Solsoft

Experiences with Bristol based IT company, Solsoft Technology Ltd.

Solsoft were featured on HTV West's TV series, Out of Order, in 2002, with a follow-up programme made shortly after. Out of Order was a consumer affairs series that took customer complaints to the companies involved. At the time, I was one of Solsoft's clients having commissioned them to develop software for my site. The work was never completed. I contacted Out of Order and spoke to one of the researchers. He said that Solsoft had threatened to sue them if they aired the programme. He told me of around eight other small businesses in the Bristol area, who had all lost money to Solsoft. Including myself, I think the total was about £30-40,000. The money was never seen again and the commissioned work, consisting of web design, software development and other IT services, was never completed properly or at all.

The researcher said that Solsoft had gone into receivership. The business closed, but reopened shortly after under a slightly different name and with mostly the same staff. The result of this, I was told, is that legally, if a client wanted to sue the company, they wouldn't be able to because the "Solsoft" they were dealing with had closed down and so couldn't be held liable.

The researcher gave me the contact details of a number of the companies who had commissioned Solsoft. These were all small businesses in the local area. One of the guys I spoke to said that Solsoft had threatened to sue him. He had refused to keep paying for work he had not received, while Solsoft accused him of breaking his contract by not continuing payments. He later told me Solsoft went ahead and took him to court. Apparently, the judge dismissed the case within about ten minutes and the guy didn't have to pay Solsoft anything. There was another guy, from another company, who had been at the court on the same day, who was also being sued by Solsoft. I was told that case too was dismissed by the judge. These cases were only to defend against Solsoft trying to take more money, not to countersue. From the way the guy was talking, I wouldn't be surprised if he later sued Solsoft to try and get his money back, but I didn't speak to him after that. The last thing he said to me was that he wasn't going to leave it. Like with the Out of Order programme, he wanted to take his story to whoever would listen.

By chance, when I mentioned my experiences with Solsoft in my site newsletter, another local business contacted me saying they too had commissioned Solsoft:

We were very interested to read your e-mail about Solsoft because we have also been prey to their 'slick' selling techniques ... About 2 years ago we were contacted by them to let a sales rep visit us ... We thought it looked very professional ...

I am sending you our correspondence with them as attachments when we decided to end dealings with them ... They charge us £... a month for what we consider to be bugger all work and like you were threatened with legal action if we did not continue to pay. We are still with them because we cannot get out of the contract.

In the correspondence they sent me, they had sent a letter to Solsoft giving an overview of all the things Solsoft said they would do, but hadn't. Surprisingly, it wasn't just the project as a whole that hadn't been completed, but lots of small details like entering "keyword meta tags" into a web page, which was part of the web design service Solsoft offered.

For my own project, a two week deadline (as specified in the contract) had stretched into months and still the project wasn't complete. More deadlines were proposed but each time they were broken. Eventually I decided to stop my direct debits until the issue with the software was resolved and explained this in an email. Shortly after, I contacted a solicitor who sent a letter to Solsoft. We had no reply to this letter, nor the second we sent. Eventually my solicitor talked to Mike Ralston, MD of Solsoft. We agreed to a meeting. Mike said, "I can certainly come to see you". I took him up on the offer although when I tried to arrange a time he said he was too busy. He invited me to Bristol and said, "We will cover any travel expenses that you may incur," although that didn't happen either. I enjoyed the meeting, it was a chance to clear the air and maybe resolve the situation, but I left feeling nothing had changed. I felt it would have been better for me to go with another developer, but when I touched on this Mike said if that happens they would invoice me for the remaining money, which would have come to around £10,000.

I had broken the contract by cancelling my direct debits. Naively, I had not paid attention to the small print. In my defense, if it went that far, we would have argued Solsoft broke the contract first by not delivering the software within a reasonable time frame. Cancelling the direct debits seemed reasonable to me, under the circumstances, but that was before I fully appreciated how a few words in a contract can make all the difference!

Begrudgingly, I agreed to another deadline, although I didn't have any faith in the company at this point. I didn't believe they would stick to the deadline, but I figured it would strengthen my position if they didn't and it also gave them the benefit of the doubt (again). The new deadline was about six weeks away. Mike had even said, "If it isn't complete this time, you can sue us."

