What is the law for putting an invoice on someones front door?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve got this lady who is trying to scam me out of a service that I provided at her house that she’s renting. In my gut, I know that she planned to scam me from the beginning.
I’ve been e-mail invoices, and finally taped one to the front door (right next to the wall mailbox) showing that it is going on 90 days past due. Wanting to embarrass her to anyone who sees it and her kids.

She rents the house, and not the owner. She finally responds to an e-mail, and it says: “don’t come to my house again”

Is it illegal for me to put an invoice on the storm door? What would you do?

2

You’ve been told not to come to her house, so don’t. It’s trespassing. It’s now time to get your collection agent involved.

3

*What would you do? *

I would snail mail an invoice with “return receipt service” so you have a record that it was delivered. If you still have no payment after 30 days, turn it over for collection as friedo suggests.

4

I’m not a lawyer. It might be ok to deliver an invoice in person and leave it on someone’s door once. It’s very likely not ok to do so when you’ve explicitly been told you are not welcome.

Do not go back to her house. Do not have any contact aside from professional and polite requests for payment by mail.

It really sucks that you’re not getting paid, but I think you may be getting too emotionally involved here. Take a step back and think about this. Continuing down this road is not likely to increase the chances that you get paid, but could easily give her legal leverage over you.

5

This is not intended to be legal advice, but merely an observation that when a sheriff’s deputy serves a notice of a pending lawsuit on a defendant, they are typically permitted to effect service by taping the notice to the front door.

6

Since this involves legal advice, let’s move it to IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

7

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8

Send her a “final notice” invoice via registered mail and say that you will give her 10 days to pay the amount owed or you will sue her in small claims court. Then do just that.

ETA: the only reason you’d need to put it on her door is to ensure she received it. She has received it. Your goal should not be to embarrass her. Your goal should be to get payment.

9

I generally refuse to work for tenants for this very reason. It’s a lot easier go after a home owner.

My policy is send an invoice via mail. After 30 days send a second invoice. 60 days send it again via certified mail noting legal action will follow if I am not contacted in 1 week. After that it depends on the debt but at 90 days I’m a fan of showing up at their place of work and asking for payment in person. I’m also not opposed to showing up on a holiday at their house to ask for payment. Nasty grams from my attorney are sometimes helpful.

I prefer not to actually take it to court because I loathe paying court fees to collect on debts. If I have to I’ll take it to court and get an unsatisfying payment plan that I’ll likely have to take to court again when they fail to meet it.

My grand fathers policy was to put have children sit on their porch till they paid. A small part of my father’s childhood was spent a bit of time hanging around embarrassing deadbeats.
She’s asked you not to come to her property. Stay off her property.

Doubt there was anything illegal about taping an invoice to her door. You certainly can’t do it again without trespassing now.

Depending on the service provided you could contact the landlord and tell him ‘I intend to put a lien on your property. I’ll let the courts decide if the tenant was acting as a agent for you or not. Could you please talk to your tenant before I am forced to do so’

10

These are the two correct answers, IMO. You’ve been told not to come to her house anymore, IME (actual experience with LEOs), once you’ve been told to stay off the property, you can be arrested if you come back. However, there’s no reason why you couldn’t have someone else do it. So there’s that.

The next thing to do would be to send the invoice, along with a letter detailing what the next step is* (small claims, turned over to the police, handed to collections, whatever) in the letter and send it via Certified mail/Return receipt requested. Keep in mind that even if they aren’t home to receive it or outright refuse it, that doesn’t matter. In all the cases I’ve dealt with, you only have to prove that you attempted to get the letter to them, they don’t actually have to receive it. But if it comes back, don’t open it. You’ll need the closed copy if it goes to court.

You might also suggest some alternative to how they can pay such as cash, check or credit card (in which case you’d send them a paypal invoice if you don’t take credit cards). I’ve found that giving people options (especially credit cards), is helpful with hard to collect debts.

