I believe the law states that if a contract is not reasonable it should not be enforceable.
A member of our team was recently asked to appear in court as a witness because a company had signed a 5 year deal with an ISO Certification company which was not accredited and therefore their main customer would not accept the certification. We assisted to company to gain accredited certification which allowed to company to gain work from their main customer, but they also wanted to have the 5 year contract revoked as being unreasonable and not fit for purpose.
Although lots of evidence was given to show that the system given under the 5 year contract was not within the ISO guidelines of having on site audits etc, our colleague lost the case and now has to continue paying for a system that he cannot use for 5 years, as well as having to maintain the accredited system they also now have in order to service the needs of the National customer. Seems unfair to us, and so we ask the question, why do customers of quality standards need to sign contracts?
We work in a quality business, so we should be offering a quality product/service ourselves. We never ask our customers to sign a contract, if we don’t look after them we should expect to lose them, and they should be allowed to go freely, if that happened we would most definitely learn from our mistake.
So we would urge anyone in this sort of situation “Beware Before signing a contract” check your options, stay in control!
12 September 2014