Clever Engineer Teaches Shady Client a Lesson When They Refuse to Pay

“Don't mess with an engineer” —u/AwkLemon

Old client makes a big offer

“Sorry but they don't have the budget to pay you”

Sweet, sweet revenge

Sleazy client doesn't like the taste of his own medicine

The comment section

Redditors expressed their approval in the comments. Some even shared their own similar stories of enacting righteous revenge on dishonest scumbags who think they can get away with not paying workers what they're owed. 

“This is epic and far-reaching revenge.” said u/Bingo__DinoDNA.

“Yeah, that is fucking BRUTALLY awesome! The amount of money they cost that penny pinching asshole in the long run is fucking delicious.” said u/WorthlessDrugAbuser.

“Yup, I've had to do a version similar to this.” added u/Demorative. “Replaced the DME on a BMW (this is the one where you have to remove the intake manifold to swap it, so it's not exactly a 5 min affair). Got the car running good, customer ghosts me and refuses to answer phone calls. I knew he had a spare key. I parked the car outside and shut it down....then flashed the CAS with the data from a manual mini cooper, then on top of that I bricked it by aborting it mid-flash. So it was stuck in programming mode. Closed the door and left. Literally next day at 6:55am he blows up my phone, accusing me of this and that. I removed the discount that he fished out of me, and added a 25% asshole tax on it. Told him to pay upfront, or I'll have the car towed for being abandoned. He refused, got his own tow truck and towed it to another shop. Shop 1 replaced the DME, CAS and key as a set, but couldn't figure out the transmission programming, so it wouldn't go into drive. He tows it to shop #2. Shop #2 bricks the transmission when trying to program it. He tows it to dealer. Dealer wanted $3400 for the mechatronic unit. He calls me back. I multiplied the money owed by 2x (to fix the transmission issue) and another 25% on top, and told him to pay upfront or I don't move my ass. He did, then I went straight to the dealership, plugged in my device, and had the car up and running 45 mins later. I never heard back from him again.”

“I did something similar.” replied u/scottlmcknight, “A customer attempted to change a machine's operator interface that had a cracked screen. After replacement, the new interface showed row after row of question marks in the data fields, indicating bad data or comm problems. So they called me after trying everything they could think of for two days. I show up and ask their ‘tech’ *cough cough* to walk me through what he did. I saw that the interface has two ports for data cables, and were only using one. I moved the cable to the other port and all the data fields started populating immediately. Red faces and swearing abounded but they were glad to see it running again. This took me all of ten minutes start to finish, and I left. My boss said that our service call fee was a minimum two hour charge and could I please just stand around next time. I said that they lost two days of production on that machine and I'm sure they were fine with me leaving when I did!”

“My Dad was a lawyer.” replied u/FoundationAny7601, “He never knew how long a case would take when he quoted....could take months or days. He quoted a case and talked prosecutor down to time served. Lady refused to pay since it only took a couple hours.”

“Stories like these make it sound like maybe TVA was good at one point, but since then TVA has fully joined team ‘fuck you.’ Source: Used to work there and watched TVA burn multiple colleagues who were the best and brightest. Worst place I've ever worked, and it's not even close.” added u/tenaseechick.

Read the full thread here.