Website design dispute

stealthgeek said:
She has emails I think stating 'No, thats not what I asked for' and 'No, those arent the fonts we agreed on', buty thats about it. She's going to check her sent items for more info. I get the point about it from their perspective, but surely thats why these agreements are drawn up in the first place? If they had come to her with a contract that had provisions for design/acceptance, then fair enough, she would have to pay and I would totally agree. I can see it from both sides, but surely its their responsibility as a service provider to get these things in writing?

Point is, they didnt do any of that, and frankly their design work was unbelievably poor, very Geocities-circa late 90's with clashing colours.
Click to expand...

The fact that they were bad designers sadly has nothing to do with this. It seems your with entered into a bussiness agreement to design a website, your wife wasn't happy with the work so is refusing to pay. That is illegal, even if your wife didn't sign any documentation, an exchange of emails will constitute an implied contract.

The main thing is just because their work was garbage and utterly useless to your wife is meaningless to this dispute. If your wife asked them to do work and they did the work then your wife must pay the fees. Unless there was some officially agreed upon satisfaction guarantee.
 
There seems to definitely be an agreement in place for the work to happen. There should also have been a discussion about costs. I'm presuming at least one of the parties had the sense to discuss money.

I think it would be fair for the customer to withhold some of the funds (but not deny altogether) if the designer has not delivered what was requested. That will depend on how far away from the brief the end product was and if they're unwilling to make alterations to match the brief.

I get the impression that the brief itself was continually altered and therefore the designer is looking to recover costs for the client changing their mind or deciding they didn't like something that wasn't specifically outlined in the brief and left to the designer's imagination.
 
These threads with skeleton details are frustrating, without knowing what she did and didn't request and agree to, there's no way to give a concrete answer.

Surely she was given a quote for how much time it would take/how much it would cost? Otherwise it's too open ended. They should only be able to bill you for a reasonable number of hours to complete the work.

Ultimately it sounds like she did commission them so will have to pay something, but if it was me I would offer to pay a smaller amount based on them not doing the work as requested and taking an unreasonably long time to do basic design work. I'd also get quotes from similar design businesses for the work that was done, with an estimate on hours needed for completion to the original company's standard.
 
D.P. said:
The fact that they were bad designers sadly has nothing to do with this. It seems your with entered into a bussiness agreement to design a website, your wife wasn't happy with the work so is refusing to pay. That is illegal, even if your wife didn't sign any documentation, an exchange of emails will constitute an implied contract.

The main thing is just because their work was garbage and utterly useless to your wife is meaningless to this dispute. If your wife asked them to do work and they did the work then your wife must pay the fees. Unless there was some officially agreed upon satisfaction guarantee.
Click to expand...

The courts disagree. If someone came round to your house to do the decorating and botched the job you wouldn't pay them, if the food is terrible at a restaurant you don't pay, same principle applies to every industry.
 
stealthgeek said:
Thing is, the site was just a basic static html page, she just wanted a main page and 'what we do' / 'contact' page - no snazzy flash, no videos, no baskets/checkouts, no SSL certs... nothing. She wanted plain white with blue colours in the logos, fonts etc she got flourescent pink in one design.
Click to expand...
What the hell?

20 hours for a 2 page static website :confused:

I think you should pay the £800 he's asking for and not be so silly in the future.

I do freelance web design and development for small local indie businesses. ~5 page static site from start to finish £150, fully completed from a blank photoshop canvas to browsable website in 2 hours if my initial design is acceptable to them and doesn't need much tweaking. 3-4 hours max if it does need tweaking.

I cant believe you couldn't find a better person in one of the most saturated fields ever.
 
asim18 said:
What the hell?

20 hours for a 2 page static website :confused:

I think you should pay the £800 he's asking for and not be so silly in the future.

I do freelance web design and development for small local indie businesses. ~5 page static site from start to finish £150, fully completed from a blank photoshop canvas to browsable website in 2 hours if my initial design is acceptable to them and doesn't need much tweaking. 3-4 hours max if it does need tweaking.

I cant believe you couldn't find a better person in one of the most saturated fields ever.
Click to expand...

You're probably just underselling yourself. Last firm I worked with was quoting £800 day rates and would probably happily quote this as two days work.

While I can't comment on the quality of your work and I must admit I don't charge nowhere near this personally, I've seen people who'd take longer but the quality of work is typically outstanding and others again that'd take longer but charge less per hour due to a lesser level of experience.

