For legal reasons but more for respect, I have to openly state beforehand that the Andrew Morton mentioned in this article is no relation to the Andrew Morton, the respected journalist and writer who wrote the Princess Diana Biography. More details on that Andrew Morton can be found at his Wiki Pedia page.
This article has been written by myself, Craig Edmonds, the Director of 123 Marbella Web Design S.L in an attempt to defend strong allegations against me and my company.
Firstly I have to thank all the clients who have written in with their messages of understanding and support in regards to this issue.
It just proves to myself and Justin that we do an excellent job and that its worth going the extra mile for our clients because we are appreciated no matter what.
Everyone should know, that Justin and I are taking these allegations very seriously and I have the best people in Marbella looking into it.
The incident has now been reported to the National Police in Marbella and investigations will continue, I am determined that the persons involved are given justice.
Click here to see a copy of the formal police complaint (pdf format)
I will personally pay a cash reward for information which leads to an arrest of the persons involved.
If anyone has ANY information regarding the offending email or the individuals involved, you can contact me in complete confidence on +34 637 547 342 or email craig@123marbella.com.
For those of you that are not aware of the situation, on the 18th of June 2008 at 15.31, an email was sent to a variety of our 123 Marbella clients, friends and family.
Please see a copy of the offending email here
For technical persons, click to see a copy of the headers for this email
The obvious goal of the email was to cast doubt over my personal and professional integrity and went on to allege that I am performing illegal activities and urged current clients to move their services away from 123 Marbella Web Design SL.
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! At this point, I should clearly point out that its a criminal offence in Spain to distribute emails such as the one above and Spains legal system is fully prepared, very quickly to deal with such offences, the penaltiy being high fines and imprisonment for the offender! |
The email was sent by a certain individual called "Peter Nimod, who according to the email signature is a Private Detective connected with a Marbella Private Investigation firm called Entre Llaves SL” using an email called rafalnadal2008@hotmail.es
The email contained some pretty strong allegations related to some dealings I have had with Andrew Morton of Advance Marbella, an ex client of 123 Marbella, a client I should add that was ask to leave our patronage. Details of which you can read below.
It seems that "Peter Nimod" went through the 123 Marbella Web Design portfolio page on the 123 Marbella Web Site, clicked through to my clients web sites, extracted contact email addresses and sent out a slanderous email claiming me to be a "devious character lacking in morals" and continues on with a lengthy email to allege that I partake in illegal activities detrimental to my clients business etc.
All of which is simply not true of course.
I did send a copy of the email to Andrew Morton at Advance Marbella to see if he knew anything about it, because he may be just a "victim" in all of this but apparently according to the email below he “knows nothing about it”. Andrew did say in the email that I should expect an “ACTA” in the next day or two because he is going to sue me....for something.
Here is his response in an email below.
18/6/2008 - 17.52 - "Sorry Craig. I have no idea what you are talking about"
However its all quite a coincidence. He is planning some kind of court action against me and a few days before that's supposed to happen, a potentially damaging email is distributed to my clients from a Marbella Private Investigation firm, using a hotmail address.
Anyway, there are two sides two every story.
I have nothing to hide and I feel that I need to put my clients at ease and assure them that there is nothing untoward happening with their services.
I am a systems administrator so yes, I have access to confidential information but its detrimental to my business to copy leads and sell them. I operate within a strict code of professional conduct and have no desire to interfere with other people’s business.
Justin and I have been providing web services to thousands of individuals and businesses over the years and we can count the disgruntled clients on one hand.
That’s how good our client retention rate is!
Now for the specifics of the allegations:
The englishmarbella.com Domain Name allegation
Before you read on, just take a look at a couple of emails between Andrew Morton and myself over the course of our relationship and you may decide for yourself not to even bother reading any further.
1/12/2006 - 19.43 - "Andrew - here are the details to fully manage your domain"
27/11/2006 - 22.55 "Andrew - you are no longer a client of 123 Marbella"
27/11/2006 - 18.05 - "Craig, I will have a lawyer onto you in no time"
27/11/2006 - 17.44 - "Andrew - I cant do the web design for free so don't be so upset"
27/11/2006 - 16.39 - "Andrew. I kindly decline the work"
27/11/2006 - 16.39 - "Craig. Can you do my new site or not?"
So, here we go with the scenario of events....
There are specific reasons why Andrew Morton of Advance Marbella is no longer the owner of the domain name englishmarbella.com as well as now being an ex client and this is purely down to not paying his bills and being unreasonable and irrational in his actions towards me on several different occasions.
