(for all other Ts&Cs see relevant online signup pages)
1. Interpretation
1.1 Definitions
Unless otherwise stated, the following definitions apply to this document:
- "we", "us", and "our" are references to Norfolk
Internet;
- "you", "your" and "customer" are references
to the person paying for services from Norfolk Internet having entered into
this agreement;
- "services" are web hosting, domain registration, reseller rights,
outsourced support, email and other services or facility provided by us to you;
- "server" is the computer equipment operated by us in connection
to the services provided;
- "order" means a request made by the customer to us for services
to be supplied subject to these conditions;
- "charges" are the charges payable by the customer for the provision
of services details of which can be found on http://www.norfolkinternet.co.uk
and may vary from time to time.
1.2 Include
The words "include" and "including" are to be construed
without limitation.
1.3 Headings
The headings in this document are for convenience only and shall not affect
the interpretation of these conditions.
2. Ordering process
2.1 Order acceptance
We have not accepted a customer application and order until account setup and
you receive the 'welcome' email including all details specific to your account.
Until this time, we reserve the right to refuse, cancel or reject any order
made by the customer. In such cases, a full refund will be made using the same
method as payment was originally made.
3. Refunds
3.1 Money back guarantee
3.1.1 Where money back guarantees are offered, customers are entitled to a full
refund within 14 days of the initial order being placed. This will be issued
in the same method as originally used by the customer. Cases involving offline
methods of payment will be refunded using a personal cheque or other online
method.
3.1.2 Any money back guarantee does not apply and will not be issued if more than 50% of allocated data transfer has already been used on the web hosting account. This money back guarantee does not apply to domain name registrations or if the account has breached these terms and conditions prior to cancellation.
3.2 Account cancellations
No refunds will be issued for account cancellations made on either a monthly
or yearly payment schedule, as server resources are allocated in advance. No
refunds are issued for domain registrations. After cancellation, all files and
emails stored within the account are deleted - it is the responsibility of customers
to retrieve and store their files for any possible future use.
4. Misuse
4.1 Spam / Unsolicited Mass E-mail
The sending of Unsolicited Commercial Email (SPAM) through our servers promoting
any website or through third party servers promoting a website hosted by us
can result in the suspension or termination of the customers web hosting account
without refund. Mailing lists may be operated as long as individuals choose
to subscribe to receive mailings via clear 'opt in' methods and a strict removal
procedure is published in all mailings. 'Safelists' and other advertising related
mailing lists may not be operated. Any complaints received are taken seriously
and will be investigated. Please see notes on Mailing Lists below.
4.2 Chat Rooms
These are not allowed. Chatroom scripts will be disabled and the account suspended
in serious or repeat cases.
4.3 Account Use
Under no circumstances must our servers be used for the hosting or communication
of, reference to or linking to any of the following:
4.3.1 nudity, pornography, anything of a sexual, lewd, or obscene nature;
4.3.2 violations of any copyright or any other right of any third party;
4.3.3 threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory statements;
4.3.4 promotion of illegal activities (hacking, cracking, etc);
4.3.5 information or software containing or about any kind of virus;
4.3.6 hate speech or hate propaganda;
4.3.7 the collection of personal information for illegal purposes;
4.3.8 content deemed by us at our sole discretion to be harmful to us;
4.3.9 It is a condition of service that hosted websites do not contain material
of an adult nature, online gaming or chatrooms. We have procedures in place
to identify and remove inappropriate material immediatley.
4.4 Banned scripts
We do not allow the use of the following scripts on our servers:
- UltimateBBS
- IkonBoard
- All versions of YABB forum
- Proxy scripts
- IRC scripts
- Anonymizer
- Chat rooms
- FormMail
Please ask in advance of installation if you are unsure of the ban-status of any third-party script, as rogue installations are removed.
4.5 Resellers
In the event that a resold account is in breach of our misuse terms, we reserve
the right to suspend this account without informing the reseller. The end user
will not be contacted by us and every effort will be made to inform the reseller
(our customer) of our actions and reasons.
5. Billing
5.1 Payment schedules
The customer agrees to supply appropriate payment for the services received
from us in advance of the time period during which such services are provided.
5.2 Invoices
These are issued when services are ordered or work is completed to customers'
satisfaction and must be paid within 7 days of issue. A reminder will be sent
after 30 days. Failure to settle will result in service being suspended after
45 days from issue of invoice. Files may be automatically deleted when an account
is closed, in which case refunds will not be offered for unused periods.
