Newly purchased website is down, what is our recourse?

I'm not new to website ownership, but I've never encountered an issue like we're experiencing, and I'm curious as to our options.

We've been in the automotive parts retail business for 35 years, with multiple retail stores. The company used to be owned by one person until the manager of store 2 purchased stores 2 and 3 from the owner two years ago. All three stores continued operating under the same name, with store 1 owning the eCommerce website. This year that owner decided to retire and close store 1, so we purchased the website. We didn't intend to update it, but rather use it to bring in revenue while we built a new one from scratch. Average income for the site is $15k-30k per month.

The website was built sometime between 1998 and 2005, using ASP, and an eCommerce platform written a company we'll call Company A. To be clear, they wrote the site and the eCommerce code, and they have hosted the site since it was built. Knowing what we basically have here is a proprietary setup, I made the decision to stick with this company, as support elsewhere would be non-existent. While I've built sites and own a large one, I prefer paying someone else to manage/support them.

All was fine for the month of July, then August 5th we noticed a drop in sales. After investigating, we found anytime anyone tried to click nearly any link on the front page, it returned an error related to the category system. I quickly called Company A and explained the situation. They said they'd look into it and get it fixed as soon as possible. That was August 5th, and the site is still down.

Since our first contact we've been given very vague and brief updates, and only after multiple calls and emails. First they had no idea what was going on, then they said they tracked it down to a specific piece of code, then they said they were re-writing that piece of code, and now we're back to them not answering our phone calls. That was on the 16th. I know enough about ASP and coding to know the entire (very basic) site could probably be re-written in a week.

So here we are in a situation where we just paid a very large sum of money to the owner of the website, changed absolutely nothing, and we're left with a website that does not work, all while losing literally $15k-$30k in revenue this month. The owner of the company is an old school guy who's ready to call up the lawyers. His point of view is we haven't done anything but process orders, and someone is responsible for this.

What is our recourse? What would you guys do?

 

1. Make a back up of the entire site and all code you purchased. (You have probably already done this, but it never hurts to mention it again)
2. Hire your own coders to look into fixing the problem.
3. Look into having the site hosted somewhere other than with company A, if they have proven to be unreliable.
4. If you are unable to get the site restored and generating income you can have an attorney look over your purchase contract to see if you have any recourse against the seller or Company A for your damages. The reason you should try to solve the problem yourself, with a new coder if needed, is that even if you sued you would be required to show how you tried to mitigate the damages. It would be reasonable to expect you to hire someone to try and solve the problem and not just sit on your hands losing income for weeks on end.

I am sure it is disappointing that Company A is not more responsive or successful in fixing the website, but since they are not even a party to the contract as far as I can tell, I am not even sure they have any obligation to work on the site for you. It seems like they would want to for the business but, as you say, the site is simple and there are probably other coders who could look at the site and solve the problems. So look into that.

Good luck.

 

Thanks for the reply, much appreciated.

I haven't made any sort of backup (though you're right, I certainly should have) as I was told by the previous owner that Company A took care of it, as the host for my personal sites does. We were told we were buying a full-managed hands-off site, which is what we were looking for. I don't even have FTP access. I've thought about hiring someone to look into it, I'm just not sure where to start and/or how to go about it considering we have no access and Company A isn't answering our calls to give us access. After this I don't believe there is anything Company A can do to retain our business. I've grown accustomed to the support I receive from LiquidWeb and RackSpace, but I figured I'd set those concerns aside and give this company a try. I'm quite surprised, as they actually have a few large customers. I'm thinking we're probably going to have to get the attorneys involved.

As far as liability goes, that was my big unknown. I know we haven't received what we paid for, but I'm not sure who's liable.

 

You guys obviously need to try and get some action from company A. As for who might be responsible, it really depends on the terms of the deal and what the seller said you were getting. Have you contacted the seller and told him about the problems and how company A is not solving them? Perhaps he has the ability to get them to solve the problem. That at least could solve the problem and help you so you can move away from Company A without any further losses.

 

Yeah, we're continuing to call and email on a daily basis, with documentation. The seller has tried to get action from Company A as well, as he says they've been great for the past decade. We still do business with the seller in other capacities and it's in his best interest to preserve our relationship.

Here's another curveball, though it's just a big what-if. The company who bought store 1 from the seller of the website contacted us in early August proposing a joint venture in the development of a new eCommerce website, which we declined. I know it's unlikely it was sabotage, but the timing sure is suspect. We have no way of knowing who has/had access to the backend of the site.

 

the thing is, that everysite is vulnerable to being attacked. Its quite possible that someone has attacked the site, and caused some of the issues. As to who is liable... well, if it is hacked, you can try to restore it from a backup.

Other things (which has happened to me) is that server updates have broken working and functioning code. Take a look at hostgator, in the past few weeks they forced moved nearly all their clients into a different datacenter with different hardware - lots of sites breaking left right and center there!

For me, I would not look at who to blame, but rather, who you can hire to have this issue solved, and fast! See if you can find a local company that can work on this asap. Your losing nearly $30k in a month, even if its $30k to have it fixed, you just have to do it.

 

You need to get control of the site- back up copies - copies of the data base- put on your own hosting and have your own coder fix it.

You bought a "hands off" site but it is not working out so you need to hire someone to deal with it. The current people running it will not even return calls so they are just losing you money and need to be out of the picture.

You could probably get a reputable company to set it up in your control and fix the problem fr under $1k, sounds like you are losing more then that dealing with the current situation.

The hard part will probably be getting the log in info from the current guys, Do you have control of the domain name ?

 

Someone with FTP access and Read/ Write privileges changed very simple files. It could be lines of code, or at the most one file only. I hope you have created a backup by now.

1 Get a coder,

2 host the site on another domain by purchasing a $15 - $20 account

3 and get that guy to work on it.

4 Afterwards when it is working fine, create another backup, download it to your harddrive.

5 Pay the coder. You can get good ones at oDesk or Elance or any of the freelancing networks.

6 Change FTP details on temp hosting or better yet, delete the FTP account. Change Cpanel password. Move the site back to your side and you will be live in no time with no problems.

By the way, you dont have to purchase another hosting package but since the directory structure of files messes with one another at times, it is better to give it a fresh start for the sake of repairing things.

Secondly, you need to rename the original folder to something different and add the new working website folder to the directory. If you are getting a 502, 50x or any such errors, change read/write permissions which is very easy. Company A is not gonna help you much. I smell a snitch.

 

I posted but missed "fully managed off-hands site".

So editing original post to summarize as BIG MISTAKE.

If you are not hands-on, you are allowing problems to be created.

 

Joey - is there any sort of contract in place? Did "Company A" agree to maintenance after the sale?