Terms and Conditions
If you would like to hire me , please read these Terms and Conditions carefully, then click the ‘I Agree’ button at the foot of this page to confirm that you have done so and that you accept these as the basis of our agreement.
This will constitute the establishment of a contract between you and my company, Big Lessons Limited, and will provide clarification for us both in the unlikely event of any dispute.
Throughout these Terms and Conditions, ‘You‘ means you as the person agreeing the Terms and Conditions and any company on behalf of which you claim authority to act.
‘We‘, ‘Me‘, ‘I‘ and ‘Us‘ all refer to my company ‘Big Lessons Limited’.
1) What these Terms and Conditions are
1.1 By contracting with us to write for you, you acknowledge that you have been offered the opportunity to read these Terms and Conditions and agree to be bound by the version of these Terms and Conditions as displayed on https://freelancecopywriter.co.uk/terms-and-conditions-of-business/ at the time of contracting.
1.2 When you contract with us to write for you, you acknowledge that as the formulation of the contract between us, these Terms and Conditions take precedence over any other terms and conditions, express or implied, and regardless of whether it is your normal practice to conduct similar engagements under your own Terms and Conditions.
1.3 If you hire me (Laurence Blume) to write for you, you are contracting with Big Lessons Limited, a UK private Limited Company which trades as ‘freelancecopywriter.co.uk’.
2) Confirming our contract and starting the job
2.1 A job is considered as being contracted the moment you agree these Terms and Conditions by clicking the ‘I Agree’ button at the bottom of this page.
2.2 If, for any reason, we do not ask you to do this or you decline to do this, a job may be judged to have been contracted on receipt of any email in which you indicate beyond reasonable doubt that you wish us to proceed with the work at a fee you have agreed with us in earlier correspondence.
2.3 If you are contracting with us on behalf of any group of individuals other than yourself alone, or on behalf of a company, you warrant that you are authorised to enter into a contract on behalf of that group of individuals or company.
2.4 If you are contracting on behalf of a company which uses a Purchase Order system, the job will be deemed to be contracted only on receipt by E-mail or post of a PO number. The PO itself should be supplied by E-mail or post, but the job will be deemed to have been contracted as soon as your PO number is received.
3) Contracting with us if you work for a marketing services or web development agency
3.1 If you contract with us on behalf of a marketing services or web development agency of any kind, to work on a project for one of your clients, a contract will exist only between us and the marketing services agency, and not between us and any client of the marketing services agency.
3.2 You agree to indemnify us against any claim by any client of the marketing services agency for compensation or damages brought about as a direct or indirect consequence of the use, or inability or unwillingness to use, the material which we write for you.
3.3 If you contract with us on behalf of a marketing services or web development agency of any kind, you attest that you are authorised to enter into a contract on behalf of that marketing services or web development agency.
4) Us contracting directly with one of your clients
4.1 If you represent a marketing services or web development agency of any kind, and wish us to work on a project for one of your clients but wish us to contract directly with that client, then a contract, subject to agreement, will exist between your client company and Big Lessons Ltd, and you acknowledge that we are free to conduct and further develop a direct relationship with that client without reference to you, and without compensation or commission of any kind being payable.
4.2 In such a case, we agree that we will not seek to sell to your client any services, other than copywriting, which they have at any time previously purchased from you.
5) The work we do for the fee we agree
5.1 Our standard pricing model is intended to be one of ‘fixed pricing’. This means that once we’ve agreed the fee, we aim to support the copy until you are entirely happy with it, without any further fee being due. This includes rewriting from scratch after you have viewed the initial draft, if you feel that that is what you’d like us to do, and are able to present a reasonable case for this being necessary.
5.2 In order to avoid the possibility of this policy being abused, the service of which you are contractually assured for the fee we agree is defined as and limited to: preparation of first draft; submission of first draft; integration of your feedback to allow preparation of second draft; submission of second draft.
6) Our Guarantee
6.1 Our aim is to do a great job for you, for the fee that we agree, and to send you away so happy that you come back again. In any creative process, however, there can be misunderstandings.
If, when you see a draft, you are dissatisfied with the work that we have written for you, please discuss it with us and we will do everything that we can to resolve your concerns.
6.2 In the end, if you have given us proper opportunity to address your concerns (defined as working in genuine collaboration with us through at least 3 additional draft submissions after you inform us in writing of your dissatisfaction), and still consider that we have failed to deliver work which is fit for purpose when measured against the requirements of a written brief which you provided in advance of writing commencing, you will be free to terminate our contract with a rejection payment of 50% of the agreed project fee being due. If you have made full payment in advance, the balance of (50% of the project fee) will be refunded to you. This is entirely without prejudice, and no liability or admission of failure or inability to complete the contract on our part is inferred.
