The day a developer held my client's business hostage
A client came to me to rebuild their marketing. Like every project, step one was getting the logins.
Their old developer had everything.
- The domain and the hosting
- The website and the CRM
- The Facebook Business Manager
- The Google accounts
Every account the business ran on sat under somebody else's control. And they weren't handing it back.
That's the scary part. You don't think about who holds the keys until you need them. The site still loads and the ads still run, but you can't change a thing and you can't leave.
So I called LegalShield.
Here's what the attorney did:
- Reviewed the contract, to see what the agreement actually said.
- Told us where my client stood: what they owned, and what to say and not say.
- Sent the developer a letter on the law firm's letterhead. That hits different than an email from me.
- Called the developer directly.
A few days later, we had all of it back.
The domain, the hosting, the website, the Business Manager and the Google accounts all went back into my client's hands. It didn't take months of back and forth. It took a letter and a phone call from an attorney.