Legal Advice on Yell.com(Hibu.com)

Janexoxo

Hey everyone

New to this website I need some advice regarding Yell(hibu):

Three years ago I signed up for a website with them, paying an initial fee and then making monthly payments for the upkeep of the website. The problem is that only a few weeks ago I realised that a very important function of the website has not been functioning at all; the email address shown on the contact us page has not been set up properly therefore if anyone had sent me an email it would just fail and I would not receive the email. There's also a form which customers can fill in on the contact us page, that has been functioning, and I was under the impression that the emails I have been receiving was from both the form and the email address, but it has only been the form which has been working.

Now over the past three years I have spent at least £4000 on internet advertisement, and I guess many people would go on to the contact us page and use the email address which does not work, so I think I have made quite a substantial loss because of this.

I am thinking of taking them to Small Claims Court and sue for £10000 losses, but I am not sure if it's going to be worth my time and expenses, therefore could you please kindly provide some advice as to if you think I have a case or not?

Many thanks in advance
Jane
X

PS, I initially posted this on Small Biz Forum but I think Consumer Rights Forum may also be relevant which is why I am posting it again.

tomtontom

You cannot quantify your losses, so I would put the idea of suing them out of your mind. They may offer you a small amount as an apology for their mistake, but given that you had noticed either I would not expect a great deal.

Cornucopia

In addition, I think they would have expected you to test the site.

Weirdly, I am a web developer and I had a similar issue with one of my customers. It was just one of those unfortunate things that we put right as soon as it was noticed.

There was no question of liability because (a) the contract terms prevented it, (b) the customer had been invited to thoroughly check the site before launch, and (c) there could be no reliable estimate for lost business (I doubt it would have been much).

Janexoxo

tomtontom wrote: »

You cannot quantify your losses, so I would put the idea of suing them out of your mind. They may offer you a small amount as an apology for their mistake, but given that you had noticed either I would not expect a great deal.

It's just that I think it would only take a few minutes for the person designing the website or the person in charge of the upkeep to make sure that feature worked but they haven't bothered, I could done that myself but since I was paying Yell for the upkeep I assumed they were making sure everything is looked after.

robatwork

You would have to quantify your losses.

Do you know how many web forms have been sent to you in the last 3 years? You would have to extrapolate from that information how many emails have been "sent" in error - you may well need an expert witness to testify that for your type of website, for every form that is submitted, 2 emails are sent (or whatever).

The costs for you would be prohibitive I think, plus they will argue that you should have checked the website. Do you have the terms you signed up to when you got the site made - what do they say about testing or errors?

I think the best you can hope for is some goodwill payment from Yell but nowhere near 10,000. Maybe 100.

Cornucopia

You need to establish first what terms you agreed to within the contract.

In my contracts, damages are limited to the contract value. ie. a customer with a grievance is only entitled to their money back, and nothing more.

Janexoxo

Cornucopia wrote: »

In addition, I think they would have expected you to test the site.

Weirdly, I am a web developer and I had a similar issue with one of my customers. It was just one of those unfortunate things that we put right as soon as it was noticed.

There was no question of liability because (a) the contract terms prevented it, (b) the customer had been invited to thoroughly check the site before launch, and (c) there could be no reliable estimate for lost business (I doubt it would have been much).

I have contacted a few solicitors who advised me that there's a very good chance that in the terms in the contract will prevent me to sue for potential losses...
Just out of curiosity, why do you doubt the lost business would have been much?

Janexoxo

robatwork wrote: »

You would have to quantify your losses.

Do you know how many web forms have been sent to you in the last 3 years? You would have to extrapolate from that information how many emails have been "sent" in error - you may well need an expert witness to testify that for your type of website, for every form that is submitted, 2 emails are sent (or whatever).

The costs for you would be prohibitive I think, plus they will argue that you should have checked the website. Do you have the terms you signed up to when you got the site made - what do they say about testing or errors?

I think the best you can hope for is some goodwill payment from Yell but nowhere near 10,000. Maybe 100.

I would say at least 50 web forms. I don't have the terms but it should not be difficult finding them. I understand when you say that I should have tested the website, however I have been paying a monthly fee for the upkeep of the website so I think they also should have made sure something as important as that function should have been working by sending out a test email at least once a year.

100! Might as well just forget about it.

Cornucopia

Janexoxo wrote: »

I have contacted a few solicitors who advised me that there's a very good chance that in the terms in the contract will prevent me to sue for potential losses...

It's quite likely... unfortunately.

Just out of curiosity, why do you doubt the lost business would have been much?

I was talking about my customer's business. (Obviously different businesses will have different profiles of contacts via different technologies).

If a potential customer is keen enough, they may not use email in the first place, and if left unanswered, they may ring you.

Janexoxo

Cornucopia wrote: »

You need to establish first what terms you agreed to within the contract.

In my contracts, damages are limited to the contract value. ie. a customer with a grievance is only entitled to their money back, and nothing more.

I guess that'll probably be the case with Yell as well? They are a very big company after all.

Cornucopia

Janexoxo wrote: »

I guess that'll probably be the case with Yell as well? They are a very big company after all.

I'd be surprised if there wasn't *some* limitation on liability.

Liability in software development is a torturous area, anyway. Think of those multi-million pound public sector IT projects that go bad - very rare you hear of a compensation payout.