Terms of Business

1. Who's who

I am Ian Sharpe, a sole trader trading as smarticulate ("I", "me"). You are the client ("you"). I also trade as ConsultingPartner.io; the two are run separately, with separate clients and separate lists, and buying from one does not put you in front of the other. Anything a person builds for you is agreed in a short Statement of Work ("SOW") saying what I will do, by when and for how much. Anything you buy directly is described on the page you buy it from, and that description is the SOW for it.

2. The work

Three kinds of thing are sold here, and the terms treat them differently because they are made differently.

Measured products (the Anyone Test, the Soundalike, the self-serve Wordprint, the Check and the monthly re-read) are produced by software from writing you have published or pasted. Nobody rules on the result. What the software counts, and what it does not, is published in full at how the score works, and that page is part of the description of every measured product.

Judged products (the Desk Wordprint, the Wordprint with interviews, the organisation Wordprint, Say It Once, the team session and the editor in residence) start from the same measurements and end with a person ruling on what they mean for you. The Draft Clinic is ninety minutes of that person's time on one piece of your writing.

Everything is advice about how you write and what your writing measures. Decisions, and responsibility for them, stay with you. A score is a measurement of distinctiveness, not a judgement of quality, and it is not a test of who or what wrote something; the site says so and so do I. Timescales are given in working days and rely on the pages you name being readable when the software reads them.

3. Money

Prices are in pounds sterling. Dollar figures on the site are estimates for orientation; the charge is made in sterling and your card converts it. I am not registered for VAT, so no VAT or sales tax is added. If that changes I will tell you, and VAT will apply from the date of registration.

Products bought on app.smarticulate.io and sessions booked online are paid by card at the time of ordering, at the exact price shown. Card payments are processed by Stripe and I never see your card details. Where a product carries a promised delivery date, that date is on your receipt. Work agreed under a SOW is quoted from the indicative figure on the site and fixed in writing before it starts; one-off work is payable in advance, the editor in residence is invoiced monthly in advance, and invoices are payable within 14 days by bank transfer to the account on the invoice. If an invoice is late I may charge interest and compensation under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 and pause the work until it is settled.

A Soundalike earns a credit of its price against a Desk Wordprint or above ordered within ninety days of paying for it. A partner's price, where a partner introduced you, is the price you pay and is shown before you order.

The Check is free for the first ninety days after a Wordprint is delivered, then a subscription, monthly or yearly, at the price shown on the Check page when you subscribe. Cancel whenever you like from the receipt Stripe sends; nothing further is charged after that.

4. Two promises, and what each one covers

Every Wordprint a person rules on, the Desk and everything above it, carries this undertaking: if it does not tell you at least three things you did not know about your own writing, you do not pay. No argument, no negotiation about what counts. Say so at the refund page and the money is back within two working days. You keep the document.

The measured products are priced without anybody's judgement in them and carry a narrower promise about defects: if the tool cannot read what you send it, or the document arrives incomplete or wrong about your business, you get your money back, within two working days. It does not cover a document that did its job and told you something you would rather it had not. If the software cannot produce your document at all, it says so and refunds you in full without your having to ask.

5. Yours and mine

Once you have paid, the document made for you is yours: the Wordprint, the Soundalike report, the prompt pack, the markdown, all of it, to use inside your business and to give to the people and the tools that write for you. The method, the measurements, the phrasebook and the software that produced it stay mine. I may use general lessons and the numbers from your measurements, with nothing that identifies you, to keep the scale honest. The benchmarks on this site are built the same way, from numbers alone, and no business is named in them.

A Soundalike reads pages your competitors have published, quotes each of them at most a line or two for comparison, and goes to you alone. It is a private report. Publishing it, or any part of it that names another business, is your decision and your responsibility.

6. What happens to your words

The Anyone Test runs in your browser. Nothing you paste is sent to a server, nothing is stored, and nobody sees it. A paid Wordprint reads the pages you name, keeps that text only for as long as it takes to produce and check the document, and deletes it when the document is sent or the order is refused. A Soundalike keeps nothing of any party's text at all. The Check keeps the numbers a draft measured and never the draft. The monthly re-read fetches the public pages you named at the start and keeps numbers only; every re-read email carries a link that stops it. What is kept is your order details, the finished document at its permanent private link, and the measurements behind it.

7. Confidentiality

Nothing about you is published, named, quoted, listed, used as a sample or mentioned in any material about smarticulate without your written permission, and the default answer to any question of that kind is no. That applies to your name, your business, your document and anything that would let a reader identify you. It has no time limit. In the other direction, you keep confidential anything I tell you about how the method works that is not already published on this site.

8. Data protection

We each comply with UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. I hold the order details you give me (your email address, your business name and the pages you named) to deliver what you bought and to answer you about it, and for nothing else. If a piece of work needs me to process personal data on your behalf, a short data processing agreement goes in place first.

9. Our working relationship

I am a self-employed sole trader, responsible for my own tax and National Insurance. I decide how the work gets done and I am free to work for other clients. Nothing here makes me your employee, worker, partner, agent or officer, and neither of us will present the relationship otherwise. Where a piece of work needs a second pair of hands I may bring in a trusted associate; I remain responsible for their work and for their keeping to these terms.

10. People

During a piece of work that involves your team, and for six months after it, neither of us will solicit for employment or engagement anyone from the other side who was materially involved, without the other's written consent.

11. If things go wrong

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law says cannot be limited. Subject to that, my total liability in connection with anything you buy is capped at what you paid for it in the twelve months before the claim, and neither of us is liable to the other for loss of profit, revenue, anticipated savings, goodwill or data, or for indirect or consequential loss. A document is for you alone and may not be relied on by anyone else.

12. Stopping

A product bought by card ends when the document is delivered. The Check ends when you cancel it. The editor in residence rolls monthly and either of us can end it with 30 days' written notice. Work under a SOW ends as the SOW says. Either of us can end anything immediately if the other seriously breaches these terms and does not put it right within 14 days of being told, or becomes insolvent. On any ending you pay for work done up to that date and I refund, pro rata, anything paid in advance for work not yet done, unless the ending was caused by your serious breach.

13. The necessary boilerplate

Neither of us is liable for delays caused by things beyond our control, including a website that cannot be read on the day. Neither of us can hand this agreement to someone else without the other's consent, not unreasonably withheld. These terms, the product page or SOW, and the refund page are the whole agreement, and changes only count in writing. Notices can be sent by email: mine is [email protected], yours is the address you ordered with. No one other than you and me gets rights under this agreement. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and any dispute goes to its courts.

Earlier versions: none. This is the first.