Rules for Firms
Your work
- You are responsible for settling disagreements with your customers and we are not liable for this.
- You agree that you will indemnify us for any claims made against us in connection with your work. This means that you must pay the full amount of our losses, liabilities, costs and payments including full legal and administration costs.
Your customers' feedback
- You do not have to give one of our forms to every customer, but you must provide a form to any customer that asks for one.
- If a customer tells us that you have refused to give them a form then we will send them a form.
- If 2 customers within 12 months tell us that you have refused to give them a form, then we may suspend or deregister you at our sole discretion.
- You may order additional forms from us at any time.
- You must not do anything to influence how your customers report their views to us.
- We will publish your customers' feedback on our website and in other reports.
- We will send you regular reports to show the full feedback of each customer. These reports include confidential pages showing the identities of your customers and employees which are for your internal use only and must not be shown to third parties.
- We may contact your customers to discuss the work you have done for them.
General information about your firm
- We will publish general information about your firm such as its nature, legal status, trading name, membership of any trade or professional body etc.
- You may provide more information to be included in additional pages on our website.
- You must tell us promptly about any changes in this information or if you plan to stop trading or sell your firm.
- You must tell us promptly if any court judgement is made against you relating to your work.
Using our logo
- You may link your website to ours, using our logo. We will give you the hyperlink address and tell you about any changes.
- You may use our marks on your headed paper, vehicles, premises and so on.
- Any wording that you use to accompany these marks must advise readers to visit our website for information about your firm.
- You must not claim or imply that your firm's registration with Referenceline represents any sort of vetting, approval, guarantee etc.
- You agree that we are the only owners of our marks and that your registration does not give you any legal rights over them.
- We may ask you to give us examples of how you are using them, or planning to use them.
- You must follow any instructions we give you and we will not agree to any use that we feel is unsuitable.
- You must not misuse our marks, or do anything that we feel may damage them or our reputation.
- You must remove our marks from anything you no longer use for your work and from any vehicle before you sell it.
- You must not use any mark that copies, or is similar to, our marks.
If you break these rules
- We will tell you if we believe that you have broken these rules. You must satisfy us within 5 working days either that you have not broken these rules, or that you have only broken the rules in a minor way and you will not break them again. If you don't do this then we may suspend or end your registration immediately, without refunding any money you have paid to us.
- If you do not pay all the amounts you owe us when they are due, we will charge you interest of 2% a month on the amount you owe us from the date that the payment was due.
Ending your registration
- Either you or we may end your registration by giving the other 3 months' written notice.
- Our policy is one of continuous improvement, so we may make changes without notice, but we will give you at least one month's notice about price increases.
- When your registration ends, you must stop using our marks as soon as possible. You must remove our marks from all stationery, vehicles etc. within 1 month. You must return any unused forms to us. You must tell us when you have done this.
- If your registration ends and you haven't broken these rules, we will refund any fees that you have paid for the period after the notice period has ended.