I am having a difficult time with a client. He's someone I have known since uni and we have worked well together since then. This time he hired me to re-do the design of his website. His main requirement was that he wanted great design, something well thought that would last more than a year. So after defining all the requirements, I sent a quote and he agreed with it.
I started the work and just before I submitted the final layouts he came back to me saying they had found a great theme they wanted to use and that I should then adjust my design to it. I was a bit annoyed but I said it was ok and that it would be charged separately since it was a new requirement. He said I should have suggested this approach and that he wouldn't pay for designs he is not going to use, that I should remove this from my quote and requote for the new work.
After talking to wall, I agreed to give him a discount on the initial project but asked for his team to write down their new requirements so I could quote from then. Then I asked for a 50% upfront of the new quote before I would start any more work - I hadn't taken upfront payment for the initial project. He got annoyed and said he couldn't pay before he would get anything tangible. I explained to him that this is a standard in my industry and that given their change of direction in this project I had lost many hours of work.
Since then, I haven't heard back from him. I saw they went live with the site using really poor design elements so I emailed him once more to ask him if he needed any design work now that they were live. He didn't get back to me.
I have made peace with the fact I won't get that money. Legally I should be paid for my work but I should also have been more careful and asked for an upfront deposit. I am not sure how to finish off this project now. Should I send him the invoice anyway? Needless to say that we won't work together again in the future but I still would like to give a professional but firm impression in my last correspondence with him. Any idea how to do that?
Sorry for the long message. Kind regards, Charlotte.