Wise Words Wednesday: Always Get Agreements In Writing

I talked to one of my new clients last week about moving her website. Normally, this isn’t a problem. If you’ve bought a web hosting account, you simply submit a helpdesk ticket and ask us to move your entire site over. (And we provide this as a free service!) If you are moving from something like Zen Cart to Shop Kit Plus, you’ll need to integrate your design, manually move your products over and copy/paste your content into the new pages.

And once you’re done with all of that, you change the nameservers on your domain name to point to your new site.

Problems occur though when you are moving from a hosting company that is being uncooperative. And it gets even worse when they have registered your domain name in their name.

This is the situation my client is facing. And to make matters worse, she has no written agreements with the company. All transactions were carried out via phone. Yikes!

My advice to you:

1. If your hosting company or web designer wants to do everything via phone, RUN! If there is a dispute later, you will have little recourse. Unless you have recorded all the conversations… you’ll need to check the legality of that in your state. In California, both parties in the conversation must be aware of the recording. In Oklahoma, only one party in the conversation has to be aware of the recording. That would be you.
2. Make sure you get a contract, read it and sign it. Make sure you keep a copy of it. If you don’t understand the contract, ask a business mentor or lawyer to help you. If you’re uncertain, I would definitely make sure you get legal advice.
3. Always get an invoice. Print out the invoice and keep it. Make sure you get detailed invoice from all your vendors. This way, if there is a dispute later, you will have proof of what you paid for.

My client did not have invoice, email communications or any other documentation. Since her hosting company registered her domain in their name, and she has no proof that she purchased the domain name, she may have lost the domain.