Terms and Conditions — Business Women Scotland

Website terms and conditions

Last updated January 2023.

These are the terms and conditions of Business Women Scotland Ltd, a company registered in Scotland under company number SC373516 with its registered office at 272 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 4JR . (“we” or “us”).

These terms and conditions explain the terms under which you may visit our websites at https://www.bwsltd.co.uk and https://www.bwsmembers.co.uk/, become a Member or book onto an event (“services”). We ask that you read these terms and conditions carefully, as you’re deemed to have accepted these terms and conditions and our privacy and cookies policy, available on our websites when you use our services.

Membership

You can join BWS, a membership organisation for women in business. Our resources include educational and networking events with like-minded women in business, and training and support for starting, developing and growing a business.

We offer a variety of plans as outlined on our websites. We use the term “Membership” to describe the membership you subscribe to (regardless of the name we use on our websites), and those with a Membership are referred to as a “Member”. The benefits you’ll receive as part of your Membership vary depending on the plan that you have opted for, and these can be found in full on our websites.

You should read this section, and these terms and conditions carefully and ask us if you are unsure of anything.

Registration

You must ensure that the details provided by you on registration or at any time are correct and complete and should these change you should let us know so we can communicate with you effectively.

Membership and Fees

Our Memberships are all annual, and when you sign up to a Membership, you will be required to pay our annual subscription fees in advance.

All payments on our websites are processed by Stripe, and so you should read their terms and conditions and privacy policy before subscribing to a Membership.

Your Membership will start on the date that you subscribe and complete your payment and will continue for a fixed period of one year from that date. You will then have access to the Membership, and all its benefits, for one year.

Your Membership will automatically end at the end of the year and you have the option to subscribe for a further year. You will then be required to pay a further annual subscription fee for your Membership.

Consumer rights

Our Memberships are provided to you as a business customer, operating by way of trade, business or profession. This means that the usual consumer rights don’t apply and all sales are final. Once you have signed up to a Membership, there is no entitlement to change your mind and receive a refund of your subscription fee already paid.

Privacy of accounts

Your Membership is personal to you, and you’re not permitted to grant anyone else access to your Membership by sharing your login details. If you find out that you have done this, we reserve the right to cancel your Membership without any liability to you, and you won’t receive a refund for any subscription fees paid.

Our community

It is so important that our community for Members is a place where Members feel supported, encouraged, and treated kindly and so we ask that you always ensure this in your actions. While we encourage everyone to engage in discussions, we won’t tolerate any nasty, unfair, or unnecessary comments. That being said, we’re not responsible for the behaviour, actions, or views of other Members, and we can only ask that everyone respects the privacy and confidentiality of others.

If you consistently break the standards we set or expect, we reserve the right to cancel your Membership without any liability to you, and you won’t receive a refund for any subscription fees paid.

Privacy and confidentiality

During your Membership, you may have access to confidential information, in particular the personal affairs of other Members. In accepting these terms and conditions, you agree that you will not use or disclose to any person, organisation or company, and will use your best efforts to prevent the disclosure or publication of any confidential information relating to any other Member.

Where there has been any unauthorised disclosure of personal or confidential information belonging to another Member, we reserve the right to cancel your Membership without any liability to you, and you won’t receive a refund for any subscription fees paid. These confidentiality and privacy obligations will continue even after your Membership ends.

Intellectual property

Our intellectual property is incredibly important to us. Please review the ‘general legal terms’ sections of these terms and conditions for more information about this.

Disclaimers

The aim of the Membership is to support and assist you while you establish, grow and scale your business, and to facilitate networking with like-minded women in business. We make no guarantees or claims as to the success you may achieve during your Membership. Each individual is unique, as is the commitment they make to themselves to apply the lessons into their life and in their business. We hope that by taking advantage of all of the elements the Membership has to offer, you will have new information, awareness, tools and content to create change in your business.

We’re not responsible for any outcomes you do or do not achieve through your Membership. We don’t make any guarantees of future earnings, profits or results. You are entirely responsible for your own results.

All information provided will be general information and guidance and will not be bespoke advice. We are not responsible for any action or inaction which you take as a result of the information provided during your Membership. No content provided during your Membership should be construed as financial or legal advice. If you require this advice, please speak to an independent professional.

We don’t warrant that you will have access to your Membership will be uninterrupted or that it will be error free.

What next?

Unless you have also booked an event, you should now also read the ‘website terms of use’ and the ‘general legal terms’ sections of these terms and conditions, as these sections will also apply to you.

Events

From time to time, we may offer in person events, and these will be advertised on our websites. This section applies to those that book an event on our websites.

