Service Terms

1. 1. We send you a quote

   It lists the scope, the price, the payment split, and the version of these terms that applies.

2. 2. You accept the quote

   Accept it on the quote itself or tell us in writing. Accepting the quote means you accept these terms. No signature is needed.

3. 3. You pay the deposit and we start

   Once you accept the quote, you pay the deposit through its payment link. We hold it as credit on your account until the work it covers is delivered; it is not an invoice. Paying it confirms your acceptance and saves your card for the payments that follow (section 6): both are conditions of accepting the quote. We confirm receipt and give you a start date. No work starts before the deposit clears.

Not included, unless your quote lists it

• Content you supply: text, images, product data, prices, stock levels.
• Copywriting, logo design, illustration, and photo editing.
• Third-party subscriptions and fees, such as hosting plans, platform plans, domain registration, premium plugin licences, payment gateway charges and courier costs. You buy them in your own name, and they are billed to you by those providers, not by us.
• Work on systems, integrations or platforms not named on the quote.
• Revision rounds beyond those included.
• Theme-editor or page-builder styling controls, where your quote says the work is built on our own theme or template with your branding applied. We apply your branding directly, because in our experience those controls go unused and add cost. Styling changes after handover are development work, quoted under section 4.

Set up, not managed

Set-up work - tracking, a Business Profile, Merchant Center, ad accounts, an email or booking platform, email security records - is complete when it works and is handed to you. Keeping it working afterwards is yours, or a plan's where your quote includes one. Platforms change their rules, disapprove products, expire tokens and move settings; responding to that after handover is new work under section 4, or part of a plan that says it covers it.

• We are not registered for VAT, so no VAT is charged on our prices.
• Invoices are due on the date stated on them.
• The final balance is payable before handover, not after it. Credentials and production deployment follow settlement.
• Anything unpaid follows the overdue cycle below. Paying what is due is not optional.
• Overdue amounts may carry interest at the rate prescribed under the Prescribed Rate of Interest Act.
• Third-party costs are yours directly. We do not mark them up, and we do not carry them for you.

Your card on file

• Paying the deposit saves the card you pay with, with our payment provider. Saving it is a condition of accepting the quote.
• You authorise us to charge it for what falls due under the quote and the services on it: the later milestones, Care once you sign up for it, and anything overdue.
• Later milestones are charged to it when they fall due. We email you at least 3 business days before any charge other than the monthly collection on the 28th, saying what it is for and how much.
• You may replace the card at any time. You may not remove it while anything under the quote is unpaid or a monthly service on it is running.

If a payment fails or is overdue

• Day 0: we tell you, and charge the saved card again on days 3 and 7.
• Days 7, 14 and 21: reminders, each firmer than the last. The day 21 reminder names the date a service will be suspended.
• Day 30: after 5 business days' written notice, we may suspend the services the amount is for: project work pauses, and a monthly service (Care) ends, as section 13 sets out.
• Restoring a suspended service carries the reinstatement fee stated on your quote. Overdue amounts may also carry interest at the prescribed rate. Suspending or ending a service never cancels what is owed.

If the take-over check finds something different

• If the take-over check shows the site differs from what your quote assumed (less of the package already in place, or a bigger site), we tell you in writing before doing any further work: what changed, item by item, the new total, and the further deposit now due so that your deposit stays at the share your quote states.
• You choose. Paying the further deposit accepts the revised quote, and work continues. Or you decline, and the engagement ends after the take-over check.
• If you decline, the take-over work already done is paid for, and the rest of your deposit is refunded within 10 business days. We remind you before the time runs out; if you have not chosen within 10 business days of our notice, the engagement ends as if you had declined.
• No work beyond the take-over check happens until you have chosen.
• If the take-over check finds less work than assumed, the total goes down and the balance due at handover goes down with it. If you have already paid more than the new total, the difference is yours, as set out under credit below.
• When you accept a quote for work on a site you already have, you confirm that you have read this clause.

Credit on your account

• Anything you have paid beyond what you owe is yours. That can happen when a total goes down after you have paid a deposit, or when you pay ahead.
• We refund it within 10 business days of your asking. Or, if you prefer, we keep it as credit on your account and set it against your next invoices, for care or a new project.
• Credit never expires, and you can ask for it back at any time.

