Terms & Conditions

Who we are. SilentShift is a trading name of Thomas Jutla, Reading, England (“we”, “us”). “You” means the business engaging us. These terms apply to every engagement together with your signed agreement or written spec; if the two conflict, the signed agreement wins. Our services are for businesses, not consumers.

Last updated: 29 July 2026.

1. We advise; you decide

We work in a consultancy capacity. We recommend platforms, tools and approaches based on experience and the best of our knowledge at the time. You decide whether to accept a recommendation, and the contract for any platform we recommend is between you and that platform — never with us.

We implement what’s agreed with reasonable skill and care, and we secure what we build to the best of our knowledge using the platforms’ own security features. What we don’t do is underwrite the platforms themselves.

2. Third-party services are yours

• Every account, subscription and licence is bought in your name, at cost, never marked up. Their fees are yours and are separate from and in addition to anything you pay us.
• Platform performance depends on the tier you subscribe to. If your tier slows or blocks the work — for example, an entry-level AI plan whose rate limits make automations crawl — we may require you to upgrade to a tier suitable for the job before that work continues. The upgrade cost is yours and does not come out of our fees.
• If a third-party platform fails, changes its prices, changes its terms, has an outage, or suffers a security breach, that is a matter between you and the platform under their terms. We are not liable for third-party platforms — including any loss of data held on them — and recommending a platform is not a guarantee of it.
• Where we recommend Contextium — a platform founded by Thomas Jutla (declared on the About page) — the same rules apply: bought in your name at the published price, no commission, no markup, and you can decline it or replace it without affecting the rest of the work.

3. Your data is yours

• All business data processed during an engagement stays in your accounts, under your control, from day one.
• We access your systems only as needed to do the agreed work — through accounts you can revoke — and we sign a mutual NDA before work starts (template published here). We keep what we learn about your business confidential (as you do with ours), except where the law requires otherwise.
• When an engagement ends, you should remove our accounts and rotate any credentials we were privileged to; after handover, access control is yours.
• On handover we document what was built and, where backups are in scope, we test them by restoring them in front of you. After handover, operating the systems — including keeping backups running and access controlled — is your responsibility unless a support plan says otherwise.

4. Scope, specs and change

Published prices are minimum engagements with published scopes (the ⓘ on each service card). Anything larger or different is specced and quoted in writing before it starts. Work not in the written spec isn’t included — it’s quoted as new work, never silently invoiced.

5. Payment

• One-off projects: as set out in the spec — typically half to start, half on delivery. Plans: monthly in advance. Invoices are due within 14 days unless the agreement says otherwise.
• Late payment attracts statutory interest at 8% above the Bank of England base rate plus the fixed recovery costs under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, plus reasonable costs of recovery beyond the fixed sums.
• If an invoice is more than 14 days overdue after a reminder, we may pause all work and support until the account is settled. Time lost to a pause doesn’t extend a plan.
• Ownership of deliverables transfers on payment. Until an invoice is paid, the deliverables it covers remain ours, and we may withhold unreleased work. Where a plan ends early, the early-exit terms in your agreement apply.
• Persistent non-payment goes to formal recovery — the interest, fixed sums and costs above apply, and we may pursue the debt through the courts of England and Wales.

6. What we’re liable for — and what we’re not

• We’re liable for doing the agreed work with reasonable skill and care. If we get that wrong, our total liability is capped at the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose.
• We’re not liable for: third-party platforms (failures, breaches, outages, data held on them — see section 2); losses caused by changes you or others make to what we built; business decisions you take on the back of our advice; or indirect losses such as lost profit, lost revenue or lost opportunity.
• Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot legally be excluded — including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or fraud.
• We carry professional indemnity insurance.

7. General

• Neither of us is liable for delays caused by events genuinely outside our control.
• These terms and every engagement are governed by the law of England and Wales, and its courts have exclusive jurisdiction.
• Using this website doesn’t create an engagement; its content is general information, not advice for your specific situation, and may change without notice.
• If part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands.

Questions? tom@silentshift.co.uk.