Thurcroft Freelancer

Our standard terms and conditions regarding optimisation are details below.
By placing an order with Thurcroft Freelancer, you confirm that you are in agreement with and bound by the terms and conditions below.

Definitions

The Client : The company or individual requesting the services of Thurcroft Freelancer.
Primary designer/site owner, employees, or affiliates.

General

Thurcroft Freelancer will carry out work only where an agreement is accepted via the Proposify Quotation Service. Thurcroft Freelancer will carry out work only for clients who are 18 years of age or above

Basecamp

Thurcroft Freelancer will work with the client through a communication software called Basecamp. The client will need to work with Thurcroft Freelancer solely on Basecamp to ensure that all documentation and details of the client’s business is kept secure.

Thurcroft Freelancer will not be liable for any logins, business details or client information that is lost or deleted. It is the client’s responsibility to ensure maximum security is kept throughout.

Website Design and Optimisation

Whilst every endeavour will be made to ensure that the website and any scripts or programs are free of errors, Thurcroft Freelancer cannot accept responsibility for any losses incurred due to malfunction, the website or any part of it.

The website, graphics and any programming code remain the property of Thurcroft Freelancer until all outstanding monies are paid in full.

Thurcroft Freelancer will not take responsibility for any copyright infringements caused by materials submitted by the client. We reserve the right to refuse any material of a copyrighted nature unless adequate proof is given of permission to use such material.

Amendments to the Client Brief

Any additions/amendments to the brief will be carried out at the discretion of Thurcroft Freelancer and where no charge is made by Thurcroft Freelancer for such additions, Thurcroft Freelancer accepts no responsibility to ensure such additions are error-free and reserves the right to charge an according amount for any correction to these or further additions.

Following acceptance of our quotation in Proposify, Thurcroft Freelancer will provide the client with a 5 working day window within which to make changes to the website WITHIN the scope of the agreed page structure and functionality at no additional cost.

Any changes required by the client that is outside of the agreed page and functionality structure, and/or are notified to Thurcroft Freelancer after the 5-day window has elapsed, will undergo an Impact Assessment (IA) in respect of any additional time and cost that may be required to complete these changes.

Thurcroft Freelancer will undertake this IA and advise the client within no longer than 10 working days of notification of the changes of the additional time/costs required to include the new requirements in the website build.

The client may choose to continue with the original or revised proposal. Where additional costs are incurred, these shall be invoiced to the client accordingly and an amended Schedule of Works will be provided to the client under the cover of an updated proposal document

Where the client opts not to continue its project following the IA, Thurcroft Freelancer reserves the right to invoice the client for all work carried out on behalf of the client in line with the initial brief and agreement as accepted in the Proposify Quotation Service.

The client agrees to make available as soon as is reasonably possible to Thurcroft Freelancer, all materials required to complete the site to the agreed standard and within the set deadline.

Thurcroft Freelancer will not be liable for costs incurred, compensation or loss of earnings due to the clients failure to provide agreed materials to agreed deadlines.

Thurcroft Freelancer will not be liable or become involved in any disputes between the client and its customers and cannot be held responsible for any wrongdoing on the part of a client.

Thurcroft Freelancer will not be liable for any costs incurred, compensation, or loss of earnings due to the work carried out on behalf of the client or any of the clients appointed agents.

Once a website has been designed and completed the final balance of payment is then due in accordance with our payment terms.

There are no exceptions to this, i.e. if the client decides they no longer want the site, as they have commissioned the work and paid a deposit they are still obliged to pay for the work that has been done. Non-payment will result in legal action being taken if necessary.

Payment of Accounts

Interest may be charged by Thurcroft Freelancer from 30 days after the date on which the payment in question fell due to the date on which that payment (including all applicable interest) is paid in full and interest shall be charged on a daily basis with reference to a year consisting of 365 days and with all unpaid interest compounded monthly.

If accounts are not settled or Thurcroft Freelancer has not been contacted regarding the delay, access to the related website may be denied and web pages removed, we will then pass such cases to the Small Claims Court to pursue payment, non-payment can result in county court judgments (CCJ’s) being added to the client’s credit rating.

Following consistent non-payment of an invoice, our Solicitors will contact the client in question with a view to taking the matter further and if need be to seek payment through legal procedures, and if necessary court summons. If the website completion is held up by the customer over 60 days from the start of the project Thurcroft Freelancer may ask for the balance to be paid up to 95% of the total amount.

Complaints Procedure

Any complaints arising from the service or products provided by Thurcroft Freelancer need to be raised with Alex Williams by email (info@thurcroftfreelancer.co.uk) as soon as practically possible following discovery of the issue of complaint.

Thurcroft Freelancer will acknowledge receipt of the complaint within 24 hours of receipt, with an initial response to the complaint sent to the complainant within 5 working days.

