can anyone please shed light on what I am legally bound to? Scammed by a marketing company

[wherehaveallthegoodfolkgone]

Hello,
NC for this. I would really appreciate any insight. I attended a networking meeting recently as my business has really suffered after competitors copied and poached the bulk of my clients. I was nudged towards a woman specialising in social media marketing and stupidly fell for the whole " I really like you and I really want to help you...I'm basically just doing it for free for you". She scoffed at a leaflet I had made and said it was rubbish, no one would have a second to look at it.

Insistence on rebranding, remaking my website (nothing wrong with it!) and calling upon a logo designer , several meetings with her ...
I tried oposing by saying that Vista Print had a great logo for my business for under a tenner, but she said it needs to be professional.

I have now been given several long 'proposals' for business names, logo designs and I have discovered that all wording in her emails (eg the lengthy descriptions behind each business name) was AI generated.

Furthermore, the logo is identical to the one I had made on vistaprint except I am being told to pay £200 for the logo woman and £500 for redesigning my perfectly decent website!
I have signed a contract at the start but really am fuming. Feel completely scammed. Any suggestions?

Thank you

It depends what work is in the contract - what did you sign up to?

Agree it depends on the contract. Crikey she sounds so dodgy. Have you got an email chain that says what you actually requested doing to your website ie nothing and what she said she would do? If you don't pay she could take you to small claims court but I imagine you will have evidence that the work is not sufficient or requested. And things like her using AI can be evidence of it not being of suitable calibre. I'm not a legal person (I'm a marketing person - I promise we aren't all like this!) hopefully someone legal will be along to advise.

Also she can't charge you for proposals have you actually agreed scope of work?

What does the contract say?
Secondly id let the organiser of the event know they are a scammer using AI

Thank you so much for such quick responses, I feel sick to my stomach. My mum died a few months ago and I feel like a walking target for unscrupulous competitors and marketing sharks!

I am going through the contract now and confess I barely understand a word of it!

I have copied and pasted some of the wording at the start of it here, extracting her business name for privacy:

UK General Data Protection Regulation
In order to comply with the Data Laws, XXXXX
requests that you, as a client (the Client) sign and return a copy of this letter (the
Agreement) to confirm your agreement to the UK GDPR Terms.
This Agreement shall be deemed to take effect as from the date of countersignature
below and shall remain in full force and effect as long as the Master Agreement
remains in effect or XXXXXX retains any of the Personal Data related to the
Master Agreement in its possession or control.

That reads as though it just relates to your personal info under GDPR. Do you have a separate contract covering the work itself?

That bit is about GDPR. It is unlikely that agreeing to their GDPR terms committed you to anything.

If you haven't commissioned any work and she has simply produced some proposals, it is unlikely that you owe her anything. But it depends on what you signed.

That says nothing about you paying her.

Id just block her and ignore.

Yes I don't think there was anything additional I signed.

I would love to block and ignore but she's so far put in at least 4 -5 hours into online 'meetings', phonecalls and creating these flashy presentations for me.

Just wondered if I am obliged to pay for her time thus far. Or the Logo 'Designer'?

No-one can tell you the answer without seeing the full contract.

Can you just cut your losses - pay her a percentage for the ‘work’ she has done to date. If she objects, send her a solicitor letter re the AI generated text she has produced.

Icehockeyflowers thats a good suggestion, thank you.

You absolutely don't need to pay for any of this. That's not a contract it's just about gdpr and personal data there should be a statement of works.

Cancel all the meetings and tell her you no longer need these services.

What did you actually sign up for?

thanks everyone, I dont think I have signed a contract as such.

I'm not sure what the problem with them being AI generated is? That's the way the world is going. Obviously trying to pressure you to pay for work you didn't sign up to isn't OK.

She sounds like a total chancer. If you haven't signed any further contract (and the GDPR boilerplate isn't it) then she can take a running jump can't she? Is it the next multi-level marketing bullshit scam?

AI is pretty awful for anything even slightly nuanced. It's great for coding, and even producing images etc. For anything conveying meaning in nuanced English, it's still crap. If it's very obviously AI-generated text, doubly crap - probably using some crapola free service or an old version of Open AI.

Just go back and say you don’t need any of the services and don’t agree to any more meetings, if all you’ve signed is related to GDPR it doesn’t sound like you’re liable for any additional costs unless there’s more in the contract about costings.

You don't have to pay anything unless you have verbally agreed to pay for work she has carried out or has commissioned for you, or there is a signed contract.

I did unfortunately verbally agree over the phone to paying her estimated charge of £500.

But presumably this was on the understanding that her logo designer would come up with the "something more professional" she insisted you needed. If its essentially the same as a freebie Vistaprint logo they can fuck off!

But the 500 quid was for redesigning the website? Has she actually done that? She seems only to have written proposals so far?

I would consult with a solicitor rather than pay this money to her - it sounds like the advice will be useful for you for signing any future contracts.

If she has done the agreed work, you will have to pay. You may be able to argue for a reduced price if you are unhappy with the quality of the work.

Forgive me for being blunt, but I am having difficulty understanding how you can run a business when you don't know the difference between a GDPR agreement and a contract?