Are yours enforceable?
For many businesses, their standard terms and conditions of business do not feature very highly on their list of priorities until it is too late and they are faced with costly litigation.
Time spent in ensuring that you have appropriate and legally enforceable terms and conditions is therefore often time well spent.
Furthermore, even with a perfectly drafted set of terms and conditions, businesses often give little thought to how they incorporate their terms and conditions into their business dealings.
It is important, therefore, that your terms and conditions are incorporated into any contract. After a contract has been formed (by offer and acceptance), new contract terms cannot be introduced unless by mutual consent. The practice, therefore, of printing terms and conditions on the back of your invoice is often insufficient to incorporate the terms and conditions as the invoice is, more often than not, sent out after the contract has been made and, in some cases, performed.
To avoid, therefore, a situation where a Court might imply terms into your contract which you may not have intended, it is important to take steps to ensure that your terms and conditions are properly incorporated.
Such steps include bringing your terms and conditions to your customer’s attention at an early stage – for example in early correspondence, in brochures or other marketing material and on any quotation you provide – and in situations where your customer might seek to impose its own terms and conditions, make sure that it is agreed which terms and conditions apply before the contract is performed.
For more advice relating to terms and conditions please contact our team at commercial@blasermills.co.uk