Nothing in the world comes without its share of caveats. The Terms & Conditions, (“T&C”) statement is but a reflection of the same line of thought. Use it, but use it properly, best sums up what the Terms & Conditions template is trying to drive home. One of the places where this sort of document is popularly used is within e-Commerce. Everything from joining a social network site to downloading a program or signing up for a subscription service, more and more the T&C’s are a part of our life that will not be going away.

Please Note: We are not lawyers or attorneys. Be sure to consult with legal counsel before implementing any type of legally binding documents. It’s far better to be safe than sorry.

As a seller or merchant, the Terms & Conditions are one of your best friends if worded and implemented correctly. It makes sure you have the ability to control the environment you’ve created. Policing your content to ensure that it’s not being misused or abused in any way that may bring you, your product or its other users any disrepute.

Even for point of sale services there is a general terms of use which we’ve all seen, those signs behind the cash register clearly stating “We have the right to refuse service to anyone”.

The Terms & Conditions document is your security blanket, so you should make sure there are no loopholes that could leave you or your business at risk. Here are some very basic guidelines on implementation of a Terms & Conditions document.

• Keep the document as concise as possible. While this needs to be thorough enough to protect your business it should not be overbearing and unreadable if possible.
• Make sure that the T&C’s have to be accepted to use the product. There should not be the assumption that the document will be read and thus inherently agreed to.
  • The best way to do this is to have the T&C’s as a gate to your product where the customer has to take an action to get past it and use your product. A common way of doing this is having the user check a box claiming they agree to the document
  • It’s also important to make sure there is a decline option, if someone does not want to use your product or agree to the terms they should not be trapped to do so.

As mentioned above, make sure to consult legal counsel when implementing one of these to ensure you’re not breaking any laws.