My attitude towards this particular issue, in some people's mind, may add some form of credibility to "Peter Nimod’s" claims but there are some facts that have been left out and you will see where I am coming from if you continue to read on.
1. Sometimes I am available to do charity work and donate some of my programming time and IT resources where I can because quite frankly the needs and requirements of most charities along the coast in terms of web sites, is out of reach of many.
If you look on my kudos and karma page I currently support several charities by giving them free hosting, domains and programming time, without anything in return.
I do this out of the goodness of my heart.
But in Andrews case I was not prepared to do any free work becaue some of the work he was asking for was too much and he is not a charity.
I also have a wife and child to think of and the kind of work he was asking for was a great deal and I was quite honestly trying to squeeze it into my busy schedule but finally figured that it would have interrupted my paid work which brings in the daily bread.
So when Andrew Morton sent me a friendly email asking if I still wanted to do the free work for him, I said given the option, I would like to politely decline and that he should start looking for someone else.
Sure, I did originally agree to do some work with him and contra that work against some free English lessons that I would give out to some of my marbellaguide.com clients but I was getting busier by the minute and Andrew did ask me if he should ask someone else to do it for him.
I should point out that this was back in November 2006 and he only launched his one page web site in early June 2008.
I am guessing I did not give him the answer he wanted.
Funnily enough, that’s when all the problems started.
2. When Andrew Morton decided that because I would not provide free web design for him he wanted to move his web site and domain name to another provider which although understandable from a clients point of view, it does not really matter where you host your web site.
He also demanded in no uncertain terms that he would like the €250 that he had paid me 3 months earlier for the annual hosting. I pointed out that in reality it does not matter where you host the web site, just because I won’t be doing the free web design work for him, another designer can still use the hosting and seeing that he was paid up for another 9 months what was the point?
He was determined, quite strongly, to get his refund so I mentioned that if I were to agree issuing a full refund that that I would have to disconnect his web site immediately, seeing that I had been hosting it for 3 months already so we should perhaps discount the 3 months and give him back the difference.
It was only then that he decided to start his legal threats saying that his “team of lawyers” will eat me alive etc, which is not really something you just blurt out to another person seeing that I was quite good to him over the years.
I have been living on the coast for 10 years now and have pretty much seen it all so I am not really fazed by any kind of threat anymore so it was “water off a ducks back” so to speak.
So I proceeded to turn off his web site to prove a point.
Andrew obviously did not like the fact that I can turn web site on and off when I please so he then came to my home, where I live with my wife and at the time, 6 month old daughter.
He came at app. 9.30pm which was way after my baby was asleep and proceeded to ring my buzzer in order to access the premises.
The buzzing of course woke my sleeping child and frightened my wife to the extent that she said we should call the police.
So Andrew maintained this for approximately 30 minutes during which time I was asked via the intercom to “come downstairs and deal with it like a man” and “how he is not going to let me get away” and “how connected he is” and of course the all time favourite, “do you know who I am?”.
Also in between buzzing spells I was also subjected to a barrage of sms message and phone calls containing all kinds of threats, which to be honest again I shrugged off.
I am guessing that his web site was pretty important to him!
He did end up leaving after about 45 minutes and I discussed with my wife that it was better to simply turn his web site on again and refund his money because he is obviously a nut.
So the next day, I gave my full cooperation and gave a copy of the web site files and a couple of days later full instructions on how to transfer the domain name to another provider. Nothing was withheld and I was very open about the whole thing.
In fact, to show my good nature and good faith, as a gesture of goodwill, I fully refunded his prepaid web hosting for the whole year to the value of €250 + iva by issuing a banker draft which was delivered to him the next day by my lawyer with who thankfully got Andrew Morton to sign a piece of paper saying it was received.
I actually thought the whole issue was behind us, but boy was I wrong!
3. Andrew Morton, at this point had all the details he needed and despite me giving him full instructions and all access details to manage and transfer the domain name away from 123 Marbella, he failed to do so within the time that he was the legally registered owner of the domain name. He had until September 2007 a full 9 months!
Whether that fault lay with his new web host/web designer, I don’t know, but after a client goes elsewhere and of course treats me in the manner I was treated, then I am not really going to jump to attention and consider his needs.
4. Then, Andrew Morton, for whatever reason, upon the expiry of the domain name englishmarbella.com in September 2007, failed to pay the renewal fee and as the official reseller for the domain name, it gets transferred to the resellers ownership automatically, in this case me.
This is standard industry practice in a reseller environment and is common business across all industries.
Here is the very last invoice he paid from 23/9/2006 until 23/09/2007
If you don’t pay for something, it gets repossessed.
