Terms of Business

In the following Terms of Business, we/us/our means Swift Proofreading Services; you/your means our clients or customers. In all cases singular and plural are interchangeable.

1. Before agreeing to do a job for you, we will give you an estimate of how long it will take us to do it, and how much we will charge you, based on what you provide to us (either the whole job or a sample of it).
2. If we agree to do the job, once we have received it if we consider that there is more work involved than we originally estimated, we will require additional time (which may involve moving the date and time we estimated we would have the job completed), and additional payment. Before we proceed, we will contact you and ask you what you want us to do.
3. If we do not meet an agreed deadline for reasons that are beyond our control (which means events such as war, fire, flood, force majeure), we will notify you as soon as possible and ask you how you want us to proceed.
4. If you ask us to do extra work on the job that was not in the original specification that we produced our estimate on, we will require additional time (which may involve moving the date and time we estimated we would have the job completed), and additional payment. Before we proceed, we will contact you and ask you what you want us to do.
5. If, in our opinion, the job is lengthy, we reserve the right to invoice you (periodically if necessary) before we complete it, and require you to pay any and all such invoices before we proceed with the job.
6. If there are queries that we need to raise with you regarding a job you have provided for us to proofread, you must answer these queries in a timely and accurate manner, or else we reserve the right to increase our fees if you are responsible for delaying us. In addition, if there are more errors than would reasonably be expected, this will inevitably increase the time it takes us to complete the work and therefore our charge will also increase. If we consider the number of errors to be too large or complex for us to be able to clearly mark them all, we reserve the right to return the job to you unfinished. Under such circumstances, we will charge you for the work we have already done.
7. Under normal circumstances, we will carry out the work at our premises. If you want us to come to your premises to carry out the work or discuss any aspect of it, we require you to reimburse us for the time we spend, and any reasonable expenses we incur, while travelling.
8. We require you to provide us with details of the style we should adhere to for each job we undertake, either in writing (preferred) or orally. If you do not supply this information, we reserve the right to apply a style using a majority rule (i.e. more than 50% of occurrences will dictate the rule, or if equal then we will decide).
9. We do not check your work for plagiarism. It is entirely your responsibility to ensure there is no copyright or other legal entitlement by someone else on the work you submit to us. If there is a lack of clarity or sense, or there is ambiguity, in any part of your work, we will query it with you but we will not always suggest a remedy, especially if we feel that to do so would assist you in completing a work on which you will be judged and to do so will unfairly give the impression that you have written the work yourself.
10. If any aspect of our work is unsatisfactory and we agree with your criticisms, we will rectify whatever problems you have highlighted in our own time and at our expense, and as quickly as we practically can.
11. The nature and content of any work we do for you will be kept confidential. We reserve the right to pass any job you have asked us to do onto a subcontractor. In this case, you will receive the work done to the same standard as we would have done it, and on the same timescale and budget. Our Terms of Business will still apply, and we will invoice you for the work done and we will collect payment for it. The rules for confidentiality that we adhere to will also apply to any of our subcontractors.
12. The price that we set for doing a job will normally be based on an hourly rate. However, we may also agree to price a job per thousand words, or agree to a flat fee.
13. For individuals: normally, we require payment for the work you have asked us to do before the completed work is returned to you. We will advise you of what methods of payment are acceptable to us. If you pay by cheque (made payable to Swift Proofreading Services), we will wait for the funds to clear into our bank account before we agree that you have paid us. For businesses: normally, we will accept payment after we have completed the work, especially if we build-up a long-term business partnership.
14. If you do not pay us for work we have done for you by the due date, we reserve the right to charge you an administration fee for time and expenses incurred while chasing you for payment, and to charge a reasonable daily rate of interest not to exceed Bank of England base rate plus five percent on any unpaid amounts.
15. If there is a dispute between you and us, English Law and English Courts will be the only jurisdiction that applies, and all correspondence will be in the English language, whether written or oral or by any other means. If any part of this Terms of Business is successfully challenged in an English Court, it does not mean that the whole of this Terms of Business is invalid. The Court’s judgment will apply only in the narrowest sense possible and the remainder of this Terms of Business will still be legally binding.
16. Data Protection and Confidentiality
    We are registered under the Data Protection Act, and will treat and store your details with the utmost respect and care. We will never pass your details onto anyone else, with the possible exception of us using subcontractors to proofread jobs for us (in which case they will be subject to the same rules as us), or if we are asked to by anyone who is legally permitted to demand that we do so. Under the terms of the Act 1998, we will keep on record such information (e.g. contact details, account records) as is necessary for us to carry out the work and keep a record in case of disputes. We will not pass on or disclose any information about any jobs that you send to us, whether we actually proofread the work, only quote for it, or for whatever reason we do no work on it at all. The possible exception is if we use subcontractors to proofread jobs for us in which case they will be subject to the same rules as us), or if we are asked to by anyone who is legally permitted to demand that we do so.
17. These terms of business may be amended by us from time to time. If we are negotiating terms for a job and we make changes that will affect the potential contract between us, we will notify you of the changes as soon as possible.

[Swift Proofreading Services Terms of Business dated 22/02/2013]