Want a Free website?

Well this isnt the company to try to get it from as the following dialogue demonstrates, the company involved seems to go from website designer to website designer getting a website created then going bust and / or disappearing. The following conversations shows the client doing everything they can do to avoid paying for their website project.
1 Good to speak to you again today and to hear that things are progressing well for you.  As promised, I have attached some photos that we used on our website but will also send you some of the recent installation we did once we get them.  With regards to text for your website, I thought I had some text in a Word document but unfortunately do not – so please feel free to copy the text directly from our website.  However, I have attached a “frequently asked questions” document which I hope will be of help to you when you start getting enquiries from potential clients.  I hope the attached is of help and please do not hesitate to call if you have any queries etc.
2 Its your friendly website designer here and was hoping to talk to you about the websites as it seems to have been dragging on for too long. Really want to get this project signed off and completed / paid for. PLEASE tell me whats happening / what you want to do as we need the outstanding payment and think you know we have been patient and pretty flexible so far.
3 Have had a meeting with your manager today who has given me a list of priorities for the websites. This list shall be commenced once the information is received and the invoices are paid. Here is an overview of the list
a optimise / polish your old website
b new pics / info / pages for the old website  – optimise for worktops / glass worktops / bars and restaurants / clubs
c Talk to your admin girl to give her ideas about how she can go about optimising website.
d New website services – commercial page / refurbishments
Therefore, please can you pay the final payment on the essex-kitchens website invoice 258 attached (with your previous payments detailed) Can you also make a deposit payment £500 for the new website work / transfers and hosting, have attached invoice 265 for this work.
Payments outstanding
Invoice 258 – £903 final payment
Invoice 265 – £500 deposit payment
4 Have been trying to get a reply from yourselves about the outstanding invoices for the websites and some indication about what you want to do with the other websites.  Have been waiting patiently for these payments and think it would be good to get them sorted and get the other websites completed sooner rather than later.  Please email / phone / visit and tell me what your intentions are as we need the outstanding payments as they have been outstanding for months now.
5 in my absence it seems you have contacted us and Louisa has told me you are now committed to completing the websites and getting them back and sorted. This is great news. To get us back on track we need the final payment on invoice 258 (£903) and for invoice 265 which is for the hosting / transfer / development of the other two websites we require a minimum of a 50% / £600 deposit.  Once these are paid the websites will be both put back to include your phone contacts and we will give you new passwords for your email.
6 I see you have transferred the hosting away from your three domains and copied the code from our servers, this has been recorded and stored, this is something I sort of expected you to do but you still need to pay for the work completed. Please advise at your earliest convenience.
We attach the outstanding invoices, I hope we can settle these before any thoughts of legal action cross our minds as we believe that all work should be paid for that has been completed so far and the work requested can still be started on receipt of funds. We assume you have or will shortly have our final demand with invoices in your possession, that have been now sent via royal mail to your registered addresses and email addresses multiple times, this final letter contains a clear / polite request to settle your account within 7 days. As recommended by the court guidelines and our solicitor we agree to allow you 7 days to pay the outstanding invoices. Failure to pay the outstanding invoices then we reserve the right to begin legal proceedings against you on the 19^th September 2012 if no payment is made before that date. This date is 7 working days after our estimated receipt of your letter and over two weeks since your acknowledgement of the last email request for payment.
Trusting this final request will be met with the knowledge that we have now given you every opportunity to avoid legal action and the inevitable legal consequences of not paying the owed monies.
Just a polite email to let you know that we havent received any payments or had a reply from you regarding the monies owed. Feel free to contact me to discuss and hopefully resolve this issue before next Wednesday (19^th September) where legal proceedings will commence to reclaim the monies outstanding / owed.  As of this morning there has been no payment received for your outstanding invoices, I have started legal proceedings by booking a meeting with the solicitor with a view to take this case to court, the meeting is for Monday so if the payment is received between now and Monday we will stop proceedings.  I operate an open, flexible, reasonable and honest policy on payments and even at this stage would be willing to take your calls / organise a meeting to discuss your situation before we absorb more costs in solicitor fees and you will invariably end up paying for our fees and the outstanding invoices.
We have now discovered you have both moved residential address, I can assure you that this doesn’t mean you can avoid payment and can assure you that you will be found and made to pay the outstanding monies. Now that you have clearly avoided contact and refused to pay we will do everything in our power to get this debt of yours paid to ensure we are rightly compensated for the work completed
To put a stop to all proceedings you still have the option to pay in full the outstanding debt.
The solicitor has drafted up some suggestions for a cost effective solution to recovering your debt and one of them is to use a debt collection agency which we are considering so will once again give you the opportunity to pay the remaining invoice before we potentially enter an agreement with a debt collection agency which will increase the costs and inconvenience for yourselves and will obviously initially cost us more to recover your debts.
We already have been offered the services of some well known and very very efficient debt collectors and suggest you stop this process before we start this process as once the debt has been sold to the debt collections you know they will go the extra mile to collect.  I strongly suggest you contact me unless you want another debt collection agency coming after you, and can assure you this matter isnt going away and we are not going to ‘forget’ it and wont settle until we get our payment recovered from yourselves.  I have been told that one of the new residents of your properties wanted you to be told to please stop the debt collectors coming to their door so we are happy to pass that on to you but dont think it will make much difference to you.
