Website T+C's Review and Advice

[baseage]

Hi

We have our website terms and conditions made however we need to make sure that we are covered for an important part.

Our company is set up as agent between the customer and supplier. the customer will always pay in advance for services and we will always pay the supplier before the services are delivered.

the issue is that if the supplier fails to deliver the service, the service isnt what the client ordered or if the supplier closes there business, then the customer will come back to us for a refund.

I have looked into business insurance for this, but there isnt a product available. I have also looked into paying for services by credit card, but as the limit available is too small, then we wont be covered by using it.

So what we would need to do is make sure that our terms and conditions cover this otherwise we could be out of pocket for the refund amount.

Any advice would be great. Also if you know of any companies that you would recommened to have this drawn up for us, that would be good as well

Michael

 

[Simon_H]

Are your "customers" consumers or businesses?

 

[fisicx]

If the customer pays you and doesn't get the service they expected then you need to pay them back. If the customer pays the supplier directly they the supplier has to make the refund.

You can't write some T&C that say 'if you pay us and the supplier doesn't deliver we aren't going to give you your money back'.

 

[baseage]

we deal with b2b customers only and not b2c

Michael

 

[Simon_H]

It's slightly better that your customers aren't consumers - the rules about what kinds of terms you could have with consumers are pretty strict. But I think fisicx is just about right.

You're describing your business as an agent, but it actually sounds like something a little different - ie an independent part of a supply chain. And so you may find it difficult to achieve what you are after. In an agency situation, the customer and the supplier have a contract - the agent is acting for one of them. You've described a situation where you have your own contracts - one with the supplier and one with the customer.

If there is a contract between you and the customer, and you have taken their money - why should the customer not be able to get redress for breach of contract if it goes wrong?

 

[standardtermsdirect]

Hi Michael,

We deal with these type of contracts regularly, we would need more information to properly consider. Please call us if you wish for a no obligation chat and we can either help or point you in the right direction. Just google standardtermsdirect and call us from there.

Regards

Steve

 

[Patrick @ BIG in the UK]

Your client (business or not) has a contract with you, not the supplier you're going to. So if anything happens that means your client doesn't get what he or she paid for, the liability is with you, unfortunately.

Think of it as you buying a t-shirt from John Lewis only for it not to be delivered. You wouldn't expect John Lewis wash their hands of you and redirect you to their supplier in Indonesia... It's that black and white in this case I'm afraid.

 

[The Resolver]

The safest way to proceed is to try to persuade your supplier that you pay through an escrow so that whilst you pay up front to the escrow, the escrow only pays the supplier once the service has been carried out, otherwise , on breach, returns the monies to you to pass back to your customer.

If you cannot negotiate such a deal, then you have to judge whether the likely incidence of breach is sufficiently low to justify the risk given the profit you make when it does not go wrong.

The third way is to exploit our universal mendacity i.e. the fact that everybody lies whenever they buy products or services online by stating that they have read and agreed with the terms and conditions. You could draw up terms (I can do them for you if you wish) that do make clear you are only acting as middle man and that the risk of ultimate breach rests with the customer. The buyer will not notice. Given these are B2B (but are you absolutely sure every single one will be B2B????) the courts could not invalidate a clause however unreasonable once the buyer has clicked to say he has 'read and agreed' (because the Unfair Contract Terms legislation only applies to B2C).

The real problem with the third way is that it will quickly lead to your reputation being hung up to dry on social media/review sites.