Horses for courses though, I wouldn't pay that myself, but if it's what was agreed and they communicated back and fourth over a number of days, one has to wonder whether he has a strong case based on people who are saying "well I could do it quicker". I think he has a much stronger argument saying the work wasn't up to snuff.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, totally agree with you.

My websites are very simple and nothing complicated (all static content), but that doesn't mean they're not "slick" if you know what I mean.? :p
 
Last edited:
Let me guess, they contacted your other half in the first place? Badgered to get work?

Smells similar to the car repair website place (trying to find details). Ask for a copy of the signed contract and if they can't provide, tell them to go and harass someone else, and report to trading standards.
 
Both parties at fault in my opinion.

I usually give 3 designers a brief and get them to present ideas to me. I select one to do the work. Give them the tools they need... colour refs, logo etc. Haggle on price... confirm acceptance of quote.

Work with designer. Either on a project basis or include hr/day rate.

BB x
 
asim18 said:
Yeah, totally agree with you.

My websites are very simple and nothing complicated (all static content), but that doesn't mean they're not "slick" if you know what I mean.? :p
Click to expand...

I have to question the quality of the design and build if the whole process takes 2 hours to go from blank canvas to full html. I'm not saying that you are not good at what you do but that is a ridiculous amount of time to try and produce quality work in.

The designer I work with is ridiculously good in PS etc and he takes longer than that just thinking about the design.
 
You do not need a contract if they have email conversations discussing the work and any alterations, we have hundreds of clients and have successfully sued non-paying customers without one.

They do have a leg to stand on, they probably will take your wife to court and they will more than likely win. Whether they're awarded the full amount is a different matter but I'd get your wife to get some sound legal advice sooner rather than later.
 
Cuchulain said:
You do not need a contract if they have email conversations discussing the work and any alterations, we have hundreds of clients and have successfully sued non-paying customers without one.

They do have a leg to stand on, they probably will take your wife to court and they will more than likely win. Whether they're awarded the full amount is a different matter but I'd get your wife to get some sound legal advice sooner rather than later.
Click to expand...

Surely it would depend on the content of the emails? Things like "those aren't the colours we agreed on" are pretty damning. If you hire me to paint your wall blue, and I paint it red, you would still pay me?
 
Woden said:
Surely it would depend on the content of the emails? Things like "those aren't the colours we agreed on" are pretty damning. If you hire me to paint your wall blue, and I paint it red, you would still pay me?
Click to expand...

We need info from the op - if I hired you to paint my wall, and you painted it red, and then i said afterwards that actaully i would prefer it blue would you still want paid?!
as said until we know the brief/extent of design work required by the ops wife - we can't really judge either way
 
the_r_sole said:
We need info from the op - if I hired you to paint my wall, and you painted it red, and then i said afterwards that actaully i would prefer it blue would you still want paid?!
as said until we know the brief/extent of design work required by the ops wife - we can't really judge either way
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I said on post #51 :D
 
asim18 said:
What the hell?

20 hours for a 2 page static website :confused:
Click to expand...

Maybe she rejected it 10 times and they essentially did 10 * 2 page websites...

though I guess given that some companies will charge thousands for a logo etc.. prices will vary

Dunno :confused: the OP doesn't really give much detail

Presumably they're billing her for ALL the time they've taken preparing stuff that wasn't up to scratch...(which isn't really on if blatant mistakes were made during the process) if she's not got a contract then presumably she can dispute at least some of the costs. I think the OP does need to read though all the e-mails - what did she say when rejecting the first design, how clear was she in specifying corrections to it etc... if she has caused them to do work (and assuming its not just some David Thorne type drawings etc..) then OP needs to put himself in their shoes... if the initial design was way off but another later design was closer to the mark/effort made to make corrections then perhaps agree on a smaller amount.
 
Firstly, £40/hr and £800 for a site is extremely cheap for professional work. This may of course not be professional work. Presumably they had a portfolio so if their design was that bad you'd not have appointed them in the first place?

We don't ever do spec design work to win clients - the actual design of the site is just one small part of the process than comes after research and wireframing, so anyone that produces a fully working site in 2 hours isn't producing quality work.

Basically in this case both parties are at fault. Your wife should have been more discerning in checking out the existing work of the company (and putting a proper budget to it) and the web company should have put a contract in place stipulating the process and payment policy (usually 25-50% upfront). What happens now is more a moral issue. Perhaps offer £400 as that's probably close to the base cost for the hours spent.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom