Trying to get my money back

[Chrissymc81]

Hi everyone. I’m a sole trader and in September I paid £2000 to a limited company for a new website and a year of SEO. I then paid a further £250 for this company to run a facebook advert. The £250 was for 1 weeks worth of advertising. I set a deadline of last week in October for the advertising and website to launch.

i had lots of small issues with the company which was really 1 guy, not responding to emails, phone calls or messages. He kept dragging out the timeline with no explanation other than he was busy.

1st November I finally saw the first draft of my new website and it was a poor copy of what I already had built myself. I listed multiple things that were wrong with this draft website but again he was dragging out fixing these things.

3rd November he ran a facebook advert, he didn’t show me the advert or obtain my approval before running this advert. When I saw it I was appalled. He made 6 mistakes in 3 sentences. There were 3 grammatical mistakes, he had typed TikTok with only 1 capital T, he said I had 20 products when I had 14.

I reached my limit and emailed him terminating our relationship and asking for my money back. After claiming he’s spoken with his solicitor he’s not responded to any of the 2 pages of reasons that I feel he’s not fulfilled the contract and he’s stated he thinks I want a refund because if got cash flow issues. He has offered me a 5% refund of the £2000 he claims he has done between 40 to 50 hours work. he claims to have spent £162 on the Facebook advert but I have proof from Facebook he only spent £32.10.

I have chopped the story down to its bare bones and can provide more details if needed.

I was thinking of going down the route of a letter before action but I’ve recently realised that as I paid him by bank transfer from my Monzo business account I can dispute these transactions.

my question is do I open myself up to litigation from him if I dispute these transactions with my bank?

the website never went live because I never approved it and the 12 months SEO was directly tied to the new website he was building. I have been asking around about SEO as I was unsure how it worked and I’ve been advised that you don’t do the SEO all at once it would be something that would be done a little bit each month.

im looking for any advice on how I’m best handling this

[Pezza54]

You stated you paid the company by bank transfer using your Monzo business account. I can't see anything special about the monzo account so as you paid by transfer and not debit card you are not covered by the chargeback scheme.
As this was a B2B contract you are not covered by the CRA 2015
You do have legal rights under the Sale of Goods and Services Act 1982 Part 2
The service provider must provide the service with reasonable care and skill. Reasonable care and skill is judged to be the level of care and skill expected from a competent company or person undertaking the same type of service.
If there is no set time for the work to be completed in the contract then the service provider must carry out the service within a reasonable time unless there is good reason. What is a reasonable amount of time is a statement of fact.
If you feel confident you can prove the company failed to exercise reasonable care and skill you should consider starting a court claim and follow pre-claim protocol (LBA)
You should also think about claiming damages in addition to your money back.

[Chrissymc81]

Thanks for the info. The reason I have recently found out bank transfers through Monzo business account are covered by chargeback is because I disputed a recent transaction that I’d made via bank transfer as I had paid for a training course which was cancelled and Monzo put the money back into my account while they investigate

[atticus]

my question is do I open myself up to litigation from him if I dispute these transactions with my bank?

My answer is that there is a chance such action may follow.