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Support Policy

Contents hide
1 Support & Rates
2 Important Notes
2.1 Definitions
2.2 Communications
2.3 Billing Queries
2.4 Useful Links

The following section is an automated excerpt from my Terms, so will always be in sync with them. The “Important Notes” section below that is for clarification.

Support & Rates

3. Support & Rates

  1. All hours spent working on, discussing, researching or developing solutions — plus any expenses incurred or other applicable fees — are billable, not just those hours spent coding.
  2. "Support" includes Scope Creep (see Definitions) and any experimental work you request, all of which is billable, even if subsequently discarded.
  3. Unless specifically agreed in writing, any estimates provided are not fixed quotes.
  4. Estimates are for guidance only and represent minimum prices and schedules. Unpredictable issues — including your feedback — can easily increase work and costs by 100% or more.
  5. No estimate (or fixed quote) can be guaranteed for more than 30 days.
  6. All support requires either an existing ongoing service contract or prepayment for an agreed number of Support Credits (see below) to cover an initial portion of the work.
  7. Unless otherwise agreed in writing, support work on any ongoing service contract is normally invoiced at the end of the week in which it is done. For clarity, this helps to limit scope creep.
  8. All invoices are due on receipt regardless of task completion.
  9. Written support is billed as though 200 words (rounded to the nearest 200, excluding pleasantries or signatures) take 15 minutes to write. Responses under 100 words will not be billed. For clarity, complex responses often take far longer.
  10. My Base ("PAYG") Support Rate is £120 per hour, rounded up, except for:
    1. Billing queries & outage troubleshooting: free for services I provide, unless due to hacking. Should such queries involve other forms of billable work, that work will still be billed.
    2. "On-Plan" Support: All support on any regular payment plan (e.g. for hosting, support or SEO) is billed by the quarter hour. Those plans also reduce my Support rate by £5 per quarter hour for every full £40/month in regular payments, down to £15 per quarter hour.
    3. VIP Block Bookings (see below): £350 per four hour block, or £300 if eligible for "On-Plan" support (unless the latter would be cheaper).
    4. £20/hour surcharge for "Urgent" Work (except outage troubleshooting) requested by a deadline on short notice. Whether your deadlines count as "Urgent" for billing purposes shall be at my sole discretion.
    5. Overtime: Work, calls or meetings that you request (or require to meet your deadlines) outside the hours of 9 am-5 pm on Monday to Friday, or on weekends or Bank Holidays, is subject to my availability and will be charged at 1.5 times the rate otherwise applicable. Overtime rates will not apply to work I may choose to do outside these times purely for my own convenience.
  11. Missing a scheduled meeting or call by over 20 minutes incurs a £20 fee unless it was cancelled at least 24 hours in advance. For clarity, you don't need to schedule a call unless you want me to call you, or to arrange a video meeting.
  12. If, in my sole opinion, at least half of a call or meeting does not relate to any web, tech, marketing or business topics, I may halve the cost of the call at my sole discretion, or waive the cost if such topics have been avoided entirely, without setting any precedent for future support. For clarity -- I don't charge for small talk, but it's not a way to get free support.
  13. Where hosting or other ongoing services include a specified amount of free support, unused time does not accumulate.
  14. You understand and accept that installing or building a system is not the same task as adjusting its initial configuration to improve results and that the latter work is separately billable.
  15. Support is normally limited to the owners or directors of your business or organisation, but can be extended to other named staff or assistants on written request. Unless you specify precise and adequate scope and budget limits in advance, you are liable for any work, expenses or other associated fees such assistants incur as if you requested them yourself. You agree to manage them to keep such work within your budget limits.
  16. VIP Block Bookings
    1. Block bookings are paid in advance and are only refundable if cancelled or rescheduled with more than 48 hours' notice.
    2. The full scope of work must be detailed and discussed by email before the block(s) are booked. Any subsequent requests or Scope Creep (see Definitions) will either require more block bookings, or separate billing at my normal rates.
    3. You agree to provide any access details or other materials required (at publishable quality where relevant) before the block booking begins.
    4. You agree to be available to provide rapid feedback by phone or email during the booking.
    5. If issues other than scope creep or slow responses from you cause the work estimated for a block to overrun, the first two hours of such overrun will not be billable. Any further time will be billable or may require extra blocks.
  17. Support Credits
    1. Each Support Credit covers one hour of billable time, or other fixed-price services of the same price or less.
    2. Any leftover fractions of Support Credits will be lost unless topped up to a full Support Credit within one month.
    3. Support Credits are non-refundable, and expire unless used within six months of purchase.
    4. Any over-payments on your account will be converted to Support Credits for future use.

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Important Notes

Definitions

  • “Scope Creep” means the extra questions, ideas and changes that often arise from an initial project plan or support request.

Communications

  • Please use email whenever possible — it’s by far the most cost-effective option. While I like a chat as much as anyone, “quick questions” rarely have quick or simple answers and we all tend to forget the details of conversations quickly. Email leads to clearer questions and better answers, letting me double-check stuff if needed and giving you a record of those answers. Text/SMS is not suitable for web support — beyond notifying me of outages, providing support by text is a nightmare.
  • Understanding the problem is half the solution — in case you were wondering why consultation is billable. In professional coding, the other half is often 10% implementation, 40% testing and bug fixing. Amateur solutions often look cheap but fail because they only consider implementation — and then rush that.
  • Security is important. Never, ever, share login details, or agree to give others full access to your site. Professional sites provide detailed permission systems to avoid this. If they explain what they really need, I’ll be happy to help them get it done safely.
  • Site down but downforeveryoneorjustme.com says it’s up? Relax – that means other visitors can still see it, but there’s a network glitch between your computer and the site’s server. If you can’t even see Google, it may help to call your ISP, but it may be a problem with your computer or the wider network.
  • Please DON’T embed images in emails, or send them in texts, PDFs or Word documents if you want them on your site. It makes them hard to extract and destroys image quality. Instead, please either:
    • Upload them to your site’s Media Library (if possible)
    • Send them as an email attachment (i.e. not in the email body)
    • Share them with me through https://dropbox.com

Billing Queries

  • Very few tasks or discussions take under half an hour. So please provide detail upfront to avoid wasting money by making me ask obvious questions like, “What was the exact error message?”
  • Troubleshooting bills are never welcome. So if these bills exceed £300 and you’d prefer to split them over 6 months, please ask.
  • Yes, I’m happy to do site edits if you’re happy to pay for them. While most sites I build are built to be easy for you to edit, you may not have the time, or be as practiced as I am. Things like visual design elements are locked down because fiddling with them can easily break a site, not because they’re cast in stone. If you want them changed, please ask.

Useful Links

  • Support Plans
  • Hosting Plans
  • SEO Plans – NB: SEO is not a quick-fix, but is far more cost-effective than paid ads in the long run.
  • Budget SEO – NB: These semi-DIY options won’t work as well as the plans above, but other cheap SEO is a minefield that I’d rather save you from.
  • Other Marketing Services — I can help with a lot more than just web design and SEO