Interesting exchange of communications regarding the ownership of a domain and the outstanding payments from work completed on a website that happened before a company ceased trading (due to a death) but wants to retain the domain / website.
[Website Client] As discussed over the phone , we have initiated the transfer of the domain. You should have received the e-mail from Go Daddy to transfer the domain to my associate. Could you please approve that transfer request.
Also please let us know how much the company still owes you. We will send you the payment asap. Is PayPal good for you?
[Website Designers] Happy to transfer the domain once the invoices are paid but think a bank transfer would be more appropriate. What are you going to do with the domains as once the invoices are settled? As part of our company standards we registered the domain initially to ourselves until the website work was completed, We can certainly transfer full ownership to yourself and give you full access to all email. We have built this site from scratch and have worked on this site as well as the others for 3 years now we know it inside out and can change anything you require. The website has never been fully paid for hence the fact the ownership remains with ourselves but happy to transfer it to you on receipt of final payments.
We have previously been contacted by another website designers regarding this account / website, was he acting on your behalf?
FYI this is the info we have send to them
Happy to continue working on this account but firstly will need to level the account as there are two portions of work and hosting to be paid for (we have previously done an SEO project on the website, done various updates and also cleared some major virus infections on the site as well as various maintenance work)
I will finalise an invoice now and believe the outstanding fees to be approximately £3500.
[Website Client] Thank you for your prompt response. I will let you work on the details, as this is his area of expertise. I will forward him this email and he will be in contact with you.
In the last few months has contacted someone else to help with the website problem, but I don’t know if it is the same guy you was contacted by, I will ask him.
[Website Designers] What do you want to do with the other websites? There is also still viruses on one of the other websites that we dont host, that should be removed. Have attached a final invoice for all outstanding work / hosting, once this is paid will do anything required to get you back and working but would be happy to give advice as to how best host / update / maintain the website. We personally would be happy to keep hosting and maintaining the website for you
[Website Client] Thank you very much for your email, it has brought to my attention a few more questions though. I would need to have a some more details regarding the work you accomplished on the website, before I give any bank orders.
Would you be so kind as to send me the work contract you had, as well as the exchange of emails about the work he intended you to do for him, for each website. Should I understand that you created the websites and have the wordpress themes and plugins / templates for them? I thank you very much for your input.
[New Website Designers] I am helping a company with a domain registered with you. The owner of the company passed away and now I am trying to gain access to various parts of their web presence; e-mail, DNS, website etc. Since the owner passed away the existing webmaster has locked the company out of their e-mail and DNS, and is asking for ficticious unpaid bills to be paid before he provides access.
The domain name is and the original tech / admin contact was ourselves – I am wondering how you can help us regain control of the zone? We paid for the renewals of the domains for the past few years and we still have access to his e-mail account so any communication can come through that account – unless the old webmaster starts changing passwords again.
We are able to provide details of ownership of the the company and I would think you can check your records to see that changes have recently been changed – we have asked the website designers to provide copies of e-mails relating to the outstanding invoices, which he has been unable to do as yet.
[Website Designers] They have been disputing the outstanding invoices but we have provided them with details of all work done and the final invoice recently. Acknowledge that if the outstanding invoices are not related specifically to the domain name renewal, then we probably have no choice but to transfer ownership of the domain name back to the owners as it is a breach of ICANN regulations to hold a domain name hostage against payment of outstanding amounts not directly related to the actual domain registration.
The outstanding invoices are directly related to website design, seo and domain hosting / maintenance and renewals, they have been messing us around for ages now and just wish they would settle their invoice and would be happy to move on with this one.
Bit of background info, I previously worked with the business owner who passed away and I knew he was ill for sometime and we had agreements in place regarding this work and the payments.
[Website Designers] We understand you are disputing the outstanding bills for the domain,I dont know why you are doing this and am happy to retain control and ownership of the domain in lieu of payment. As I have said previously we can transfer the domain to yourselves on payment of outstanding invoices. Looking forward to completing for you. The account will remain suspended until the invoice are paid, I think you have the invoice and the payment details, as soon as you confirm payment will be made the websites will be put back live.