Was I ripped off by my web designer?

You paid. You got something. And you have no way of telling whether the person you paid did a decent job or took you for a ride. That is not a failing on your part — it is the whole problem.

“All I’m getting are either numpties, conmen, or way overpriced opportunists.”

A business owner on UK Business Forums, looking for someone to build a website

Someone who builds websites for a living put the same thing from the other side, in a thread about finding customers:

“Business owners have no idea whether someone did a good job or not.”

A developer on UK Business Forums

He is right, and it is worth sitting with for a second. In almost every other trade you can tell. You can see whether a wall is straight. You can hear whether an engine runs. A website is the one thing you buy where the person selling it is the only person who can tell you whether it is any good.

What being ripped off actually looks like

It is rarely dramatic. Across hundreds of complaints, the same handful come up again and again.

The price went up after you committedOne owner described “two months in and ever the continuing wanting more money” for extras “never disclosed at the beginning”. The final bill lands at two or three times the quote, and you pay it, because walking away means losing what you have already spent.

You are charged for every small change“He tries to get money out of me every time we talk for some update or another.” So opening hours, prices and staff go stale, because keeping them right costs money every time.

It was never finished“Paid £549 deposit… promised within one month, but 3 months later nothing had been done.” Another: “I paid £1,300 for an ecommerce site. 10 months on I still have no website.”

You are locked into a contractTwelve months of direct debits for a site and advertising that produced nothing, with no exit and a release fee at the end.

The work itself is thinA developer described what is usually behind the invoice: not building anything, but customising an off-the-shelf theme. Which is fine, and honest work — unless you were charged as though it were not.

Notice what is not on that list. Nobody complains that their website is ugly. They complain that they cannot tell what they bought.

The things worth checking, in plain terms

You do not need to understand how any of it works. You need to know whether five things are true, and each of them is checkable from outside in minutes.

Is your name on the domain?The web address itself. If it is registered to the person who built the site rather than to you, you do not own your own address. This is the single most common complaint in eleven years of forum posts, and it has a page of its own.

Does the enquiry form actually deliver?Not "does it show a thank-you page". Does the message arrive. Those are different questions and the answer is often no. Also its own page, because it is the most expensive fault there is.

Can you change a price yourself?If changing one number means ringing someone and paying them, your site will drift out of date and start actively misinforming people.

Does it work properly on a phone?Most local searches are on a phone. A site built for a desktop means pinching and zooming to find your number, and search engines push it down in mobile results.

Are you findable at all?Whether the site can be indexed, whether your details are consistent everywhere, and whether the registers your trade is judged on have an entry for you.

What we do about it

We check all of it and tell you what we found, in words you can act on. Not a score out of a hundred — a list of what is wrong, what it is costing you, and what it would take to fix.

Including when the answer is that nothing much is wrong. That happens, and it is a perfectly good outcome. If the person who built your site did a decent job, you deserve to know that too, and it will have cost you an email to find out.

We are not the people who built it and we are not bidding to rebuild it. The check is the same either way, which is the only reason it is worth anything.

Do this yourself first, it takes two minutes

Search for WHOIS lookup, type in your web address, and look at the registrant name. If it is not you or your business, that is the conversation to have before any other.

Check my website

Or ring and ask: 020 3422 3453

InSite Scan › Was I ripped off by my web designer?