A friend of a friend got such an order for Tesco, our biggest supermarket chain, a few years ago. Needless to say, their invoice was paid very soon after that.
In big companies there are often things like this, if you have 5K people working in finance or procurement and 1 in 100.. and you run it for 10 years... well you can see where this goes with the tail cases. Things like the person handling the case has a break down, or someone didn't put a transaction lock in the workflow, or two accounts got set up because there was a delay and someone helpfully restarted the set up process.
Not much, i'm afraid - i can't even remember who it was, it was a tale told in a pub, i think. They'd done some work for Tesco, sent an invoice, Tesco messed them around trying not to pay it, so they brought a case in court, Tesco didn't bother sending anyone to contest it, and this person got the winding-up order. When that is issued, official letters go to the directors, and apparently that got their attention.
I've twice been involved in sending winding-up orders, or at least sending a letter before action to say that a winding-up order comes next. They're an effective and cheap tool in the U.K. to shake dishonest companies looking to avoid/delay paying their bills.
I would love to know more details as well. I have a UK based client that has gone silent with significant unpaid invoices. Can you share details of how to file such an action?