Terms and conditions of
sale to a consumer

Follow best business practice by using this model of standard terms and conditions for supplying goods and services to your customers. Our form incorporates all the latest and best legal advice for staying ahead in your customer dealings.

Advice

Standard terms of business should be sent to any new customers as soon as possible. All correspondence thereafter to your customers should refer to your “standard terms as delivered”.

Be careful

Whenever you’re selling goods or supplying services to a consumer, they’re more protected than business customers and consequently, what you can and cannot put in your contract is much more regulated. In particular, watch out for the Consumer Rights Act 2015 which provides that consumer contracts must be written in plain English and not contain unfair terms.

Advice

Basically, consumer contracts must now be “jargon” free so that each clause can be understood clearly without the need for a lawyer to provide an explanation. Additionally, each clause must be fair and not cause a significant imbalance for the consumer, so any attempt to pull a fast one will fail. For more information see http://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/competition-and-markets-authority.

Title retention clauses?

To avoid losing ownership of your goods there’s no reason why you can’t say in the contract that they remain your property until they’re paid for. If you don’t do this, the goods will belong to your customer (despite the fact that they haven’t paid for them) and you’ll be left in the frustrating position of having to bring a claim for the debt in the county court. Don’t forget, your clause must be written in plain English in order to comply with the Regulations.

Don’t even attempt to try and exclude or limit your liability if things go wrong. The type of all encompassing clauses that you often see in business-to-business contracts will not pass the fairness test and consequently the Regulations provide that these clauses can be ignored. Such clauses are seen as unfair because they prevent or hinder the customer from seeking redress and therefore upset the balance of the contract to the customer’s disadvantage.