Terms for website, SEO and support work

Who I am

These terms are for work I do as Nicolaie Cristea, a self-employed sole trader based in Nuneaton, England, registered with HMRC. For a first enquiry, use the contact form on this website. Once we are working together, we keep in touch by email, or by any other contact we have already agreed. In these terms, "I" and "me" means Nicolaie Cristea, and "you" means the person or business that asks me to do work.

These terms do not apply if you employ me on PAYE. In that case, your contract of employment applies.

How a job starts

• Every job starts with a written quote setting out the scope, price and dates.
• A quote is valid for 30 days.
• Our contract starts when you accept the quote in writing. An email is enough.
• The contract is these terms plus the quote. If the two disagree, the quote wins.
• I only do the work the quote describes. Any extra work is agreed in writing first and charged at £40 an hour, unless we agree a fixed price.

What you agree to do

• Give me accurate information, the access I need, and timely answers. If a delay on your side holds up the work, the dates move by the same amount.
• Confirm that you own, or are allowed to use, any text, images, logins and data you give me.
• Keep your hosting, domain, licences and paid plugins in your name and paid up. They stay your responsibility.
• Keep your own site's legal pages and business information accurate, unless the quote says I will write or update them.
• Tell me straight away if you think something I changed has caused a problem, so I can look at it quickly.

Access and security

• I use my own login on your website and hosting, never yours. You can remove my access at any time.
• I keep any access details private and stored securely. I never share them, and I remove my access when we stop working together.
• I do not change your passwords, ownership settings or billing without your written agreement.

Backups

• Monthly care plans include off-site backups and a tested restore.
• For one-off work, I take a backup before making changes, unless you tell me in writing that you have a current one.
• If something goes wrong, my first duty is to restore your site from the latest backup.

Payment

• Prices are in pounds. I am not VAT registered, so no VAT is added.
• One-off work: half is paid before I start and half on delivery.
• Monthly plans are paid monthly in advance.
• Invoices are due within 14 days.
• If an invoice is overdue, I may pause work until it is paid. For business clients, I may also charge interest and compensation under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998.

Monthly plans

• A plan runs month to month, from the start date in the quote.
• Either of us can end it with 30 days' notice in writing.
• Hours included in a plan are for that month and do not roll over.
• I work Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm UK time, excluding bank holidays. A "next working day" response, part of the Priority plan only, means within those hours.

Results

Search engines, platforms and hosting companies change their systems without notice, and nobody controls them. So I do not promise rankings, traffic, enquiries or sales. I promise to do the agreed work with reasonable care and skill, to report clearly what I changed, and to give you straight answers.

Other companies' services

Your site may depend on services run by other companies, such as hosting, plugins, themes, Google, Bing and payment providers. Their own terms apply to them. I am not responsible for their outages, price changes, security failures or policy decisions, but I will help you deal with them where that is part of the agreed work.

Who owns the work

• Once you have paid in full, you own what I made specifically for you: reports, written content and code written for your site.
• I keep the rights to my own tools, methods, templates and general know-how, which I may reuse in other work.
• I may list the project in my portfolio and CV (your business name, a link to the site, and a short description of what I did), unless you ask me in writing not to.

Confidentiality

I keep your business information private and only use it to do the agreed work. This does not cover information that is already public, or anything I have to disclose by law.

Your customers' data

If the work means I handle personal data that you are responsible for, such as customer details stored in your website, you are the controller and I process that data only on your behalf. I will:

• act only on your documented instructions;
• keep the data confidential and secure;
• not copy it elsewhere, or keep it after the work ends, unless the law requires me to;
• tell you without undue delay if I become aware of a breach;
• help you respond to data requests where the work allows;
• tell you before involving any other company that would handle that data.

If you need a separate data processing agreement, I will sign a reasonable one.

Liability

• I carry out the work with reasonable care and skill.
• If you are a business, my total liability to you for any one job is limited to the price you paid for that job. For a monthly plan, it is limited to the fees you paid in the three months before the event that caused the claim.
• If you are a business, I am not liable for loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill or opportunity, or for any indirect or consequential loss.
• For lost or damaged data, my liability is limited to restoring the latest available backup.
• Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow to be limited.
• If you are a consumer, nothing in these terms affects your legal rights.

Cancelling

• If you are a consumer and we agreed the work at a distance, for example by email, you have 14 days to cancel. If you ask me to start within those 14 days and then cancel, you pay for the work done up to that point.
• One-off work: if you cancel before I start, the deposit is refunded in full. If you cancel during the work, you pay for the work done to that point, and anything paid beyond that is refunded.
• I may end our contract if an invoice is more than 30 days overdue, if I am asked to do something unlawful or dishonest, or if I am treated abusively. Any money paid for work not yet done is refunded.

Events outside my control

Neither of us is responsible for a delay or failure caused by events outside our reasonable control, such as a major outage at a hosting company or illness. We will tell each other as soon as possible and agree new dates.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with anything, tell me in writing, preferably by email so we both have a clear record, or through any contact we already use. If we have not worked together yet, use the contact form. I will reply within 5 working days and aim to put things right within 14 days. If we still cannot agree, either of us may take the matter to the courts.

General

• These terms and the quote are the whole agreement between us.
• Only you and I have rights under this contract. No third party can enforce it.
• If one part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest still applies.
• These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales deal with any dispute. If you are a consumer living in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can also use your local courts.
• I may update these terms. A job keeps the version that applied when you accepted its quote.