Specialists we hire for you

• Where your quote includes a specialist, they work for you: you hire them on your own account on a freelance platform, and you pay them there, on the platform's own terms and protections.
• We help you set the account up, and you add us to it so we can hire on your behalf. The account, and everything delivered into it, stays yours.
• What we bill is our own work, as the tasks on your quote: the brief, finding and hiring the specialist, and checking each delivery against the brief.
• The specialist's fee is between you and the specialist. It never passes through us, and we take no share of it.
• Creative judgement - whether you like a design, a photo or a piece of writing - is settled through the specialist's own revision rounds, as stated in the brief.

When something is missing

• If the work can go on without it (most words and pictures), we carry on with a clearly marked placeholder and you send it during the review rounds. Nothing launches with a placeholder: at the final review you send it, launch without that part, or add it to your quote as made-for-you work. If the final review's window (section 5) passes without your choice, that part launches without it.
• If the work cannot go on without it (your logo and brand for a design, your product data for a store, the logins we need), the project pauses the day after its due date, and its timeline stops until it arrives.
• After 30 days paused, we may end the engagement under section 18: you pay for the work done, and any part of your deposit not yet earned is credited or refunded. Starting again is a new quote.

Always

• Access to the accounts we need, in your name, with us added as a collaborator or administrator.
• A single named contact who can give feedback and make decisions.
• Feedback within the review window in section 5.
• Confirmation that you own, or are licensed to use, everything you send us.

Online stores

• You name the person on your side who enters and maintains products. A store nobody on your side can run is a store that stops working.
• You enter or import your own products. We show you how, and we refine them where your quote says so.
• A small sample of real products - one simple product, one with variants, one with a long description - before we design the product and collection pages, because they cannot be designed or reviewed without them.
• Your full catalogue before the staging review.

You are responsible for

• Strong, unique passwords and two-factor authentication on every account tied to your property: domain, platform, hosting, email, analytics, advertising, social and payment accounts.
• Who has access. Remove people who leave, and review access regularly. We will ask for the minimum access we need and tell you when we no longer need it.
• Recovery details and any identity or business verification the platform requires. Keep them current, because platforms will only talk to the verified owner.
• Telling us promptly if you believe an account has been compromised, and telling the platform first.

What a compromise means for the engagement

• A compromise, suspension, lockout or restriction of an account we do not own is your risk. We are not liable for loss it causes, including lost advertising, lost sales, lost data, or a launch that slips.
• Helping you recover is not included in any quote, plan or warranty. Recovery, re-verification, dealing with platform support, rebuilding what was changed or removed, and restoring advertising or catalogue accounts are new work, quoted under section 4 and undertaken at our discretion.
• While an account we need is compromised or restricted, timelines pause under section 8 and the warranty in section 12 does not apply to the components affected.
• Where we discover a compromise ourselves, we tell you without undue delay, as section 14 requires. Telling you is included. Fixing it is not.

We are not a backup service

We are under no obligation to keep anything after handover, and you should not rely on us to. Keeping working backups of your live property is your responsibility, or your care plan's. If we do still hold a copy and you need it, ask - we will usually provide it to an authorised contact on your account. That is a courtesy, not a commitment.

The warranty does not cover

• Changes made to the property after handover, by you or anyone else. This voids the warranty for the components affected.
• New requirements, or things the quote did not include.
• Faults in third-party services, platforms, plugins or hosting.
• Content you supplied.
• Anything arising from a compromised, suspended or restricted account under section 10.