Booking the event

You can book a place on our events on our websites. You’ll need to pay for your place at the time of making your booking and if you have any questions about this, please don’t hesitate to ask. You must ensure that the details provided by you on registration or at any time are correct and complete and should these change you should let us know so we can communicate with you effectively.

Once we’ve accepted your booking, you will receive a confirmation email. This email will confirm all details necessary for attendance of the event, such as times, availability of refreshments and what you can expect during the event. If you haven’t received the email within 24 hours, or if you have any other questions, please contact us.

Refunds and rescheduling

It is important you note that once you have booked your place on the event, we operate a no refund policy and so you are not entitled to cancel your place and claim a refund. This is because our events are provided to you as a business customer, operating by way of trade, business or profession. This means that the usual consumer rights don’t apply and all sales are final.

However, if we need to reschedule the event for operational reasons or due to a force majeure event (see the ‘general legal terms’ section of these terms and conditions), we’ll contact you to advise you of the new agreed time and date. If you aren’t able to make the new date and time, please let us know and we will in that instance be able to refund you the fee.

What next?

You should now also read the ‘website terms of use’ and the ‘general legal terms’ sections of these terms and conditions, as these sections also apply to you.

Website terms of use

This section of these terms and conditions (“website terms of use”) applies to any person that visits our websites, for whatever reason. By using our websites, you confirm that you accept these website terms of use and that you agree to comply with them. If you don’t agree to these website terms of use, you shouldn’t use our websites.

Changes to these website terms of use or our websites

We may amend these website terms of use from time to time. We may also update and change our websites from time to time to reflect changes to our products, services, our users' needs, and our business priorities.

Suspending or withdrawing our websites

Our websites are made available free of charge. We don’t guarantee that our websites, or any content on it, will always be available or be uninterrupted. We may suspend or withdraw or restrict the availability of all or any part of our websites for business and operational reasons. We will try to give you reasonable notice of any suspension or withdrawal.

You are also responsible for ensuring that all persons who access our websites through your internet connection are aware of these website terms of use and other applicable terms and conditions, and that they comply with them.

Transferring these website terms of use

We may transfer our rights and obligations under these website terms of use to another organisation. We will always tell you in writing if this happens and we will ensure that the transfer won’t affect your rights under these website terms of use.

Privacy of accounts

If you choose, or you are provided with, a user identification code, password, or any other piece of information as part of our security procedures, you must treat such information as confidential. You must not disclose it to any third party.

We have the right to disable any user identification code or password, whether chosen by you or allocated by us, at any time, if in our reasonable opinion you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these website terms of use. If you know or suspect that anyone other than you knows your user identification code or password, you must promptly notify us in writing.

No text or data mining, or web scraping

You must not conduct, facilitate, authorise, or permit any text or data mining or web scraping in relation to our websites or any services provided via, or in relation to, our websites. This includes using (or permitting, authorising, or attempting the use of):

Any "robot", "bot", "spider", "scraper" or other automated device, program, tool, algorithm, code, process, or methodology to access, obtain, copy, monitor or republish any portion of the website or any data, content, information, or services accessed via the same; or
Any automated analytical technique aimed at analysing text and data in digital form to generate information which includes but isn’t limited to patterns, trends, and correlations.

The provisions in this clause should be treated as an express reservation of our rights in this regard, including for the purposes of Article 4(3) of Digital Copyright Directive ((EU) 2019/790). This clause shall not apply insofar as (but only to the extent that) we are unable to exclude or limit text or data mining or web scraping activity by contract under the laws which are applicable to us.

Third party links

Where our websites contain links to other websites and resources provided by third parties, these links are provided for your information only. Such links shouldn’t be interpreted as approval by us of those linked websites or information you may obtain from them. We have no control over the contents of those websites or resources.

Computer misuse

We don’t guarantee that our websites will be secure or free from bugs or viruses. You are responsible for configuring your information technology, computer programmes and platform to access our websites. You should use your own virus protection software.

You must not misuse our websites by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material that is malicious or technologically harmful. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our websites, the server on which our websites are stored, or any server, computer or database connected to our websites. You must not attack our websites via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of service attack. By breaching this provision, you would commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities, and we will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of such a breach, your right to use our websites will cease immediately.

Disclaimers and our legal responsibility to you

The content on our websites is provided for general information only. Although we make reasonable efforts to update the information on our websites, we make no representations, warranties or guarantees, whether express or implied, that the content on our websites is accurate, complete, or up to date.

