Dear client, I'm sorry about your cat but ...

Agency work can be tough, but it's tougher when your clients don't pay you. Below is a purely "satirical" email I sent to a client who shall not be named earlier today that I thought you might like*. Feel free to use it as inspiration.

Dear Client,

Thank you for your recent email explaining why you have been unable to pay your invoice for web development services.

Despite the fact that we sympathise with you that a recent tornado damaged your parent’s outside toilet and you had to go and fix it, this unfortunately falls outside our area of control and as such cannot be accepted as a valid reason for non payment.

While I understand that the idea of paying for work once it's done is a great solution for you, for us to adequately run a business we need money to pay for things such as electricity, computers and anti-depressants, therefore we prefer to get paid up front for things. You were told this 2.5 years ago and it is outlined in the proposal. So unfortunately I must decline the request to add an additional 90 lines of features that you believe should have been in there from the beginning that we should have magically known despite having no working knowledge of your business.

I appreciate that you now, at the completion of the project do not like the font used, or the size of your logo, and that your hairdresser thinks that a nice fluorescent green would make a better highlight colour, however this was signed off by you 2.5 years ago when you signed off on your designs so we must decline your request for changes.

Unfortunately yes, while you were waiting to receive grant money to pay for stage 2, we did have to take our team off your project and put them onto another client’s work who had already paid us up front. Don't worry, we know you "are our client too".

As we have already completed the project and are simply waiting on you to provide us with DNS access, content, payment, final approval, two step verification, your signed NDA, access to the Go Daddy hosting you insist we use and approval from your neighbour who used to work in IT, we have unfortunately had to pay our team already because as a business we have a legal obligation to pay our employees. Because we were unable to maintain this, I had to make every one of my employees redundant and complete your work myself despite not being a web developer.

At present we have logged 1342 hours on your project and you have paid for 12. Unfortunately due to this we have no choice but to close the business.

Also due to the amount of hours I personally spent on the project I had to start taking pep pills to keep myself awake and formed a drug addiction that has now grown into a fully fledged meth addiction. My wife and children suffered from the burden of a restless, drug addicted father and left me almost six months ago.

I am actually currently hitch-hiking across the country to start life again but have spent the last of my money on a bottle of rum which is now empty so I am stranded in a semi-deserted rural motel. Fortunately there is a help wanted sign on the door, which looks extremely tempting.

Despite this I will endeavour to complete your project just as soon as you pay the final invoice of $350.

Thanks again!

*This didn't actually happen.

Note: This is not aimed at any one of our clients. It's aimed at all of them.