Commercial and services contracts · 07
Standard terms of trade and website terms
Sets the terms on which you sell to everybody, without negotiating each one.
Sets the terms on which you sell to everybody, without negotiating each one.
Incorporation — how and when the customer is taken to have agreed; ordering and acceptance; price, payment and interest; delivery and risk; returns; limitation of liability drafted to survive section 48 and 49 of the Consumer Protection Act; the section 43 disclosures the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act requires for electronic transactions; the cooling-off position; and a privacy notice that satisfies POPIA at the point of collection.
A limitation or indemnity in consumer terms must be drawn to the consumer’s attention in the manner section 49 prescribes, and agreement must be affirmatively signalled — a clause buried in a document nobody opened does not bind. Terms that apply to “orders placed from today” but were changed unilaterally last month bind nobody either: version and date the terms, and keep the superseded versions.
The law it sits under
What governs this instrument.
Standard terms of trade are the most heavily regulated document most businesses issue. The Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 governs unfair terms, and section 49 requires that any term limiting risk or liability, constituting an assumption of risk, or imposing an indemnity be drawn to the consumer’s attention in plain language and conspicuously — a clause buried in fine print does not bind. The Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 governs the same terms online.
Related pages, tools and documents
Where this instrument sits in the wider set, and the engagement that produces it.
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