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The 2am invoice that saved my bacon from a silent scope grab
Got a project last month from a referral, nice coffee shop branding gig. Everything seemed fine until they asked me to send the working files "just to review" at 7pm on a Friday. I said no, obviously, but the real red flag was their follow-up: they asked three times in 48 hours, and each time the reason got vaguer. First it was to check fonts, then for their in-house person to "get familiar", then just "to have on file". I stuck to my guns, sent a PDF proof instead. Guess what? They canceled the project a week later and I saw the exact color palette on their new Instagram ad, 3 weeks after. They took my PDF, traced the whole thing. No watermark would have stopped that, but at least I got paid for the milestones. Now I put a clause in every contract that says any file sharing after final payment only, and I write it in bold. Anyone else had a client try to ghost you after asking for loose files mid-project? How do you handle the "we just need a peek" dance without sounding paranoid?
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