Complaints

The complaint text that is displayed might not represent all complaints filed with BBB. Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:30/06/2023

  Type:Billing Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  My nonprofit organization, ***** based in ***** (**************), ordered a website design project from ****** in 2020. We chose a package from among the options available on their website and made the full payment of ***** ******* required only part payment but we chose to make full payment to reduce international transfer charges when sending the funds from *****). The steps towards fulfilment of this project include (1) building the framework of the website, (2) content upload, (3) testing, (4) training, (5) deployment etc. ****** completed step 1. But while we were preparing for step 2, ****** told us that we will need to pay a monthly fee of **** to maintain the website in perpetuity. This was on top of the ******. This hidden cost was neither listed in the package description on their website nor in any of our prior communications. When compared to standard practice in the industry, this requirement was very strange because projects are normally handed over upon completion and it is up to the client to decide if they wanted the developer to continue maintaining the project. In any case, we had an internal team that was going to be trained to manage the website so we did not need to be paying up to ****/month for this. The project stalled as **** struggled internally to accept this demand. This year, I notified ****** that we could not continue the project and I requested the refund of a reasonable portion of the full payment we made. But the CEO of Morweb says "There is a no refund policy on our contract. Also, were at a loss since we spent more hours than the initial payment due to the fact the website is fully designed and developed". These claims are completely false, in that,  Morweb only built the framework of the website, and this is verifiable. Our demands: 1. ****** should be able to bill us for the work they have done, then refund the remainder of our funds. 2. We demand that whatever work they would have billed us for be exported to us.

  Business Response

  Date: 25/07/2023

  There are a few factors that are not correct that I'd like to acknowledge directly. 
  1. I don't have any records of ** demanding $***/month in perpetuity, that is much more than we would charge monthly for a 'Starter Package' which is what they signed up for. Our public pricingon our website, the monthly cost is starting at $***/month. **************************************
  2. The attached document is the SIGNED proposal by ************************. He mentioned in his complaint "This hidden cost was neither listed in the package description on their website nor in any of our prior communications." If you refer to page 4 of the *** document, you'll clearly see the cost breakdown which also clearly shows a 'Monthly Fees' section stating $** USD/month. Therefore, we were very, very clear about the monthly cost which they viewed and signed, it's also very clearly stated on the website that each package has a monthly fee.
  3. Complainant stated: "****** only built the framework of the website, and this is verifiable". This is not correct. Perhaps his understanding of a framework is different from ours. That being said, we completed a full design and a full development of their website which is visible on our staging site. In the link below you can see that the site is fully functional. The only step that is not completed is the content upload which as he stated they were working on, so that had not progressed.
  Clients Staging Site: **************************
  As for a refund, as our CEO mentioned we do have a clear no refund policy on our terms & conditions which is also included in the signed contract. Since we did provide this project at a far reduced cost for this client (we normally don't take on projects for under ******** their project was ****** total), we have far exceeded the amount of hours covered in the budget, so at our hourly rate we're well above the ****** in total cost expenditure, This is fair considering they do not have a reason for canceling

  Customer Answer

  Date: 27/07/2023

  First of all, we thank the better Business Bureau for securing a response from ****** for us. The BBB has helped to get the response we could not get in several months, as ****** would simply won't mind us anymore. For this, we are a grateful BBB user! 
  

  1. ******'s claim that they do not take up jobs below ******* and that charging us $***** was a highly discounted fee is not true. In fact,during one of our engagements, their account manager, *********************************,provided a detailed breakdown of all their packages and costs, and none of them exceeded ******* I have attached a copy of that email in evidence.  
  
  2. ******'s assertion that the development was completed simply because they provided a link to a staging site with dummy images and 'Lorem Ipsum' texts is completely strange. No developer in the world would consider such a site as completed work for a client.
  
  3. It is evident that ******'s approach is to retain clients with their post-development monthly maintenance charges, aiming for perpetual gains. I acknowledge my error when I quoted a higher monthly charge than the ***, but the point is that, it was not clear to us that this monthly recurrent cost was different from the upfront cost of ****** that we paid for our package. There is no way we would have agreed to a contract that makes us pay monthly maintenance fees for things we can do ourselves. We just needed the website development, nothing more.   
  
  4. Based on our current conviction, we are prepared to challenge ******'s non-refundable clause, on the basis of the scope of work and ******'s own provisions.
  

  To conclude, we are not asking for a full refund. We are asking for a refund based on ******'s own calculation of work done for us. After all,we have now debunked their claim that they were doing us a favour with the pricing; and we have proved that ****** did not complete the scope of work. So,****** should do the right thing and make us a refund.