Booking Terms and Conditions
Please note: the following terms relate mainly to Snail Tales bookings by schools, and occasionally party organisers. Always read the Terms and Conditions provided with your booking form in case there may be any differences.
DEFINITIONS
1. An “activity” is defined as the collective format, presentation and content of a proposal in the act of being delivered.
2. The use of a 1st person pronoun relates to Snail Tales.
3. The use of a 2nd person pronoun relates to the individual/organisation considering the booking.
ACTIVITIES
4. Once Snail Tales has accepted your booking, Snail Tales will undertake to provide the activity/ies using reasonable skill and care. In return, you agree to be bound by the terms and conditions herein.
PAYMENT
5. A deposit of at least 10% is required at the time the booking is made (NOT the date of the activity). We shall issue a receipt for your deposit upon receiving both the booking and the deposit, and this shall constitute acceptance of your booking. Should we not be able to accept your booking for any reason, your deposit will be returned to you as soon as possible (if paying by cheque, your cheque will be returned to you without being cashed in).
6. This deposit is non-refundable except in the circumstances described under the heading “Cancellations” and clause 24.
7. The balance must be paid on or before the first day of the activity. An invoice for the balance will be sent out upon receipt of the booking and the deposit if the deposit is less than the total payment.
8. We prefer to receive payment by electronic transfer and will be happy to provide our account details so you can pay in this way. If you prefer to pay by cheque, please make it payable to “Snail Tales”. If paying by any other means, you must contact us first.
9. At present, we do not charge VAT.
10. Expenses for Snail Tales staff and travel are included in the activity price.
CANCELLATIONS
11. In the event you need to cancel the booking, please give as much notice as possible. We will refund any deposit provided the cancellation is made at least 60 days before the date of the booking.
12. Cancellations made with less than 30 days notice will incur a cancellation fee of 50% of the booking fee. This shall be invoiced immediately upon our receipt of the cancellation and must be paid within 30 days.
13. We appreciate that there may be occasions when activities are cancelled at very short notice due to unexpected circumstances, eg weather problems. In these situations we will make every effort to reorganise our schedule to deliver the activity at a later date for no extra charge. Where it is not possible for us to accommodate a rescheduled activity within 6 calendar months, we will offer to refund any payment made in excess of the deposit.
14. Should it be unavoidable that we must cancel an activity (eg personal injury), we will reimburse you in full, including any deposit, as soon as possible and no later than the date of the cancelled activity.
YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES
PARENTAL CONSENT
15. Where the activity involves a recording of the participants in any form (eg video, photo) it is your responsibility to ensure any required consents have been received prior to the activity. This includes any photos we may take to use for promotional purposes. We will always inform you within the initial proposal if there is to be any recording of your activity.
16. In the event of any consent(s) being withheld, it is your responsibility to point this out to us so we can avoid recording that/those particular participant(s).
REFRESHMENTS
17. It is your responsibility to provide adequate refreshments for the participants, if necessary.
18. It is also your responsibility to check with the participants for any allergies, and ensure that any food is prepared with thorough consideration for health and safety.
POST-ACTIVITY RESOURCES
19. Occasionally, a Snail Tales activity may involve offering resources to the participants that they can only take away after the activity is complete (eg website subsciption). In these cases, it is your responsibility to ascertain demand on our behalf and collect payment at the price we set. Delivery will then be made directly to the participants once you have forwarded the payment to us. For this reason, we recommend that you collect payment from the participants in the form of cheques made payable to “Snail Tales”.
PRE-EXISTING COPYRIGHT
20. If you are asking us to run an activity based on pre-existing media (eg books, cartoons, films), involving characters created by third parties, it is your responsibility to ensure that permission has been obtained to hold creative workshops using the characters and places from that media. We are happy to provide some preliminary advice on this matter.
HEATH AND SAFETY
21. It is your responsibility to ensure that every area of the premises being used for an activity have been checked with a thorough concern for health and safety.
22. It is your responsibility to have ready appropriate risk assessments for the premises in which we and the participants are to operate, and ensure that we have seen a copy prior to the activity.
23. Should we come across any aspect of our environment that places us or the participants at risk of danger without adequate safeguard, we reserve the right to place the activity on hold until the risk is removed. Should you be unable to remove the risk, we reserve the right to cancel the activity without refund.
24. We agree not to interfere with anything provided to safeguard the health and safety of us and the participants. You have the right to receive a full refund if we break this agreement.
LIABILITY
25. In the event of injury to persons or damage to property in the course of an activity, Snail Tales will be liable to the limit specified by our public liability insurance, currently £5million.
26. Except where expressly agreed otherwise in writing, neither you nor Snail Tales will be responsible for any losses that the other suffers as a result of a breach of these terms and conditions, except those losses which are a foreseeable consequence of the breach. Neither you nor Snail Tales will be responsible for indirect losses which happen as a side-effect of the main loss or damage and which are not foreseeable by Snail Tales and you (eg loss of profits, loss of data).
PRIVACY
27. Your contact information will be kept on our files, along with a record of the activity/ies performed for you. We will not share this information with any other individual or organisation without your prior written consent.
28. Any other information provided by you or the participants of an activity to us will be kept in the strictest confidence and only until the end of the activity.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
29. Before reading a proposal from Snail Tales, you will have read a disclaimer expressing the fact that continuing to read the proposal constitutes acceptance of an agreement of confidentiality. Any attempt to use the ideas in a proposal from Snail Tales yourself without hiring us will be deemed a breach of this agreement of confidentiality, as will any attempt to hire another organisation/individual to carry out a proposal from or inspired by a proposal from Snail Tales.
30. We hereby assert and reserve our copyright in the format, presentation and content of all our activities. You are not permitted to copy any Snail Tales activity for profit.
31. However, we respect the fact that you may wish to continue exploring certain aspects of a Snail Tales activity with the same participants to “follow-up” on the activity. You may do so only in so far as the majority of the participants are the same as those who took part in the activity as run by Snail Tales.
32. Clauses 30 and 31 do not apply to those activities where we are training the participants to run activities of their own.
33. When running creative workshops, we firmly believe in leaving ownership with the creators. In these activities, copyright in the stories, characters, individual performances and materials created by the participants will remain with the participants. However, Snail Tales shall retain an irrevocable and perpetual licence to use the stories, characters, individual performances or materials for the purposes of promoting our work.
34. In cases where you have an existing copyright agreement with the participants (eg that any work of their creation is held under your copyright), this will not prevent us from retaining the above licence, and you will be deemed to have granted the licence yourself.
OTHER LEGAL BITS
35. You may not transfer any of your rights or responsibilities under these terms and conditions to any other person without obtaining our written consent.
36. If you breach these terms and conditions and we choose to ignore this, we will still be entitled to use our rights and remedies within this agreement at a later date or in any other situation where you breach these terms and conditions.
37. Any person who is not party to this agreement between you and Snail Tales shall have no right to enforce any of the terms and conditions herein.
38. We always hope to solve any disagreements quickly and efficiently. If you are not happy with the way we deal with any disagreement and you wish to take legal proceedings, you must do so under English law within the United Kingdom.
39. Headings in these terms and conditions are for convenience only and will have no legal meaning or effect.
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