Previous customer wants their money back, can they ?

A question about : Previous customer wants their money back, can they ?

I have been looking after someones website for a few years and now I feel a mug by accepting less than 1/3 minimum wage ! (once I take out all the expenses)

I felt it was time to move on and let this project go and emailed him, he said he did not get it. I said that I could not provide this service anymore as he was wanting too much and as he was looking around I said for him to find someone else. I then deleted the site.

This guy is basically wanting me to sit at home waiting for something to happen, and now he said he wants all records of payments he made to me so he can claim it back and costs to setup his site again, the site was 'rented' and always been like this. He would only own his own photos and text he has emailed me in the past. The code that manages the site I paid for, by paying another guy to code it due to him knowing more than me on this.

There has never been a contract for this and I am starting to worry that he may cause a lot of problems for me.

He earns 1000's a week so why he can not pay more or better still find a company that can provide this sort of service that he wants to pay peanuts for.

Is it likely that he can claim anything. He has paid me at the end of each months service, in arrears !

Thanks

Best answers:

• What contractual agreement did you have in place?
• Welcome to the world of commerce. Irrespective of your arrangements with the coder and website, everything hinges on what you agreed to do. This doesn't have to be in writing, but in cases of dispute, this certainly keeps the ground rules and removes doubt. If there is nothing, it then becomes a risky business for him to assert 'rights' that he imagines he has.
• There was none, it was just a friend of a friend.
• This will come under B2B so CAB is the wrong place for this, better in the small business section.
  You are the one who worked for the fee so not his fault, you accepted the peanuts so why blame him. You may have left yourself open to a large claim by deleting the site, whether you know it or not a contract existed between you, a contract doesn't need to be written, it can be formed by verbal agreement, payment, and actions. The service was provided and a payment for it was made so it does exist.
  It may be argued that he owned the site by paying for the service provided, to delete the site you may have damaged his business considerably. If he decides to take this further you will need some proper legal advice.
• The guy I was doing this for had the domain name himself and I got the hosting side of things, I paid out my own pocket for the hosting, then I got money after a month from him which paid me for my time. It was not very much and I felt a mug. And when he said he wanted someone else to redo his site I was not interested as I thought I'd be the mug again working on it and fixing this or that or making more changes for a very low wage!
• after re-reading my last post i think i got it slightly wrong...
  I paid for the hosting and after a month of my money and time he paid me money for what i provided, hosting and my time. But I never got money upfront.
• Is the site recoverable?
  If it is, I'd recover it now. It's probably worth contacting the hosting to see if they have access to a backup anyway (and hopefully you've got your own backups too).
  Do you have any paperwork at all? Your first post says he owned only his own photos and text, and not the website, but if you have no contract it will be difficult to prove this. I believe that the industry standard is that you would hand the website back to him when the service ends, and leave him to maintain it or pass it on to someone else.
  Recovering the site will make you look much more reasonable if he takes this further.
  How much notice did you give him? It doesn't sound like much from the post.
• Cannot understand why you deleted the site.
  You could have left it standing and if he wished someone else to manage it, you would charge for the code.
• He has always paid after I provided the service, and not always on time, which is one of the reasons I want to give it up.
  I emailed him 24 July in the morning, and then followed this with a text to his mobile. He claims he always checks his emails, but says he did not get mine.
  I then took the site offline and removed his account as I only want people to pay upfront for it. He was not wanting to do this a few months ago and I keep on going, but had had enough, so emailed to say this. He actually got two weeks of hosting out of me free !
  He them came around yesterday evening to ask why, and then he kept calling me and texting and emails, now I have called the Police as I feel threatened by him, I got told by the Police to text/email him saying not contact anymore type message. Hope he takes the hint.
• It would have been advisable to send a letter giving him 30 days notice of your intention to change billing arrangements, and giving him the option to begin paying in advance on xx/xx, or to exit the service. You could then have said that has hosting not been paid by a date 14 days later, the site would be deleted.
  If he didn't want to pay upfront, he probably would have left anyway.
  If you can recover the site, it's worth doing so. It will make this look much more reasonable and professional should he decide to take you to court. Whether this is likely depends on how much he has paid you in total, and if his website is important to his business.
• His site was on my server that I pay for, I manage other sites as well, none that are his.
  I told him I was not going to continue and advised he go with this other guy that was going to host and manage the site for him at Ј200 a year !!
  Tall order really as it is not just a case of checking the site works every day, but coding changes fixing problems on his pc and the list goes on, it started out just his site then changes to it, then pc problem solving and many more, before i knew it i was a 'mug'
  So told him that i can not provide this sort of support as it just is not possible for a one-man-band.
  The platform (scripts) is mine and he has agreed on this and even suggested that he and i could work together on this and he promote my work and get commission! i did not entertain this idea and it got forgotten about.
  I have actually found the original site that i got from him when i first took on his site, pretty basic but it worked. Would I be better off giving him this ?
  Oh the domain names he has fully control over, none of the domains for his site are in my name or anything. So there is nothing stopping him finding someone else to do this for Ј200 ! as he claims
  Quote:
• Can't you google the site to recover it ? Many sites stay in googles cache for ages ? Worth a go. I don't think you should have deleted the site though. It's going to be tricky to sort this all out without any contract.
• I have had a look and found the very first backup done from his previous host, i do not want to give him 'my' code as it is my own platform i created with the intention of renting it to others with a different look.
  so if i sent him his original site do you think this would calm him down ?
  i have already emailed and texted him asking that he not contact me as i already reported to police about this.
• There was many conversations about him wanting to move as he felt I was not doing enough, but as I explained to him. He is not the only person I was doing this sort of work for. So if he wanted me fulltime then I would need a full time pay for the fulltime job!
  He then started to look for someone else and found that he could get the same service and more for around Ј200 a year !! this was within the last week.
  Then on Sunday I had had enough of the demands and emails calls and texts asking why I could not complete and why the site was playing up, which most of the time was his doing due to him messing up his email client program or something, and I had to login to his pc from my pc and fix what he messed up. Clearly telling him what I done and what not to do next time.
  But all this for very low wage is not good. So on Sunday night Monday morning I sent him emails and text stating that I had enough of it and did not want to work like this. He had access to the domains and could have got this guy he found to set up a basic site and start again like he did with me two years ago, and see how long it lasts before the new guy has had enough of his demands.
  Yesterday he came to my house demanding again that I fix it and get his emails back that clearly would not be on the server or anywhere due to no site to receive them. He was threatening me and kept swearing which got my back up, but i tried my best to keep my cool, and did. But after he left I realized what had happened and called the police to report what had happened in case this went further.
• Seems pretty simple.
  If he wants you to sort things out, quote him a price to do it.
  If he accepts only start once you have receivecd payment. If he declines your offer he is on his own.
  Do not muddy the waters commenting about what others may charge etc.
  In the end you give a price and it is up to him to accept or decline.