Webuser Forums: Record for Migration?

Is this a record for site migration? Last year I employed a web development company to rebuild my website. Including SEO and the rebuild and developments I spent over £20.000 on the new site. Just 6 months afterwards, following all this investment I discovered that they were also servicing my direct competitor. I told them I was unhappy about this as it was a very small company. I was worried about security. I suspect my competitor targeted them. They then gave me a months notice in January 2008. I eventually found a good company willing to take the site over, though many rejected it on the basis that code was messy,there were complexities. There also seemed to be a lack of a complete set of files downloaded to FTP space. Apparently the whole CMS contains some files and code that the developer will not release, claiming it their IP. They never at any time told me that the CMS I had bought was not fully transportable.

Further, part way through the months notice they stopped carrying out any developments to the site - I have advertisers and partners waiting for site amendments and I also have amendments I need to have made to the site to re-position it towards the correct target audience. It is now 4 weeks since the scheduled migration date. I have not been able to make any amendments to the site (except copy) for over 5 weeks. This is because there is enormous difficulty separating the files from the CMS files, they keep supplying incorrect information and out of date files and are extremely unhelpful. I'm sure that 4 weeks to effect a migration must be a record. All the delays that they are causing me a loss of revenue and you can imagine the stress of not being in control of your own website! Is it normal to retain a CMS without advising that the CMS was not actually owned by the client? How long should migration take? Do you think they are just incompetent? ( they made loads of errors whilst they were my developers - didn't have the expertise they claimed)? Or do you think this situation is so extreme there might be darker forces at work? It looks to me for all the world that they are trying to sabotage my business.

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