I remember many years back working as a young man in a sales position.  One of the first things taught to me by the more mature staff was the simple lesson 'Never Slag Off The Competition'.

There's a couple of reasons, the first is that they are professionals just like you.  To slag them off is in a sense to slag yourself off. Secondly the customer may well be considering them for the work that you are hoping to get.  To then slag them off makes you look like a poor loser that cant adequately compete for the business.  In short it does you more harm than your competition.

Why I am writing about this, well recently we were contacted by a company that wanted to engage our web design services having seen one of our sites they really liked it, followed the 'Designed by CPTsolutions.biz' link at the bottom of the page and asked us to put together a quote to redesign their old website.  Naturally we were delighted.

We met with the new clients found out all about their business and asked a couple of questions as to why they were'nt using their old web design firm.

It transpired that their old firm had been bought out and no longer traded in Swansea and they had never heard from them since, despite their continued hosting of the site (and the annual fees that came with that).

We contacted the old company who were really nice people and professional  and arranged for us to transfer in the domain name.

What happened next marked them as unprofessional. 

They waited for us to complete the project then contacted the client and told them that their new site was (in their opinion) a step backwards and poorer quality and inferior to the old site.

The first we heard of this was when the new client sent us an email telling us exactly what was said.  They said that they were delighted with the new site and that this marked the old firm as unprofessional.

I agree

I cant see any gain the old company could have had from doing this which is why it makes me sad, especially as it is bound to take the shine of the new site for the new clients who have as mentioned previously are otherwise delightfully happy with the new site.

Anyway you can make up your own mind by looking at the images below.

Old Highgate Website 

New Highgate Welcome Page