Thurcroft Freelancer aims to resolve all complaints received as quickly and as amicably as possible

Email Notifications

Thurcroft Freelancer shall send the Customer the following information by email to the specified email address: (a) future changes to Thurcroft Freelancer charges or fees; and (b) any additional terms and conditions or changes to the way in which the Service shall be run.

Thurcroft Freelancer shall give the Customer no less than 30 days prior notification of those changes.

We will add your email address to our email list for our newsletter, this will be sent when we have news, tips, help, or offers. If you do not want to be contacted with our newsletter, please unsubscribe when you receive the first newsletter email.

Notwithstanding the email notifications highlighted above, we will use the Project Management Service to collaborate with our clients on each project we undertake as deemed necessary.

Limitation of Liability

Thurcroft Freelancer total liability to the Customer shall not exceed the aggregate of any sums paid to Thurcroft Freelancer by the Customer during the calendar year in which the applicable cause of action against Thurcroft Freelancer Ltd arose.

Neither party shall be liable to the other for its failure to comply with its obligations under the Agreement caused by anything beyond its reasonable control.

Term of Agreement and Termination

The Agreement shall commence on the date of its execution and it shall last for the period agreed.

Disclaimers and limitations on liability.

Thurcroft Freelancer shall not be responsible for URLs dropped or excluded by a search engine for any reason. This is due to the nature of the search engine algorithm changes that can affect any website unexpectedly.

Thurcroft Freelancer will not be responsible for any commercial or business losses (including without limitation loss of goodwill, profits, contracts, anticipated savings, data, or wasted expenditure).

Thurcroft Freelancer are not responsible for the actions of anyone from the Training given by Thurcroft Freelancer. Thurcroft Freelancer shall not be responsible for delays or failure of performance resulting from Internet Service Provider delivery problems or failure, or any communication or delivery problems associated with Client’s receipt of the Account Service data.

Thurcroft Freelancer shall not be responsible for acts or causes beyond their control, including but not limited to: acts of God, strikes, lockouts, communications line or equipment failures, power failures, earthquakes, or other disasters.

Thurcroft Freelancer does not represent or warrant that Customers’ URLs will achieve a favourable position, or any position, within a particular search engine.

You expressly agree that use of the services provided by Thurcroft Freelancer hereunder is at your sole risk. These Services are provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis.

Thurcroft Freelancer expressly disclaims all warranties of any kind, express or implied, including without limitation any warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement.

Notwithstanding the security precautions taken against disclosure of information, there are certain conditions that exist on the Internet generally which are outside of Thurcroft Freelancer control and could result in a breach of security. Accordingly, Thurcroft Freelancer cannot guarantee that Your Account Service data information will be free from corruption or piracy.

You hereby expressly waive any claim against Thurcroft Freelancer arising out of the loss of data through corruption, piracy, and breach of security or for any other reason that is not based on intentional or grossly negligent actions of Thurcroft Freelancer.

To the maximum extent allowed by law, Thurcroft Freelancer and any of their parents, members, subsidiaries, affiliates, service providers, licensors, officers, directors or employees shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages (no matter how they arose, including negligence), or for interrupted communications, lost data or lost profits, arising out of or in connection with the Services provided hereunder. Furthermore, Thurcroft Freelancer will not have any liability for any losses arising because of the search engine algorithm changes, negative SEO by third parties or search engine guideline or quality control changes. Thurcroft Freelancer services are not operational or accessible.

This section does not limit liability for bodily injury of a person.

Content

It will be the client’s responsibility that any content written by Thurcroft Freelancer or company working on their behalf to be accurate and correct. The client takes full responsibility for content on the website once it has been uploaded to the server.

Any images provided by the client will be the responsibility of the client to make sure they have full rights to add them to the website, this also goes for any logos of governing bodies or affiliations.

Data Protection

All client password data is kept safe electronically using the LastPass password manager which uses AES-256 bit encryption with PBKDF2 SHA-256 and salted hashes to ensure complete security in the cloud.

Any access from laptops or mobile devices will use the Two-factor authentication (sometimes referred to as multifactor or 2FA) adds extra security to your LastPass account by requiring a second login step before authorising access to our password vault.

This means if there was any unauthorised access to the device it will not allow them access to the passwords in the secure vault.

Any new passwords will be created using the LastPass safe password creator and Include Numbers, Symbols, Capital Letters, and Lower-Case Letters: We use a mix of different types of characters to make the password much harder to crack. Any passwords shared between employees will use the encrypted sharing system within the LastPass software.

Thurcroft Freelancer provides training to employees so that they understand their responsibilities towards data protection and password security.

