These Conditions apply to the Support and Services
we provide our customers, and by ordering the
Services you agree to be bound by the terms and
conditions set out below. Before you order any
Support, Service or Hardware, if you have any
questions relating to these Conditions please
contact us on 0844 87 97 345 (calls to this number
cot £0.05 from a BT landline. Call costs
from mobiles and other networks may vary. All
calls to our customer services representatives
may be recorded for quality monitoring and training
purposes). Alternatively, you can contact us via
our Contact Us page.
"Conditions" means these terms and
conditions; "One-off Services" means
Services which you order on a one-off basis; "Personal
Information" means the personal details provided
by you to us; "Support or Services"
means the Technical Support Services or Product
Services you order under the terms of these Conditions;
"Subscription Services and Support Contracts"
refers to Services to which you subscribe on an
annual or on-going basis; "Us/our/we"
means Support So Simple, a trading name of Home
Counties IT Ltd, registered in England and Wales
No. 5652965, our Staff, IT Technicians or Contracted
Support Partners; "Website" means the
website located at www.supportsosimple.com or
www.homecountiesit.co.uk or any subsequent URL
which may replace it; and "You/Your"
means an authorised user of the Services. "Tickets"
means the recorded details of any open or closed
support request.
You undertake: To pay the amounts due for any
support or service in a timely manner. To notify
us of any changes to your personal information
that may relate to any contract or service we
are providing. That the information you provide
is true, accurate and complete in all respects.
Not to impersonate any other person or entity,
or to use a false name.
We reserve the right to modify the price or content,
or withdraw, temporarily or permanently some or
all of our Support Services or Support Contracts.
We will NOT increase any subscription based Support
Contract by more than 15% in any 12 month period,
unless the level of service changes. We may not
advise customers of any changes to subscription
and support contract rates other than in the instance
the level of service changes. We also reserve
the right to amend, add, remove or change the
terms and conditions of any existing, previous
and new service or support contract.
All prices quoted exclude VAT at current rates,
unless otherwise stated. We require cleared funds
for all Support Contracts, Support Services and
Hardware, prior to being provided. Any hardware
provided remains the property of Support So Simple
until all agreed prices have been paid. We reserve
the right to amend or withdraw any quoted price
for any service, support or hardware.
You may cancel any Support Contracts within 7
days from when the account was first activated
on the condition that no support, services or
hardware has been provided within that period.
If any support, service or hardware has been provided
you may not cancel the contract unless alternative
payment is made to cover any provided support,
services or hardware. Without prejudice to our
rights or to any other rights we have under the
terms of these Conditions, we reserve the right
to terminate the provision of the Services to
you at any time
We may need to collect certain Personal Information
to provide you with Support and Services. This
Personal Information will form part of a record
of your dealings with us. When you contact us,
we may ask for certain Personal Information to
be able to check your identity and may make a
note of this contact if it is relevant. We will
keep Personal Information given to us by you or
others during your relationship with us and other
companies in associated with Home Counties IT
Ltd. This includes details you give us on order
forms or during communications with you, and you
agree that we may use and update this information.
to provide you with other services, to recover
debts, to prevent and detect fraud, to update
our records, to prevent money laundering and to
check your identity. We may use your Personal
Information for research and statistical analysis
to develop and improve our products and services.
When assessing an application, we may use automated
decision-making systems.
Your Personal Information is confidential and,
although we may freely disclose it to other companies
associated with Home Counties IT Ltd, we will
only disclose it outside these companies when
you give us your consent, it is needed by certain
reputable third parties involved in running accounts
and/or providing services for us (e.g. credit
reference agencies), it is needed in order to
obtain professional advice, it is needed to investigate
or prevent crime (e.g. to fraud prevention agencies),
the law permits or requires it, or any regulatory
or governmental body requires it, even without
your consent or 6.5.6 there is a duty to the public
to reveal the Personal Information.
We may administer your account and provide services
from countries outside Europe that may not have
the same data protection laws as the UK. However,
we will have contracts or other legal mechanisms
in place to ensure your Personal Information is
adequately protected, and we remain bound by our
obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998
even when your Personal Information is processed
outside the European Economic Area (EEA). We may
monitor, record, store and use any telephone,
email or other electronic communications with
you for training purposes, to check any instructions
given to us and to improve the quality of our
customer service. Where we process sensitive personal
data about you, we will employ appropriate security
measures.
