What do you do with vanishing clients?

Hello! I'm a new freelance writer and I've been enjoying myself thus far. I'd like to ask for advice on what to do if a client vanishes without payment.

I generally do 50% deposit and 50% upon delivery, and this has worked beautifully in all but one situation.

One of my clients contracted two essays with me. We did our 50/50 payment smoothly for the first one, and she then asked if she could pay 100% of the second essay only after delivery. This was because, according to her, she'd only get paid afterwards.

I agreed to this since she was friendly and cooperative for the first essay. However, upon receiving the second essay, she deleted her email!! I'm now at a loss as to what to do.

I noticed that her Paypal email is different from her correspondence email, and I've contacted her on that too, but it's been a week and I still haven't heard back from her.

Here's the thing - I know the university she attends. This is because the academic articles she sent me include time stamps that indicate the university server from which they were downloaded.

After some quick Googling, it wasn't hard to deduce which department and course she's in.

Would it be an unethical breach of trust to email her and insinuate that I know what university and programme she's in, and then remind her to pay up?

Two Rules for Fledgling Academic Writers

1. Unless you want to lose 10% or 20% or 30% (or more) of you hard-earned money on a continual basis and waste a considerable amount of your time chasing down clients who renege on their promises to pay after delivery, just take the advice of all veteran writers and never agree to write (or even schedule) a single page of work until it's paid for in full. Let clients order (and pay for) partial projects if they don't want to trust you with a full prepayment, but don't ever write anything until it's paid for in full. No exceptions, regardless of the "reason." Ever.

2. Never email (or cc) any project to any email other than the exact email actually displayed in the PayPal account. No exception for any reason. Ever. Tell you clients in advance so as to avoid begging and frantic pleading about no longer having access to that email after the project has been delivered to the PayPal email. Sometimes, people no longer have access to their PayPal emails; that's why you explain in advance so they can fix the account info if necessary. If the PayPal email isn't exactly the same as the communication email, always email the PayPal email immediately after payment and ask for confirmation about the payment for the project. If you don't get a response, tell the client you're going to refund it and cancel the order unless the PayPal account owner responds and confirms from the PayPal email.

If you want to go through this constantly, ignore these two rules and listen to all the novices who chime in to tell you that it's perfectly fine to take "deposits" and deliver work before it's paid for in full.

If you know her name and school, you can easily find her school email address. Contact her there and let her know that if she doesn't pay for the project, she doesn't own it and you have the right to publish it to make sure she can't use it, as well as the PayPal address and email that she used for it to warn your colleagues about getting scammed. Keep in mind that the student might not even be the person who scammed you. There are plenty of thieves who pose as "writers" to real clients and as "clients" to real writers: they'll take the order and the money from the student, hire a writer for the project promising to pay on delivery, and then disappear after delivery, exactly as you describe. They may also pay you the first time to build trust and confidence (while charging the student much more than they pay you), and then try to get the next (usually, much larger) project from you entirely for free.

They can send payment without having a Paypal account (so no email to verify); perhaps that was the case here.

Thanks FreelanceWriter for your sobering and much-needed advice! Thankfully, this was a small project. I will certainly be much more prudent in my future dealings and only write work that has been paid for in full. Cheers!

Major - it's an interesting case. The Paypal transaction was from a verified user, and even had a mailing address...

If you still haven't been paid, you can post the paper on EssayChat. I think Paypal verifies a mailing address once, so if someone moves the old one would stay.

That's not going to help you if that account is compromised or being used without authorization. That's why you only send the project to the email address displayed on the account and require a confirmation of the order sent from that email if it's not the same as the correspondence email.

That's a risky policy. If a client wants to split the payment, it's better to get 50% and provide half the work. Collect the 50% balance and then complete the rest of the work. I never complete work that is not paid. If the customer disappears, then they only received what was paid. I'm not willing to work for free or on contingency. Writing is my bread and butter!

In terms of not receiving the second payment, @Major is correct. If the client is not responding to you, post the work online. And, @Major is also correct regarding PayPal. They do not verify every address used; just the primary one. Simply because an address is listed as primary doesn't mean it is still the correct address or that the individual resides at that address.

It would probably be best to try to contact the student first using the direct email mentioned by the OP, just in case the student was also an innocent victim of a third-party scammer, as I mentioned earlier.

Hello everyone! Thank you all for your advice. If you're interested to know, I solved this amicably with my vanished client - well, as amicably as we could have after I posted the essay in question on my website. My client apologised, they paid, I deleted the post, everything's back to normal. This has been a good lesson and I am definitely switching over to full payment only. Thanks everyone!

I am particularly interested in this. How many times has this occurred that people somehow scam these students? It seems as though that, in this industry, there's a particularly high volume of probability that people are being tricked into something that they shouldn't be into. Because of this, extra measures should be ensured when making or even planning to transact with anyone.

