Terms of business

01 Who you are contracting with

LEWCOMMERCE is the trading name of Lewis Stewart, a sole trader in England.

Trading name

LEWCOMMERCE

Proprietor

Lewis Stewart

Address for service

2d Nursery Close, Wroughton, Swindon, SN4 9DR, England

Contact

WhatsApp 07494 582061

VAT

Not VAT registered

In these terms, "I" and "me" mean Lewis Stewart trading as LEWCOMMERCE, and "you" means the client named on the quote.

02 What these terms cover

These terms apply to every piece of work unless we have signed something else that says otherwise. Where a written quote and these terms disagree, the quote wins for that job.

They are written for businesses. If you are buying as a consumer rather than for a business, you also have statutory rights — including, in most cases, 14 days to cancel a distance contract — and nothing here removes them.

03 Quotes and starting work

You get a written quote setting out the scope, the price and the timescale. It is valid for 30 days. Work starts when you accept it in writing — a WhatsApp message saying yes is enough — and, where a deposit applies, when that deposit clears.

No work is chargeable before you have accepted a quote. Conversations, calls and the initial look at your site are free.

04 Prices and payment

Build projects

50% deposit to start, balance on completion before the site goes live

Fixed-price jobs

Payable in full on delivery of the written report or work

Monthly services

Billed monthly in advance, first payment on start date

Payment terms

14 days from invoice date

VAT

Not VAT registered — no VAT is charged, and every price quoted is the price you pay

Late payment is subject to statutory interest and compensation under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998. I would always rather chase you on WhatsApp than use it.

Where an audit fee is credited against a later engagement, that credit applies to the first month or first invoice of the follow-on work, and only if that work is booked within 30 days of the audit being delivered.

05 What I need from you

Most delays come from one place: waiting on content. To keep to a timescale I need text, images, logos and access to any accounts involved, at the start rather than in pieces.

You confirm that anything you supply — copy, photographs, logos, fonts — is yours to use, or that you have permission to use it. If a third party claims otherwise, that is your responsibility rather than mine.

I will not ask for, and will not accept, passwords to your accounts by message. If access is needed you grant it through the platform's own invitation or delegated access feature.

06 Timescales and changes

Timescales on a quote are working estimates made in good faith and assume content arrives when agreed. They are not guaranteed dates unless the quote says so.

Two rounds of revisions are included in a build. Changes that go beyond what was quoted — new pages, a new direction, a feature that was not discussed — are quoted separately before any extra work happens. You will never receive an invoice for something you did not agree to first.

07 What you own

On final payment, you own the work outright — every file, the HTML, the CSS, the images produced for you, and the design. It transfers to you and you can take it anywhere, host it anywhere, or have someone else edit it. That is deliberate, and it is the opposite of how most builder platforms work.

Two limits on that, which are ordinary:

• Third-party components keep their own licences — typefaces, stock photography, and any plugin or library. You get what the licence allows, and I will tell you what those are.
• Until final payment clears, the work remains mine. In practice this only matters if an invoice goes unpaid.

I keep the right to show the finished work in a portfolio and to describe how it was built, unless you ask me in writing not to. Nothing confidential is ever shown.

08 Monthly services

Site monitoring and growth retainers run month to month. There is no minimum term and no automatic annual lock-in.

Billing

Monthly in advance

Your notice

30 days, in writing or by message

My notice

30 days

On ending

Service runs to the end of the paid period; reports already produced stay yours

Unused time

Retainer hours do not roll into the next month

Monitoring reports what it finds. It reduces the chance of a problem going unnoticed; it does not guarantee your site will never break, and it is not a security guarantee or a backup service unless the quote says those are included.

09 Hosting and third parties

Where hosting, a domain or a third-party service is arranged for you, it is supplied by that provider under their terms, and their uptime and their outages are theirs. I will deal with them on your behalf during a job, but I cannot be responsible for a service I do not run.

10 Cancelling

You can cancel a project at any time in writing. You pay for work completed up to that point, and the deposit covers the first stage rather than being a penalty. If the work completed is worth less than the deposit, the difference is refunded.

I may end a project if payment is more than 30 days overdue, if the work turns out to be materially different from what was quoted and no new price can be agreed, or in the event of abusive conduct. You would be invoiced only for work done.

11 Responsibility and limits

I take responsibility for doing the work properly and to a reasonable professional standard, and for fixing defects in my own work at no charge.

What I do not accept responsibility for, and no honest supplier would: loss of profit, loss of business, or loss of anticipated savings; the results of marketing activity, since search rankings, ad performance and enquiry volume depend on markets and platforms I do not control; or failures caused by third-party services, by your own changes to the work after delivery, or by content you supplied.

Except as set out below, my total liability for any one job is limited to the fees you paid for it.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.

12 Confidentiality and data

Anything commercially sensitive you share stays confidential, during the work and afterwards.

Where I handle personal data on your behalf — for example a customer list for an email campaign — I act as a processor on your instructions, use it only for that job, and delete or return it when the work ends. How your own information is handled is set out in the privacy policy.

13 If something goes wrong

Tell me. Most problems are a misunderstanding about scope and are sorted out in a single conversation. If we cannot resolve it between us, we will both genuinely consider mediation before either of us starts a claim.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.

14 Changes to these terms

These terms may be updated for future work. The version that applies to your job is the one in force on the date you accepted the quote, and the date and version at the top of this page are the record.