Our Support Services and other Services are provided
on a commercially reasonable basis and although
Support So Simple, its Technicians and Support
Partners will provide the Support and Services
with reasonable skill and care, we make no warranty
that the Services will meet your exact requirements
or that all the features of the Services will
always be available. We shall not be liable where
we are unable (using reasonable effort) to provide
the Services as a result of any event outside
our reasonable control. Our liability shall not
in any event include losses related to any business
of a customer such as lost data, lost profits
or business interruption. We will not be liable
for any loss or damage caused by us in circumstances
where there is no breach of a legal duty of care
owed to you by us and/or such loss or damage is
not reasonably foreseeable. We will not be liable
for any loss or damage caused wholly or mainly
by your breach of these Conditions.
Nothing in these Conditions shall exclude or
limit our liability for death or personal injury
resulting from our acts or omissions or those
of our servants, agents or employees or limit
your rights as a consumer under applicable UK
law. Each provision of this clause operates separately.
If any part is disallowed, or is not effective,
the other parts will continue to apply and they
continue to apply even after these Conditions
have been terminated or cancelled. If either of
us cannot do what we have promised because of
something beyond our reasonable control such as
lightning, flood, exceptionally severe weather,
fire, explosion, war, civil disorder, industrial
disputes, acts or omissions of persons for whom
we are not responsible, or acts of local or central
government or other competent authorities, such
party will not be liable for this.
Support Contracts, Pay-As-You-Go Support Services
and Fixed Price Support Services are currently
only available to UK residents over the age of
18 years. All Support Contracts are for a minimum
of 12 calendar months from the date the accounts
were activated. You must have valid software licenses
for all the software you request support or assistance
with, and all the hardware should be legally purchased
or obtained. We will provide the Technical Support
Services to the best of our abilities. We may
not be able to advise on all issues or to repair
or solve all problems that you ask us to but,
to the extent that we cannot advise on an issue
or solve a problem we will ensure appropriate
advise is provided to obtain further support from
associated manufacturers or developers as applicable.
In these instances, we are unable to provide any
part or full refund for our services as all support,
to the extent of providing a solution (in part)
is valid and chargeable as per the conditions
of our service agreement(s).
All technical support enquiries or general enquiries
require a support ticket to be raised (for each
incident), and any respective payments be made
before being actioned. Support tickets can be
raised by customers using our online Web Help
Desk, by calling one of our operators who will
raise the ticket on the customers bahelf, or by
communicating with a member of staff or Technician
through e-mail, who will then raise a support
ticket on the customers behalf. We (Support So
Simple) aim to respond to or acknowledge all new
support tickets raised within 1 working hour,
with the respective IT Technician (or appropriate
member of staff) responding within 4 working hours,
although during unexpected busy periods or delays
outside of our control customers may experience
further delays. If a Support Ticket has not been
acknowledged or updated within 24 hours of being
placed, customers should contact Support So Simple
or a member of staff directly by either phone
or e-mail, to check the status of the support
ticket. We are unable to offer any compensation
or refunds (in part or full) for extended delays,
other than extreme circumstances when it can be
proven that a support ticket was knowingly ignored
or delayed beyond a reasonable time frame as dictated
by Support So Simple.
Home Office customers are eligable for our Home
and Home Office Support Contracts on the condition
they work from their home address in a 'home office'
environment as approved by a Support So Simple
member of staff. We are unable to provide support
for or accept responsibility for any work or business
based applications, including but not limited
to Sage, Quickbooks, Business Banking, VPN, Microsoft
Exchange or any other applications, operating
systems or hardware associated with a business
system or environment, as dictated by a Support
So Simple staff member. The offer of Free Support
is limited to Home Users only, and may be withdrawn
without notice at any point. The Free Trial of
our Remote Business Contracts is limited to Business
contracts only and subject to the same conditions
as our standard contracts. This offer is available
to new customers only, and may be withdrawn without
notice at any point.
We endeavour to respond to all onsite support
requests within 72 hours (whether Pay-As-You-Go
or as part of an onsite contract), prioritising
more urgent support as necessary (as dictated
by Support So Simple staff). This allows for a
speedy response for genuine computing emergencies
ensuring all customer receive the best level of
support possible. If a customer requires an immediate
'same day' response to what is dictated as a non-urgent
response by Support So Simple staff, a £30
premium is applicable - this premium is in part
to deter those customers who might abuse our support
services at the expense of other customers, but
also to cover additional administrative and logistical
costs that are incurred with such a response.
