Rules for Firms
Your work
- You are responsible for settling disagreements with your customers and we are not liable for this. Your scheme or association may offer a dispute resolution procedure to help with 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 must tell your customers that they may send their feedback to us.
- You must offer one of our forms to every customer and 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 publish this information on our website and suppress the information about references received for your firm to date.
- If 2 or more responses with low ratings are withheld from publication while they are being reviewed under the complaints procedure, then we may mention this on the website and we may withhold all of your feedback from publication.
- If you are registered directly with Referenceline, you may order additional forms from us at any time. If you are registered with a trading standards scheme, you may download additional forms free of charge from the website and print them yourself.
- 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 show you the full feedback of each customer, except where the customer has asked to remain anonymous. Customers' identities are for your internal use only and must not be shown to third parties, in accordance with the Data Protection Act.
- We may contact your customers to discuss the work you have done for them and we may contact your professional body, scheme or association to share information with them.
General information about your firm
- We will publish general information about your firm such as its nature, legal status, trading name, legal name and address, membership of any trade or professional body etc.
- You may provide more information to be included in additional pages on our website. There may be an additional charge for this.
- You must tell us promptly about any changes in this information, including any decision to stop trading or transfer ownership of the firm.
- You must tell us promptly if any court judgement is made against you relating to your work and we may publish this information on our website.
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 and our partners, where applicable, 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 8% p.a. on the amount you owe us from the date that the payment was due.
Ending your registration
- If you have registered directly with Referenceline, then either you or we may end your registration by giving the other 3 months' written notice. If you have registered via trading standards, then their rules will apply.
- 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.