, I had to make her think that I was, but not admit to anything at the same time.

So I replied, I said to her, sorry, but I'm not going to pay you until you pay me what you owe me.

Well, this turned out to be the perfect level of vague.

I never said that I hacked her sight.

I never threatened to keep it down. And instead, I just looked really suspicious. She then immediately called me and asked me what I want. I told her, I still have access to her website and Google Analytics. I can see what she made off the landing page and I want what we agreed on. 5% of sales from that landing page. Well, it ended up being just shy have $1,500. After that, she then said she'll take care of it. We got off the call and I sent her the final invoice. And right then, she wired the money immediately. She then messaged me with a payment confirmation from her bank and asked me to enable her website. So in my mind, I'm thinking, wow, it worked. I was shaking when I typed back, but I replied by saying, I had nothing to do with your website crashing. You should talk to your hosting provider. After that, I never heard from her again, but I'm honestly just so glad that I ended up getting paid. Dude, I love this so much. This is like the best kind of revenge you ever want to get because this Karen deserve this. The second anybody like doesn't pay someone for their work on time, like that for me marks you as a bad person right then and there. Like across the board, you're a garbage human being if you don't pay people for their work. Whether that's building out a website or like, I don't know, lawn care or whatever it is. Just pay people what you promised them. Like seriously. And you agreed to give basically the original poster some royalties, so you got to do that. So seriously, good for the original poster for tricking them into paying you. Like, that is a brilliant way to get your money back. Because chances are, this Karen probably wasn't even paying for hosting or something like that. Because based on their history, I wouldn't be surprised if they were like skimping on all of that from the very beginning. If you like Am I the Jerk, you're probably going to love Am I the Genius.

Check it out, link down below in the description.

Also, go to Ami the Jerk.com slash submit if you would like to submit your own stories.

My idiotic supervisor says that if I'm even five minutes late to work, then I should not

even bother showing up in the first place.

...