Terms and conditions

These terms apply to work carried out by Flintholt ("we", "us"). They form the contract between us and you once you accept a written quote, unless we have signed something different with you.

1. Who we are

Flintholt of Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 2DS. Flintholt is a trading name of Tony Begley, a sole trader. We are not registered for VAT, so no VAT is added to any price we quote.

Contact: info@gb3d.co.uk or 07585 485111.

2. Quotes and prices

Every project is quoted in writing before work starts. A quote is valid for 30 days from the date it is issued. The prices shown on our website are starting points, not the quote.

A fixed quote does not change unless you change what you have asked for. If you ask for something outside the agreed scope we will quote for that separately and wait for you to accept it before doing the work — you will not receive an invoice you were not expecting.

3. Deposit and payment

Payment is 50% to start, 50% on handover. Projects over £2,999 are staged against agreed milestones, which we set out in the quote.

Invoices are issued by email with a link to pay by card or bank transfer, and are due within 7 days. The deposit is refundable for 14 days after work starts, less the cost of any work already carried out, which is deducted from it. After that it is not refundable.

If an invoice is not paid by its due date we may pause work until it is. We will always tell you before we do that.

4. What you own

On payment of the final invoice, the work becomes yours outright. That includes the source code, the database and its contents, the designs, and every account and login we created for the project. We will hand them over and help you take control of them.

Until the final invoice is paid, we retain ownership of the work. This is a payment safeguard, not a claim on your business.

Two things sit outside that transfer. First, any third-party component we use — an open-source library, a font, a stock photograph — stays under its own licence, and we will tell you what those are. Second, we keep the right to reuse our own general skills, methods and non-confidential building blocks on other projects; we do not reuse anything specific to your business, your data or your brand.

You keep ownership of anything you give us — your logo, your text, your photographs, your data. You confirm you have the right to give it to us for this purpose.

5. Your domain and your accounts

Your domain name is registered in your name, not ours, and stays that way. Where a project needs a third-party service in your name — card payments, for example — we will tell you about it in the quote and it is billed to you directly by that provider.

6. The care plan

The care plan is an optional monthly service covering hosting, backups, security updates, monitoring, support and small changes. It currently starts at £45 a month. Small changes means text and content fixes: swapping a phone number, updating an address, changing your opening hours, correcting a typo, or refreshing a photograph or logo.

The care plan is a service, not a licence. It does not give you access to your software — you already own that. If the plan ends, your software keeps working. Nothing is switched off, deleted or withheld, and we will help you move hosting elsewhere.

The plan is billed monthly in advance. You may cancel at any time by telling us in writing, with 30 days notice; cover runs to the end of the period you have paid for. We may change the monthly price by giving you at least 30 days written notice, and you may cancel if you do not accept the change.

7. Direct Debit

Care plan payments are collected by Direct Debit. All Direct Debits are covered by the Direct Debit Guarantee, which is provided by all banks and building societies that accept Direct Debit instructions. We will confirm the amount and the collection date in advance, and tell you before any change to either.

8. What we need from you

Projects run late for one reason far more often than any other: waiting for content and decisions. We will tell you clearly what we need and when. If a project stalls waiting on you for more than 30 days we may invoice for the work completed to that point and reschedule the remainder.

9. Cancellation

You may cancel a project in writing at any time. You will be charged for the work completed up to that point, less any deposit already paid, and we will hand over whatever has been completed once that invoice is settled.

If you are a consumer — that is, buying outside your trade or business — you have the right under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 to cancel within 14 days of entering the contract, without giving a reason. If you ask us to start work within that 14-day period, you are making an express request to do so and you accept that you lose the right to cancel once the work has been fully performed. If you cancel part-way through, you pay for what has been done.

We may end a project if payment is significantly overdue, if we are asked to do something unlawful, or if the working relationship has genuinely broken down. If we do, we will invoice only for work completed.

10. What we are responsible for

We will carry out the work with reasonable skill and care. We will fix genuine defects in what we built, free of charge, for 30 days after handover. That covers things not working as agreed; it does not cover new features, changes you ask for later, or problems caused by someone else editing the work.

We cannot promise particular business results. Search rankings, enquiry volumes and sales depend on your market, your prices and your competitors as much as on your website, and nobody who tells you otherwise is being straight with you.

Except where the law does not allow it to be limited, our total liability for any project is capped at the total amount you have paid us for that project. We are not liable for lost profits, lost business or lost data, though we will of course use the backups we hold to restore what we can. Nothing here limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

11. Your data

How we handle personal information is set out in our privacy policy. Where we process personal data on your behalf — for example, your customers' details inside a system we host for you — we do so on your instructions, we keep it secure, and we do not use it for anything else. We never sell it.

12. General

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If any part of them turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still applies. Any change to these terms for an agreed project has to be in writing.

This document is a draft prepared for review. It is not legal advice and has not been checked by a solicitor. Do not rely on it, or take a deposit or Direct Debit under it, until it has been reviewed.