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The brand went quiet after you delivered

Most of these are not scams. They are a person who moved on to the next thing, inside a company where nobody owns paying you. That changes what you send.

Last updated 7 September 2026

You delivered on time. The files landed. Then nothing. Two weeks later you are refreshing your inbox and drafting something you will regret sending.

The sequence

Day 1 after terms lapse: the nudge

Short, no emotion, restates the facts and makes it trivially easy to act.

Day 7: go around, not up

Your contact probably isn't ignoring you, just busy. Accounts payable is a different department with a different inbox and an actual process. Most brands publish an ap@ or accounts@ address, and the person there is measured on clearing invoices rather than on making content.

Send the same facts, plus the PO number if there is one. Copy your original contact so nobody feels gone around.

Day 14: the consequence, stated flatly

This is where the contract earns its money, and it only works if you wrote it in.

That last paragraph is the one that works. A brand can absorb a late fee. A brand cannot casually keep running paid ads on content it does not have the rights to, and the person who reads that email knows it.

The clause that makes all of this possible

You cannot send that third email unless the contract says so before you deliver. Two sentences, in the agreement, from the start:

• Rights are contingent on payment. Usage is granted on receipt of payment in full, and lapses if the invoice goes unpaid past terms.
• Late fees, stated as a number. 1.5% per month is standard and rarely argued with. Its job is giving AP a reason to move your invoice up the pile, not earning you money.

Add a 50% deposit on booking and this problem mostly disappears. A brand that has already paid half is a brand with a reason to close the file, and a brand that will not pay a deposit has told you something useful before you spent a day filming.

UGC Backend's Balance Invoicing add-on sends the final invoice for you when a deal is marked complete.

What not to do

• Do not go public early. Naming a brand on social before you have exhausted the private route reads as unprofessional to every other brand watching, and it kills the negotiating leverage you still had.
• Do not send seven emails in ten days. Volume reads as panic and gets you filtered. The sequence above is three contacts across two weeks.
• Do not delete the content or the files. You may need them, and destroying deliverables can put you in breach rather than them.
• Do not accept "we will roll it into the next project." That is an unpaid invoice wearing a hat.

When it is actually serious

Past 60 days with no contact from anyone, at a company that is still trading and still running your ads, you are in a different situation. Options, roughly in order of cost: a formal demand letter, a small claims filing if the amount is within your local limit, or a collections agency that takes a percentage.

For most UGC-sized invoices the demand letter is where it ends, because the cost of ignoring it finally exceeds the cost of paying you.

Written for UGC creators in the US. Market-informed starting points, not fixed prices, and not legal or financial advice. Your market, niche and results should move them.