As all of my clients know, we give everyone ample time for the renewal of domain names and quite often I have received complaints about the amount of times clients get reminded by email.
Now you all know why we send out so many reminders!
4. Usually, when a client "forgets" to renew a domain name, I am very accommodating and have on more than one occasion simply given the client the domain name as long as they honour the backdated registration fees. This is usually because they have treated me with some respect.
It should be noted that I am under no obligation to do anything after a domain expires but do so because of my good nature. If a client fails to pay his renewal fees then as in most management situations it up to my discretion.
However, in Andrew Morton’s case you have probably established by now why I was determined not to give in so easily.
6. On Feb 8th 2008 at 13.35, I received a barrage of phone calls and sms text messages from Andrew Morton demanding the codes and details to transfer the englishmarbella.com domain name.
I did not wish to engage in a barbaric confrontation with Andrew Morton like the last time, and he has also been told previously that any correspondence or contact he wishes to make with me should be done through my lawyers who will document his request and take according action,
Seeing that he is also not a client anymore, I actually have no reason to liaise with Andrew Morton directly and being the owner of my own business I can pretty much speak to who I like.
So he was told by sms message that he should send an email to legal@123marbella.com and my lawyers will handle it in due course.
Unfortunately the harassment continued for about an hour or two and I had to get my lawyers to contact him directly after which the harassment stopped.
Due to the previous problems I have had with Andrew, I decided that it be best for my lawyers to handle things from now on.
At this point, even though I was entirely justified to do so, I did not report him to the police for harassment even though I was fully within my right to do so.
8. After producing enough evidence in the form of Facturas, Emails and Domain Name records, to show that Andrew Morton failed to perform any due diligence in regards to his domain, my lawyers were satisfied that Andrew Morton has absolutely no grounds to ownership of the domain name and no grounds to sue me either.
Satisfied with that, this prompted me then to secure the domain name for an additional 10 years through to 2017.
Andrew lawyers then got in touch with us and we told them that if Andrew wished to re-acquire the domain name, then it would be €1,000 taking into account that the domain is registered through to 2017.
Without all the fact, this may appear that I have stolen his domain name, some may decide that its downright extortion but if you marry all the facts together you will understand my position on this matter.
To summarise this issue
Andrew Morton legally owning the domain name englishmarbella.com > FALSE
I stole the domain name from Andrew Morton > FALSE
I am trying to extort money from Andrew Morton > FALSE
(okay, the last one has a “twinge” of truth depending on how you view it but can you blame me?)
Now on to Andalucian Dream Homes which is actually a really old issue and was sorted years ago, amicably I might add.
In fact I have spoken to David Honeyman on the 20th of June and he was very surpised at these old allegations.
Why Andalucian Dream Homes is not a direct client anymore allegation
123 Marbella created Andalucian Dream Homes' first web site when they opened their very first office in Elviria what seems now to be many years ago.
I did a great job for them delivering exactly what David Honeyman wanted.
Andalucian Dream Homes was fairly small at the time and did not need much work done but a short while later for personal reasons I went on a 10 month web design sabbatical, during which time I was not accepting any new projects.
During that sabbatical time, Andalucian Dream Homes needed a new web site done because they were growing and at the time I could not accommodate them so they were referred to another company.
Andalucian Dream Homes did not leave unhappy.
To summarise this issue
Andalucian Dream Homes dumping 123 Marbella > FALSE
The Andalucian Dream Homes Domain Name allegation
Yes, some time ago, after ADH went elsewhere I was paid by Cloud Nine Marbella to perform some seo services and a common trick when performing seo is to register misspellings of competitors domain names and redirect traffic.
This is why I bang on to my current clients that they should register all their domain names including misspellings!
So, I went off in search of come juicy domains that I could redirect traffic to my client’s web site and I came across www.andaluciadreamhomes.com (notice there is no s after the andalucia bit) and thought BRILLIANT!
It was available, I registered it and redirected potential buyers to the Cloud Nine Web Site and it worked great until one of David Honeymans’ crew got wind of it.
David and another chap, the Sales Director I believe, came to my offices and we had a meeting about it and shortly afterwards I transferred the domain name.
Sure, I felt a bit guilty about David being a previous client but I was asked to do a job by a current client and I did it and did it well.
I dont need to make excuses for doing my job.
I have corresponded with David a few times since then and the whole issue was buried as far as David is concerned.
To summarise this issue
123 Marbella selling other clients leads to Cloud Nine > FALSE
123 Marbella registering a misspelling > TRUE (but its not illegal to do so) |
