Swains Business Broadband Terms & Conditions

You should read these terms and conditions carefully before you agree to receive services from Swains Voice and Data plc, a company registered in England and Wales (Company Number 4) whose registered office is at Eastland House, Westgate, Hunstanton, Norfolk, PE36 5EW.
Please note that “we”, “our”, “us”, “Swains” refers to Swains Voice and Data plc. The terms “you”, “customer” refer to the legal entity subscribing to the service.
These terms and conditions, any registration forms (online or paper) and our acceptance email shall constitute the contract between the parties for the services detailed in the registration forms

1.0 Schedule of Services

1. Rental of ADSL on existing BT analogue line from customer’s site (BT analogue line rental still payable)
2. ADSL services supplied as listed on the registration form
3. IP connectivity between customer’s site and Internet Network service.
4. IP addresses may be requested at Swains Voice and Data plc discretion and subject to completing an appropriate IP Address request form. Where IP addresses are issued these must be returned upon termination of this agreement and are at no time the property of the Customer.
5. Customers are expected to manage their own hardware. Swains Voice and Data plc will not provide any support for hardware or configurations. It is the customer’s responsibility to ensure their hardware is compatible with the service.

2.0 Contract Duration and Termination

1. The term of this agreement is initially 90 days with 30 days written notice to cancel. Termination of this agreement within the minimum term will incur a cancellation fee of 100% of any remaining charges for the remainder of the minimum term. The contract terms begins once we have agreed your request by sending a confirmatory email.
2. You may give us notice to cancel within 7 days of the contract start date, providing your services have not been activated. If you cancel in this way the contract shall be treated as null and void and you will be refunded any charges payable within 30 Days. All equipment supplied should be returned within 7 Working days of the cancellation date. Where equipment is not received by Swains Voice and Data plc, is damaged or is returned unfit for purpose the customer is liable for the full equipment cost.
3. Upon expiry of the minimum term the customer may cancel this agreement providing 30 days written notice.
4. Should you fail to keep to the terms and conditions of this contract we reserve the right to suspend the service and end this contract (or both) at any time with immediate effect

3.0 Charges and paying for the services

1. You agree to pay Swains the appropriate charges for your use of the service including ongoing rental and fees for equipment and set up charges that apply from the date you subscribe. Our charges are listed on the registration form.
2. Any additional charges incurred by Swains for the provision of services shall be payable by the customer, once the customer has agreed to the additional charges.
3. Where charges are incurred by Swains from an Engineer attending an end user site upon an agreed date and time and has been unable to gain access to complete their scheduled work, these charges are payable in full by the customer.
4. We accept payment by Direct Debit and Cheque only
5. Payment will be collected Monthly in advance
6. If you fail to pay Swains on time we reserve the right to charge interest on the overdue amount at a rate of 4% per annum above the Bank of England Base rate from the date the money became overdue until the date payment is received

4.0 Service Standards

1. On wires only, Swains Voice and Data plc only provides support for the service being provided on a working BT analogue line.
2. In order to use ADSL Services, you need an existing BT telephone line and a personal computer of a minimum specification. You acknowledge that we are dependent upon certain third parties to install and provide ADSL Services to you. You also acknowledge that there may be technical limits that prevent us from delivering an operational service to you. We will endeavour to provide ADSL Services to you at the access rate you choose but, due to contention within the network, the speed of service may be reduced at times.
3. Swains Voice and Data plc are only responsible for the hardware and service supplied by Swains Voice and Data plc, up to the Ethernet interfaces, all equipment and services beyond this are the customer’s responsibility.
4. All hardware supplied by Swains Voice and Data plc is supplied with a 1 year return to base warranty. If during the 1 year warranty period (Deemed to be 12 months from date of shipping from Swains) the equipment is deemed by Swains to be faulty, replacement equipment will be supplied once the customers original equipment is returned and tested by Swains.
5. We do not undertake to provide a fault free service. If, however, a fault occurs, you should report the fault by telephone, electronic mail or in writing to the Support Service. We will let you know as soon as reasonably practicable of any periods of downtime of the Support Service.

