An agreement for me to undertake work for you constitutes your understanding and acceptance of the following terms. Agreement to work should be over email as this provides a record of the instruction and the context of the work required.

General

I am under no obligation to provide any service if you are behind on your bills. Past history can work in your favour if you have always paid on time and I reserve the right to continue or cease based on my assessment of your likelihood to pay promptly. See below for specific circumstances for various pricing models.

Normal hours of service fall within 9am and 5pm in the Paris time zone (GMT+1/BST+1 as appropriate), Mon-Fri. Work undertaken outside of these hours (by necessity/emergency or by your specific request – not just because I decide to work late) will be charged at time and a half, so 10 minutes of work will fill a 15-minute block.

During work hours I endeavour to respond initially to requests for help as soon as I am able (depending for example on whether I am engaged in direct support with another client). Time Block and Monthly support clients have priority over ad hoc work.

When I have upcoming holidays I will endeavour to inform you in advance. During holidays I cannot commit to full support nor rapid response, but I will attempt to check in with my email regularly where this is possible and provide as much information as I can to enable you to work until I return and can look at the problem properly.

You agree to supply admin credentials for any systems covered by a project or that you want supported. I can’t be responsible for delays caused by not having the rights to log in to relevant systems.

Projects

You will be supplied with a project proposal and your acceptance of the proposal (and the instruction to go ahead) will be taken as an agreement to pay the amount quoted. Payment up front will often be offered at a discount.

Ad hoc work

Minor time-based work that is requested by a customer who has no active support agreement or time block is charged at full ad hoc rates, with a minimum charge of 1 hour, and further time charged in half-hour blocks.

An estimate of time required and scope of what I will be doing will be provided before you agree to the work. If it becomes apparent that this will not be enough because of unforeseen complications, I will let you know before going over the agreed time. Slow computers and non-functioning login details are common causes of additional wasted time. If I identify additional work that is needed I will inform you before proceeding except on some occasions where I choose to provide the extra service free of charge.

Out of scope project work will be charged at ad hoc pricing and conditions if a monthly contract or time block is not in place. You are of course welcome to purchase a block or monthly contract instead of paying the ad hoc rates but this must be indicated before the work will be attempted.

Time Blocks

Time Blocks expire 12 months from the date of purchase except by specific and exceptional agreement prior to the expiry date.

Time Blocks are paid before work can commence and are nonrefundable.

Time block work is tracked and logged in 15-minute blocks for simplicity but will not be grossly rounded in my favour. For example, if I take 3 minutes to discover and fix a problem and then later have a 10-minute job to do for you, I will roll these into one 15-minute block and not round them both up to 15 minutes each.

Monthly Support Agreements

As stated above, if you are overdue on a monthly payment then I reserve the right to delay starting any requested work until this is rectified.

A new monthly contract has a minimum duration of 4 months and 2 months’ notice must be given to cease or reduce the hours by more than 50%. An exception to this notice period is made if you switch to a time block model.

I may agree with you at the time of purchase of a contract that I will carry over unused hours between months, and how many months I am willing to carry over.

Ceasing our relationship

In the event that we cease doing business together, note that while I endeavour to document your systems and setup as I go along, some remaining time during the notice period will be required to collect and transfer data and documentation to you so that you can continue to function after we part ways. For this reason I will also take some time along the way to try to make your system setup clear for anyone who may follow me as your IT technician or manager.

I will hand over any usernames or passwords that I hold for you to pass to the next person, and once I know you have them I will remove them from my records. I will show you how to remove my own user accounts from your systems if I am not able to do this for you. If it becomes apparent later that I am still on any email alerts or I find any other login details I will contact you at once to hand over or remove these.