7 Website Clients to Website Designers – Referring to invoice number 265, You are charging us £700 for building the new website. That website was never completed, there was only ever a holding page. We have shown your invoices to 3 other web design companies and all three have agreed that the money you are claiming is far too much. We would have continued to do business with your self but the way you just closed down all access to emails and web sites was frankly disgraceful, and you lost us a lot of money. We have paid you up to date £800 and that is all you will be receiving. please pass on to me your solicitors suggestions and details , as our companies  are no longer trading due to a developer going into receivership owing us £26,000 your details are with the accountant but due to you threats on your last email we have past it on to our solicitor dealing with everything and also to the police , we will not tolerate threats or abusive emails . We do have information from various sources that the web site was not worth the money invoiced, that you have a reputation for over charging and the fact that you turned everything off and stopped us from getting a income off the web site and try to pay you is in effect bad business . If you wish to sue please continue as we will counter sue for loss of earnings on 3 web sites , 1 of which had nothing to do with you , and also remember do not make threats .
8 According to companies house (contacted them yesterday) you are still trading and regardless of that fact that is inconsequential to me you owe me money which needs to be paid. I have no concern whatsoever if you are trading or not.  Feel free to send my correspondence to your solicitors and your police (I have heard they are looking for you anyway so perhaps that’s not your smartest move) You have let a lot of people down but let me assure you I am not going to let you simply go bust and for us to forget about the costs associated with your website development.  Your ‘various sources’ that talk about our charging are pretty pathetic and I wont waste my time replying to these stupid accusations.  You seem to suggest that I am at fault by removing your website services but the facts (that are not completely documented) are that you had over 20 reminders to pay for our services and repeatedly refused or ignored these final demands and even when the email service was temporarily removed you had the option to re-instate them immediately once payment had been received.
The invoice clearly shows what you have been charged for and the website that you said ‘has nothing to do with us’ was charged only for the transfer and the hosting. I resent any idea that we are a rip off or overcharge. You have a new website that is attracting an increasing amount of website visitors and that is what you wanted and have got.
The solicitor has offered another way out of this predicament for you and its one I would consider. If you transfer the website back to us (you simply change the IPS tag back to us using the code ‘ENOM’ ) then we will reduce the outstanding invoice by 75%. If not then we will chase you and recover the full amount outstanding. You are not the first ‘company’ to attempt this and you wont be the last but luckily for us the first company to try this gave us a free lesson in how to ensure we get paid fairly for our work and this is one lesson we will repeat in order to get our guys paid for their work.
Website is still registered and even if you sold it on, your manager is still personally liable for it and in selling it, you are simple making your problem / debts worse. Thought I was being reasonable in trying to give you all the options and  happy for you to try to wiggle out of this but we will do everything in our power to see that you dont wiggle out of paying for the work you have got.   Just spoke to your ‘Manager’ who is now seems to be ‘claiming’ that the work was never finished but be assured 100% of the kitchens website was completed including design / seo and webcopy.  We have never given this project anything but our best work and this is demonstrated by the fact the website now brings in over 250 website visitors per month (this is a 446% increase on the same month last year) and by anyone’s reasoning is proof that our website build / webcopy and SEO has been completed.
You have told me to take you to court and that seems like a good option to get this payment as you haven’t acted responsibly or reasonably at any stage of this process in trying to get the final payment sorted.
9 Here is the final offer recommended by the solicitor:  We will accept a full and final payment of £750, this is the amount that we will accept for your two outstanding invoices (invoice total outstanding £1065) This will be accepted in good faith and the discounted amount represents the fact that we do not ‘want’ to take this matter to the HM Courts and Tribunals Service and look to resolve this matter swiftly and in both parties interest.
10 Well £750 will not get paid today, I have spoke to a solicitor and he advised me that if I was not happy with the site not to pay a penny and allow you to take me to court , but to be honest this is not quite the case, so I will transfer over £500 as final settlement and not a penny more.
11 When can you pay it? obviously I have done you a favour by agreeing a settlement figure half the outstanding invoice total so think you should do me a favour in settling this before the weekend so I can actually pay the guys that done all the work on your website. Starting to think you are just delaying this, can you tell me when its going to be in the bank please as checked with the bank about 1 hour ago and nothing in or pending. If nothing is actually in the account by Tuesday Morning at 11 I will submit the claim to the court.
12 As I said I have no need to delay this and no worried if you take me to court , I don’t have internet banking , I have to go into the bank to do it but unfortunately for I have been working on site. I am not working this Saturday to I will got to the bank then.
13  Checked today for payment and confirm nothing again, you really leave me no choice now we have given you every opportunity to settle this but have lied and misled at every opportunity, its a pity that you have done this but legally we have demonstrated that we have done everything in our power to come to an agreement but once again you haven’t met your promises and as a result I see no other option but to continue with this legal action.
Situation Update Client has dissolved yet another business (this makes 12 now) and has disappeared we have a court ruling and warrant out to reclaim the monies owed.