5.3 Bank charges
Customers are responsible for the provision of sufficient funds in their account
and we will not be held responsible for any charges incurred as a result of
overdrawing of the bank account or credit card or as a result of failed transactions.
5.4 Suspension
In addition to 5.2 above, we additionally reserve the right, at our discretion,
to suspend any account after 7 working days have passed without due payment
being received. Any added time for payment will be at our sole discretion. An
administration fee may be levied at £25 per hour (or part thereof) for
time spent pursuing payment.
5.5 Currencies
All invoices and payments are processed in GB Pound Sterling (£) Prices
shown in any other currencies on this website or other promotional material
is to be treated as a guide only and may be inaccurate due to changes in the
exchange rates. All customers are advised to check amounts using accurate recent
exchange rates before ordering.
6. Backups
6.1 Regularity and policy
Unless a specific feature of an account, backups are made by us purely on an
occasional basis, however, no guarantees are made of any kind as to the regularity
or integrity of these backups. All customers are strongly advised to regularly
download their own backups from their control panel where a zipped archive is
provided daily of all account files and databases.
7. Resource Use
7.1 CPU & Memory
All accounts are monitored for their use of server resources. If any account
is using a high amount of server resources we will contact the customer to discuss
the issue with them. In serious cases where an account is using a considerably
large amount of system resources (memory, CPU etc.) the account may be suspended
or script disabled without notice to maintain the smooth running of the server.
7.2 Data transfer and webspace allocations
Customers can request a package upgrade or temporary resource increase at the
costs available to view on our website at http://www.norfolkinternet.co.uk.
It is the sole responsibility of the customer to contact us in advance of requiring
extra resources to prevent account suspension. In some cases, accounts are automatically
suspended when their resource limits have been reached and manual unsuspension
is required by us.
8. Customer Responsibility
8.1 Contact Information
The customer is responsible for keeping their contact details up to date with
Norfolk Internet. We cannot be held responsible for communication mixups or
missed payments as a direct result of the customers failure to update their
details.
8.2 Sensitive data
Customers are responsible for keeping their usernames, passwords and other sensitive
data safe. If a breach is suspected, the customer is required to request a change
of login details by contacting support staff.
9. Contact procedure
9.1 If a breach of these terms and conditions is found we will, at our sole
discretion, determine whether it is a serious or minor breach. If a serious
breach of these terms is found we reserve the right to suspend the account(s)
of the customer in question or disable any part of the account before contacting
them. We will however make an attempt to contact the customer prior to suspension
in the event of a minor breach using the email address we have on record for
your account. If no reply is received within 3 days we will escalate the status
of the breach to a serious breach and may suspend the account(s).
9.2 In the event that a resold account is the subject of the breach we will make every effort to contact the reseller before taking action. In serious cases we may have to suspend or disable all or part of the account before contacting the reseller.
10. Limitation of Liability & General Terms
10.1 We are not responsible for any claimed damages, which may result from servers
going offline, or being unavailable for any reason. This includes damages which
may result from the corruption or deletion of data. The customer agrees to indemnify
and hold us, our suppliers and our employees and agents harmless from any claims,
damages, including but not limited to consequential damages resulting from the
use of the service which damages the customer or any other party.
10.2 We will cooperate fully with investigations of violation of systems or network security at other sites and will cooperate with law enforcement authorities in the investigation of possible criminal violations. Customers who violate these terms may incur in criminal or civil liability.
10.3 For clients with multiple accounts and resellers, we reserve the right to suspend all accounts should the main account owner violate these terms and conditions in a manner deemed by us to be extremely serious.
10.4 In the event that we are unable to contact a reseller account holder to pursue payment, we reserve the right to contact their customers to inform them of the situation. We also reserve the right to contact a reseller's customers if they are 'abandoned' by the reseller account holder.
10.5 We will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of these terms and conditions. The failure by a customer to meet or follow any of the above terms and conditions is grounds for account suspension or deactivation.
11. Modification
11.1 We reserves the right to add, delete, or modify these Terms and Conditions,
our hosting packages, prices and website at any time with notice provided via
WWW and announcements in our forum and/or customer control panel(s). All customers
are encouraged to check this document at least once a month to ensure they are
aware of any changes.
Updated 9 July 08
IMPORTANT INFORMATION - MAILING LISTS
For the purpose of this information, a "mailing list" is defined as sending an identical email to a batch of email addresses either via a specific mailing list application (eg DadaMail), other online application (eg forum script), Outlook/home computer email software (eg putting multiple addresses in the To: field), or similar. A common use for mailing lists is to keep customers informed of new products, registered website users informed of new website features, and things of this nature.
