Your agency blames you every time something goes wrong

What blame-shifting looks like

The contact form stops sending enquiries. You ring the agency. They say someone on your side must have changed a setting in your inbox.

The site goes down for an afternoon. They say it is a problem with your internet, or your domain, or something Google did.

Page speed has dropped. They say it is because you uploaded a photo that was too big, six months ago, and nobody noticed until now.

You did not touch any of it. You do not have the login. You would not know where to start. But somehow, every time something breaks, the trail leads back to you.

Why agencies do it

Three reasons, and none of them are about you.

• It is cheaper than fixing things. If the agency admits the problem is theirs, they have to do the work inside your monthly fee. If it is your fault, they can quote extra to sort it out.
• It buys time. While you are checking your own emails, hunting through your phone for old logins, or ringing your broadband provider, the agency does not have to do anything.
• It protects the relationship from scrutiny. If every problem is framed as something external, the agency never has to explain what they actually do for the monthly fee.

The retainer you pay every month is meant to cover exactly this kind of thing. If every incident gets bounced back to you, the retainer is paying for nothing.

What is actually their job

If you are paying an agency a monthly fee to look after your website, here is what falls inside their scope by default:

• The site loading when someone visits it
• The contact form sending enquiries to the right inbox
• The site working on a phone as well as a desktop
• The software the site is built on staying up to date and secure
• Backups, so if something does break it can be put back
• Telling you when something is wrong, before you find out from a customer

None of that is conditional on you doing anything. You hired them so you would not have to.

How to push back in writing

The next time something breaks and they point at you, do not argue on the phone. Send an email. Keep it short and factual.

Hi [name]. The contact form on the site is not working - enquiries are not arriving. Please can you confirm what has caused this, when it will be fixed, and whether this is included in the monthly retainer I pay. If you believe the cause is something on my side, please explain in plain English what you think I did and when. Thanks.

This does three things. It forces them to put their explanation in writing. It makes them name a specific action you supposedly took. And it asks directly whether the fix is covered by the fee you already pay.

Nine times out of ten, the email gets a very different response from the phone call. Vague accusations do not survive being typed out.

When to leave

One incident is not a pattern. Three is. If every problem with your site somehow becomes your fault, the relationship is broken and it will not fix itself.

The agency is not going to wake up one Monday and start taking responsibility. They have a system that works for them. You are inside it.

Before you leave, make sure you have access to your domain name, your hosting account, and a copy of the site. The domain in particular - the address people type to find you - is often registered in the agency's own account rather than yours, and you need it back before you go anywhere. They are legally required to transfer it to you if you ask.

What good support looks like

You should not have to become a part-time IT person to get a straight answer about your own website. When something breaks, the person looking after it should tell you what happened, fix it, and tell you when it is done. That is the entire job.

SkipTheAgency is a one-person operation. When something breaks, there is one person to ring and one person who fixes it - me. The Maintained plan is £65/month and covers the kind of work most agencies charge £150/month for, including the things they currently blame you for. No ticket queue, no finger-pointing, no invoice for fixing something that should never have broken.