But to reiterate, a certified letter with RR, is the next step before anyone ‘official’ is likely to help you out. If the debt it more than $200 or so dollars and it’s easy to show that you did the work, I’m just take them to small claims. Less than that, move on. I don’t know what you do for a living, what you did for her or how you’re related to her WRT her renting the apartment, but going forward it might be worth asking for half upfront (“for materials”) so at least it’s not a total loss when you get stiffed.

*I’ve heard that can be considered extortion, a threat. That is you’re threatening them with something if they don’t give you money, but I don’t know if it’s true. Every time I’ve heard this, they always say, just demand the money and if they don’t give it to you take the next step but don’t phrase it in the form if ‘give me my money or else’. No idea if it’s true, just something I’ve heard.

11

If the person who owes money lives in an apartment building or condo, where the hallway does not belong to her, is it trespassing to walk up to the door and post a notice or invoice on it? Because I can see that if she lives in a freestanding home set back from the street, the only way to put the invoice on the door is to enter the lawn, but not in the case of a multifamily dwelling.

12

Fifteen or so years ago I thought about how pissed off I always was about people owing me money and not paying. Not wanting to be always pissed off, I stopped accepting checks and stopped all billing. I take payment when goods/services are rendered.

I noticed an immediate drop in business, but stuck to my guns. Eventually my local competition realized I was sending them business that had a higher than average likelihood of not paying. Within two years of my decision to stop billing, all of my local competitors followed suit.

13

This seems like a really good way to piss off the landlord and make sure that he obstructs you as much as possible and never hires you for anything in the future. Making threats against someone generally doesn’t make them like you, and if the landlord is competent he will know very well how liens work and that you’re just blowing smoke.

14

I’m not even sure how that makes sense. That’s like doing work for a homeowner and when he doesn’t pay, putting a lien on the neighbors house. The landlord didn’t request the work, you can’t put a lien on his property.

I’d be surprised if the lien would even be granted since the name on the job and the property owners name aren’t the same. At best, maybe you could get a lien on his car, but I doubt it since you the work wasn’t done on the car so it’s not like the OP is trying to recover his work for non-payment.

His best bet, IMO, would be small claims. If there’s a signed contract, it’s a shoo-in, if not, it’s a bit tougher, but can still be done.

TL;DR, Leave the land lord out and his property out of it, its got nothing to do with anything.

15

If the work was on the real property (land, structure, fixed equipment), not just a service for the renter, you might could make a case. The “name on the job” in this sense is the street address. The charge is incurred by the property, not necessarily any particular person.

No doubt rules vary from place to place, but owners have been assessed for “necessary” work they didn’t know about, after the fact.

The phrasing given above is the wrong approach though; the way to do it would be to assume that the tenant was acting as agent for the owner. So send the owner a bill, make him ask the tenant about it. Maybe he’s not happy with them already.

16

In commercial real estate service providers put liens on buildings all the time where the tenants did not pay the bill for services rendered to the property. This can absolutely impede the sale of a property unless the lein is satisfied.

17

See, this is why you need a pimp.

18

If it’s a required service for occupancy ultimately the landLord is going to have to pay. That’s why it depends on the service provided.

My work usually involves potable water supply. Even if a tenant requested the work I could still attach a lien on the property.

If the goal is to collect a debt I don’t really care if I piss off a landlord doing so. Him and his dead beat tenants can go screw.

As I said initially I refuse to work for tenants to begin with. It makes small claims and property liens very straight forward.

19

OP here.

Thanks for all the replies. I’m resigning to the fact that I’ll never get paid, so as to not let it get to me.

It’s the principle of it. :mad: I’m certain that she never planned to pay from day one. It was for lawn service.

If it was a larger amount, I’d take her to small claims. But even if I won the case, I’d still have to chase her for the money. The court here doesn’t require it to be paid right then and there.

I may call the landlord. He’s a realtor. Maybe he can somehow force her to pay it by saying that I could put a lien on the property.
She is an absolute psychopath/sociopath. Twists everything around, and puts the blame on me. And I just keep saying, pay me for the services provided.

20

If she never intended to pay, she may fall under this