• Either side may cancel with 30 days' written notice. There is no minimum term and no cancellation penalty.
• Your plan's monthly allowance does not roll over if unused.
• Each Care plan includes an optional 15-minute check-in call a month, which you book from the link we send you after each month's collection. A month you don't book is not carried over.
• Before we do work beyond your allowance, we tell you what it is and what it costs. Your approval in writing - a message is enough - authorises it. We invoice it when you approve, and start once it is paid. If that invoice goes overdue, it follows the overdue cycle in section 6, which charges the card on file.
• Changing plan, up or down, takes effect from your next collection date. There is no proration.
• A failed collection is followed by the timeline below. We tell you at every step before anything is paused or suspended.
• Response commitments are commitments to respond, not to resolve. Resolution time depends on the cause.
• Commitments apply during business hours only: Monday to Thursday, 08:00-16:00, and Friday, 08:00-14:00 SAST, excluding South African public holidays and any closure we announce at least 5 business days ahead.
• Care never includes hosting. We do not sell hosting. Your site runs on a hosting account in your name, which you pay its provider for directly, under that provider's own terms. We make no uptime guarantee for it.
• Where we recommend a provider, such as our hosting partner, and you sign up through our link, that provider may pay us a referral fee. You pay it its normal price, and it costs you nothing more.
• Your host runs its own updates, backups and security. Updates can occasionally break something on your site. Care checks your site after them and puts right what they break; without a care plan, that is quoted work under section 4.
• Where your site needs a premium plugin or theme licence, you buy it directly from its seller, in your name. We do not supply licences under our own agreements.

Your first 30 days of Care, with a new build

• Where your quote says a new build includes Care, the first 30 days of it are included from handover, on the plan your quote names (Essentials if it names none). They run alongside the warranty in section 12.
• They include a Care review call before the 30 days end, which you book from a link we send you.
• We remind you 7 days before they end. When they end, Care stops unless you sign up. Nothing continues, and nothing is charged, unless you choose it.
• To sign up, you pay for the days from sign-up to the next collection day, at the monthly fee divided by the days in that month, and confirm that the card on file is used for the monthly collections that follow. This is the only time a Care fee is worked out by the day: changing plan later takes effect from your next collection date.

If a collection fails

• A failed collection follows the overdue cycle in section 6: retries on the card, reminders, then suspension after notice.
• Suspending a monthly service ends its plan, under section 18, on the day it is suspended: no further months are billed.
• For 30 days after that, paying what is owed, with the reinstatement fee, restarts the plan where it stopped. After 30 days, coming back is a new quote.
• Your accounts and assets are handed over once the account is settled.

We undertake to

• Process personal information only for the purposes of your engagement, and only on your instruction.
• Keep it confidential, and apply reasonable technical and organisational security safeguards.
• Notify you without undue delay where we have reasonable grounds to believe it has been accessed by an unauthorised person.
• Return or delete it at the end of the engagement, on your instruction, except where we must keep records by law.

We show our work

We display the projects we build in our portfolio, in case studies, and in our marketing. That includes screenshots, a description of the work, and your business name. The permission is permanent and continues after the intellectual property transfers to you. A portfolio is how a studio this size earns its next project - very possibly including yours - so showing the work is part of the engagement rather than an optional extra. Two things we will never publish:

• What you paid, or any other commercial term of your engagement.
• Personal information belonging to you or your customers.

If a write-up does not describe your project the way you would like, tell us and we will gladly revise the wording. What we ask is that the project stays on the portfolio.

• Search rankings, traffic, leads, sales or revenue. These depend on search algorithms, competitors, your market and your own follow-through. Nobody can guarantee them, and anyone who does is misleading you.
• Uptime. Infrastructure belongs to third-party providers under their own service terms.
• That a website or an account cannot be compromised. Hardening reduces the risk; nothing removes it entirely.
• That a platform will keep your account open, unrestricted or verified. Platforms suspend, restrict and re-verify accounts under their own rules and on their own timelines.
• That third-party services will keep working as they do today. Platforms, plugins, gateways and APIs change outside our control.
• Compatibility with browsers or devices no longer supported by their makers.

• If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest still applies.
• We may use subcontractors for work we deliver. We stay responsible for their work. Specialists we source for you under section 6 are covered by that section instead.
• Neither side may transfer the agreement without the other's written consent, except as part of a sale of the business.
• Notices go to the email addresses on the quote.

The Design Hammock (Pty) Ltd

Registration 2021/653578/07. 159 Maria Bronkhorst Road, Ashlea Gardens, Pretoria, 0081. graeme@thedesignhammock.co.za