I'm winding down nowadays, and so got rid of a lot of payroll clients. The software I use had also become extortionate, it used to be less than £100 pa back in the day, but since being bought out, it has gone upto to an eye watering £2,500 pa. So in April I contacted them to tell them that we had reduced our number of clients considerably (lost 2/3rds of them) and didn't need open pay slips etc anymore. With only about 100-150 employees per month to deal with, I was expecting to pay about £500 - £1,000 maybe, but after a while they offered to reduce it by £14 (!), or if we signed a 3 year contract reduce it by £300.
So I had a look at Moneysoft, it looks a lot easier to use and only £200, so started to use that and told the old software company (I'm sure you know who they are by now) that we didnt need them anymore but would like access to our old data, and asked for a quote for that. They have come back and are demanding the whole £2.5K for the next year because I didnt give them 3 months notice before the start of the new year (1.5.19, and I contacted them only 1 month before) and I cannot have access to the old data afterwards. I don't think I've ever actually signed a contract, so wonder whether this is even legal. Although the invoice says "By renewing and using the products above you accept the following terms and conditions". As I say, the start date was 1.5.19, and we havn't used it since then. It's obviously very annoying to pay £2.5K for software you don't even use, and I think they are behaving very unreasonably, but is there anything I can do about it ?
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90 day notice periods are pretty common place, these days.
In any event, didn't you think to; read the contract, or speak to the software provider, to see what their expectations were?
Without wishing to appear disrespectful, you appear to have treated this (substantial) annual "arrangement" very casually.
Bit surprised at the offer to reduce it by £14.
Contract or no, that's just insulting. It'd be more respectful to reduce it by nothing and just insist on the contract terms.
Bite the bullet and move on , our old provider consistently increasing their fees forced us over our fear of migrating to a new software provider - ended up opting for Moneysoft - easy to use and very reasonable price
Bite the bullet and move on , our old provider consistently increasing their fees forced us over our fear of migrating to a new software provider - ended up opting for Moneysoft - easy to use and very reasonable price
I have to say that I fail to see why software companies need any notice at all.
Well you can not pay it, and see if they want to defend their T&C's in court.
I am not a lawyer, so cant tell you if these type of contract terms are enforceable or not when you have not signed an explicit contract to that effect.
NB which shysters is it? Iris or SAGE or some other c-words I wont trade with?
They will, they can and they do, if the sums are large enough (which in this case they are). Any solicitor would advise you to pay rather than go through the hassle of the court which will end up tripling the cost with almost zero hope of winning. Remember, this is not consumer law, this is contract law.
The flowery one rather than the herby one. I'm surprised that the herby one which I've used since computers first started is comparatively cheap.
I related my woes to my brother who is in IT, and he called it 'Gotcha' software. They have little interest in customer relations, just hike up the prices as soon as possible, and then put in long cancellation periods and try to get even longer 'contracts' because they know we will probably need to access our data for years in the future. And it doesnt matter if you don't want to use it anymore, because they've gotcha.
So a massive word of warning to people moaning about the tripling of the tax software prices following another buy out. If it's anything like the payroll, the prices will be 10 times higher in a few years time with no way out.