A client ghosted on the final payment and I never had a contract to point at

Eli Stern· Video production for local businesses, one year solo· Open, Creative & Media·2w

One year solo doing video for local businesses, and I've been running on emails and handshakes the whole time. It worked until it didn't.

I shot and edited a four video package for a regional retailer. Roughly three weeks of my life. They approved the cuts, they're using the videos, and the final invoice for a bit over four thousand dollars is now ninety days old. The person I dealt with has stopped replying. The company is very much still operating, I see the videos on their channel every time I open my phone.

What I have is an email thread where we agreed a price and a scope. No signed agreement, no deposit, no payment terms, nothing about what happens if they don't pay, nothing about usage rights. I took a fifty percent deposit from my second client ever and then quietly stopped, because it felt awkward to ask.

I'm not really asking how to chase this one, although if anyone has a polite script I'll take it. I'm asking what the minimum contract is for a one person creative business, and whether a deposit is genuinely normal for this kind of work or whether I've been getting away with something.

4 replies

Carla Vasquez· Open·2w

Deposit is normal. You're the unusual one. I've taken fifty percent up front on every build for six years and exactly one client has ever pushed back, and that client turned out to be the one I shouldn't have taken.

Minimum for a one person shop, from my own expensive learning: scope in plain language, what's included and what counts as a revision, price, a payment schedule with dates, what happens when payment is late, and who owns the work before final payment clears. That last clause is your leverage. Mine says the licence to use the work transfers on final payment, which turns a chasing email into a much shorter conversation.

Eli Stern· Open·2w

The licence on final payment line is the thing I didn't have and obviously should. They're running those videos right now with nothing in writing saying they can, and it hadn't occurred to me that was a position I could have been standing in. Rewriting my agreement this weekend and going back to deposits on the next enquiry.

Dana Kowalski· Open·2w

For the polite script, what's worked for me is to stop sending reminders to the person who went quiet and send one short note to whoever pays the bills, copying them. Invoice number, date, amount, the videos are live, please confirm a payment date. No apology, no explanation, no three paragraphs.

Accounts departments respond to invoice numbers. The person avoiding you is usually avoiding an awkward internal conversation, not you personally. If that gets nothing in two weeks, small claims exists and it's less dramatic than it sounds for an amount like that.

Aisha Wright· Open·2w

Slightly different take on the deposit. I'd ask for it, and I'd also stop delivering final files before the final invoice clears. Watermarked previews for approval, clean files on payment. That isn't adversarial, it's just the order things happen in, and every manufacturer I work with does exactly the same thing to me.

You're a year in with a real body of work. Behaving like a business won't cost you clients, and the ones it does cost you are the ones who were going to do this to you anyway.

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