How to cancel a contract early - Help

[Frank the Insurance guy]

I am currently 7 months into a 12 month contract with a PPC marketing agency.

My contract is clear on cancellation within the 12 months: "You are required to make monthly payments for the remainder of your minimum term as outlined in your contract. Therefore, if you are within your contract and wish to cancel, you will be required to pay out your outstanding payments in full, regardless of campaign performance."

Issue I have is how useless the PPC campaign has been - looking at searches that lead to clicks, these are so generalised that there are very few genuine conversations. Over time we have worked on negative keywords to try and get to the real buyers, but still very little (basically none!).

Has anyone got experience of taking on someone and cancelling a contract earlier due to non-performance?

What has raised my concerns is that at the beginning of May, in frustration at the poor performance of our ad campaign, I set up an ads campaign myself to run along side the "experts" - in just a couple of weeks I have had more conversations from the ads and 75% have gone on to "buy"!

As a business I relied on their "expertise" as thought that would prove beneficial on a return on investment.

Not sure how relevant, but in case anyone needs it - its only a small campaign to get a few enquiries, nothing major, so budget of aprox £250pm on PPC plus their monthly management fee £120 pm. Initial discussions we were working on getting 4 conversations a week, but barely got 1 a week!!

I'm going to pause the experts campaign to stop losing money, but don't want to continue paying them a monthly management fee to not manage anything!

 

[japancool]

What does the contract say regarding performance targets?

 

[Frank the Insurance guy]

What does the contract say regarding performance targets?

Nothing specific - just their responsibilities:

".....we will carry out our services with a reasonable standard of care. Our PPC services will consist of:

• Set-up & Build: We will set up paid advertising accounts with search engines and build a PPC advertising campaign for your business.
• Monitoring & Optimisation: This will include a range of campaign strategies, including: Keyword Research, Competitor Analysis, Mobile Optimisation and Ad Extension Implementation.
• Transparency & Satisfaction: We will provide you with monthly reporting and complete ownership of the advertising account. You will also be able to provide service feedback to make sure you are happy with the service from your Account Manager."

Looking at this I am thinking - have they carried out their services with a reasonable standard of care?

Like many, I'm not a lawyer and hindsight is a wonderful thing - suddenly wondering why the above terms do not mention reasonable standard of skill AND care - perhaps they know they haven't got the skills needed!!

 

[MBE2017]

For the few months left it will probably cause you more distress and wasted time, maybe take it as a hard learnt lesson.

The last time I considered using advertising I had loads of promises, but no-one willing to put anything in writing, to enable myself to hold them to account. I decided to stick with free advertising and sales were more than acceptable.

 

[WaveJumper]

As above but in the mean time I think I would be having a lot of meetings with them pushing them on the success rate of their service and get them to justify the performance

 

[UKSBD]

Very unlikely you can get out of it so this is what I would do if I had the time.

Phone your account manager 2 or 3 times a day, keep asking questions, keep changing your mind, keep adding a new keyword, keep wanting the wording of you ad changed, want the location changed, want the daily budget changed, etc. basically become that awkward person who takes up so much of their time that they are pleased to get rid off you.

Even if they don't cancel the contract, get pleasure out of knowing how annoying and costly you are to them

Edit to add: read the contract 1st though to ensure they can't charge you for extra time.

 

[WaveJumper]

You never know they may get so fed up hearing from you they will cancel the contract themselves

 

[Frank the Insurance guy]

Very unlikely you can get out of it so this is what I would do if I had the time.

Phone your account manager 2 or 3 times a day, keep asking questions, keep changing your mind, keep adding a new keyword, keep wanting the wording of you ad changed, want the location changed, want the daily budget changed, etc. basically become that awkward person who takes up so much of their time that they are pleased to get rid off you.

Even if they don't cancel the contract, get pleasure out of knowing how annoying and costly you are to them

Edit to add: read the contract 1st though to ensure they can't charge you for extra time.

Ha ha..Would love to do that....but that's just not me. I like to play things straight.

I think I'll just make a formal complaint, and make an offer of half the remaining charges and see if they are happy to negotiate. Otherwise, as some have said, I'll just have to put it down to experience and carry on paying them!

 

[UKSBD]

Ha ha..Would love to do that....but that's just not me. I like to play things straight.

I think I'll just make a formal complaint, and make an offer of half the remaining charges and see if they are happy to negotiate. Otherwise, as some have said, I'll just have to put it down to experience and carry on paying them!

Read the cancellation terms very carefully, there is probably a very short window (if one at all) that you can cancel in and if you miss it you will be tied in for another 12 months

 

[bwglaw]

Any lawyer worth their salt will only advise on sight of entire contract - snippets here and there are not helpful because the entire contractual relationship needs to be reviewed to gauge, amongst others things, how well the contract is drafted, its enforceability etc etc. Having over 17 years experience, I can get a feel of what kind of contractual parties we are dealing with and this goes a long way in advising/deciding the best way forward, including negotiations to terminate early.

 

[Fagin2021]

Ha ha..Would love to do that....but that's just not me. I like to play things straight.

I think I'll just make a formal complaint, and make an offer of half the remaining charges and see if they are happy to negotiate. Otherwise, as some have said, I'll just have to put it down to experience and carry on paying them!

Sadly, this is not uncommon with agencies and the contract you've signed seems pretty clear regarding cancellation.

Fortunately, you're not talking about a pile of dosh so it's probably best to do as you say above and lick your wounds.