We do allow the use of email mailing lists though there are some conditions in place.
Firstly, we do not allow 'safe lists' or other similar schemes whereby advertisers trade email contacts. In addition to this, the vast majority of email address lists available for sale on the internet as 'legitimate opt-in lists of contacts who have agreed to be sent advertising emails' are fake and will lead to large numbers of spam reports so we do not allow the use of these purchased lists - all addresses on a mailing list must agree to be sent emails specifically with the website sending the emails (see below).
We recommend the use of an application called Dada Mail due to it's large number of features, ease of use and server resource usage (eg ability to 'batch send'). Operating mailing lists using a basic home made script or a non mailing list application (eg forum application 'Email All' feature) is not recommended due to the lack of options and flexibility with these methods.
Anyone operating a mailing list should first pay careful attention to our terms and conditions in this area where we set out some rules relating to:
Absolutely no spam (unsolicited bulk email)
All subscribers to the mailing list must have specifically agreed to be on the list and receive mailings via opt-in methods (opting in with the site sending the emails)
All mailings must contain clear and concise unsubscription instructions
All mailings must contain a passage detailing why the email is being sent and why they are listed
We require that anyone operating a mailing list follows the points below to minimise problems with mailings:
Double Opt-In
An opt-in method of list subscription is where the subscriber asks to be put
on the list by, for example, entering their email address in a website form
to become subscribed.
We require that list administrators employ double opt-in methods whereby the subscriber has to authorise being added to the list after submitting their email address. This usually takes the form of an automated email being sent to the address submitted where a link needs to be clicked to confirm the subscription.
Not only does this get extra confirmation from the client, it also ensures
that the email address is valid (avoiding problems with email bounces when sending
to the list) and also that the email address is owned by the person subscribing
(avoiding problems with people entering addresses not owned by them on website
forms).
List administrators are also asked to keep evidence/logs of the date and method
that subscribers agreed to be included in the mailing list.
Unsubscribe Instructions
All emails sent to the mailing list must contain clear instructions for unsubscription.
We require that subscribers are offered the ability to unsubscribe via an online
web link (most mailing software is capable of this) and not by replying to the
email with a special subject line as most do not feel comfortable replying to
an email they consider as unwanted.
In addition, we ask that the instructions for unsubscribing to the email are shown clearly (not in tiny text) both at the top of the email and at the bottom (or just at the top at least).
Email content
We ask that emails sent to mailing lists do not primarily focus on advertising
websites owned/operated by the client but not hosted with us. To advertise these
websites a mailing list should be operating on the server/provider they are
hosted on.
We also ask that all emails contain an opening paragraph detailing who the
email is from, why it is being sent (eg because the subscriber asked to be kept
informed via the list) and what the email is about (eg advertising new product
line). We ask that websites are clear on the volume of mailings (eg weekly,
monthly, etc) and content of mailings (eg announcements only, sales, etc) so
that the subscriber can see this before subscribing.
Also, in order to help greatly if spam complaints do occur, we ask that the
subscribers email address is included as test somewhere within the email so
we know who the complaint is from. This can be put in the email headers, within
the content or embedded within the unsubscribe link (preferred method).
Single Opt-Out
We ask that those operating mailing lists allow unsubscriptions (opt-out's)
with no email confirmation or other additional tasks required by those unsubscribing.
If a subscriber clicks the unsubscribe link in the mailing their email address
should then be removed from the database with no email confirmation required.
Example
An example of a mailing list email which compilies with the above requirements
is shown below:
Joe Bloggs,
--------------
This email is being sent to you (email@address.com) because you are subscribed
to the 'New Products' mailing list operated by The Online Clothing Company after
submitting the subscription form on our website (http://www.clothingcompany.com)
and verified the email address.
If you wish to unsubscribe, please click here: http://www.clothingcompany.com/listunsubscribe.php?email=email@address.com
--------------
** mailing list email content here **
--------------
The operator of this mailing list can be contacted as shown below:
The Online Clothing Company, Address, Phone Number
If you wish to unsubscribe from future mailings, please click here: http://www.clothingcompany.com/listunsubscribe.php?email=email@address.com
To alter your subscription options please click here:
http://www.clothingcompany.com/listoptions.php?email=email@address.com
--------------
The guidelines above should result in no (or very few) problems relating to spam reports being sent by receivers of email they consider as spam which by law we are required to investigate with utmost urgency. Despite the above we maintain the right to suspend any mailing list which generates a large number of abuse complaints in order to keep the server from being blacklisted and causing email problems for all other clients.