“Help me! I am being held hostage and can’t escape,” sobbed a woman into my phone.

It was a late midweek afternoon. I had been savouring my last tea of the day while bathing in the last of the sun’s fat rays through my office window.

“Tell me what is going on,” I responded.

“I am a small business owner and have several tiny websites, all being looked after by this web designer. He started lovely, and he set me up on his own hosting. He took care of everything for me and just billed me for stuff on my website rather than me having to do anything.

“But as the years went on, the hosting and other website bills kept going up and up. It took longer and longer for my calls and emails to my designer to be answered. It can take a couple of weeks or more for him to answer me (if at all).”

“Then my sites kept getting hacked and cost a bomb to get fixed each time. I have had my identity stolen, and I still constantly worry about when the next phone call or email will come through with yet another financial disaster I have to fix from that.”

“And it isn’t as if my websites are fabulous or high-end. They are tiny, regular small business websites. Nothing flash or fancy.

“Each site takes about 10 seconds for each page to load, and God forbid I want actually to do anything like add content at the back. I can walk around the block in the time it takes for any page to open and save.”

“The last straw was me asking him to add a single tiny button to one page on my website and them telling me that it was going to cost me an extra $1500.”

“I have wanted to get away from them for ages, but I don’t know how. He has all the licenses to everything on my site as well as my Office365 account. I don’t know where to start or what to do.”

“I can help,” I said. “Let’s talk through what you need to do and how we can get you free of where you are and back in control.”