They may refresh the page again and again, nothing is displayed. A blank page and a lot of concern among the Berrichon entrepreneurs concerned. Their websites are inaccessible. They are dozens in this situation and do not know what to do.
More than 300 companies and communities are concerned in Cher, Indre, Indre-et-Loire, Nièvre and Allier. Entities that have been deadlocked for a month and feel helpless. “It’s a disaster, there are some who have lost 40% of their turnover, it’s huge”, worries Annick Pasquier. She runs Equivalangue, a translation and interpreting company based in Bourges, and found her website inaccessible a few weeks ago.
“It’s a showcase for usshe explains. It allows us to present our services to customers”. And the situation is even worse for sites specializing in online sales. Impossible for them to continue their activity without a functional website.
The agency that manages their websites questioned
The companies concerned are questioning Berruyère agency Creative Alfawhich takes care of the creation and management of their websites. “This company buys the domain names and invoices us for them annuallyexplains Annick Pasquier. There is also the maintenance of the site, the updates”. The problem is that it has not paid for the last subscriptions of its customers to the service provider who hosts the sites.
For more than a month, we weren’t even visible on Google anymore.
“Overnight, we had no more orders on our online store, we had no more reservations for our activitysays Yoann Taillard, manager of La Tanière des enrages, near Nevers, a place where you can throw axes. For more than a month, we weren’t even visible on Google anymore. Our society is made in such a way that we can no longer do without the internet to have a certain visibility”.
“We lost money, it will serve as a lessonhe continues. We left to make a site, but we are going to redo it ourselves. We’re going to do something much simpler, less fussy, but at least we’ll have our hands on what we’re doing”.
The trader from Nièvre took the opportunity to send a message of vigilance to his brothers and sisters. “Be careful, if you rely on companies, make sure that the domain name belongs to you, that you have control over your site. Because if you have only that to live on, if overnight you don’t have more access, it can be catastrophic”warns Yoann Taillard.
Towards collective action by affected companies?
Faced with this situation, the former manager of the Berruyère agency is trying to help his former clients. “There are some who continue to trust me, so we were able to put some back in place”explains André Gentit, founder of this agency which was originally called Clic en Berry. He sold it last year, so it became Creative Alfa. “We saved what was salvageablehe says. There’s a client who called me in tears. No more mailboxes, no more customers, no more orders… And there, we can’t do much except recover a domain name and try to rebuild a site”.
Annick Pasquier invites the companies affected to approach her to attempt collective action. If you are concerned, you can contact her at 06.80.73.33.70. A meeting should soon be organized at the Cher Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
The manager of the Creative Alfa agency defends herself
Contacted by France Bleu Berry, the director of Creative Alfa regrets having come to such a situation. “The agency’s developers are gone, I’m on my own to manage, to get my hands dirty”, explains Grace Doumbia. It returns the ball to Ionos, a service provider that manages the hosting of websites.
“I feel sorry for the companies if they feel like they have been abandoned, it was not my will”she continues, ensuring that she is in contact with the service provider and has raised almost all of the sum necessary to regain control of the domain names of the companies concerned. “I hope to resolve this situation in the coming days”promises the manager of Creative Alfa.