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Where the de Hek is Danny?

Long-time Aardvark readers will remember the name Danny de Hek, who once billed himself as "New Zealand's Mobile Internet Consultant".

Many years ago, Danny was notorious for his truth-stretching online presence and his entrepreneurial flair which saw him traveling the country and designing rather poor websites for motels and the occasional rental company. Danny gained unfavourable mention in many of my early columns and even won the coveted "lemon of the year award back in 1997.

Danny wasn't averse to doing a bit of spamming back in those days either and to some, he was the quintessential "Internet cowboy".

So what's Danny been up to?

Well, if the emails I've been getting recently, he's still not flavour of the month in the eyes of some (now former) customers.

This week I received an email from the owners of Canterbury Equestrian, a small seller of equestrian products located near Christchurch.

The owners of this business fell under Danny's spell back in 2009, paying him to design and build them a website.

This he did (can't complain about that) and for the princely sum of $330 a month, he also promoted the site to the world, no doubt by way of his "information network".

Okay, so one could question whether the customer was getting value for their $330/month but that's not the customer's concern.

Where things start to go off the rails is that Danny also registered the domain name equestrian-products.co.nz and built the customer's website under it. He also used an email address at this domain to forward inquiries placed through the website.

Of course that's all very professional and commonsense. Such a domain name will be better ranked by Google and, as Danny claimed, having your own domain for email purposes is a far more professional and long-term approach than using the @xtra.co.nz address your ISP has given you.

The wheels fell off this wagon however, when the customer decided that DDH's services were no longer what they needed or wanted and withdrew from the hosting/promotion arrangement.

Things got messy, very messy.

Now in my opinion, an ethical hosting company would have (right from the start) registered the client's domain name in the client's name rather than their own. Danny didn't. The domain that Danny set up for the client is still registered in the name of NewZealandNZ.co.nz Ltd.

What's more, Danny immediately repurposed that site (which had become part of Canterbury Equestrian's branding and image) to become a (ADULT LINK!) purveyor of adult products.

Naturally, Canterbury Equestrian, Danny's former customer, were not best-pleased and although I'm no lawyer, it's my opinion that they'd have a damned good case if they chose to sue for damages and consequential losses. No company wants there website turning into an "adult products supplier" overnight, simply because they chose to dispense with their hosting and promotion services.

Clearly Danny also saw the error of his ways (although the evidence remains in Google's cache for the time being) and has now changed the site to reinstate much of the former customer's content (without permission) with a view to flogging the site to some other purveyor of similar products. Again, if the customer provided copy for the creation of the original pages, they may have grounds for legal action under copyright law. There may even be grounds for an action on the basis of "passing off" but again I reiterate -- I'm not a lawyer so I'm simply speculating.

The client in this case advises me that DDH also threatened to sell their data to a competitor if they canceled their business arrangement with him -- and then did.

Has Danny broken the law?

That's something only the courts could determine.

Has he behaved in an ethical manner?

I certainly don't think so. It would seem time hasn't changed Danny's ways and I would have to advise people to still steer well clear of his online activities. There are plenty of companies out there who would never stoop to this kind of behaviour that can create and promote a website.

However, I'd like to hear from some of the other professional web designers within the ranks of Aardvark's readers. Would you do what Danny has done in this case? What is your opinion of Danny de Hek's behaviour and actions in this particular case.

Oh... and I have heard there are other customers who have found themselves "doing battle" with DDH and who are decidedly unhappy at his business practices.

Can't teach an old dog new tricks I guess.

And for the record, I exchanged SMS messages with DDH last night, asking him to submit his side of the story by email. Nothing was received -- although I'm sure something may turn up in the wake of this column.

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