Legal Question in Consumer Law in Illinois

I run an Illinois heating and air company that is starting a residential division. The owner's, last year, had signed on with a web developer to develop and maintain a website for the commercial part of the business. This web developer has not done a good job with any of it. The wording they put into the commercial website is attrocious and the initial development of the residential website is nothing like what we asked for at the initial meeting, and to change anything they want more money. We are totally unhappy with them and want to move to another company, but as part of the initial design contract, they slipped into the wording that we would be under contract for maintenance and optimization for 5 years. The cancellation clause is half of the total contract, which on the commercial side would be 11k alone. We are not getting what we asked for or paying for, although this design company disputes our feelings stating that we should be very happy. Is there anything under Illinois law that would allow us to terminate these contracts without penalty? Yes, the owner's signed the contracts, but these are simple, not college educated people.


Asked on 2/19/13, 3:18 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Stephen Messutta

Take the contract to an attorney. There may be other provisions relating to quality standards of the work, or some other clause that could put the brakes on the company and make them decide to work with you. The only other way would be to stop payment and bring it to a head with a lawsuit, and the attorney can advise you based on the totality of the contract whether you might have a chance because sometimes if people feel compelled to hire a contractor to correct screw-ups from prior contractors, courts see that you mean business because you're incurring new costs to correct past mistakes. Sometimes this works. Again have a local attorney review the contract - for a few hundred dollars the savings could be significant and the company would get what it needs and wanted.....

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Answered on 2/20/13, 2:32 pm


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