My website design company 's gone AWOL

[BrummieOnTheRun]

I've contracted with a company to produce an e-commerce enabled site for me.

They've had the money (all the suppliers I looked at wanted payment in advance, so that wasn't unusual in itself) but I can't get hold of anyone in the company to kick off the project, or to even confirm when they will be able to kick off the project. I'm in a 'queue' for a developer.

It's been 5 weeks since I've heard from them and they are refusing to respond to e-mails or phone calls.

There are no timescale commitments in the contract so I have nothing I can call upon there.

Any thoughts on next steps?

Can you go round and see them? It would be harder for them to turn you away!

Otherwise, try your local trading standards office - they may know something about this company if they're dodgy.

I have to say it seems very suspect to ask for all your money up front.

They are at the other end of the country, unfortunately, SantaBeClause.

I know what you mean about payment upfront, but I looked at 3 other companies (all supposedly reputable) and they were also payment up front so this did appear to be the norm.

(They are just customising templates rather than doing a full bespoke project). This bunch have very high profile and official backers, so on the face of it they were a safe bet.

I suspect they have taken on too much work pre-Xmas, although their content management system is down too, so I smell a rat.

Will contact Trading Standards, as suggested.
Cheers.

You mention that there are no time limits. This is normally in contracts, but failing which it usually falls to be decided what is "reasonable time" in the circumstances. Five weeks seems quite long. Have you had any correspondence with them at all??

I finally managed to get through to someone this evening, karen, but thank you.

Long, not particularly interesting, story:
They aren't crooked, just crap. Doing your own small business is so very different to doing it under auspices of an established company and much more risky.

There is nothing dodgy about the company, they just screwed up technically and were useless commercially at the follow-up to sort it out.

However I will take the T&Cs much more seriously next time. I have seen enough contracts to know better but was less demanding when it was my own business! Ridiculous.

Glad you managed to contact them.

Hope they actually do some work for you now!