Company reversed our website and took away security keys.

Location: Wyoming
My business is incorporated in Wyoming, and also does business in Washington state. Marketing company is based in California.

So in November of 2023 my company (MC) entered into an agreement with a Marketing Agency (MA) to build us a new website for $945, we purchased more options so it was $1445 in the end. It looked well and we were happy with the service.

Then, in February of 2024 we brought another service of their’s, cold calling. We paid $545/week for them to cold call on our behalf. Things went fairly well until yesterday when I announced my intent to cancel with them by within a month due to performance issues.

The owner of the MA said he understood. Then, a minute later said he found out that we owed $10,700 from back invoices. This was odd and I looked at my bank statements, and sure enough there were no funds going out. Our routing and account number has never changed, and I’m not sure what went wrong. However, their system never notified us of a failure, and it seems it did not notify them either (since the beginning of March 2025).

He wanted payment within 24 hours, I told him,

“Given that we received automated confirmations each week and weren’t notified of any failure until now, it seems the fault lies with your system. We’re happy to work toward resolving the outstanding balance, but $10,000 is not reflective of our responsibility in this situation. We’re open to discussing a fair resolution or payment plan that acknowledges this context.”

I then offered three payment plans,

**”$7,000 upfront (70% option)

50% upfront, then 545/week until $8,000 is paid. (80% option)

$10,000 over the course of 30 weeks.”**

This made him furious. He told me that I was a little boy and he was older, so he knew the laws better than me.

I told him he can take it to court if he wants, but he will need to explain why he failed to notify us for months that their system was failing to withdraw funds.

He replied with

“Give me a few more minutes ill let you know why you should consider this”

I didn’t think much about it, until 30 minutes later my business partner called to report the website had the message

“Pay MA invoice please” with a countdown of 31 days.

Then, going past that the website was what it used to be before November 2023. Not only that, but they removed the security keys “https” from the website. Thus to even get to the website you had to pass through two Google messages warning that the website was not safe, passwords and credit card information were not safe, and to not advance.

Last night he agreed to the 70% option in return for our website. So we do have our website back, and we did pay the 70%.

But I want to know is there anything I can do about this? I hate the fact that they think they can just do this to us or other companies and get away with it.

For clarification, the service agreement says nothing about reversal of website or anything. I was under the impression that the website, including all assets of it that we paid for using our logo, was ours to keep, and not theirs to use as ransom.