It happens to customers all the time. The scammers advertise and/or contact students directly through Facebook or Twitter. Once the payment is issued, they attempt to scam writers into providing the project before payment so that they can actually deliver the project and then continue getting paid by the same customer for future projects. After tricking some novice writer or some other writer who's desperate enough to do the work before being paid, they'll just continue taking payments from the same customer and trying to scam other desperate or naïve writers so that they can continue delivering projects to keep the client as long as possible. The first time they can't find a new writer to scam for free work, the client gets neither the project nor a refund and the scammers just stop responding or block their most recent victims or they create some new account IDs to continue the same scam on new customers and new writers.

That's why the biggest red flag for customers is being contacted (first) by supposed "writers" through Facebook or Twitter, simply because legit writers don't contact random students offering to provide work. The biggest red flag for writers is responding to an inquiry from a new client by asking the supposed "student" for additional basic info about a project and having the "student" respond that he'll have to get back to you with that basic info instead of just answering the question, because that means the client is really just someone posing as a student to you and posing as a writer to the real student. Alternatively, the scammers tell the writer that they're ordering a project for "a friend" from the start, so that those delayed responses to basic questions don't arouse immediate suspicion, which is precisely why new "clients" asking about ordering projects for "friends" is another red flag for writers.

What's most dreadful is the cycle of having both customers and writers who alternatively scam each other due to desperation in the field. There have also been instances wherein writers have been made to accomplish tasks that were placed into a reserved account. After they had completed the project, the client disappears out of nowhere without dispersing payment. These types of acts to exist. And the best way for clients and writers to defend themselves is by ensuring that they double check all of the details and reservations followed by contracts that they get into.

The terms "cycle" and "each other" both imply that there are individual writers and individual clients who sometimes collaborate successfully but who scam each other at other times. In English, "each other" is reserved for situations involving only two people; when you're referring to more than two people -- such as universes of many writers and universes of many customers -- we say "one another." Likewise, "cycle" implies repetition or alternation between individual writers and clients scamming and not scamming each other. Legitimate writers never scam any customers and legitimate customers never scam any writers.


I have no idea what this is, but it sounds like something having to do with the policies of an essay company.


This can't happen to an experienced independent writer, because we don't book any project -- much less actually complete it -- until payment has cleared. No essay company I've ever known lists projects until payment has been issued, either; so I'm not sure what you're referring to here. If you're referring to situations where payments fail after having been issued, reputable companies still pay their writers for completed projects and eat the loss rather than expecting their writers to absorb that loss.


Unless you're referring to writers and clients of essay companies, the best way for clients to protect themselves is to try out any new writer with a short project; and the best way for writers to protect themselves is simply never to schedule any work until it's been paid for in full and never to make any exceptions about that for anybody for any reason.

I was referring to this situation. I have had instances before wherein there were issues regarding the payment method of the clients - and the company was still able to fully pay me for the project that I completed for. This is a definite sign that a company is reputable and can be relied upon by a writer.

Agreed.

There are no vanishing clients when one works for a writing company. If there is a problem with the payment, it is placed on hold and, if need be, eventually cancelled. So the writer never lost anything as the instruction is not to start work on the paper until the payment has cleared. For independent writers, they should not be turning over completed papers to clients with incomplete payments. It would be a foolish thing to do. Once you turn over the completed paper, the client can use all sorts of excuses not to pay. That is the only situation where a vanishing client could exist and that situation is easily preventable by using common sense on the writer's part.

Writers shouldn't even be scheduling, researching, or writing even a single page of any project until that project (or a section of that project) is paid for in full. Once you've spent your valuable time doing the work, simply not turning it over to the client pending payment serves no purpose to the writer, because that work has already been done and the corresponding time has already been spent on the project by the writer. The principal value of maintaining a no-work-prior-to-payment policy is that providing notice of that policy well in advance steers away potentially dishonest and problematic clients before the writer ever has to deal with those types of headaches.

For clients who've found this forum, the only thing they really need to do to prevent getting ripped off is use a writer with a very long history on this forum for providing high-quality work. There's zero risk that anybody who's spent a decade or more establishing a good reputation here is suddenly going to decide to start taking money from clients without delivering projects or delivering poor-quality work. New clients can (and should) still limit their relative risk by trying out any new writer with a short project; but if clients do their part to identify legit writers first, they should expect to be satisfied with the work they receive and not lie awake at night worrying about it in the interim between payment and receipt of that first project from their carefully-chosen writer.

I'm of the same mind as FW in that I don't even book a paper unless it's been paid for. I do make exceptions for dissertations but even then 50% down payment is required, with the final payment sent before turning over the work.