Paid designer their Holding my site hostage. [SOS!]

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1

Paid wix designer --no contract – They will not give access or transfer website to us.
They charge my client 600/mo
and charged 3000 to build the site.
If he stops paying their “discounted prices” they will delete the website.

They said it cannot be transferred due to technology theft (untrue their using only wix tools and tech, no code!). The registered the domain under their own identity.

I’m helping the company owner due to his lack of tech knowlege and need some guidance, does wix legal and abuse department assist with this?

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This Wix Corvid Forum is for all code related issues on your site.

You would be much better suited going through Wix Support for more help with your issue, especially by phone directly.
https://support.wix.com/en/article/contacting-wix-by-phone-3491545
https://support.wix.com/en/article/contacting-wix-support

https://support.wix.com/en/article/transferring-a-premium-site-to-another-wix-account

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I’ve done that, the lady on the phone provided next to no support. Im hoping someone here (coders) can assist me with options and guidance if possible.

4

You are best going through your contract and seeing what the Wix Designer has said about handing over the website on final payment etc.

Who Really Owns A Website?
This depends on a few different things!

  • If you did not buy your own domain and someone bought it for you – technically they own the domain.

  • If you hired someone to build a website without putting in writing they will pass ownership to you upon completion and final payment – they may actually own the website.

  • If you contracted with someone to build a website and you do in fact have it in writing that after final payment is made that you will own the website – then YOU own the website!

  • If you purchase your own domain – then YOU own the domain.
    Read more here.
    https://www.2dogsdesign.com/web-developer-holding-website-hostage/

Have a read of online posts too.
https://www.askdavetaylor.com/help_website_being_held_hostage_by_webmaster/
https://trisummitsolutions.com/is-your-web-developer-holding-you-hostage/

If you know where the domain is hosted you can also go to that domain company yourself and explain the situation to them too as they might be able to transfer your domain over to yourself without you having to contact the Wix Designer.

You will lose the website if it isn’t transferred across to you, however you would need to take that issue up with the Wix Designer yourself personally if you wanted to go through the legal route.

Wix Designers are not employed by Wix so they can’t provide any legal support for you, the only thing that Wix themselves might be able to do is to lock your website and the account of the Wix Designer, so that the website itself can’t be deleted by the Wix Designer.

I would suggest that you go back to Wix Support and ask them if this is possible until the situation is resolved, so that at least you can be safe in the knowledge that your website won’t be deleted,

Also, if you do phone Wix, then don’t just go with the first Wix Support person you get, I am not trying to say that they are bad - a defo no there.

However, ask to be put in contact with somebody higher up in command, like their manager etc, at least you will have the attention of somebody higher up in command.

Plus, always take the name of the person you are speaking to and where they are working, so that if needed you can refer back to what they said later and you know who they are and what part of Wix that they are working in etc.

Finally, keep a record of everything that you do with this issue so that you have a complete record of what you have done and don’t forget any important info.

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You don’t pay $3000 for a site without a contract. You might consider paying $300 - 400 with no contract, but you know what you’re getting at that point. Now it would be incumbent upon your client to pay legal fees for a case they probably won’t win. If the designer doesn’t cave under pressure (best-case scenario), then I would suggest hiring someone else or creating a different site yourself, and learn from your client’s mistakes.

With that said, is your client giving you the full story or is this truly just a scummy designer (Again, 3k no contract wtf)? Make sure you answer that question first.

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I’ve seen all their emails and I’ve known this guy for 10+ years he has just been taken advantage of. None of the emails presented terms or a contract so this company has simply taken advantage of an older generation that isn’t tech savvy.

This is why I’m assisting.
All contracts were verbal, and the company had the impression that they were getting a website like their coworkers have with other dealers. Everything was verbally agreed upon that they were making him a website.

7

Well unfortunately then as it is all verbally agreed, you don’t have much to go with unless somebody somewhere has a record of those verbal agreements.

As you say that the person is a Wix Designer, are they classed as a Wix Expert and on the Wix Arena advertising themselves? Wix Arena

If they are then I am sure that Wix would prefer not to have a designer like that associated with them and would prefer to have them removed from the Wix Arena and possibly remove the Wix Expert title too if they can.

Going back to your issues, David is right (especially with the size of payment too), you are better off creating your own website with your own domain purchased by yourselves so that you have complete control over it.

At least you can still have an online presence if the designer does delete the site and it would weaken the designers threats as they would know that you have an alternative option as a backup.

Or, you learn by this mistake and go with another designer, however this time get a contract all sorted out along with the payment details and the owner of the website is always yourself etc.

You need everything written in stone, otherwise you can just be done like this again, unfortunately.

One good point out of all of this, is that you now have the chance to start all again and use Wix to design it all how you want it etc and you will have complete control over everything that you do.

Finally, depending on where you are based, do you have any legal company that can offer you free advice to see if they could do anything to help. Like David has said, they might not be able to do much, however they can at least give you some good advice.

8

Well, I have considered the option of a credit card charge back for fraud / non receipt of services / product.

Also, the gentleman is a doctor which definitely holds some regards to professional practice.

I’m going to call Wix and see if they can assist to some degree. Doctors to be doctors have oaths they take, where a web designer does not. So that definitely has to give them some creditability.

I’ve contacted form lawyers, also requested ownership to Google business page, submitted a ICANN request for a domain appeal.

Their just scum business and I don’t think Wix wants these type of people representing them.

9

While I agree with the sentiment, I’m not sure what Wix could do. Perhaps they could ban any Wix account tied to their LLC, but even then they could just create a new one.

If you are able to get a chargeback because the payment was in credit, that would be ideal I suppose, even if it’s only part of the payment. With no contract, it’s not like they can claim any stated rights either. But yeah, I mean the only time I can think of some $3k transaction being safe outside of a contract is when you’re paying for a license, so just remind him of that. $600 in perpetuity for a Wix site, unless it’s some sort of legitimate service like data input/maintenance is totally ridiculous. Wix is literally doing everything for you.

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10

Dang! I’m really sorry that this happened to the Doctor. I personally also build websites (Wix Expert), but only locally, and $3000 is the minimum I charge, although I don’t have them sign a contract, I have them sign an agreement form that they understand what I do, and some basic understanding of who owns and controls what. I understand this bit because as a web designer, I don’t want to give access to the owner to edit the site to avoid making mistakes of having them mess stuff up. However, be that they want to, I will never hold it hostage, and transfer the site to their account, and they can find someone else to edit it from then on.

My recommendation is to try to come to a conclusion, press on the fact that you don’t need to be paying $600/month as they are not doing any continuous maintenance and hosting is covered by Wix. If they say that they do monthly updates, request that they don’t, and leave their work idle.

IF THEY REFUSE, you can extract the site files, and host the website temporarily on your own servers (my recommendation is BlueHost). While you are hosting the site on another server, you can look for a trustworthy wix designer to make an ideal copy of it. BEWARE of this option, as for one, if they have all the rights to the site, it would be copyright infringement, and secondly Wix isn’t too nice about transferring to other hosts. But it is an option.