During the lead up to this latest and what would become the last deadline, some work was done, but the project, which was to create e-card software, still wasn't completed. The original two week deadline was for the first stage of the project, to get a basic script up and running to send e-cards. The next few months should have seen the completion of the rest of the project. My dealings with Solsoft lasted around a year. Towards the end of that period, they still hadn't got the first stage working, at least not for me. The programmer, Alan, who had come to see me with the salesman, had left Solsoft part way through the project. I don't know the circumstances surrounding his departure, but Mike later suggested that Alan was the reason for the delays. While Alan was still working there, he said they'd had to hire an assistant programmer, Chris, to help with the workload. After Alan left I got this email from Chris:

From: Chris ...
To: Jason Brown
Sent: 22 August 2000
Subject: Update

Jason,

Apologies for not updating you sooner but if you read on you will hopefully understand why. Alan is no longer the technical director at Solsoft, and as far as I know has nothing to do with the day to day running of the company anymore. This was as much a surprise to me as it no doubt is to you, and I have been left in a very awkward situation now, being the senior programmer at the company having only been here a couple of months. As you can image I am very busy helping and training others as well as developing web sites, however, before you panic, I am still working on your site, although not so much of my time is spent doing this as I and no doubt you would like. I am, distractions forbidding, working purely on your site today and going through the list produced by Alan of features still to do.

There is, however, a new programmer starting on the 1st September, who will help to lighten the load for me so I can concentrate on my web sites, in particular yours.

I will try to keep you updated more frequently, although I am away after today for the rest of the week, and back in after the bank holiday on Tuesday 29th Aug.

Speak to you soon

Chris ...

Solsoft - Working Websites, as advertised on GWR, Eagle and City Line.

Chris was the conscientious one:

From: Chris ...
To: Jason Brown
Sent: 12 July 2000
Subject: RE: Postcard software

Jason,

I totally agree with you that the continuous missing of deadlines is not good enough and, although I haven't been here long and wasn't involved in the start of project, as the main developer of the site I take full responsibility for this and am not particularly happy to start a new job in this awkward situation. The stage one will definitely be complete by Friday ...

Chris ...

Not that stage one was completed, or that things improved after Alan left. Chris didn't last long either. He was replaced by Graham:

Jason,

As you know, Chris ... has left Solsoft and I have now been put in charge of the Wickedmoon.net project ...

Look forward to hearing from you.

Regards
Graham ...

On the subject of people coming and going from Solsoft, the researcher I spoke with at Out of Order said the salesman had left too because he wasn't happy about something. I never found out what.

After the meeting with Mike, he wrote in an email dated 23 August 2000, "I would like to confirm that Stage 1 of the project will be completed by the end of September." A couple of weeks later I got this email from Chris:

From: Chris ...
To: Jason Brown
Sent: 05 September 2000
Subject: Wicked Moon update

Jason,

Apologies I couldn't take your call yesterday as I was in meetings for most of the day. I will get in touch by the end of the day with a full update and plan of action for the coming weeks.

As you will be able to see not many changes have been made since we last discussed the progress, but I assure you we are keeping to the deadline of the end of September as agreed. The reason for this lack of progress is due to my new position of Team leader, during this big transitional stage for the company I am being distracted from developing sites. However we are currently recruiting more development staff (this being one of my
distractions) which will mean after stage 1 is complete the possibility of handing it over to one of our senior programmers to develop stages 2 and 3 ( I will discuss this with you in more detail later). In the mean time rest assured that the deadline will be met and I will keep you informed towards the end of this week as to the progress on the site.

Regards

Chris

Another couple of weeks later I received this:

From: Chris ...
To: Jason Brown
Sent: 18 September 2000
Subject: Update

Jason,

My sincere apologies for not speaking to you last week, but as I mentioned before I really am rushed off my feet at the moment ... I am really going to make big effort to finish off stage 1 this week and will let you know how I am getting on around Wednesday.

...

