Web design

Delboy11

Hey guys,

a friend has just recently been contacted by a company offering to make them a website for their business.

They agreed to hire this company and have paid them. I was told about this earlier and took a look at the companies website.

Well. :rotfl: it doesn't look like they are even capable of web design judging on their site and their previous work.

Anyways as my friend paid a bit of money for work to be done, if they don't like it is there anything they can do about getting a refund?
Would it be worth asking the company to stop work & refund? (probably ain't even started yet)

What if this company uses a free website template or downloads a design and claims it as their work? what could be done about that if that happens?

Thanks.

DB

wealdroam

Business to business transaction.

Clearly consumer protection legislation does not apply.

It really depends on what is specified in the contract.

Delboy11

What if no written contract was made? only verbal

im trying to find out whats been agreed now.

Edit:

Apparently they agreed on half up front and if they like it they pay the other half.

whatmichaelsays

If you haven't given them a detailed, workable brief, do it now and keep a copy. You then have a clear, documented statement of what you want the design to achieve and what functionality you require. If the design doesn't meet the brief, the designer hasn't honoured its side of the contract.

Other than that, as someone has said, this is a B2B transaction. No consumer laws apply here - only contract law.

A poorly designed site in itself isn't necessarily a sign that things might go wrong. My employer's website is appalling but we are the third biggest agency in our sector - we just don't have time to update our own site!

wealdroam

Delboy11 wrote: »

What if no written contract was made? only verbal.

Probably not the best basis, but there is still a contract.

Problem is that when issues like this need resolving, it is one persons word against the others.

wangtastic

wealdroam is right, often these things don't even make it to court.

DO EVERYTHING IN WRITING! haha

paddyrg

It will come down a lot to personal taste, and how much your mate paid. Good web design is VERY expensive, which is why there is a lot of mediocre web sites out there for businesses. Templates are not inherently evil, they are electronically recycling something that works for which pure unique development would be expensive (and error-prone). Are we talking 3,4 or 5 figures here? Anything too fancy is original work, for which a designer and skilled developer would rack up a bill of 5 figures in a month between them at contract rates, so templates can be very cost effective.

Delboy11

We're talking 3 digits, but looking at their previous work they shouldn't be getting more than a fiver.

There is absolutely no effort at all, just a few images from google copied & pasted into 1 big image then used as a page background with text chucked in on top. Its like they used MS paint, copied and pasted a few images into it and wrote some rubbish onto it.

if you get what i mean. :rotfl:

wealdroam

Delboy11 wrote: »

There is absolutely no effort at all, just a few images from google copied & pasted into 1 big image then used as a page background with text chucked in on top. Its like they used MS paint, copied and pasted a few images into it and wrote some rubbish onto it.

if you get what i mean. :rotfl:

I do get what you mean.

Of course no-one knows what the spec was that your friend verbally gave this guy.

If your friend said "just sling something together", and "use MS Paint and google images" you will never know.

More importantly, if the other guy says he was told to "just sling something together", and "use MS Paint and google images", who can say otherwise.

I know you will come back and say "he didn't say anything like that", but I don't know how this can be resolved.

paddyrg

3 figures is at the low end of web site costs, it is where the bottom feeders live. People think web sitess are easy to make, and in one sense they are, in much the same way as using a word processor is.

However, if I offer to draw you a cat for £100, you would probably want to see examples of other animals I've drawn in the past so you could gague if that picture would be o your taste.

In this case, it sounds like your mate would have been better off with a free web template in honesty - they're generally bland but competent!

Delboy11

Well my friend was actually expecting more than a ms paint job :P

i think he's going to try and get the money back, and ive said he'd be better off with a free template atleast thats coded in html or css.

anyways cheers guys.

DB