Legal Advice Needed -Paid for website and work not done

zigojacko

Hey everyone,

I hope someone can advise where I legally stand with this.

About 2 years ago I went to a website design company to upgrade my successful forum to a fully interactive social networking website. Due to my limited budget at the time, I was advised that to keep costs down, it would be better opting for an open source social networking script and developing and customising it to suit my needs as a bespoke design would cost in the region of £6K - £7K.

I was quoted £1500 for the works and I still have the invoice, to date, the work as agreed has not been finished and they have already had £1200 of my money and it has left my online business in tatters.

First my phpbb forums were migrated with one social networking script and there was problems with that, it was then switched over to another and my database of members and forum conetent was migrated. The owner of the web design company was bought out as there was problems and this guy was dealing with my project, it was then passed to someone else who has since also left the company and now I can't get anyone there to work on my website.

The contact and communication has been non existent, the plan was to wait for a new release of this social networking platform which was released in December, it still hasn't been installed on the server for me and my old version upgraded.

I do have a website live which is hosted with them, although about 90% of the work has been done myself, as per the original quote, they haven't done any customisation/development work and I am left with a half finished website which looks awful and half the modules on the site don't work properly.

My web traffic has deteriorated to just a trickle, no-one uses it and I have become a bit of a laughing stock in my industry now and this has seriously damaged my brand name. If I could get them to revert back to how my site was before I went to them, I would do so but due to all the database migration and switching between platforms, it isn't possible.

I am finally in touch with them again and I keep getting told someone will get in touch and will get it sorted and nothing happens. I have now been told that "we don't know what the outcome of this will be now" and it sounds like they are going to try and pull out of the project leaving me £1200 down with a terrible website that I can't even market.

The ironic thing is, it would take about half an hour to install the new platform on the server and less than half a day to migrate the database again (as the social networking script have developed tools for this to be done), I could at least go to someone else for the design/development then.

I'm just wondering where I stand with recovering any money that I have paid, I have proof of the payments and a copy of the invoice which clearly details the work that they agreed to to and haven't done.

If I am to go to another company to get my site sorted out, I really need that money back as I have no other funds to invest in it.

Any feedback/help appreciated.

Many thanks

Anihilator

I somehow doubt a half days work is half the work on a £1500 website package.

hippyadam

Eeek, that's a story and a half! They sound like they're taking the michael quite frankly.

The only issue i can see is where you say "The owner of the web design company was bought out" it's going to depend on the nature of the company you engaged in the first place...

If it was a sole trader, you may have issues. However if its a Limited company your contract is with the company itself, irrespective of who is the MD, shareholder etc.

If i were you i'd write to them recorded delivery, giving them 7 days to either make good the work or refund the money. If they don't do either i'd be looking at issuing via moneyclaim online to get back what i'd paid if nothing else!

zigojacko

Anihilator wrote: »

I somehow doubt a half days work is half the work on a £1500 website package.

You're right, the half days work is just to install the script on the server, I can do it myself and it takes no time at all, the only time consuming part is setting the permissions for the necessary folders... I just purely asked them to do this and then I don't mind if they have other clients they need to concentrate on as I will at least be able to work on my website myself until they have more free time to put into my project.

What I am paying them for is the installation, customisation, design and a small part of custom development to tweak the modules to suit my requirements. (This is all stated in their quotation document when I first went to them).

Asking them to just do this installation so I can do some work on the site isn't a big ask (seeing a month has passed now since I requested this)... As it stands, there is absolutely nothing I can do/work on/market.

zigojacko

hippyadam wrote: »

The only issue i can see is where you say "The owner of the web design company was bought out" it's going to depend on the nature of the company you engaged in the first place...

If it was a sole trader, you may have issues. However if its a Limited company your contract is with the company itself, irrespective of who is the MD, shareholder etc.

It is a limited company, small business. There was internal problems and I don't think the owner of the company was pulling his weight, I can't confirm this but the impression I got, he hardly got much done on my website for a start. Either way, he was bought out but the company name/classification has not changed.

hippyadam wrote: »

If i were you i'd write to them recorded delivery, giving them 7 days to either make good the work or refund the money. If they don't do either i'd be looking at issuing via moneyclaim online to get back what i'd paid if nothing else!

I am prepared to do this if you feel this is my next course of action, I am unfamiliar with "issuing via moneyclaim", is this a system where I am entitled to recover my money?

Many thanks