This communication below between website owner and website design company demonstrates why its important to have milestone meetings to ensure all aspects of a project specification is met or exceeded.
[Website Owners] Thank you for your recent phone call I appreciate your efforts in building a website for us. Believe there is no point in getting into the history of what your initial remit was and what you actually produced, the truth is that things changed at our company in terms of management and expectations of what should be expected of the spend on the website and what you were capable of delivering within the budget agreed.
We appreciate you have incurred some costs in order to get the site to the current level, however it doesn’t come close to the site we would expect given your remit and certainly falls short of what we expected. We have decided to build our own site and would like to work closely with you in order to ensure a smooth transition. We have a new domain name and website but it would obviously be of benefit to us to have anyone who visits our old site to be pointed to the new site.
We therefore need to come to a compromise which allows us both to move on. We obviously can’t pay all of the money you claim you are owed as, in our opinion, you didn’t deliver what we expected in terms of a top quality website. We therefore need to agree a sum which will allow us to work together to move forward to our mutual benefit. I suggest we pay you a sum of £2000.00 as full and final settlement and in return you transfer control of our .co.uk domain to our control. I would be obliged if you would come back to me at your earliest convenience.
[Website Design / SEO Company] Am more than happy to get into the remit and what was produced as it was confirmed that this was what was required and the website enquires have enforced the fact that you have a website that is bringing in visitors and converting them to people that ask for info / quotes.
Just in the last 7 days there has been two price calculator enquiries that are around the £3k and £5k region each. I find it hard to believe that you don’t see the value / benefit of these and are risking these enquires over an unsettled invoice. You have your own ideas about SEO / website conversions and it looks like you are happy to create a new website and promote that. Looking at the enquiries / website visitors and price calculator enquires it seems you clearly don’t value these enquiries and have no idea about the amount of time and effort put into making your site work which is why we agreed on a figure to build your site and still insist that its fit for purpose. Its simply not correct to say the website is ‘great’ then to be presented with a final invoice then refuse to pay as you have decided its not to your taste. I will not allow my company to be abused like that in the months that have gone by I have even gone as far as obtaining independent expert opinion from two (unrelated) people that would be willing to give written evidence about this project after being given all email communication and SEO evidence.
If you are 100% set to cut ties with ourselves (despite the assurance that we can continue to build / promote the site) then I am willing to compromise to bring this situation to an end to agree a discount to the final invoice and will transfer the domain name to yourselves and help you with your transfer to the new site and agree to not take any legal action for a compromised price of £5250 (the most recent agreement I made to you was for you to have a discount of £500 and to pay a final balance of £5500. I feel I am being open and fair here and hope you start to see this from a 3rd parties perspective.
Additionally before you decide to cut ties – our recent SEO improvements successes for clients includes the ones below (only included as produced them for another company recently as they wanted to see what we can achieve) are attached to see what is possible with us.
[Website Owners] Sorry meant to come back to you sooner, like you we are extremely busy but would like to move on, I don’t want to go over old ground but we are not going to agree on all of the previous issues discussed. Apart from the issue of the remit you were given, and whether or not you met it, we want to retain complete control of our site and domains and want the facility to keep the site dynamic. We want to build upon it substantially over the coming years and don’t want to have to rely upon an outside party to interpret our requirements and go backwards and forwards to get it the way we want it, both in terms of time and costs involved.
I would like you to release the .co.uk domain in order that we can point it at the new site we are currently building which should be ready in a few weeks, if you have control of our Google local account I would like you to give me the log in details.
Given that we are in dispute, I guess you are not going to do this for nothing and as you are aware we are not going to pay the full amount that you consider we owe. I would be obliged if you would come back to me with your best offer to facilitate the above.
[Website Design / SEO Company] Thanks for the reply, happy to do what you need once we have agreed payment, to be clear your best required outcome is that you want to redirect the .co.uk to the .net domain that I see you have had built by another website design company in Essex. Am happy to do what you want as it seems you have your own ideas / thoughts on the best way forward and I wish you the best in that.
Regarding the fact that you now clearly don’t want to continue with the website we built for you and you want (at a date / time of your choosing) to transfer the .co.uk to the .net domain I am willing to do this and release this to you (along with any related accounts by giving you the access or making you an administrator) for a final non-negotiable cost of £5200 this again is discounted from the last offer and hope this will be agreeable to all involved. I have repeatedly shown my understanding and flexibility in this matter and hope this is appreciated. I still believe this to be not in the best interests of your company but it appears my professional opinions / thoughts on the best way forward for your website is not valued so will take up your time with my advice any more.
If this isn’t what you want I will revert to the original invoice total outstanding amount (without any discounts) and seek to reclaim that through the legal channels that are open to us.
Hoping this is going to be acceptable / agreeable to you and I will once again state that once payment is made I can help you transfer the domain and give you associated account access or passwords.