- Original Poster
- #1
Hello guys,
Just joined here for a bit of advice, hopefully this is in the right place and someone can help us out
Basically we have an established company in the education sector (for this thread I'll call it X company). We are one of the main (if not the main) provider of these services and well known in our field. We're at the very top of google for most of our services and business is good.
I personally built the X company website around 2 years ago through my own personal web development company and put a link to my web dev company at the bottom of the X company website.
Around a year ago, I received an email from a young Romanian gentleman saying he was starting a company doing the same thing and had seen that I built the website for X company. He said he had (by coincidence) purchased the same website theme as was used in X company's site and had already commissioned a website to be built, but he wasn't happy with the finished article. He asked if I could redo their site to make it "look like X company or even better" obviously not realising that I am a director at X company and not just the guy who did their website.
I replied to decline their offer and advised that I am connected to the company and never received a reply. I also advised that they do not use the theme we were using as it was a difficult theme to work with.
Over the course of the next year they built a new website (with a different theme) and filled it with word-for-word information and pictures taken straight from our website. Some of the images I personally photo-shopped and edited, and now they were appearing on their site and social media pages. Even their company names and social media page titles were very similar to ours.
Fast forward a year and these guys are still ripping off our stuff regularly, but now they are at the number 2 spot on google directly below us, selling our services slightly cheaper than us.
Recently we uploaded a picture of one of our staff members gaining an award and low and behold, the picture of our staff member is now appearing on their site (albeit really small so you can't make him out but it's the same image). I just checked their terms and conditions, and literally word for word they have copied our entire 11 pages of legal document and put it on their site with our name changed to theirs.
This has gone beyond 'imitation being the highest form of flattery' and a bit of a joke. These guys basically gained accreditation to offer services off the back of our hard work. (we often get 'suspect' inquiries asking very specific questions about our delivery methods, documents, processes etc and they must be fishing for information posing as genuine customers).
We spent many many hours putting these documents together and writing articles, editing images and these guys have come along and leapfrogged their way to the top simply by copying our material and hiring the staff members with the appropriate qualifications who can pull it round for them. We put all our stuff together from scratch and tweaked and tailored it over many years (almost ten years on work), and these guys have copied it all within a year.
They even have the audacity to put "copyright - all rights reserved 2017' on their documents and their website! We of course have the same thing on ours.
I was thinking of contacting them but I'm not entirely sure what to say, I was hoping someone here might give me some advice or advise if there is something we can do that financially realistic for a small business to undertake.
I still have their email to me asking me to essentially clone our website for them, but are we wasting our time perusing this?
My main concern is that they offer everything that we do and more, so at the moment we are top of google and well known, it won't be long before these guys have overtaken us and people are confusing our company name with theirs (if they aren't doing that already).
Any help or advice would be fantastic
Just joined here for a bit of advice, hopefully this is in the right place and someone can help us out
Basically we have an established company in the education sector (for this thread I'll call it X company). We are one of the main (if not the main) provider of these services and well known in our field. We're at the very top of google for most of our services and business is good.
I personally built the X company website around 2 years ago through my own personal web development company and put a link to my web dev company at the bottom of the X company website.
Around a year ago, I received an email from a young Romanian gentleman saying he was starting a company doing the same thing and had seen that I built the website for X company. He said he had (by coincidence) purchased the same website theme as was used in X company's site and had already commissioned a website to be built, but he wasn't happy with the finished article. He asked if I could redo their site to make it "look like X company or even better" obviously not realising that I am a director at X company and not just the guy who did their website.
I replied to decline their offer and advised that I am connected to the company and never received a reply. I also advised that they do not use the theme we were using as it was a difficult theme to work with.
Over the course of the next year they built a new website (with a different theme) and filled it with word-for-word information and pictures taken straight from our website. Some of the images I personally photo-shopped and edited, and now they were appearing on their site and social media pages. Even their company names and social media page titles were very similar to ours.
Fast forward a year and these guys are still ripping off our stuff regularly, but now they are at the number 2 spot on google directly below us, selling our services slightly cheaper than us.
Recently we uploaded a picture of one of our staff members gaining an award and low and behold, the picture of our staff member is now appearing on their site (albeit really small so you can't make him out but it's the same image). I just checked their terms and conditions, and literally word for word they have copied our entire 11 pages of legal document and put it on their site with our name changed to theirs.
This has gone beyond 'imitation being the highest form of flattery' and a bit of a joke. These guys basically gained accreditation to offer services off the back of our hard work. (we often get 'suspect' inquiries asking very specific questions about our delivery methods, documents, processes etc and they must be fishing for information posing as genuine customers).
We spent many many hours putting these documents together and writing articles, editing images and these guys have come along and leapfrogged their way to the top simply by copying our material and hiring the staff members with the appropriate qualifications who can pull it round for them. We put all our stuff together from scratch and tweaked and tailored it over many years (almost ten years on work), and these guys have copied it all within a year.
They even have the audacity to put "copyright - all rights reserved 2017' on their documents and their website! We of course have the same thing on ours.
I was thinking of contacting them but I'm not entirely sure what to say, I was hoping someone here might give me some advice or advise if there is something we can do that financially realistic for a small business to undertake.
I still have their email to me asking me to essentially clone our website for them, but are we wasting our time perusing this?
My main concern is that they offer everything that we do and more, so at the moment we are top of google and well known, it won't be long before these guys have overtaken us and people are confusing our company name with theirs (if they aren't doing that already).
Any help or advice would be fantastic
