Revision of B2C Professional and Trade Terms and Conditions documents

Using Standard Terms of Trading when offering Professional or Trade Services to Consumer Customers

When offering services to consumer customers, a sole trader or company will be well served by using a standard set of terms and conditions of trading (also known as “terms of business”). 

Such terms and conditions are designed to be used by suppliers to establish a comprehensive and unambiguous set of legal and commercial terms which will govern the legal relationship between suppliers of services and their consumer customers. 

Updated Professional and Trade Terms and Conditions (Business to Consumer) 

Business to Consumer (B2C) Professional and Trade Terms and Conditions templates are available covering a wide range of services. 

The updates made to these templates will ensure that they are as clear and comprehensive as possible and that they continue to conform to current law and practice. In particular, the clauses that deal with the process of issue and revision of Orders and Quotations and entering into a formal agreement have been revised. Further, the liability clause in each case now includes an optional cap on the total amount of liability that the trader accepts. 

As in all of the previous versions of these templates, a schedule to each set of terms contains a form of "Service Agreement" expressly incorporating the terms which the supplier can give to customers. Alternatively, the supplier, if it prefers, can give them its own form of service agreement. There is also a form which can be used by customers to cancel the Agreement as provided by consumer law. 

These template documents conform to all of the applicable consumer law requirements for such terms of business.

You can continue to use the previous versions of all of these templates if you wish because they still accord with the current law, but you might wish to use these new versions going forward as they fully reflect up to date best practice. 

The contents of this Newsletter are for reference purposes only and do not constitute legal advice. Independent legal advice should be sought in relation to any specific legal matter.