ccj from a website

JasX

you are not receiving a standard 'off the shelf' product, you are receiving a highly customised item built from scratch.

Hence the court is quite rightly requiring you to pay for work done and you have quite correctly been given a CCJ for persistent non payment.

This isn't a case of buying something from amazon etc where you can argue about physical delivery, you are receiving very poor legal advice if it has been suggested you have a case on the delivery angle, the as the governing legal principle is you need to pay for work done.

This should have been made clear to you after losing three court cases on the matter. lots of projects start and then do not get completed from very small ones to very big ones -take a look at all the half finished houses around after the property crash? you thing all those have been half built for free because they wern't completed and delivered?

I'm afraid you are living in cloud cuckoo land.

Norfolk_Jim

I think your problem is that there are many things you are required to pay for before you get what your buying

A holiday - goods in a shop - a commission.

The court has decided that your "friend", mmmm, has produced what was a agreed and you owe him the money and when you pay

either
a) you'll get what you paid for - and can perhaps start to complain that it isn't what you expected
or b) He wont give you what you need - and again you can then claim against him. Does he take credit cards?

Unfortunately, your stuck with the courts decision fair or unfair, as you've appealed it and still not been successful

Hax

Well, from what I've read here, it seems like you just need to pay your "friend" for the work they've done - at which point, they should hand it over to you.

Regardless of the state you consider it to be in, they have spent time and possibly money on doing this and it's this time you need to pay them for.

I would imagine that the printed screenshots are just to show the functionality that has been implemented and if you were to pay them they would then hand over the full development to you to do with as you want.

Using your painter analogy: If you had a painter in to decorate a room and half way through the job, you refused to pay them, would you expect them to continue to work for you?

stevojay

yes but the work was done the work up until the court case was done the website was live, there was 200 products on there and people were viewing it so he has quoted £2811 for a fully working website.

i havent got that at all quite the opposite.

lets turn it round

if your painter had stopped half way through a job and said i want paying would you? no you agreed upon the full room with specifics not a half hearted job.

if i have to pay for the website then i want the fully working website. if he isnt going to give it to me fully working then basically as it seems from comments i haven't got a legal case then im just supposed to pay nearly £3000 for nothing.

i might as well have free money here tattoed on my head because for the comments i am getting i have just basically given someone £3000 for absolutely nothing

Grant_UK_2

Hi stevojay

I would suggest to the designer that he puts down in writing exactly what you will be getting if you pay the outstanding amount.

Unfortunately, because this has already gone to court, the judgement about your liability has been made.

The choice as I see it is, if you want to clear the CCJ, you'll need to pay the bill. If you're going to pay the bill, it's reasonable for you to get a full breakdown of what that money is going to get you. That way, if he fails to fulfill the terms of what he has promised, you then have enough to take him back to court.

Realistically, for a project costing over two grand, it should have been clearly laid out what was going to happen, when money needed to be paid and how you would be able to see progress on the project. The opportunity for that to happen has now passed, so you need to make the best of it I'm afraid.

You could suggest staging the project with partial payments along the way. That will also enable you to advise required amendments whilst he's still on with the job, rather than spotting them when it's too late. His main concern is that he's going to get paid for the work he's done. Your main concern is that you get what you're paying for. It may take goodwill and compromise from both of you to get what you want.

Cheers - Grant

Hax

stevojay wrote: »

lets turn it round

if your painter had stopped half way through a job and said i want paying would you? no you agreed upon the full room with specifics not a half hearted job.

Yes - I would pay them for the work that had done up until that point as they have, after all, spent time doing the work - and that time MUST be paid for. But, payment would be conditional on them completing the work - at which point, they would get the remainder of the payment.

To me, it sounds like your "friend" has spent time and effort developing a website for you - a website which you admit has been completed and was up and running just fine. It then sounds like you have had a dispute over payment for the work done and your "friend" has taken down the website until such time as you make the payment to them.

If you made the payment, would you get the website back? Maybe they aren't willing to "host" it for you, but you should at least get the content for deploying it on your own web hosting account.

Norfolk_Jim

If only you had paid him - you could then have sued him for a lousy web site if it is as bad as you say it is. But now that a court has made a ruling about payment you really are up the creek. hindsight isn't much use, sorry, this is one very costly error for you, I certainly am not aiming to be unhelpful and rub it in. It would irk me massively too.

saltnvinegar

SteveoJay

I'm afraid that trying to come up with analogies to try to present your argument is a bit futile as comparing a fish to a giraffe. You need to look at the facts:

You entered into a verbal agreement for your 'friend' to build you a bespoke website.

Although you say you didn't you and your friend have evidence that an agreement was in place due to the 200+ emails that were exchanged between you and your 'friend' detailing the work you wanted him to carry out.

You did not produce, nor did you sign a 'statement of work'. This is a standard IT contracting/developer/web design thing where a piece of defined work is delivered for a fixed price. However because you did not have this it would seem to me your 'friend' was working on a 'time and materials basis'

A website was produced and was live for 3-4 weeks but because you did not pay for the 'time and materials' delivered to that point in time the website was pulled.

You have been given screen shots and a disk with images on it. In the Web Design business this is called a 'composition' and is usually the starting point for any website design project as the composition is what the customer 'signs off' in a normal 'statement of work' process.

TBH you are lucky to have even this if you have not paid anything.

It would seem that what your 'friend' has asked you to pay for is on a time and materials basis and you have refused to pay because the website still wasn't what you wanted or imagined.

However your 'friend' has then refused to do any further work on the website until you have paid the 'Time and Materials' delivered to that point and they have then shut the website down as you have not paid.

Your 'friend' has then taken you to court to pursue monies outstanding.

The courts have found no substance to your argument as it has been dismissed on 3 seperate occasions.

However much you may not like what has happened that is how it appears to me reading your thread.

If you cannot/will not pay the CCJ then thats up to you, but it would appear you were not paying for the product of the website but the time and materials to produce it. Whether it was what you wanted in terms of finished product is irrelevant if this is the case.

If you want a 'graceful' way out then this is what I would suggest:

1) Agree with your friend that in return for paying the CCJ you want a statement of work to be drawn up detailing exactly what you will get when you pay the money e.g.:

1) A live website
2) Handover of all admin passwords and domain name ownership rights
3) A copy of all the website files and html/aspx code etc
4) Screenshots/compositions detailing the website and how you want it to look and how you want it to work
5) Timeframes of when all the above will be carried out

You can include payment milestones in the SoW too.

Your 'friend' has no obligation to do the above however, they already have the CCJ, but it may make you seem to be more reasonable.

SnV