I wanna rant about a freelance job but I can't. Tell me your freelancing horror stories instead :D

I've gotten called by a British recruiter today offering me a freelance job in .NET. Which is weird as I'm not even a junior developer yet. (Attending a daytime .net course til June)

Freelanced at a News Organization. Their WordPress site was slow as balls and outdated. Turns out they haven't updated since 2003. Friend got me the contract, though I had 0 WordPress experience.

After 3 months and making it smaller, faster, and more responsive. They refused to pay me. I only got my money after threatening a lawsuit and the Texas Workforce Coalition.

TL;DR
Some companies would sooner pay their plumber than their web developer.

Every freelancer horror story starts with a client who says "I want you to make the next _______." or I have an idea. I want to create _______ but for ______. 🙄 those are the worst clients.

@Nanos Luckily I haven't sent him any code yet, just demonstrated what it does. It turns out he just wanted me to "write in my own words" (so to speak) a way more complex open source app that does something different to what he originally specified. And then use that in his own commercial product. If I did do that (I can't anyway), would I technically be stealing from the original devs? Just wondering.