Database, Application and E-Commerce Development

Thurcroft Freelancer cannot take responsibility for any losses incurred by the use of any software created for the client. Whilst every care has been taken to ensure products are problem-free and accurate, the ultimate responsibility lies with the client in ensuring that all software is functioning correctly before use.

Where applications or websites are developed on servers not recommended by Thurcroft Freelancer, the client is expected to provide or seek any information, additional software, support or co-operation pertaining to the server required in order for the application to be correctly developed. Where large applications are to be developed, it is the client’s responsibility to provide a suitable testing environment which is identical to the final production environment.

The client is expected to test fully any application or programming relating to a website developed by Thurcroft Freelancer before being made generally available for use. Where “bugs”, errors or other issues are found after the site is live, Thurcroft Freelancer will endeavour (but is not obliged to) to correct these issues to meet the standards of function outlined in the brief.

Usual WooCommerce updates within the same main version (e.g. 3.1 upgrade to 3.2) can be done within the usual maintenance package. However major upgrades from full versions (e.g. 3.1 upgrading to 4.0) will require placing a copy of the website onto our test server and upgrading there first which is chargeable at our standard rate. We would then attempt to fix any quick issue. If the issues are not able to be fixed, we would then quote for fixing any problematic issues arising from plugin conflicts affecting the WooCommerce upgrade.

3rd Party Plugins

Continuity of Service (Website Functionality and Third-Party Plugins): When a site is first set up, all the core software and plugin components work harmoniously together. Very occasionally, as the various providers (theme and plugins) release new versions of their software, parts of the site can get out of sync and this can result in display errors.

It is your responsibly, as website owner to check your site from time to time including website contact forms (we recommend at least once a week) and to report any issues to us which we investigate and fix where possible (or restore from a previous backup) as part of our support for your site.

Thurcroft Freelancer will not be responsible for any emails not received because of a faulty webform or plugin.

Sometimes a software update can have unseen consequences which only become apparent when particular actions are performed on the site, many days or weeks after the software has been updated. There is no way we can anticipate these in advance. We are not responsible for any plugins developed by a third party and used in the build of your website, very rarely a third party may discontinue a plugin of the support given for it, in this case we would need to charge you for finding a suitable replacement, installing and testing.

Site Speed

We use good quality hosting and premium themes and plugins which assist the speedy download of a web page. As a result, our sites are set up to perform well.

However, other factors out of our control that can affect page download speed such as IP provider speed, browser performance and computer performance.

WordPress has many advantages which is why it is one of the most popular web development platforms around. The WordPress platform is built in PHP language. PHP files will usually take more execution time than static HTML files.

Each page of a dynamic website is generated from information stored in a database or external file, so it will take more time to load compared to a site which is built completely using HTML. Pages with large images or a lot of smaller images may take longer to load than a normal text page.

As standard, we will ensure that your website loads in a reasonable time based on the size and complexity of the design and functionality. This will be tested using GTMetrix, which is an industry leading website load testing service.

Although there are other load speed checking services available on the Internet, Thurcroft Freelancer will only use GTMetrix and due to WordPress functionality, we cannot guarantee any particular page speed score or loading time.

Post Live Warranty Service

When your website has been promoted to Live, Thurcroft Freelancer will carry out the appropriate checks and the final balance/instalment of your invoice will become payable as agreed in your terms and conditions.

Where you have opted to take out Hosting or Update Packages with Thurcroft Freelancer, fees will be levied as agreed in your terms and conditions.

Where you have declined an update package or placed a contract with a 3rd party for update services, and your website is subsequently hacked, Thurcroft Freelancer reserves the right to carry out an impact assessment and provide a quotation for any fixes or remediations you wish Thurcroft Freelancer to undertake on your website on your behalf.

For a period of 30 Calendar Days following the promotion of a website to Live, Thurcroft Freelancer will provide a free of charge warranty service to ensure your website performs to optimal levels.

Following the expiry of the 30-day post live warranty period, any fixes or amendments required will be impact assessed and a quotation will be provided to you for your consideration.

Compatibility

Thurcroft Freelancer will endeavour to ensure that any developed/designed website or application will function correctly on the server it is initially installed in and that it will function correctly when viewed with web browsing software and to an acceptable level.

Website Hosting

Whilst Thurcroft Freelancer recommends hosting companies to host websites, no guarantees can be made as to the availability or interruption of this service by Thurcroft Freelancer cannot accept liability for losses caused by the unavailability, malfunction or interruption of this service, or for loss of turnover, sales, revenue, profits or indirect, consequential or special loss.

Thurcroft Freelancer reserves the right to refuse to handle in any way, material which may be deemed offensive, illegal or in any way controversial, and also to terminate the hosting service should the necessity arise.

On signing, you are confirming that you have read and agree to the terms and conditions of Thurcroft Freelancer.