I confess my mistake, I should have had a written contract signed by both parties before the training had begun. It was a basic JEE training with Spring+Hibernate stack and I created a short course outline which I estimated to take 15-20 hours depending upon the how quickly audience would learn different concepts. One of the company's technical manager said that I can add more things into the outline if I find necessary. After every session, I would email company seniors with number of hours consumed. Finally we ended up consuming 22.75 hours. When I went to the finance officer for paycheck, he said I was supposed to take 15-16 hours but I took a lot more than that. His tone was as if I have tricked him into paying more and he was now worried how he would justify the case to his seniors.<p>What would you do if you were in this position?
Watch F*ck you pay me: <a href="http://vimeo.com/22053820" rel="nofollow">http://vimeo.com/22053820</a> and never let this happen again.<p>The only thing you can really do now is talk to them and try to get them to pay you, but you have no real leverage.<p>Consider yourself lucky, freelancers get burned and not paid for a month or more of work all too frequently. Protect yourself in the future with a solid contract.
Sounds to me like you have a written contract, your email thread. You submitted your hours, they acknowledge them (I assume). Did they acknowledge your rate? You have a written contract, no?
Since you have no written contract, you can only try and negotiate whatever you can at this point. Think about the time it will take to negotiate vs the pay for those extra 6 hours or so. There will be a point when it will not be worth it and you just need to cut your losses and move on.<p>My advice: cut your losses and move on asap. You have certainly learnt a lesson the hard way which is always effective. You will never (hopefully) get into this situation because you know better now. You are wiser now.
1. Take whatever you can take and fast.<p>2. Do something (if it's not too late) so client will have to come back to you for more technical help.<p>3. After clearing check - inform your client that you're now working on a retainer-only basis (like lawyers do).<p>4. When client requests your help - trigger "retainer required for further assistance" reply.