Website Project Payments

This happens at the end of a project when you are happy with every aspect of your website build / design and function, read below to see what happens when a company tries to make excuses about paying, We have sympathy for both parties here as it seems the staged payment model has fallen down when different subjective opinions have been aired.
[Website Design Company] Hope you don’t think I’m hassling you but all my concerns / actions will benefit yourself / your website so anxious to get moving on this and would welcome a reply / confirmation that you got the email below or call either tomorrow or Monday afternoon.
I obviously want the best for your website and for you to be happy with it and the business it will bring you and want to discuss the outstanding invoice as we obviously need to be paid for the work completed. Can you give me a ring when you are free? Really want to work with you to get the website working for you.
To follow up on our previous convo I want us to talk about how to move forward with the website / website background and also want to inform you that we done our ‘post live’ SEO review  of the site and found that the text that was used for your blog posts has been copied from other sites this is both dangerous from a legal perspective (know of someone that faced a court case resulting in thousands of pounds fine / payment over this) and bad (actually terrible) from a SEO perspective, therefore would recommend removing copied text and replacing it with unique / relevant / search engine friendly text.
Additionally we noticed that the image used in the  news section post was too big (the right of the image had a big empty space and too big for the news section) so we have created a new ‘optimised’ version of that image and uploaded it back to the news section. Just looking at your visitor numbers and they are looking good, assume these are converting to enquiries and price calculator enquiries. When would be a good time to discuss the project? Additionally we liked the red background image that is still on the site and welcome your thoughts
Just for your information we have updated the price calculator system slightly today (formatting of the quote that the client and yourselves receives) The functionality has not been affected and feel free to test this yourself.
[Website Client] They website stats we received on Monday were not great reading, and also printed out on lead sheets, so will need to do a list for you. Will email soon.
[Website Design Company] Just coming to the end of another long day and really want to get this sorted with you. It seems you are either very busy or avoiding me and I am stating that I want to work with you to get this resolved.
If you are not wanting to continue working with us then I respectfully ask you again to settle your invoice that is now overdue and will re-state that I am happy to work with you going forward to get your site working for you. Your delay in paying the outstanding balance has already caused us problems and would really urge you to settle this quickly. I don’t want to resort to playing ‘hardball’ by putting this in front of my solicitor for his advice but the need for your final payment is now getting great. Please get in touch by email / phone to enable us to get you back on track. We updated your blog section today (standard / routine upgrade)
Be interested to see your stats as on reviewing the system today I can see visitor stats are all above what I would expect for you at this time. With your average page views and ‘time on site’ stat particularly impressive for a newly created site. As you know we have another website for a company in your business sector that we work with and happy to say that they are now ranking higher for a subset of search terms that we are monitoring for them.
If you google your primary and secondary search terms you will see that they have now moved up to 2nd in Google.co.uk / google.com and are on the first page in yahoo for those terms. I look forward to receiving any info you can pass to me regarding your stats and think we need to talk regarding the outstanding invoice as we cant afford to leave this much longer. The delay in paying this is starting to cause me nightmares. I know from your emails that you have some reservations but think we can resolve anything to get this working for you.
[Website Client] I can honestly say I am not avoiding you, will get an email of the results we have had to you today with any luck.
[Website Design Company] Do you want to call me? Feel this is the best way forward,  should be available for the rest of the day / evening
[Website Client] Not trying to avoid you, been very busy lately. The problem is that when we came to see you, it was clear that this was going to be hard work to get what we wanted. My girlfriend has a lot more experience in the web side of things than I ever will. You thought she may have had her own agenda, but I’m sure it was just the fact that the site looked nothing like the remit we gave. The spec was to be something like the guide sites we passed to you. When she pointed anything out, you just disagreed. This made it quite obvious that we could not move forward, so my girlfriend started building a site herself. I am still not happy with the site you built and know I never will be, we have so much more to put on a site and wished it had worked with you.
I really do not think we have had what we asked for or agreed on. The best thing to do is reconsider your invoice based on my comments then we can look at it. Bear in mind that we are now building another site to replace the one you have built and feel we have already paid for one, if you don’t include the additional functionality we requested. I will send details of the site we are building if you would like to look at it.
[Website Design Company] The site was built to the requirement given to us by yourself who emailed us confirmation that it was ‘great’ and to proceed. I hear what you are saying and happy to come to a resolution. I disagree that the site ‘looks nothing like the remit’ and disagree that I disagreed with things she pointed out (cant recall exactly what I disagreed with at the moment but if I disagreed with something I probably had reason to disagree). I will say that after that meeting I gave your girlfried a list of things we needed (like photos and text) that she agreed to provide but to this date nothing has been provided. All things considered I am willing to let you pay the invoice and to part ways with yourself and happy to let yourself continue with the website development / online promotion.