We will not be responsible to you for any third
party products, application and/or operating systems,
their compatibility, reliability or respective
warranty agreements. All hardware and software
provided by us is subject to the manufacturers
or respective licensed importers conditions of
sale, with any warranty claims being handled directly
through them. In some instances where a product
was supplied DOA or has failed within 30 days
we may be able to replace the item under warranty,
but it will depend on the conditions of the manufacturers
own warranty procedure - many manufacturers require
warranty claims to be handled by the end user
and not the reseller.
When you purchase any of our Support Services,
we will use reasonable skill and care when attempting
to diagnose and repair and software or hardware
fault. If a problem we have fixed occurs again
within 30 days as a direct result of the same
cause(s) we identified when we fixed it the first
time, or as a direct result of the work carried
out by us, provided you have fully complied with
these conditions we will attempt to fix the problem
again at no extra charge (excluding any onsite
support or additional charges as a result of the
repair). If subsequent repairs are required that
could have likely appeared at the time of the
original repair, additional support charges may
apply (assuming those same charges would have
applied if the problem had returned, escalated
or manifested at the time of the original repair.
Additionally, we may be unable to honour any warranty
period for any reoccurring faults that develop
as a result of software updates, firmware updates,
modifications made to the hardware or software
by either the end user, the manufacturer, 3rd
parties (both in person and software) or effective
hardware or software.
All support Contracts are subject to assessment
of the covered hardware with business customers
subject to an onsite survey of all hardware covered
by any contract. ALL hardware within an business
organisation or IT network being covered by a
business contract must be covered by one of our
Support Contracts, with the exclusion of some
devices. Any onsite survey found to contradict
the requested level of support may result in the
contract being terminated and a one-off £80
fee being applied to cover the survey and any
following.
Our standard opening hours are 8am to 8pm Monday
to Friday and 9am to 5pm on weekends and Bank
Holidays, although we may be able to provide additional
support outside of these hours if approved in
advance. We may respond to e-mail enquiries at
any point of the day or night but do not guarantee
a response out of standard working hours. In the
event a member of staff is unable to respond to
a phone call, you may leave a voicemail. We will
endeavour to respond to all voicemails, e-mails
and raised support tickets as soon as possible,
with all technical enquiries being responded to
by an IT Technician typically within 4 working
hours (if not sooner). Given the nature of the
services we do not guarantee a minimum repair
time for any reported fault, problem or general
enquiry but will continue to review any open 'tickets'
ensuring a resolution as soon as possible. In
the event we have to wait on a 3rd party for either
additional information, support, software or hardware
we will continue to update you as best as possible.
Exclusions to our Unlimited Support Contracts
include Training sessions (planned, groups or
anything that requires more than 10 minutes dedicated
instruction in total), new hardware or software
installations (if a new server, workstation, software
rollout or IT system is required a pre-approved
quote will be required before any work carried
out) and repeat faults as a direct result of end
users and customers ignoring recommendations provided
by us, manufacturers or 3rd parties, general misuse
of hardware or software, and unlicensed or illegally
obtained hardware or software.
With all our Support Contracts, we have a Fair
Use Policy when any Unlimited Onsite Support feature
is added. Although we are able to provide unlimited
onsite support for any single instance, there
is a limit of 3 separate onsite support visits
per device, per calendar month. As an example,
if we return to repair the same computer for an
ongoing problem or a particular repair is expected
to take a long time the onsite support is limitless
(subject to all other conditions), but should
a single device suffer varying non-related problems
the onsite support is limited to three single
instances. This is to prevent customers abusing
our services, requesting onsite support for issues
that are either non-urgent (so could be dealt
with as a group of repairs) or could be dealt
with remotely given the end users support. Unlimited
Onsite Server Support is only available when the
server is covered for unlimited offsite support.
In all other instances, onsite support is limited
to 1 hour per instance for server repairs.
Our IT Technicians are experienced in removing
and dealing with Virus', Malware and Spyware but
given their very nature (and the varying causes
of infection), we are unable to provide any extended
warranty for onsite or offsite support. Our Technicians
will typically perform all the necessary tests
to diagnose and remove any infections as best
as possible, causing as little disruption to you,
your computer and your applications as possible
but given the repair options vary from "do
nothing" to "Wipe the computer",
the varying repairs can have equally varying results.
