What would you do?

So a client of mine is ignoring my emails and owes me $1000+, even though he clearly has no problem updating his facebook status and uploading a video to youtube. I’ve asked him repeatedly very nicely to get in touch, at least a message saying what his status is would help. I doubt he’s sick or anything like that, as I said above he updated his facebook profile.

Has this ever happened to any of you on here in your freelance careers? Even though I made him sign a contract (well digitally at least), how do I actually go about getting my money? I even left a message on his cellphone (if it’s his at all). Just looking for advice from anyone if they can share any. He’s based in the U.K and I’m in East Europe presently.

This sucks real bad as it’s the first time it’s happened to me in 8 years in this business.

Thanks.

P.S – He liked the work and approved every step of it.

Threaten to take legal action, that seems like the next step.

Legally i believe the client has 60 days until he/she has to pay up, find a way to get in contact by phone or in person, confront them over the phone works well for me.

You said you have 8 years experience, i take it you made the client pay some sort of deposit before any work carried out?

If the work was web related, put a temp page up, the client will notice that.

Clients can be a pain in the ass at times, don’t worry this happens to all of us, if worst comes to worst you lose out on a grand and your time is wasted. DO NOT let this discourage you, simply brush it off and get cracking on some other work.

You said you have 8 years experience, i take it you made the client pay some sort of deposit before any work carried out?

Oh yeah, of course. Never pushed one pixel without a deposit.

Thanks, I don’t lose heart. Working on themes to upload

if its possible take his project offline till he paid like you signed in your contract- the full price

if you hosted his projects lock the domain and wait for whats coming from him, he will notice the downtime.

maybe its just not clear whats left in your contracts. would also like to know what kind of contract you both made, a premade with all important points/lists such as payment, a final review….

ill follow this thread and hope you get your things paid and both are happy

Hey there, Weborithm!

I know it’s not of use for this problem of yours, but you might want to have a look at CSS Killswitch. Haven’t still tried it though.

Good luck!

This has happend to me before, and I was naive enough not to have such a contract.

It worked in my favour though, because with no contract there was nothing to say who owned what and since he’d only paid for a site design and no hosting, i simply took the site down.

It took him 3 days to pay, and he did!