I hadn’t really thought we would need to ‘reconsider’ the invoice and have now shown this whole project including its progress / meeting notes and  emails to someone qualified to advise on these matters and their advice was to get the invoice legally enforced as we had received confirmation that the website was as required before a change of heart once 90% of the framework had been completed and a ‘full redesign’ was not a ‘realistic expectation’ at that stage. To show a willingness to get this resolved and for you to be happy I will reduce the invoice by 3% as long as its paid within 7 days. After 7 days have elapsed this additional discount will no longer apply. Hope that sounds fair and reasonable. We have built / promoted hundreds of websites and have had experience only once of a client not paying an invoice on demand so happy to take this to a legal settlement if we cannot resolve this amicably.
Personally I am surprised and a bit sad that you have chosen to get your website build / promoted by someone else as was looking forward to seeing your website visitors and your sales increase as so many of our other clients have experienced and whatever you decide going forward I would be more than happy to give advice / help and take on your website / promotion should it not work out for you.
[Website Client] Thank you for your e-mail and confirmation that you disagree that our website looks nothing like the remit you were given to build it on the guide website models. I would challenge anyone with an iota of professionalism, graphic design or website building skills to suggest that our website bears any comparison to the others. No matter the framework which my manager confirmed was ‘great’ and to proceed, it would have been reasonable to assume that a “professional” website design company could have then populated the site to resemble the sites mentioned in the remit they were given.
You say that you asked our marketing manager to provide pictures and text to add to the site, the reason this wasn’t forthcoming is that we weren’t happy with the aesthetics of the site and had asked you to change several aspects of it, you just never seemed to take that on board. You made several changes which didn’t match our requests, unfortunately it became increasingly obvious to me that you just did not grasp my concept of how our site should look.  In essence I don’t believe you have delivered a site which matches the remit you were given or indeed our expectations.
Thank you for you offer of a deduction of 3% to the invoice, I consider this a derisory offer on the basis of everything I have outlined above. I am prepared to make you an offer of 70% of the value of the invoice in full and final settlement of services rendered. Unlike your offer I will not put a time limit of seven days as I believe you should have reasonable time to consider it.
[Website Design Company] Much of your email is re-stating that the look of the website is not like the requested design even though you previously agreed that the guide website should be the basis to your site redesign and approved the design. The fact that you subsequently decided to request changes is fine but a full redesign after the design / development / approval process is not appropriate. Your suggested changes after our meeting was recorded and emailed and any suggestion of us not taking your suggestions on board is, in my opinion, unfounded.
You have been given full admin access to the backed wordpress section of the project / website and we have provided full admin access and requested feedback over 6 months ago and any suggestion of if defaulting to an incorrect result is something I find hard to comprehend and would welcome you to point these ‘incorrect results’ out. If they exist they could be a result of someone adding incorrect data or the calculating process may need changing but our testing procedure has failed to find a problem with it. Additionally I would say that you have full admin access to all the  backend prices and these were pre-populated for you with an offer to increase or decrease these ‘sample’ prices as you see fit, no reply has ever been received. Happy to work with you to understand / update the website backend system as it’s an important part of your website’s ‘sales channel’ in attracting business and believe this part of the site has already attracted enquiries for you.
Thank you for your ‘offer’ to pay the outstanding invoice We are happy to discuss this further but trying to negotiate a final invoice payment, months after it was sent and after the work has been completed, is not something we consider professional or realistic in this situation. Your ‘offer’ instead of the correct total shows how far apart we are in this the offer itself is something that is bordering on insulting for the time / effort and work put into your project that has already provided yourselves with an increasing flow of visitors to your website. Therefore my offers still stands and if we can’t come to a satisfactory agreement we are happy to take this down the legal route which will give you the opportunity to state your thoughts to an independent arbitrator, this will be both time consuming for us both and I hope you take time to consider your position which I think you have been badly advised upon.
[Website Client] Unfortunately you keep stating the fact we have an “Extra flow of visitors to the site”. This is like having a shop front with no shop, they walk in the front door and straight back out again. You are telling me the site has been finished for 3 months, well I have had a hand full of leads from it in that time in our area. I have even had comments from existing clients who have said they would never have bought from us based on the site, it was just the fact they knew us and went on to find our details.
I am not disputing the fact that we requested the look of the site to be like the guide sites, I am just stating in my opinion and anyone else I show it to they see very little resemblance to the look or professionalism of the other sites. In our meeting with you, you stated the look was not overly important, it was more about the performance. If you rate performance on visits I could probably agree, but we need to keep people on the site long enough to like what they see and make an enquiry. I fully understand your concerns of legal action as it is time consuming for all involved but I think my offer was very reasonable considering I am the one who is having to pay out again for something that I feel I never received from your Essex Webdesign company in the first place. I have not asked for any money back and even made an offer to pay more.