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Are you using the right terms and conditions for your shopping cart?
| Guest post by: Michael Smyth |
Article Overview: If you have an e-commerce facility on your website then you will know that your bank requires you to have terms and conditions for its use. But what many business owners do is simply use their standard trading conditions in conjunction with the e-commerce facility. That’s fine but having an e-commerce facility creates its own unique issues which won’t be covered by your normal terms of trade.
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Free Download - Download a template or see a lawyer? By Michael Smyth |
Are you using the right terms and conditions for your shopping cart?
Why
you need specific e-commerce terms
With e-commerce your customers will be
paying you by credit card over the internet.
Unlike your customers coming to a store to purchase your goods, you
can’t see them and neither are they required to verify their identity either
through a pin number or a signature. As
a result the transaction is less secure and then you add the complication that
the transaction is happening over the internet. Whether your e-commerce
facility uses Secure Socket Layer technology or not, everything is vulnerable
to an expert intent on doing some damage.
So if something goes wrong, for example the
customer is using somebody else’s card or the transaction somehow gets hacked,
then you want to make sure that no liability attaches to you.
What
should you put in your terms?
Here is a short checklist of some things
you will want to cover in your e-commerce terms to ensure that your liability
is kept to a minimum:
1.
Ensure the customer is who he says he is: this means getting the customer to agree that
he is over 18 and he is using his own credit card for a proper purpose.
2.
Refunds:
what is your policy on refunds?
In what circumstances will they be made and how? My recommendation is that all refunds only be
made back to the card which originally purchased the product and not by any
other means.
3.
Privacy:
get permission to collect personal information from your customers through
your online shopping cart.
4.
Security: give some assurances around the level of
security offered but exclude liability for transactions that may be hacked.
5.
Fees:
does payment by your e-commerce facility attract additional fees on top
of the price for the product? If so,
deal with that in these specific terms.
6.
Limit liability: You need to have a general exclusion of
liability for the customer’s use of the e-commerce facility and emphasise that
any payment reversals are nothing to do with you, but an issue between the
customer and her card issuer.
Review
your terms now
The chances are that your normal terms of
trade will not include these terms (at least specific to the customer’s use of
the e-commerce facility). So either
incorporate such terms into your standard trading terms or have them as a
separate document. Whichever you choose,
make sure the customer ticks the box to say that they have read them (even if
they don’t).
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About the Author: Michael Smyth RSS for Michael's articles - Visit Michael's website Click here to visit Michael's website   THE TOP 5 HIDDEN DANGERS FOR SOCIAL NETWORKING How to ensure your business becomes an asset not a liability Could you website end up costing you money Are your dreams of retiring on the sale proceeds of your business pie in the sky Why you shouldnt copy someone elses terms of business |
Related Forum Posts
Re: Online Store for Website
- We've used it for our business since early 2011 and there have been no issues. All you do is create a PayPal account with your business email address, or make one up for you business, apply the business credit card info to it and get a shopping cart app and that's it. We don't keep a lot of money in our PayPal account though. Stay around $500 or less. I've heard stories where people had a ton of money in their PayPal account and could not get it out for some reason. So be careful. Use it only as a transfer process and you'll be fine.
Creating a partnership
- Hi Praveenv - you will need to speak with a lawyer to create a distributor agreement to outline the terms and conditions under which you and your partner will be operating.
The other issue to consider is customs. How does your country treat importing the product you are looking at? Do you have to pay additional custom fees to bring it into the country?
Re: Has the poor economy hurt or improved your holiday shopping?
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I met some of my goals but they were mostly in terms of increasing my workrate and profile on the Internet and I have made some progress but like Michelle and Alan, in terms of business success I still have some way to go to get to where I want to be.
For some reason my Alexa ranking has just rocketed back up after all that which is very discouraging by I am told that this can happen for no reason so I am trying to be positive. I am committing myself to even more effort in 2011 and hoping for a breakthrough but maybe try to streamline my efforts in terms of time management
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