What you’re agreeing to.

Who you’re dealing with

Treetop Agency is a trading name of Nathan Mansfield, a sole trader, at 6 Hillview Place, Lossiemouth, Morayshire, IV31 6RR, Scotland. Email [email protected]. We are not currently registered for VAT; if that changes, we’ll tell you before VAT is added to anything you pay.

Where these terms say we, that’s us. Where they say you, that’s whoever is reading the site or buying the work.

What these terms cover

Two things, and it’s worth keeping them apart. These terms govern this website and the free audit. Paid work is governed by a separate written agreement that we send you before anything starts.

If the written agreement and this page ever disagree, the written agreement wins. Nothing on this page is an offer to enter a contract, and nothing here replaces what you actually signed.

The audit

It costs nothing, it carries no obligation, and the findings are yours whatever you decide afterwards. You can take it to somebody else and have them do the work. We’d rather you didn’t, but there’s no clause stopping you.

To do it we look at what’s publicly visible about your business, and at anything you choose to show us. We don’t need access to your accounts to produce one, and we won’t ask for passwords.

What we don’t promise

Four things no agency can honestly promise you, us included.

• Not positions. Where you rank on Google is Google’s decision, made by systems we don’t control and aren’t told about. Anyone guaranteeing you a position is guessing or lying.
• Not a number of enquiries. How many people contact you depends on your market, your prices, your area and how you answer the phone. We can make you easier to find and easier to contact. The rest is your business.
• Not a number of reviews. We can ask your customers properly and at the right moment. Whether they write anything is up to them.
• Not uninterrupted service. This site, and the systems behind the work, depend on third parties. They go down occasionally. We’ll get things back up, but we can’t promise it never happens.

Anything we show you about past work is what happened for that business, in that market, at that time. It isn’t a forecast for yours.

How we handle reviews

There are shortcuts in this industry and we don’t take them. We don’t write reviews, buy them, or have anyone post one who wasn’t a real customer. We don’t offer people anything in exchange for a review, and we don’t screen customers first to send only the happy ones to Google. That last one is called gating, and it breaks Google’s policy.

We also can’t remove a bad review. Nobody can, except Google, and only when it breaches their rules. What we can do is ask every customer, so the honest picture is a fuller one, and help you reply well when something goes wrong.

If you ask us to do any of the things in the first paragraph, we’ll say no and, if you insist, we’ll end the work.

If you become a client

A few things we’ll need from you, none of them onerous:

• Accurate details about the business, and the authority to let us act on its behalf.
• Access to your Google Business Profile, granted through Google, not by handing over a password.
• Customer contact details you are lawfully allowed to share with us, gathered with the consent that messaging them requires.
• Replies to us when we’re waiting on something. Most delays are here.

What we do with that data, how long we keep it, and how to have it deleted are all on the privacy page.

Paying for it

We quote after the audit, in writing, and the price doesn’t move without you agreeing to it first. We don’t publish figures, because the honest number depends on what you already have — we’d rather look before we say one.

Ongoing work is billed in advance for the period ahead. If a payment fails we’ll tell you and try again rather than switching anything off the same day. If it stays unpaid, the work pauses, and eventually it stops. The written agreement sets out those periods.

Stopping

Monthly work is monthly. You can stop at the end of a period you’ve paid for and we won’t ask you to justify it or sit through a retention call.

We may stop too — if the work turns out to be something we can’t do honestly, or if the relationship isn’t working. Where it’s reasonable we’ll say what’s wrong and give you the chance to put it right first.

Who owns what

We keep the things we bring with us: our own code, templates, systems and the way we put the work together. You’re not buying those, and we’ll go on using them for other clients.

The text, images and design of this website are ours. Read it, quote it, send it to someone. Don’t republish it as your own.

Where our liability stops

If we get something wrong and it costs you money, our total liability over any twelve-month period is limited to what you paid us in that period. We’re not liable for lost profits, lost business or lost data beyond that.

Nothing here limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud. It cannot, and we wouldn’t want it to.

The pages on this site are general information about what we do. They aren’t advice for your particular situation, and we’re not liable for decisions taken on the strength of reading them. Where we link to somebody else’s site, we’re not responsible for what’s on it.

If something goes wrong

Tell us. Email [email protected] and you’ll get a person, usually the same day. Most complaints are a misunderstanding about what was going to happen and when, and they get sorted in one reply.

Changes to these terms

If they change, this page changes and the date at the top moves. If you’re a client and the change is a material one, we’ll tell you at least 30 days before it applies to you. We don’t backdate.

The law this runs under

Scots law governs these terms, and the Scottish courts have exclusive jurisdiction. If you’re a consumer rather than a business, this doesn’t take away rights you have under the law where you live.