Complaint Review: Rand Marketing

I wished I would have looked at the two listed complaints before hiring Rand Marketing for our web development and SEO.  Both situations look extremely familiar as far as the work and billing practices by Rand Marketing.
We hired them to replicate an existing European website on a specific platform, as well as to perform all SEO and social optimization for six months after the launching of the on-line store. Rand Marketing was given access to the web developer at our mother company, who gave them the keys to the back office of their website so that they could have a clear picture of what needed to be done.  I told them that the website would have to be adapted to the needs of our market place, but would be much less complex than the European one, as our product assortment is more limited. The portion of their bid for the web development and the time frame seemed reasonable for the amount of work needed.
The very reason we hired them is because they were presenting themselves as a platinum partner for the platform we wanted to use – both on their website and on their emails.
We had a payment schedule based upon the work (around 20% for development and 80% for SEO), which we paid up to 85% despite the fact that the web development was taking way too long.

After six months of work, having us redo a lot of the work as they could not figure out how to import the products and images correctly, and could not set up a fair amount of the features on the site, they presented us with tons of additional hours.  I have to say that they did recognize that a lot of hours were the result of their wrong-doing, but we had to agree to fork out an additional 150% of the original web development price to complete the website.  Our only goal being to launch the website as soon as possible, we agreed upon that extra amount of money.
Shortly after, they started charging additional hours than what we had agreed upon, with neither solutions nor progress in view.  In fact, we had even instructed them not to touch some areas of the site – which they ignored and subsequently billed. Moreover, they wanted us to get support from the platform so that the staff could help Rand Marketing finish the job they could not perform.
That is when we found out that they were a preferred platinum partner only for a few days as they never fulfilled their obligations and training.
We finally decided to stop working with them and re-create the website on a different server.  We also asked to be reimbursed for all the upfront payments for SEO that never got started, with the deduction of the amount of additional hours we had originally agreed upon.  This was a very reasonable request, especially taking into consideration that Rand Marketing made us loose at least two months in revenue sales by being incapable of completing our website in a timely manner.
Their answer was that the only condition under which we would part was to sign a release agreement forfeiting all amounts previously paid.  We are now preparing the next step with our attorney.

Should Rand Marketing decide to try to rebut our argument, they will probably claim that they worked very hard on our website and that there were changes in the scope of the work.  The changes were minimal and most of the work done was either redundant or unnecessary.  Using an expert on this platform, we now know how sloppy their work was and how dishonest this company is with its billing.  I bet that if I were to develop websites, I would probably charge a lot of hours as do not have the skills.  But the question one would be entitled to ask is: Is that money honestly earned?