bPaidOnTime Exposes Deadbeat Clients Who Don't Pay

A friend of mine once said, "Getting a gig is easy. Delivering the project is easy. Getting paid is hard." I can vouch for that; I was once left in a lurch by an unscrupulous client for a staggering $20,000. And in today's uncertain economy, getting paid is getting harder, not easier.

That's why I was intrigued to find a little site called bPaidOnTime, where you can file a short credit report on your clients.

Just identify the company, their address, and enter some notes about their payment status. Are they 30 days overdue? 90 days overdue? Are they promising payment soon or just ignoring your calls? It only takes a few moments to file a report.

The site is fully searchable, so you can see if a prospective client is already reneging on someone else's contract.

On the other hand, this seems like weak medicine. It's little more than a virtual soapbox from which to shout about financial injustices, and the site doesn't appear to get much traffic.

Surely there are some better alternatives out there (short of the courtroom). Have you ever had a client that failed to pay? What did you do about it? What kind of alternatives have you found? Sound off in the comments.