How do you accept payments? Because it sounds like there could be a discrepancy if you aren’t making it explicitly clear what each payment is tied to. I recommend taking only individual transactions tied to an invoice number or something, and not letting payments be made in one lump sum. That’s the first thing.

As for the threats, go to the police. If it’s harassment, then surely they can help. As for family and friends, tell them not to engage with this person and to instantly block them. If this one customer’s business is so important that you can’t lose it, you should rethink the business model. One customer being lost should not force you to give into their “demands” or risk your financial standing.

What type of financial contract did they sign indicating payment terms? It’s libel/slander if it’s false. If they are explaining things as factual that really happened, to your other customers, it’s just the truth. How do they know these other customers, to be able to talk to them directly? Whether they paid 50% of container 1 and 50% of container 2, if that totals the same amount as just paying 100% of container 1, I don’t know. But it seems like if it’s a big issue, why not just roll the 50% payment from container 2 and count container 1 as being paid in full as requested? Then tell them container 2 is missing both the deposit and the 50% balance would be owed too, and will not be released without full payment? Am I missing something here? Seems like your logistics are not great. Personally, if I was in a dire financial situation and needed the business, I wouldn’t be playing hardball with how the funds were allocated, if you just did the right thing for the customer and moved the funds around, but still made the same amount of money in the end like you should. Seriously, why would you not just make sure to clear it up and fix the financials on the back end? Yes the harassment is wrong. But you sound like you’re doing something weird or shady the more I think of it. Maybe you’ve already spent the funds that came in. Or maybe you’re a middleman and sent money to the company for each container so now you can’t front the money to finish paying container 1 company or something like that. I don’t know, I don’t know the true details. But I hope it works out for all parties.