5.0 Service Credits

1 Do not apply to Swains Voice and Data plc ADSL services

6.0 Outages

2 Planned Outages may occasionally be necessary for Swains Voice and Data plc to carry out essential maintenance or network upgrades. They will be kept to a minimum and scheduled to minimise disruption. Swains Voice and Data plc will endeavour to inform customers of these activities in advance
3 Swains Voice and Data plc will provide a fault reporting helpdesk facility Mon – Fri, 9 – 5.30 (excluding public holidays). The helpdesk will respond promptly to faults reported. Faults remedied will be advised by email.
4 Swains Voice and Data plc aim to rectify faults within 5 hours of raising a fault. Time to fix may be affected by circumstances. This is a target repair time and does not constitute a service level; under no circumstance are Swains Voice and Data plc liable for outages or consequential losses.
5 Faults not involving Swains Voice and Data plc Network services or equipment are the responsibility of the customer
6 Neither party shall be liable to the other, either in contract, tort (including negligence) or otherwise for direct or indirect loss of profits, business or anticipated savings, nor for any indirect or consequential loss or damage or for any destruction of data.

7.0 Swains Voice and Data plc Acceptable Use Policy

Introduction

The following Policy contains rules that govern your use of Swains Voice and Data plc services (“Service”) and forms part of the terms and conditions of use of the Service.
This Policy may be amended from time to time.

Applying the Policy According to the Nature of Swains Voice and Data plc Service to You

Depending upon the nature of the Service you have selected:
• You may be setting up website or websites to be run on either your server or our server ("Website");
• You may be using our hardware, software, network and / or telecommunications to use the Service ("Our Equipment")
• You may be providing your own hardware, software, network and / or telecommunications to use the Service ("Your Equipment")
This Policy applies to all of the Services you select.

Restrictions on the Service

You are not permitted to have illegal material on your Website(s), link to content that is illegal or to allow Our Equipment or Your Equipment to be used for any illegal activity. You risk being prosecuted if you or any of your customers publish illegal material in this or any other country.
You must ensure that your Website(s), Our Equipment and Your Equipment are not used to incite disorder, publish, disseminate or promote any material which encourages anything which is in any way pornographic, obscene, defamatory, menacing, offensive or in any way unlawful.
Neither you nor your customers are permitted to publish any content, or link to any content, in which you or they (as applicable) do not own the right, without the prior permission of the owner of the relevant right.
You must not use or allow any of your Websites, Our Equipment or Your Equipment to be used to transmit or post any material which may cause offence to others on the grounds of gender, race or religion or which may cause annoyance or offence to any person.
Swains will comply with our obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998 and other any applicable data protection legislation. You are also required to comply with all data protection legislation. In addition, you must maintain all required registrations, including those reasonably requested by us to enable us to process your personal data in connection with our performance of our obligations under this Agreement.

Unacceptable Activities

You must not use or allow any of your Websites, Our Equipment or Your Equipment to be used to distribute or promote any of the following:
• The sending of unsolicited emails or forged messages or spoofing
• Software which may be used for port-scanning, virus creation, packet sniffing, smurfing, hacking, Trojan horses or any other illegal or anti-social activity
• Any activity which interferes with systems or networks’ ability to operate including denial of service attacks in any form
• Lists of email addresses (unless all of the addressees on the list have given their explicit permission)
• The processing of personal data which does not comply with all applicable data protection and privacy laws and regulations
• Links to any website(s) that host illegal content
• Content designed to offend or cause needless anxiety to others

Security

You must not do anything, or allow any third party to do anything, which will compromise the security of Swains Voice and Data plc equipment and you are therefore required to install and use appropriate virus checking software and security devices and to impose this same requirement on any of your own customers that use any of your Websites or Your Equipment.
You must not share, or disclose to any third party, any passwords provided by Swains Voice and Data plc. Such passwords are your responsibility.

Swains Voice and Data plc Rights

Compliance with this Policy is a contractual requirement. We reserve the right to suspend, restrict or terminate your access to the Service if either you or a third party accessing your Website or Your Equipment causes, or is likely to cause, our Service to be interrupted, damaged or impaired.
Offending material may be removed without prior notice. We may retain a copy of such material for our records.
We reserve the right to forward offending material to the police or other regulatory authorities in the event that we are requested to do so or where a complaint is made about your use of the Service and is deemed by us to be inconsistent with this Policy.

Complaints

If you consider that one of our customers is in breach of this policy, please send details of the incident to us at info@swains.co.uk.
Please provide as much information as possible including the date, time, timezone and IP address if applicable, together with all other relevant information. These should be provided in plain text within the email and not as attachments.
We will deal with all complaints received and take appropriate action where your complaint is upheld. Please allow a minimum of two working days for a response. If you have a complaint outside of the acceptable usage policy please contact Swains in writing.