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I had a really awful experience with this client. We started good but as the years went on, the client became hard to work with -- unreasonable timelines and extremely delayed paychecks. To make the long story short, the relationship didn't end well. The last project studies I did went to production and there were mistakes on my part. At that point, I haven't been paid for 4 months of work. Being naive, I just decided to simply walk away because I felt like I wasn't being treated right. They have the AI files for all the projects I did with them during those months. Some were in stores already, some were in production, some were in testing the material/print stage. And yet not a single cent on my bank (even if I kept telling them I needed to get paid).

Just earlier, I got an email from one of their brand managers asking me for the font name. I realized I always outline the fonts so as to avoid any misuse of fonts come production.

I don't know if I want to answer or not, because I feel like it's understood that the last time we (the client I was dealing with not the brand manager) talked, it didn't go well and we both knew it felt it was time to move on.

I'm also not sure if I want to bring up the missed payments from before. We didn't have a contract even when I started doing projects with them - it was all verbal. At this point, I'm thinking of what should I do.

Acer
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I would absolutely mention any money owed.

Hi [brand manger],

There is still an outstanding balance of $xxxx owed for work completed. No information regarding projects or their construction will be shared until the outstanding balance has been paid.

Thank you.

I don't know what your agreement was with the client. However, in general sharing all your native files is typically poor practice.

Community
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Scott
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  • The agreement was monthly, X amount for 2-4 projects. I'm hesitating because they might raise the mistake I did in the last project, which happened to be the last straw before I decided to cut the relationship off. Would it make sense for me to go after the money owed, even if, I made a mistake for that one? I mean I had accepted that I wasn't going to get the money when I made that decision... but since the brand manager has opened the communication again, it made me think twice. – Acer Feb 04 '20 at 08:31
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    I can't possibly give any advice since I have little to no idea what the situation actually may be. All I know is that if someone owes me money.. I don't freely fulfill their requests. – Scott Feb 04 '20 at 09:57