The alternative (knowing you would lose) is to cancel and tell them to stuff it. The onus will then be on them to decide whether they want the bad publicity by pursuing a small sum of money.

If it's not against forum rules, you might want to name them as a warning to others.

 

[japancool]

They're not based in Altrincham, are they?

 

[Fagin2021]

Looking at this I am thinking - have they carried out their services with a reasonable standard of care?

As you have access to your account, one thing you might do is set the reporting date for the last 6 months and have a look at the change history. This will tell you whether they've been trying to manage your account actively or whether they've just let it run 'as is' even though it hasn't been working.
If the latter, it will strengthen your hand in any negotiation.

 

[fisicx]

Agree with @Fagin2021 - if they haven’t been adjusting every couple of days then one wonders what they have been doing for the £120 admin fee.

When they set everything up, did they create a set of landing pages? If not then everything they did was pretty much pointless.

 

[ctrlbrk]

Transparency & Satisfaction: We will provide you with monthly reporting and complete ownership of the advertising account. You will also be able to provide service feedback to make sure you are happy with the service from your Account Manager."

About this clause, have you provided service feedback? Have you told them you were unhappy with your acct manager?

 

[AllUpHere]

I know it doesn't help, but nobody who's any good at what they do, does anything for 120 quid. You aren't getting anything useful, because you aren't paying for anything useful. Being completely honest, they don't know what they are doing, but then neither do you. It was a mistake to hire them; it was a mistake to use anyone to help you with such a low budget.

Take over yourself and see what you can cobble together. In your industry the negative keyword list should be massive, if it's not they've been doing very little. Also, if they didn't put together some decent landing pages the whole thing was a waste of time anyway.

 

[Andy Harris]

Two sides to the coin here ...

1. Quite often it's not purely the PPC setup at fault - websites have to be strong enough to convert.

2. However, if their setup is that bad, then they need to be called out about it. I have witnessed similar with agencies that should know better.

Regards the £120/m, although you are technically in contract, you could get another PPC expert to review what they've set up, point out the clear holes in what they've done and send that to them as a report along with a "you are not providing a professional service and so I am cancelling all payments to you". If they argued the point, remind them that the PPC expert service demonstrated that they did a poor job and you'd use that in any further dialogue with them.

What's the worst that could happen? They try and take you to court over a relatively small amount over the rest of the contract period, which would cost them and probably not be worth it. You'd have the independent report to back you up.

I'm not a legal expert but that's what I'd do if I'd been so disappointed.

 

[Frank the Insurance guy]

Thanks all for your advice - much appreciated.

As you have access to your account, one thing you might do is set the reporting date for the last 6 months and have a look at the change history. This will tell you whether they've been trying to manage your account actively or whether they've just let it run 'as is' even though it hasn't been working.
If the latter, it will strengthen your hand in any negotiation.

Didn't know there was a change history - just checked and the only changes relate to issues i raised that needed amending! So could use this in my complaint, thanks!

When they set everything up, did they create a set of landing pages? If not then everything they did was pretty much pointless.

They didn't create landing pages!

About this clause, have you provided service feedback? Have you told them you were unhappy with your acct manager?

Had a lengthy call a month or so ago, which resulted in lots of changes and huge number of negative keywords, so they know I am not happy with the performance!

I know it doesn't help, but nobody who's any good at what they do, does anything for 120 quid. You aren't getting anything useful, because you aren't paying for anything useful. Being completely honest, they don't know what they are doing, but then neither do you. It was a mistake to hire them; it was a mistake to use anyone to help you with such a low budget.

This is my downfall and a warning to others - being naive and new to PPC, I didn't know what was a reasonable rate and was won over by their sales patter!

 

[Frank the Insurance guy]

1. Quite often it's not purely the PPC setup at fault - websites have to be strong enough to convert.

That's why I set up a campaign to run alongside the expert one! My one has proved the website is good enough to convert, raising the issue that it was their set up of the campaign that is at fault!

 

[AllUpHere]

This is my downfall and a warning to others - being naive and new to PPC, I didn't know what was a reasonable rate and was won over by their sales patter!

Just think of it from a common sense perspective. Would someone who's any good even bother spending the time to deliver 'sales patter' for 120 quid a month. Knock off the VAT and a bit of income tax and they are probably doing it for just about nothing. My date rate is £768, but I actually take about £400 quid after tax. Any less and it wouldn't be worth my time ( I have other more lucrative sources of income).

 

[fisicx]

They didn't create landing pages!

In other words, they failed to do the very things Google advise in their documentation:

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/14086?hl=en-GB

All good ammunition for your complaint.

 

[Fagin2021]

Just think of it from a common sense perspective. Would someone who's any good even bother spending the time to deliver 'sales patter' for 120 quid a month.

Whilst what you say is perfectly true, the 'agency' should not have taken on the account. If you do take an account, you should do your best to deliver - whatever the rate - or decline the business.

After what's been revealed, I'd be inclined to demand a refund of all monies paid - not just a fee-free cancellation. Put them on the back foot.

 

[AllUpHere]

Whilst what you say is perfectly true, the 'agency' should not have taken on the account. If you do take an account, you should do your best to deliver - whatever the rate - or decline the business.

After what's been revealed, I'd be inclined to demand a refund of all monies paid - not just a fee-free cancellation. Put them on the back foot.

I completely agree. In my first post I suggested that neither they nor the OP knew what they are doing. They shouldn't have taken the work, and the OP shouldn't have hired them.
Anyway, the OP has a better plan now, so let's hope he gets some better results.