If I sell several services, can I have one set of composite terms of business or do I need to have one set for each service I offer?

Legally, it is entirely possible to do this, but you should think about the customer experience in doing so. 

If you have services that are very distinct and customers are only likely to buy one of those services, then it might not be a good idea to combine your terms, as the customer will need to read through a lot that isn’t relevant to them. However, if a good number of your customers consume two or more of your services, then it would potentially make sense to combine the terms. 

It is also worth considering the customer journey. Are there some services that you provide where you have a telephone conversation with the prospect or an email exchange with them and then send them an invoice? Whereas with other services, there is an online sales page with payment taken upfront online? In that case, it would make sense to have terms for the services where you invoice and separate terms for the services where payment is taken online.

If you are dealing with consumers for some services and businesses for other services, then it would be neater to have separate terms for the services that you offer to consumers and separate terms for the services that you offer to businesses, as the terms for consumers will need to contain all of the require consumer protection terms such as the 14 day cooling off period. If however you sell the same services to a mixture of consumers and businesses, then you can use the same terms and would simply say “if you are purchasing the services as a consumer (as defined in the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, namely that you are purchasing the services wholly or mainly for purposes outside of a business, trade, craft of profession, then the following applies…” Then you would go on to include the cancellation clauses, for example. For business customers you would add a line to say “if you are not purchasing the services as a consumer (as defined above), then the above cancellation clauses do not apply.”

 

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