Terms and Conditions

We aim to keep our terms simple to understand and fair. Here's a summary of the key points of your agreement with us.

Billing and payment

  • You agree to pay all charges for the Service on receipt of a Birchills Telecom invoice.
  • Rental charges are normally invoiced monthly in advance; call charges are normally invoiced monthly in arrears.
  • All prices are exclusive of VAT, which is added at the appropriate rate.

Service reliability

We can't guarantee the Service will never be faulty. Birchills Telecom is not liable to you for any loss of business, revenue, profit or expected savings, wasted expense, financial loss, or data being lost or corrupted.

The Service will not work during a power failure or broadband connection failure. See our reliability and emergency calls page for important information about making 999 or 112 calls.

Setting up your service and porting numbers

Entering a contract authorises us to take over your services from your current telecommunications provider(s). A faxed or emailed copy of your order form is a legally binding contract. Number porting is carried out in line with our Code of Practice.

Contract length

The minimum duration of your agreement is 30 days. If you choose to terminate before the end of that period, you agree to pay the recurring charges that would have applied had the contract run to its end date.

Hardware warranty

All hardware is supplied with a 24-month return-to-base warranty. Items that fail due to a manufacturing defect within that period will be repaired or replaced at no charge.

Fair use policy

You should be able to use the Service in a way that meets your reasonable business needs, including calling both mobiles and landlines. Fair use does not include premium rate numbers (including 0845 numbers) or international numbers.

It isn't fair use to:

  • drive automated traffic through our network, for example with power dialling, or by automating traffic from a landline to mobiles;
  • resell or redistribute our service to other parties.

If your usage is continually unfair, or isn't consistent with what we'd typically expect, we may move you to a metered package better suited to your usage. In extreme cases we may suspend or terminate your access to the Service.

Unlimited packages are not intended for outbound call centres and are only available to accounts with 5 or more extensions. There is a call threshold of 1 hour on unlimited packages — calls beyond this are charged at our normal rates (see our call charges).

Your responsibilities

  • You're responsible for ensuring calls made on the system are made with your authority and comply with all relevant legislation.
  • You must not take any measures that compromise the security of the system, including sharing passwords, and you'll reimburse us for any costs we incur as a result if you do.
  • The Service is exclusive to you and may not be shared with third parties.

If you have a complaint about any part of our service, see our complaints procedure.