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Im not sure, she is going to print off any emails relating to this at the weekend and we'll have a look at exactly what was said.
Website design dispute
- Thread starter stealthgeek
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Im not sure, she is going to print off any emails relating to this at the weekend and we'll have a look at exactly what was said.
Soldato
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if we go on site and do the wrong thing we wouldnt get paid.
obviously we dont know what really went on between client and designer so we have to speculate.
maybe her font was a paid font she didnt want to pay for? maybe she asked for yellow against white (crimes to eyeballs) and he altered it. maybe she wanted comic sans and he couldnt bring himself to use it?
Soldato
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part of the design process is trying different things to get to a final (correct) solution - using the construction example was bad on my part, was just to identify the difference between doing work and tendering for it
Soldato
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that's not a creative service at all tho, would you go to a resturant and ask for something to eat, then get something to eat but decide you didn't like the look of it and refuse to pay?
Agreed. I always show the client an index page and one or two further pages. We then fine tune every detail together such as fonts, colours, layout etc. Only then will I proceed to carry on with the remainder of the pages and even then I'll regularly upload it to a test domain to let them view the progress. If at any stage of the game anything crops up that they don't like/want they can inform me and we'll discuss how to proceed from there. I'd never dream of just blindly carrying on for another £800 worth of working hours without letting them see each stage as I went along.
Aww that would be sad. But no, they havent got a leg to stand on.
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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.
Oh dear. They are far from not having a leg to stand on as might be expected in these types of circumstances due to the lack of formality. There is quite clearly a contract in this instance. Whilst it may "only" be verbal, it is evidenced by the conduct of both parties and the fact that work was undertaken - regardless of the fact that the work did not prove satisfactory. It would be unwise to believe that your wife can completely set aside the invoice. The more sensible approach would be to at least enter some dialogue with the web designers to explain that their work was not of an appropriate standard bearing in mind the instructions provided and see what they say. She could still refuse to pay but if it were to then go through a small claims procedure she could at least evidence a willingness to discuss the matter which would present her in a positive light.
They want to charge £800 for a 2 page static XHTML site?.
What colour masks do they wear?.
They want to charge £800 for a 2 page static XHTML site?.
What colour masks do they wear?.
Id be worried even more at the fact they wanted to charge that yet didnt have the 'business sense' or good practice to do it properly with a contract etc.
Soldato
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They want to charge £800 for a 2 page static XHTML site?.
What colour masks do they wear?.
depends what they thought the brief was and what work they actually carried out, remember we are only hearing a tiny bit of one side of the story here
Did the company design the site and then proceed to code it? If so, did your wife authorise the code/build stage? I cant believe she would have if she's unsatisfied with the design..
Or.. 800 quid for a mock-up design seems hellishly expensive!
Or.. 800 quid for a mock-up design seems hellishly expensive!
True.
To the OP - Did your wife make it perfectly clear right from the 'get go' that she wanted an index/home page and a contact/what we do page and that was it?.
As mentioned I would have thought that it was your responsibility to communicate to them what changes/improvements you wanted made throughout the process, rather than just tell them that you no longer want anything half way through.
I have sympathy though if they were being deliberately useless to bump up the number of hours worked on it.
Not really sure who would win legally.
I have sympathy though if they were being deliberately useless to bump up the number of hours worked on it.
Not really sure who would win legally.
Soldato
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yeah. im not sure i would pay an hourly rate if they kept coming back with something other than what i asked for. hourly rates are crap anyway, too open to abuse. maybe charge an hourly rate for stuff after completion like changing some page content etc. but i would just set a fixed price for the design.
something like this could be knocked up and finalised in a few hours. basic websites dont take long at all to do and why do a HTML page? surely most people just mockup in photoshop to show the client? thats what i used to do.
luckily i spent 10 years working for corporates so i didnt have this issue. my main gripe was bloody awful corporate colours (red and green - eurgggh felt like xmas all the time)
Associate
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No contract, no written agreement they don't have a leg to stand on.
Not if the design itself was the work she was buying. Design isn't a 0 effort game. Obviously they should have been sending her a prototype / mock-up first, but if they've got beyond that point then one can argue they deserve to get paid.
On the other hand if they truely did an awful job, I can understand why you wouldn't want to pay. But if you're contracting a company at £40 p/h, I assumed you looked at previous work before agreeing terms with them?
