Might of been ripped off.

SamG

SamG

SamG

Associate
Joined
28 Nov 2004
Posts
950
A company have done a website for my uncle's business. They have charged him £150 + VAT and £30 a month to host it.

It looks very basic and they have also misspelled his company name wrong. They also made up a load of stuff.

£30 a month seems quite a lot for what it is. I'm sure my friend is paying under £30 for a whole year.

What do you think?

Since he paid to have the website made can he now move it to a cheaper place to host?

If so can anyone recommend a cheaper host?

Thanks.

Edit: I've just found this in another thread http://www.ochostreview.co.uk/

So it looks like my Uncle is definitely getting ripped off.
 
Last edited:
In my opinion that is atrocious, non complimentary colour scheme, poor style and nav boxes, and totally unnecessary tables. I would have created that for you, with better mark up for £10 ex hosting.

A Real rip off in my opinion, sorry.
 
RandomTom said:
In my opinion that is atrocious, non complimentary colour scheme, poor style and nav boxes, and totally unnecessary tables. I would have created that for you, with better mark up for £10 ex hosting.

A Real rip off in my opinion, sorry.
Click to expand...
Man you're cheap.

TBH, if you want to pay £150 for a professional website to be designed + implemented then you deserve what you get.

Did that price include domain registration? What does the £30 p/m cover? Do you get any updates to the content included?
 
Ouch. Hit them with "why isnt this site accessible" and "why am i paying so much more" etc.. and try to get the money back. Maybe if you start mentioning accessibility, standards etc they might run for the hills (or more likely give you a blank look). That is pretty bad, makes a mockery of the web design business :(

@Mickey; for a two page static site thats probably not going to need updating, what would you charge :confused:

EDIT: Takes years to load as well :(
 
Might have been ripped off
emot-eng101.gif


And yeah, you have been ripped off :(
 
Mickey said:
TBH, if you want to pay £150 for a professional website to be designed + implemented then you deserve what you get.

Did that price include domain registration? What does the £30 p/m cover? Do you get any updates to the content included?
Click to expand...
To be fair, most people don't know much about websites so sadly they'll just accept what they're told and only find out when it's too late :(

£30/mo is a complete ripoff, especially since the site has taken 90 seconds to load so far. Just pick one of the companies on ochostreview.co.uk with good reviews and you'll save a ton of money :)
 
Is it hosted from two tins and a piece of string.. no wait.. i think that would be too fast..

Have words with your website supplier.. that is appauling in all senses.. even though i only have a grey background after 1 minute of waiting.
 
Scam said:
@Mickey; for a two page static site thats probably not going to need updating, what would you charge :confused:
Click to expand...
Well I generally don't get jobs as small as that, and i'm no designer (but could definitely do a better job than that).

General prices of people i've worked with, it'd cost a couple of hundred quid for a decent simple site design alone.

Once you have the design you then have the time chopping up the designs, writing the markup/css, setting up the domain/hosting (if that's part of the price?). Not to mention the time taken talking to the client in the first place, getting the content finalised, factor in a bit of time for any simple amends...If it were a project i'd be working on there'd maybe be a simple CMS implemented too etc...

Costs soon add up.

Maybe i'm just too used to actually making a living out of this kinda stuff? :o
 
£150 for a few of static web pages or a simple template I wouldn't say is too much, if it was good. This is clearly not good and I wouldn't pay for it. As for £30 a month for hosting, that is extortionate.

Hmm, entertaining.
 
£150 is nowhere near enough to expect to get a decent site produced. If I were him I'd get it redesigned and moved to someone else, the hosting is atrocious I can’t even get the contact page to load more than the grey background.

That site will probably hurt his business more than help it, I suppose he can count himself fortunate that he hasn’t shelled out a lot of cash on such a useless 'solution' and move on. Tell him to find someone with a portfolio of sites so he can see the standard he can expect and has grounds to complain if he doesn’t get that.
 
The site is a joke, as well as the mark-up.

Cut it off right away, don't let them take anymore money from you.
I agree that it's a reasonable price compaired to decent freelancers but that site just sucks! I could knock something up in an hour that would look a lot better than that, completely free.
 
It's now just got a grey screen with this on it:

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 border=


I'm speaking to him tomorrow so i'll get him to complain about poor accessibility, poor design and high price.

Is the site now his? Can he just move it to a new host? Like Tsohost.
 
Last edited:
Mickey said:
Man you're cheap.
Click to expand...
Lol :p, I was just saying that that website seriously would take no effort what so ever to produce. I've never contemplated making money out of websites before, so I don't actually know the going rate, but for that, it's not worth £10.
 
£30 per month is really ripping the money out, you can get packages for about £15 a year from a good uk host, for about £30/mmonth, you could get vps server
 
30 p/m for business hosting isn't that bad. I've got clients paying £100's. You'd expect the service to be much better than the average host at those costs.
 
That is absolutely shocking. Looking at what they have produced, I wouldn't suggest going back to them and asking them to improve on it; they've already proved they are completely incompetent. The website itself is awful; you could get a better design and coding from a free template! There really is nothing to improve upon there; if I were you I would forget about the "web designers" who did that and move on.

As far as monthly charges go, that is also appalling. You can pick up an outstanding shared hosting package (with more than enough disk space and data transfer for a simple static website) for about £5-10/month. Cheaper hosting is available, but I'd say £5-10/month is a good compromise between value and quality. Aside from that, there shouldn't be any other costs. Has your uncle signed a maintenance contract with them?

If I were you I would:

  1. Forget about the cowboys who made that awful attempt at a website
  2. Get a decent company to build a decent website (although, bare in mind this will be more expensive)
  3. Get your uncle to buy his own web hosting (£5-10/month) and his own domain name (~£6/year for a .com, or ~£3/year for a .co.uk)

P.S. When you say they "misspelled his company name", do you mean they have registered the wrong domain name too?

P.P.S. A quick WHOIS on the domain name reveals that the nameservers are owned by www.iomart.co.uk. A quick visit to that site reveals that they own the "UFindUs" service which is being advertised at the bottom of your uncle's website. Did he authorise them to advertise their own products on his website?
 
Yeah, he got ripped off more than a bandaid.

Move hosts. Now.

Talk to someone who knows his arse from his elbows.

Re-design and re-host.

Sit back and bask in the cheap hosting and more professional website.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom