As a freelance writer, it can often be difficult to gauge the integrity of new clients. The problem arises from the fact that I often find myself working for people who are on the other side of the globe, this makes chasing a bad debt impossible.

Recently, following a spate of dealings with blatantly crooked customers, who had placed orders, accepted delivery and then promptly disappeared without a trace, I have begun to insist that all of my clients use an escrow service to handle project funding.

Escrow is a great way to protect both the buyer and the provider. By using an escrow service, the buyer is no longer required to make any advance payment, which could theoretically be lost. For me, the main advantage lays in the fact I know for sure the project funds are available and ready to be released to me once the project is completed. All in all a much safer situation for everyone involved.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 9:34 am and is filed under Clients, Freelance, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.