6.3 In such circumstance, you undertake to make no use whatsoever of any material contained in any draft which we have prepared for you.
6.4 In such circumstance, you agree to absolve us of liability for any loss of income or for any costs or damages suffered by you or by any third party as a result of any delay which has been caused to your business or to the business of any third party.
7) Payment terms
7.1 Our standard trading terms are:
7.1.1 UK clients who are not Limited Companies
On your first job, the full project fee is payable in advance. Invoiced as soon as you book.
On any subsequent project you may ask me to do, an invoice will be sent on delivery of the first draft, with payment due 7 days later.
This payment model is not variable.
7.1.2 UK Limited Company clients
On your first job, the first 50% of project fee is payable in advance. It is covered by the first of two invoices sent when you book the job.
The second 50% is due at 30 days. It is shown on the second invoice. (If we have not completed the task at 30 days, the balance may be paid on completion, though in no circumstances later than at 45 days).
On any subsequent project you may ask me to do, the job will be invoiced on booking, with payment due 30 days later.
If for any reason your company’s purchasing policy makes this impossible for you to agree, you must advise us of this before contracting the job, so that we can consider whether we wish to offer alternative terms.
7.1.3 Clients being billed outside of the UK
On your first job, full project fee is payable in advance. It is invoiced as soon as you book the job.
On any subsequent project you may ask me to do, the job will be invoiced on booking, with payment due on completion.
If for any reason your company’s purchasing policy makes this impossible for you to agree, you must advise us of this before contracting the job, so that we can consider whether we wish to offer alternative terms.
7. 1.4. All clients booking blogging or similar ongoing projects.
On all regular blog post contracts, or contracts for other ongoing work, payment is monthly in advance.
Two invoices equal to the expected value of the monthly contract will be issued when the contract is booked. The first of these, covering the first month’s posts, is due for payment immediately, and in advance of work commencing. The second is due at 30 days, so in advance of the second month’s work, A further invoice, due at 30 days, will be issued each month thereafter. If the number of posts actually taken in any month varies from that initially agreed, the following month’s invoice will correct the sum paid, in either direction.
This payment model is not variable.
7.1.5 All clients booking projects meriting milestone payments
The project will be broken into agreed task completion and billing milestones. Invoices for all milestones will be issued on booking the project, with payment of each milestone due before work commences on the subsequent milestone.
If this is the first job I have done for you, there will be an initial payment stage payable in advance.
This payment model is not variable.
7.2 Unless otherwise agreed, UK payment must be made by UK online bank transfer (BACS). Account details are provided on the invoice. International payment should be made via SWIFT or other recognised international electronic bank transfer. International banking details will be provided to you via email.
If your accounts department require any information additional to that shown on your invoice, or provided by us, they must request this information from us in sufficient time to complete payment by the appropriate date.
If you wish to make payment by Visa or Mastercard, or by PayPal, we can arrange for you to do this securely, and you must advise us of this in sufficient time for payment to be completed by the due date.
7.3 The existence of 30, 60 or 90 day payment terms, or an ‘end of following month’ payment practice, in your company’s routine handling of accounts payable will have no bearing on your obligation to make payment on the due dates shown on our invoices.
7.4 Once a project has been contracted, the full project fee we have agreed between us is deemed to be incurred unless we have specifically agreed payment milestones. You have no right to withhold or reduce payment based on any critical response to, or appraisal of, the copy we write for you, and you acknowledge our right to pursue payment in full should you elect for any reason to do this.
7.5 Should you for any reason fail to maintain communication with us with regard to a project which you have contracted, we will issue an invoice forthwith, and due for immediate payment.
We will consider failure to maintain communication as a period of 21 days in which we do not hear from you, despite our sending 3 or more emails to an address via which we have previously communicated successfully with you and from which the mail does not bounce. 5 days will be allowed for the last email to be responded to. In such a situation, we will make every effort to contact you by telephone as well as by email, but it is your obligation to ensure you maintain communication throughout your project.
7.6 In the event of premature commutation of the project by you for any reason, no reduction in fee will be due, and the full sum agreed between us for the work contracted will immediately become due for payment, with the immediate cancellation of any period of credit shown on the invoice.
7.7 This does not affect your statutory rights, nor your rights under the terms of our Guarantee (6, above) which protects you in the situation where, after a fair and proper process of collaboration, you contend that the copy we have delivered is not fit for purpose and we agree to accept your contention without prejudice.
7.8 Should you wish to cancel the project entirely for a legitimate reasons, before work on it has actually commenced, we will refund any payment you have made in full and any invoices raised will be cancelled.