Chris

September came and went. I phoned Chris, who was still working there at the time. I felt he was a little in over his head. He apologised for the project not being complete. However, Mike thought otherwise. I sent the following email to Mike:

From: Jason Brown
To: Mike Ralston
Sent: 02 October 2000
Subject: Re: Solsoft

Mike,

Thanks for your continued assurances that the first stage would be complete by the end of September. I have been very patient since Alan ... failed to keep to his initial deadline of 2 weeks for this stage. It is now around 6 months later and, on checking the software and chatting with Chris ... this morning, the 2nd of October, there is still no usable software.

I appreciate that progress has been made on the software, but as Chris has admitted when I phoned him this morning, he did leave it late into September before getting stuck into the project, leaving important testing and coding till the last minute ... important features of the software are still not in place or finished.

We need to discuss how best to move forward on this given your original comments that I could sue if the software was still not complete by the end of September. As you know, numerous deadlines have already been missed, many without so much as an apology, so to hear Chris promising another deadline for Wednesday this week does little to instil confidence in the company.

As I brought to your attention before, that 2 week deadline set by Alan when I first commissioned the software would have allowed me to use it to generate revenue ...

Given all the above and previous conversations, I feel pushed into and justified in cancelling my direct debit for the time being, or permanently if this situation is not resolved amicably and legal proceedings required.

I am meeting with my solicitor tomorrow to discuss the situation thus far. Given your previous comments I would be interested in your thoughts on this matter, having missed the latest deadline and already agreed compensation in the form of added features in the software for the missing of previous deadlines.

Regards

Jason

Mike's reply:

From: Mike Ralston
To: Jason Brown
Sent: 02 October 2000
Subject: RE: Solsoft

Jason,

I am under the impression from Chris that all the software has been completed as discussed, and that you had indicated your happiness with what had been delivered.

I will speak to Chris immediately to confirm this situation.

Kind regards

Mike Ralston

My reply:

From: Jason Brown
To: Mike Ralston
Sent: 02 October 2000
Subject: Re: Solsoft

Mike,

No, I had indicated quite the opposite on discovering some of the features were still not in place or functioning properly ... Chris will be the first to say I was far from happy during our telephone conversation earlier this morning.

Chris had promised *another* deadline for Wednesday morning, but on considering the situation thus far I am furious the software is *still* not complete. Like I say I will be speaking with my solicitor tomorrow.

Regards

Jason

Mike's reply:

From: Mike Ralston
To: Jason Brown
Sent: 03 October 2000
Subject: RE: Solsoft

Jason,

I am at a loss as to what the problem is. The software is finished and more robust than ever envisaged, and as with any product of this type there will always be small 'tweaks' to get it working exactly how you want it to.

...

Kind regards

Mike Ralston

When I was looking for a software developer and first contacted Solsoft, they sent over a salesman with one of the programmers, Alan, who took me out to discuss the project over lunch. This left a good impression, although I felt it was a little over the top. I had only made speculative enquiries to the company. I wasn't particularly inspired by the programmer, but Solsoft had the advantage of spreading your payments over a number of years, an option none of the other developers I contacted offered. This would have been particularly attractive to small businesses who couldn't afford expensive initial outlays. In summing up my experiences, I wondered whether Solsoft were using small businesses, who weren't really in a position to do anything about it even if they wanted to, to build up their own business. Many small businesses were locked into contracts they didn't feel were fair, paying for services which they did not receive. When I first contacted Solsoft, they were a small company, consisting of only a few people. By the time I contacted my solicitor, Mike had said the company had grown to a couple of dozen or so people and were now located in "our new premises next to IBM in Bristol".

Interestingly, while I never did see stage one of the project complete and a working e-card script, I did get Solsoft's Christmas e-card, which was sent while all of this was going on. I don't know what software they used, but the format of the links was the same as in the software they were designing for me.

I do wonder how many companies were affected by Solsoft. The Out of Order programme only knew of those who happened to be tuning in at the time and wanted to expose Solsoft. If any companies have had negative experiences with Solsoft and would like to contact me, please do so.

I had already spent a lot of money on a solicitor and it had got me nowhere. I decided not to pursue further legal action and just cut my losses. I half expected to be taken to court myself, for not keeping up the direct debits, but I never heard from Solsoft. It was around this time that I discovered Solsoft had gone into receivership, only to reopen under a slightly different business name.

At the time of writing, Solsoft are still going strong at www.solsoft.co.uk.

Jason