Well for one thing, $18.33 an hour is pretty bottom-barrel for qualified front-end work. $35+ up is where the decent price range _begins_ for reasonably skille

Well for one thing, $18.33 an hour is pretty bottom-barrel for qualified front-end work. $35+ up is where the decent price range _begins_ for reasonably skilled development work in any non-trivial category (which definitely includes front-end). So in a sense, you made a simple mistake (in aiming too low for a price point), got an immature / low-integrity counterparty to deal with as a result -- and so now you get to chalk this up as a learning experience, and the $550 as your "tuition." And also, sometimes we just get burned, and all we can do is take our lumps and move on. A $550 loss sucks (especially if this was a personal / pet project) but it's not nearly as bad as other things that can happen to us.