My client still owes me money... advice needed.

Hi guys. I'm back and I need a bit of help this time. It has been about a week now since one of my clients has ceased all communications with me. The problem is, he still owes me money. I am considering posting all the articles on my web page so that they would be useless to that client (Web articles should be original. Webmasters check with copyscape). Would this be the smart thing to do or should I wait some more?

if you're still unpaid by this time, better post them on the web now....

if it's been this long, chances are you are not getting paid.

i would suggest sending 1 more email and making it clear that the client broke their end of the business agreement and is therefore not entitled to use your work. inform them of your intent to post the work publicly, give them a day to respond, and then do so if you don't receive payment. that way, you have it in writing that you clearly attempted to collect payment and that the client is choosing to voluntarily sever the deal.

Go ahead and post it online. It will have no actual effect on the client. You need to know that person's full name, if that student's a client, and s/he's graduated, then you can't do anything. The school/college/university will not retain copies of the essay so nothing to compare against what you post online. The student can then simply say it's someone else with the same name.

I have found that it's often fairly easy to locate the school and even the instructor of many clients, especially when they include instructions for their papers that come word-for-word from their instructors. Google the text of the assignment description and see what comes back.

I have never contacted a school/instructor with such an issue, but I have sent a few emails to customers who left me in the same situation, politely letting them know that I have reason to believe they are using my product to cheat at (name of institution customer attends), and that in order to protect the copyright of my product I will be emailing a copy of the article to (student's instructor, if known, or the Dean of instruction/other appropriate authority). I have never failed to receive payment doing this.

pheelyks has the right idea, most students just need the threat of calling them out and reporting them. If you drop the name of the school they attend then the fear really sets in that they just tried to rip off the wrong person and you will get paid.

Why did they take your paper prior to payment?

you are being a crybaby. get over it.

@Unbeliever_Paradox did you ever collect on the money owed to you?

Since this case was different from an academic paper, I was wondering of Pheelyks advice was appropriate for your case.

You did say it was a web article issue and not a college paper problem.

So I am interested to learn whether or not you were able to collect and how you managed to do that after all the time that passed between the submission of the paper and your client contacting you again.

Did you make good on your "threat" to simply publish all of the posts in order to render your submissions to him useless? If I were in your situation, I would do the exact same thing.

Sometimes, shaming a person into doing the right thing is the only option that might work.

I said might work because if the person happens to be one of the few people on the planet who doesn't have any shame, then nothing you try to do to collect your payment is going to work.

It would appear that the writer was unable to collect from the client. He would have said otherwise had he been able to collect. Having been in this position a few times, I have found that there are other options to solve the problem, other than shaming the client, which accomplishes nothing for the writer. It accomplishes nothing because the writer turned over the rights to the client when he completed the work. So the client may have already turned the paper over to the publication by the time the post had been made. Which will make it difficult for the OP to prove that he is the original source of the article. My way of handling this situation is to always have my collection agency go after the client. If that fails, then I have my lawyer draw up a demand letter. The latter action has a 100% success rate when it comes to collection as far as I am concerned. The clients always pay up as having to go to court, even if it is only small claims court will be a tremendous bother for them. Mediation through my lawyer always does the job.

This is also precisely the reason why, when writers have clients, it is always smart to create equitable contracts that do not benefit one over the other. If a writer is able to show clients that they are truly legitimate workers who offer legitimate services, then it helps reduce the instances wherein the writer would be taken advantage of. Showing seriousness in the work would definitely give the readers a better idea on what they should anticipate from the text itself.

Now, once a writer is in a situation wherein they are already being taken advantage of, then it would only be wise to approach a mediator. I have also heard of other freelancers threatening to sue - and, while it certainly isn't the ideal situation, it should give the client an idea that the writer is genuinely going to take action if they do not comply with the working conditions that they have initially agreed upon.

