By Liz Ward of Virtuoso Legal
I took a phone call recently from Jenny (not her real name of course!) an old client. We’d first advised Jenny 3 years ago when her luxury goods business had problems with credit card fraud. We re-drafted her terms and conditions and included new payment terms in accordance with the Distance Selling Directives. Her merchant services provider had insisted that she had professionally drafted terms, and the new systems for delivery and taking payment seemed to almost eliminate the problems. Job done!
I took a phone call recently from Jenny (not her real name of course!) an old client. We’d first advised Jenny 3 years ago when her luxury goods business had problems with credit card fraud. We re-drafted her terms and conditions and included new payment terms in accordance with the Distance Selling Directives. Her merchant services provider had insisted that she had professionally drafted terms, and the new systems for delivery and taking payment seemed to almost eliminate the problems. Job done!
Well not quite.
A
new website....
In summer Jenny decided she would have a new, re-freshed website ready for
the Christmas rush. She’d contacted a number of website
suppliers and chose a new developer. She is based in London. By August all was
ready for transfer to the new website. In
September, the website was beta tested, appeared to work ok and then went live
on 1 October. Immediately Jenny saw problems. Orders dropped off a cliff edge and
the new website was nowhere to be seen on Google – even when key words were
used. Jenny’s old website was quite well optimised for certain
key products.
It didn’t take long to get to the bottom of the problem of orders
not going through. Customers
simply couldn’t check out on the website. So once they’d put
items in the basket, payment was either delayed or couldn’t be taken at all,
with the customers left with a page that just froze. Angry calls and emails to the developer
ended up with no clear result; although some features were
improved. She refused to pay him the final payment. He couldn’t make the site
work properly and refused to take her calls. A complete impasse resulted.
A
business disappearing down the pan.....
By mid November, things had deteriorated to the point where he wanted more money to resolve matters
and she was watching her business disappear down the pan. He threatened to sue for money owed
and take her complete site down. She threatened to counter-claim
for business losses.
Now there are all kinds of technical reasons for the faults –
which it transpired arose mainly because a key member of staff had left at a
critical time in creating the website. Jenny
had chosen her web developer because he had provided the lowest quote
– and she simply signed his badly drafted terms of business. We’ve all done
it. However, as Red Adair famously said.....
“if you think
going to an expert is expensive, wait until you’ve used an amateur.”
A good website is akin to having the best shop on the High
Street. With a proper contract, specification planning and sign off schedules
incorporated into the terms, a lot of this headache could have been avoided. So
if you are planning a new website in 2014 just email Dan for a full checklist
that should help you agree proper terms and avoid problems arising between
developer and client.
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