My Company had given a website development project to classmate's company which is into website development. There was an absence of service agreement and also the developers did not stress upon the need for a proper documentation manual which would be useful for proper project execution. There was an initial delay of one month from the date of actual promised delivery date of the completed project. in the mid-way, we found out that the website was not at all upto the mark. Hence, we thought of dropping it.
In the meantime, we also learnt that there should be a proper documentation to be given to the clients for developing it. Hence we prepared the document manual and kept it ready. Due to constant pleading by the classmate, we thought of re-giving the project to the developer. After a discussion on the documentationmanual, he agreed upon orally to complete the project within one month. And also, due to the losses that occured because of the previous delay, in his email, the person agreed upon for a price of Rs. 1,00,000 instead of Rs. 1,40,000. Hence it was all set that, the project will be delivered within a month and the price payable is Rs. 1,00,000. Again I want to say that, there was no service agreement and the delivery date of one month was totally oral in nature. But the quote of 1,00,000 is being mentioned in one of the emails sent by him.
Today, it is 3 and half months over after the promised one month delivery and the project is not completed yet and delivered to us. The project done until now was loaded with errors from top to bottom. In addition to previous agreed upon price of Rs. 1,00,000, we have received a surprise additional quote of Rs. 1,50,000 which is 150% above the earlier agreed upon quote. The break-up of the earlier quote + new quote has not been provided.
The project which is done 85-90% till now is not at all searchable in google and is in unacceptable condition. Since there is a delay of 105 days and still not got delivery of the project, we are thinking of not accepting the project and completely dropping it.
We have already made a payment of Rs. 44,000 as part payment in consideration of the earlier agreed upon quote of Rs. 1,00,000. When spoken about the delivery date, we get to hear from our developers that there was no agreement or contract pertaining to the delivery date of the project and they are behaving immorally and unethically and also they arent responding to our queries.
Since this project was the prime component of our business model and the only source of revenue for our company, due to the negligence of the developer, our business is running on costs. Hearing to the words of our developer, we had set up an office 6 months back and from then onwards, we are incurring only expenses in terms of various fixed costs.
Please Note that, there isnt any service agreement in between us and it was only an oral agreement in between the directors regarding the requirement terms and delivery date.
Kindly suggest us as to what we can do now? Is it possible we do not accept the project? What are the damages that we can claim from the developers? Thank you.