8) Late Payment
8.1 We are a signatory to the Prompt Payment Code, administered for the UK Government Office of the Small Business Commissioner. You can read more about the Prompt Payment Code here.
Where payment is not received within 5 working days of the due date shown on the invoice, we reserve the right to charge interest from the due date. This will be applied in line with the Prompt Payment Code guideline of 8% plus the prevailing Bank of England reference rate.
8.2 The current Bank of England reference rate for the period 1 July 2023 until 31 December 2023 is 5.00%, making a total interest rate chargeable of 13.5%. In addition the statutory compensation charge of £70 for overdue sums of £1000 to £9999.99, or £40 for sums up to £999.99, will be charged. You can click here to check the currently applicable Prompt Payment Code interest rates chargeable on commercial debts.
9) Jurisdiction
9.1 In the settlement of any and all disputes arising out of these Terms and Conditions or arising in any other way from any contract formed between us, you acknowledge that delivery is deemed to occur in the United Kingdom.
9.2 You accept that jurisdiction in the Courts of England and Wales will prevail and agree to subject yourself to and comply with any settlement ordered by the Courts of England and Wales.
10) Delivery dates
10.1 We try hard to ensure that deadlines and milestones are met punctually, and almost always manage this. From time to time, however, workload may cause us to need to put back delivery dates a little. Where this is necessary, we will always seek to agree this with you first.
10.2 We reserve the right, however, to put back any milestone or delivery date by up to 48 hours, providing that we have given you notice of this at least 24 hours before the date at which we will be unable to deliver.
11) Security
If you wish to pass data, information or materials of any kind to us as part of a project which you wish us to undertake for you, or for a company who are your client, and require us to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA), we will do so in good faith. However, you indemnify us against any action whatsoever by you or your client associated with the accidental disclosure or loss of this information.
12) Passing over of your own copy draft
12.1 As part of the brief for your project, you may ask us to view a copy draft which you have written yourself, or which has been written for you by somebody else.
If you send us such draft copy, you affirm that you are the copyright holder, or that you are authorised by the copyright holder to permit all or part of this material to form a part of the new copyright work which we will create for you.
12.2 In such a case you indemnify us against any claim arising from subsequent suggestion that the new work in any way breaches any existing copyright.
12.3 In any situation where you do ask us to view an existing copy draft as part of the briefing, you acknowledge that the draft which we will write for you may bear similarities in all or part to this draft, but that in such a case the draft we write for you will be considered as an original work under the terms of our contract, without regard for the existence of the original draft.
13) Referencing other people’s content
If you send us research or sample copy taken from someone else’s printed collateral or website as an illustration of the kind of work you wish us to do for you, we will make every effort to ensure that the draft that we prepare for you in no way breaches the copyright of the content owner. However, you indemnify us against any action arising, directly or indirectly, as a result of use of this content as reference material.
14) Your right to use the copy we write for you
14.1 When you commission us to write copy for you, you are purchasing the copyright in the work we write for you, and this is assigned to you on receipt by us of full and final payment of all fees due.
14.2 We reserve the right to use reasonable extracts of the copy in the promotion of freelancecopywriter.co.uk without making a specific request to do so.
15) Errors and literals
15.1 We make every effort to ensure that copy is free of spelling mistakes and other literals. Early drafts may sometimes contain such errors, and our practice is to ensure that these are removed before a final draft is submitted to you.
15.2 However, ultimate responsibility for checking for spelling mistakes and literals is yours, and you absolve us of liability for any costs incurred as a result of the appearance of such errors in the final published form of any collateral in which you use the copy concerned, whether or not these errors appeared in any draft of the copy supplied by us.
16) Copy samples on this site
16.1 You acknowledge that all sample copy displayed on this site is copyright the commissioning company or Big Lessons Limited, and is displayed for your research only.
16.2 You may not copy or adapt any item, in whole or part, for any use whatsoever, save in a presentation whose purpose is to demonstrate to a client or colleague the nature of our work with a view to gaining approval to commission us.
17) Our collaboration with other copywriters
When you contract with us to write copy for you, you acknowledge that we may, in rare and exceptional circumstances but at our discretion, engage the services of other experienced professional copywriters to help us deliver all or part of the work which you require.
In such a case, we undertake to review and amend as required the work before it is presented to you, and to ensure that the work is of the same quality and professionalism it would be expected to exhibit if written in its entirety by us.
Sign here, please.
I confirm that I am contracting the project we have discussed on the terms agreed in our correspondence, and that I have read and agree to the Terms and Conditions displayed at https://freelancecopywriter.co.uk/terms-and-conditions-of-business/ on the date shown below.
"*" indicates required fields