If someone has already ignored his obligation to pay for delivered work or has stopped responding to the writer's emails about the debt, there's no such thing as any "mediator" to whom that person will respond, either. Once the project has been delivered, the writer no longer has any leverage whatsoever and the client has zero incentive to participate in any kind of mediation process. Likewise, no freelancer is ever going to "sue" any client over an outstanding debt for several reasons, but most simply, because the cost of travelling to the client's location (which is the only jurisdiction where such a suit could be filed against a customer) is going to be a lot more than the debt for just about any conceivable project. Furthermore, anybody who would renege on a debt in the first place would also purposely make the process as cost-prohibitive as possible for the writer, by simply requesting an adjournment as many times as the court will allow, thereby forcing the writer to make the same trip (and lose valuable work time, as well) at least two or three times chasing that debt in court. That's why every experienced writer knows it's absolutely insane to even consider producing -- much less actually delivering -- any project that hasn't been paid for in full.

I have personally heard of writers who have definitely turned to small claims courts to chase outstanding debt, especially if they have legitimate contracts signed in accordance to these projects. I also still think it isn't unreasonable to believe that there are writers who do not get 100% paid upfront since the terms of writing do not have a strict template that is followed. Still, I don't think that a lot of writers would actually want to chase clients who do not properly pay. Chances are small, and this is often the case when the pending payment is small and can be forgotten by the writer. The whole fiasco is definitely a pressing thing for anyone who freelances. There's always a small risk in cooperating and building trust with clients.

Really? How many times did they have to go back to court to get the case heard and what was the outcome? What percentage of any writer's clients do you suppose happen to live within a few-hour drive of where the writer lives? How do you suggest writers who don't happen to live in the same state as their non-paying clients go about suing them and then collecting on the judgment if they win? At most, 5%-10% of my American clients live in NY and approximately 50% of my clients don't even live in this country. How do you imagine I would "sue" clients who live out of state and/or abroad? Most projects are worth only a few hundred dollars or less. How many of those projects do you imagine a busy writer with multiple deadlines every day during most weeks of the year can possibly afford to chase down for payment after delivery?


It's never an issue if you always require full payment in advance. It's an issue that will definitely come up repeatedly (and way too often to deal with) if you provide any work before payment. No writer who does this as a fulltime job can afford to take the risk of having to waste time and money chasing after non-paying clients. That's why experienced fulltime writers never allow anything less than full payment in advance. The only sensible and workable way that clients can "build trust" with a writer is by ordering a very small project first, even a single page if you're that worried about it. Someone will always have to take the risk associated with that first project; but busy writers with constant deadlines simply can't afford to deal with clients who won't even trust them with pre-payment for a one-page or two-page project. Of course, clients can reduce that risk to an absolute minimum by using resources (such as this website) to identify writers who are unlikely to be scams in the first place. Conversely, there's no such thing as any website or forum that allows writers to review the reputations of new clients.

Furthermore, on that note, clients only have to do research once to identify a legitimate writer; meanwhile, a busy writer might have 100 or 200 different clients (and twice that many prospective clients) every year. How much time do you imagine a busy writer can afford to spend researching every new prospective client to determine whether or not that client can be trusted to pay after delivery and how would you suggest writers go about that process? Those are just some of the most obvious reasons that clients who want a good, highly-experienced professional writer are just going to have to accept that payment after delivery is not an option. You might find some people who call themselves "writers" who are willing to provide work before payment, but they're invariably going to be inexperienced fledgling writers and people who just dabble in this business as a side-gig or as something they try to do to earn money in between real jobs.

Since the OP never got back to us, I can only assume that he figured out a way of collecting the balance on the debt, without having to resort to legal or unscrupulous means. Sometimes, collecting on the balance is just a matter of talking to the client, making sure to keep a cordial tone, and working with him until some sort of payment schedule can be reached. That is, if the client actually had intentions of paying and was simply in a bad financial situation at the time. I choose to believe that he was able to collect on the money owed, which is why we never heard from him again at this forum.