[Iceman90]

As a professional web developer myself, I'd be curious to know what pricing system was agreed upon for the project. Was it a flate rate, or hourly rate? Did your stepfather let the designer know what his budget was before starting the project?

I don't think $6,000.00 is totally unreasonable for this project. If it was done by a firm, who had to pay a few people to produce the site, perhaps an editor or copywriter, plus a project and perhaps account manager, that fee could be right on par, depending on their hourly rate.

Did you get an itemized invoice? If not, ask for one. That should let you know what you were charged for, so you know where the costs started to add up.

To be able to fairly evaluate the price, I'd need to know what was promised. While websites can often look very simple, there is often a lot that goes on behind the scenes that the average user doesn't see. If the client wants to be able to manage their own content, implementing a content management system can add to a project's costs for sure, as just one example of things that people don't see on the front end.

Also, a lot of times web designers/developers end up doing more than just development of the site, including copywriting/editing (if not in the original scope of work), graphic creation or sourcing, etc. All of these take billable time as well, and are often out of scope of the original agreement, which could mean paying for this time at a premium.

As getback said, for the website to have gone live, and the client to be unhappy, means there was a breakdown in the system somewhere. Did your stepfather ask for an estimate on the site before work began? Did he get regular updates of costs throughout the project? Did he approve the work before going live, and discuss any concerns with the web designer, so they could be fixed?

I get my domain names for about $15 from a registrar that I trust (not necessarily the cheapest by any means). $99 is very high, even if the designer were to mark up the cost.