LEGAL
Terms of service
The terms covering use of this website and the supply of our services.
Who these terms are with
Thorne Technology Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15879105, VAT number GB473009601. In these terms that is "we" and "us", and you are "you".
These terms cover two separate things: using this website, and buying services from us. The website part applies to anyone reading this. The services part applies once you have accepted a quote.
We sell to businesses and organisations, not to consumers. That matters legally: the cancellation rights in the Consumer Contracts Regulations do not apply to a business purchase, so they are not set out here.
Using this website
You may read it, print it and quote it. You may not copy it wholesale, scrape it, or present our words or design as your own.
Prices on this site are published in good faith, exclude VAT, and are what we charge unless your situation changes the work. If something on your site makes a job materially bigger than the published price assumes, we tell you before we start rather than after we finish.
We try to keep everything here accurate. If you spot something wrong, tell us and we will fix it.
How a contract starts
Nothing on this website is an offer you can accept by clicking. A contract starts when we send you a written quote or service agreement and you accept it in writing, which includes email.
The quote says what is included. Anything not in it is not in it, and we will quote separately rather than assume.
The 30 day rolling term
Support agreements run month to month on 30 days notice, from either side, in writing. There is no minimum term, no automatic renewal period to be caught by and no exit fee.
Notice given part way through a month runs to the end of the following month. We do not refund part months, and we do not charge for one you did not have.
Send notice to hello@thornetechnology.co.uk, so it is dated and logged. An email to an engineer who is on holiday is not a reliable way to end a contract, and we would rather neither of us had to argue about when the clock started.
At the end, whatever you ask for: we hand over administrative credentials, documentation and any data we hold for you, or we destroy them. We will not hold your systems hostage over a disagreement about an invoice, which is a thing that happens in this industry and should not.
Charges and payment
All prices exclude VAT, which is charged at the prevailing rate.
| What | When it is invoiced | When it is due |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly support plans | The 1st of the month | The 25th of the same month |
| Project and installation work | 50% deposit before we start, balance on completion | The 25th following the invoice |
| Hardware and third party licences | On order | The 25th following the invoice |
| Ad hoc and out of scope work | After it is done | The 25th following the invoice |
Third party licences and hardware are shown separately on the invoice, so you can see what is ours and what is a supplier's.
Invoice queries go to hello@thornetechnology.co.uk. Tell us before the due date rather than after it and nothing escalates.
Late payment carries statutory interest and compensation under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998. We would rather ring you.
Prices can change with 30 days written notice. If a change does not suit you, the 30 day notice period is yours to use.
What we will do
We will carry out the work with reasonable skill and care, by people who know what they are doing, and to the response times in your service agreement where it sets them.
We will tell you when something is outside what we can sensibly fix, and say so early rather than bill you for discovering it.
Where we need access to your systems or premises we will agree it with you first, except in an emergency where waiting would make the problem worse, and we will tell you straight afterwards.
What we need from you
A named contact who can make decisions, reasonable access when we need it, and the licences your software requires. We will tell you what is needed; we cannot make you compliant with a vendor's licensing on your behalf.
Backups and continuity are only our responsibility where your agreement says we provide them. If it does not, they are yours.
If you ask us to do something we have advised against, we will do it and record the advice in writing. That record is not us being difficult; it is so neither of us has to rely on memory later.
Who owns what
Your data is yours, throughout and afterwards. Nothing in these terms gives us any right to it beyond doing the work you are paying for.
Configuration documentation we produce for your systems is yours once it is paid for. Our own templates, tooling and internal processes remain ours.
Where we build software or a website for you, ownership transfers on final payment, and we say in the quote what is custom and what is a third party component licensed rather than owned.
Confidentiality
We see a lot. Invoices, correspondence, whatever is on a screen when we walk past it. None of it goes anywhere, during the contract or after it, except where the law requires.
The same applies in the other direction to anything we tell you about how we work.
Data protection
For the systems we manage you are the data controller and we are the processor, acting on your instructions. The detail sits in the data processing terms attached to your agreement, which set out what we may do, who else is involved and what happens at the end.
For our own dealings with you, such as billing and correspondence, we are the controller. The privacy policy explains that side.
If there is ever a personal data breach affecting your data we will tell you without undue delay, with what we know at the time rather than waiting until we know everything.
Liability
Read this section properly. It is the one that matters if something goes badly wrong.
| What | Position |
|---|---|
| Death or personal injury caused by our negligence | Not limited or excluded. It cannot lawfully be, and we would not try |
| Fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation | Not limited or excluded |
| Anything else the law says cannot be excluded | Not limited or excluded |
| Everything else | Capped at the total charges you paid us in the 12 months before the claim |
| Loss of profit, revenue, goodwill or anticipated savings | Excluded |
| Loss or corruption of data where we do not provide your backups | Excluded |
Where we do provide your backups, that exclusion does not apply and the cap above does.
We hold professional indemnity and public liability insurance. Current certificates are available on request.
Neither of us is liable for failures caused by something genuinely outside our control, such as a supplier outage, a utility failure or an act of government. We will tell you what has happened and what we are doing about it.
Suspension and ending the agreement
Either of us may end the agreement on 30 days written notice, for any reason or none, to hello@thornetechnology.co.uk or to the address on your agreement.
Either of us may end it immediately if the other commits a material breach and has not put it right within 14 days of being asked in writing, or becomes insolvent.
We may suspend service where an invoice is more than 30 days overdue and we have asked for it twice in writing. We will give you 7 days warning before we do, and we will not suspend anything that would put safety at risk.
The small print that still matters
If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest stands.
Not enforcing something once does not mean we have given up the right to enforce it later.
Nobody who is not you or us gets rights under these terms. The Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 does not apply.
Your agreement, the quote and these terms are the whole of it. If they disagree, the signed agreement wins, then the quote, then this page.
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. Wales shares a legal jurisdiction with England: there is no separate Welsh contract law, and a Welsh business and a Welsh supplier are in the same courts as an English one.