> The final invoice was sent one week ago and you have not received payment.
> You attempt to Skype but the client is offline ... perhaps they are on holiday or a family emergency arose.
To me all this says is that this guy is working with mostly individuals. I know we all like to make ridiculous payment terms ("pay me within 48 hours or I'll apply 1.99% interest every 12 hours for 1 week then persue legal action") but in the real world you cannot demand payment within 7 days. Any client of size is doing to take at least 21-30 days to pay. Most will pay within 30. Some will not sign anything that requires payment in less than 90.
> A month has passed. It is now clear that you are being purposefully ignored.
No, it's not.
> Perhaps the client lives in another country so legal action is out.
In truthfulness, I tend to shy away from foreign clients for this very reason. I have no recourse if things go seriously south.
> Legal action ... is underway.
This is downright stupid. If I contract someone to do something and they tell me they're persuing legal action against me, that is the last time I ever speak to them without my attorney in the room, on the phone or cc'd. If your goal is to get paid this is the stupidest thing you could possible do to get that check.
Also, it's just not true. Buying a domain and putting up an HTML file does not constitute legal action. Let's say you take this to trial. What happens next is their attorney shows the jury or judge that you were threatening legal action and saying you'd already taken it days or weeks before actually doing it. You were lying while trying to get money out of his or her client. What else have you lied about?
> As a webmaster I will use my considerable SEO skills to ensure that pigclient-warning.co.uk is the first search result
This is extortion. It's illegal and if I got this I would hire an attorney and make sure this find its way to the inbox of whatever law enforcement official it has to.
> To end this today you could pay my final invoice and I will immediately remove the page. ... I have attached a revised final invoice to include the cost of buying [the domain] plus a [50 pound] admin fee."
Also extortion. You do not have the right to just arbitrarily decide they now have to pay you $50 because you had to write a snippy email detailing how you've broken the law a handful of times.
> On both occasions I have received payment within one hour.*
Which goes to show you what kind of clients you work with.
> I have always resented having to stop to that level
You should.
What blows my mind is that at the very end he admits there may well be legal ramifications for doing this.
Non-paying clients should be built into your pricing. Credit card transaction fees have a certain percentage of fraud built in. Everything does. If one client paying 60 days late or not at all destroys your business, you need more clients, you need to charge more or you need to get someone that knows what they're doing to help you with the business side. Probably all three.