Additionally, in some instances Virus' and Malware
programmes are designed to cause as much havoc
when removed as when in place, meaning the removal
can often leave a computer in a more fragile state
than when infected. In these instances, we will
continue to provide any support as required but
cannot be held responsible for damaged caused
as a result of any attempted repairs. All customers
should ensure they have a working, reliable backup
of all their data and important information before
requesting any support, resulting in potentially
'aggressive' repair solutions.
Where you wish to avail yourself of Remote Desktop
Support, you agree that our agents are entitled
to access your Equipment remotely to provide you
with the Technical Support Services. Remote Access
Support is only available in relation to a Remotely
Accessible Device. Remote Desktop Support will
be used only where we deem it suitable for your
specific Remotely Accessible Device. Where we
deem that Remote Desktop Support is suitable for
your specific Remotely Accessible Device, you
agree that we are entitled to access your Remotely
Accessible Device remotely to provide you with
the Remote Desktop Support. To use Remote Access
Support and for us to access your Remotely Accessible
Device, all the component parts of your Remotely
Accessible Device must be fully working and fully
assembled. Furthermore, your Remotely Accessible
Device must have access and a sustained connection
to landline broadband internet, in order to avail
yourself of the Remote Desktop Support. Remote
Desktop Support is not available over a mobile
modem or other mobile internet connection.
All Online Backup accounts are subject to a minimum
contract term of 12 months, although you are able
to upgrade your account at any point during that
contract. When upgrading, you are committing to
a further 12 months contract. Our online backup
service rates may increase without notice, but
we will guarantee they will not increase by more
than 15% in any 12 month period. Our Online Backup
service is provided and powered by JustCloud.com,
trading as YouBackup. We are unable to accept
any responsibility for data loss, access or associated
problems with the account, software, data or problems
or conflicts cause by or to any third party applications,
additionally we are unable to provide any compensation
or free support in the event of such problems
(unless covered by one of our Support Contracts).
In extreme circumstances we will be able to terminate
any accounts early, if the software or system
is found to be at fault. We will endeavour to
help wherever possible but for all other problems
or concerns, please contact support at JustCloud.com.
Our Lowest Price Guarantee offer is subject to
strict comparable conditions and will require
a thorough investigation. We are unable to match
limited offers, vouchers or loyalty discounts
provided by other companies. Claims must be with
companies based locally to the supported site
(5 miles) and excludes any bespoke support where
travel premiums have been applied. Claims must
be made within 14 days of works being initially
undertaken. We are only able to match our net
rate (rates excluding VAT). All genuine claims
will be investigated fairly although any unrealistic
cliam will be rejected without further investigation.
Discounts and refunds apply to labour charges
only, as supplied by Support So Simple and not
a third party support agent, software, services
or hardware. The maximum discount that can be
applied (or refunded) is up to 20% of the total
labour charge. Claims made after 14 days of any
work being carried out are not applicable, although
you may choose to cancel any further work at that
point (and all outstanding fees paid). We reserve
the right to refuse work or continue to work should
we be unable to match any confirmed rate if deemed
to be too low. Our price guarantee is only available
to new customers. Should existing customers wish
to negotiate any support fees please contact a
member of staff first.
By its very nature, IT and computing in general
is very complicated, both in its design and varying
uses - as a result, the support required is as
complicated and varying. All our Technicians and
Support Partners use their own personal training,
experience, knowledge and instincts when dealing
with customers individual and unique problems,
often with varying solutions. All out Technicians
will typically suggest or carry out the simplest
and most likely repairs before moving on to the
next 'most likely' solution to whichever problem
they may be dealing with. As many problems are
intermittent or are present only in particular
environments we will often require continued communication
from our customers in order to plan or implement
the next stage of any solution - this information
is invaluable, and without it our technicians
will be unable to fully or accurately diagnose
any problem. We would request that you provide
us with as much detail as possible regarding any
problems you may be experiencing with your computing
devices, no matter how small - the more information
we have, the better prepared we are to assist
you!
If paying by direct debit, please note that Support
So Simple is a trading name of Home Counties IT
Ltd (HCIT). HCIT Ltd have appointed the BACS Approved
Direct Debit Bureau, Eazy Collect Services Limited
(www.eazycollect.co.uk),
to collect your payments and HCIT LTD will be
shown on your bank statement.
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