We won’t be liable to you, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, for any loss of profit, loss of business, interruption to business, for any loss of business opportunity, or for any indirect or consequential loss arising out of or in connection with your use of our websites. Our total liability to you for all other losses arising out of or in connection with your use of our websites, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, shall be limited to £500.

Nothing in these website terms of use seeks to limit or exclude our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence (including that of our employees, agents or subcontractors) any other matter in respect of which liability cannot be excluded or restricted by law.

General legal terms

Intellectual property rights

When you engage with us, whether it’s visiting our websites, becoming a Member, or booking onto an event, you’ll certainly be introduced to intellectual property, which we either own or we’re the licensee of. We refer to this as our “IP” and includes, but is not limited to:

the layout of our websites, social media posts and marketing material
any and all text on our websites, social media posts and marketing material
the photos on our websites, social media posts and marketing material
any materials you receive as part of your Membership or attendance of an event.

The IP is protected by copyright. You’re allowed to stream or download one copy of the IP onto your personal device. By using our websites and our services, you agree that you will:

not rent, lease, sub-license, loan or otherwise make our IP available to any person without our prior consent
not copy our IP, except as part of the normal use of the IP
not translate, merge, adapt, vary, alter or modify our IP, nor allow our IP to be incorporated into other programmes
not disassemble, decompile, reverse engineer or create derivative works from our IP, such as by copying our designs and reproducing for your own personal or business purposes
comply with all applicable law when using our IP.

If you breach these terms and conditions, you may lose your right to use our IP, and you must destroy or return any copies you’ve made.

Liability

Our total liability to you for all other losses arising out of or in connection with the contract for sale between you and us, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, shall be limited to the total fees paid for the Membership in the 12 months preceding a claim or the fees paid to attend an event.

Except to the extent expressly set out in this section, the terms implied by Sections 13 to 15 of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 and by Sections 3 to 5 of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 are excluded.

Nothing in these terms and conditions seeks to limit or exclude our liability for: (i) death or personal injury caused by our negligence (including that of our employees, agents or subcontractors); (ii) fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; (iii) breach of the terms implied by Section 12 of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 or Section 2 of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982; (iv) defective products under the Consumer Protection Act 1987; or (v) any other matter in respect of which liability cannot be excluded or restricted by law.

Force majeure

We won’t be liable for any failure or delay in performing our obligations under these terms and conditions where our failure or delay is due to a cause beyond our reasonable control (“force majeure event”). Such force majeure events include, but are not limited to: power failure, internet service provider failure, strikes, lock-outs or other industrial action by third parties, riots and other civil unrest, fire, explosion, flood, storms, earthquakes, subsidence, acts of terrorism (threatened or actual), acts of war (declared, undeclared, threatened, actual or preparations for war), epidemic, pandemic or other natural disaster, or any other event that is beyond our reasonable control. We’ll use our reasonable efforts to continue our obligations under these terms and conditions as soon as we can after the force majeure event has stopped.

Data protection

We comply with our obligations under the EU law retained version of the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) (2016/679) and the UK Data Protection Act 201. If any of these laws are replaced or superseded, will also comply with that those. For more information on how we process your personal data, please read out privacy and cookies policy, available on our websites.

The legal bit

Notices. Any notices to be served on each other must be sent by email and the time of delivery will be the time of transmission. Please send any notices to us by email to lynne@bwsltd.co.uk and we will use the email associated with your account/Membership/booking. If your contact details change, please let us know. This doesn’t apply to the service of legal proceedings, which can’t be emailed.

Entire agreement. These terms and conditions represent the entire understanding and agreement between you and us with regards to the subject matter and formation of these terms and conditions, and replaces all other negotiations, understandings, and representations, if any, made by and between you and us. No representation, inducement, promise or agreement, oral or otherwise, if any, not contained in these terms and conditions or any other agreement related to these terms and conditions and expressly references herein is of any force and effect.

No delay. Delay in exercising a right under these terms and conditions won’t take away that right or any other right.

Third parties. No one other than you and we have any right to enforce any terms of these terms and conditions and the Contract (Third Parties Rights) (Scotland) Act 2017 don’t apply to these terms and conditions.

Severability. If any provision or part-provision of these terms and conditions is or becomes invalid, illegal, or unenforceable, it will be deemed amended to the minimum extent needed to make it valid, legal, and enforceable. If such amendment isn’t possible, the relevant provision or part-provision will be deemed deleted. Any such amendment or deletion won’t affect the validity and enforceability of the rest of these terms and conditions.

Governing law and jurisdiction. These terms and conditions, and any non-contractual obligations arising under them, are governed by Scots law. The courts of Scotland have exclusive jurisdiction over any matter and proceedings arising out of these terms and conditions.