Policy

Introduction

The following user Agreement of the terms of services and use ("Agreement") is a contract between the Belgian company BMC s.a., registered under the number BE0444.903.168 at the ECB and with headquarters located at the 1050 Brussels, Avenue Louise, 143, Belgium ("Company" or "Manager of the Platform") and the user ("User") with an approved registration on the web-platform i-Lance ("Platform").

The manager of the platform offers the services of intermediation in the establishment of business relations between the Freelancers and the Clients - sponsors or publishers of projects on the platform located at https://www.i-lance.eu (or any other national "i-lance" hosting domain extension name) or any part of the rest of the web-platform.

The purpose of the present Agreement is to define the modalities of use of the proposed services and to define the rights and the responsibilities of the users of the platform.

User must read, agree to and accept all the terms and conditions included in the present Agreement in order to become a user of the web-platform.

Definitions

Freelancer: this term designs any natural or legal person registered as a sole trader (main or complementary), student sole trader or as a payroller (or equivalent), having a valid VAT number and having a legal business activity in Belgium or in any other country. Freelancers offer their business services to Clients for short or medium-term projects.

Client: this term designs any natural or legal person having a legal business activity in Belgium or in any other member country and having a valid VAT number. Clients are sponsors of the projects on the platform and publish their project offers on the platform or enter directly in contact with freelancers of their interest in order to have their short, medium- or long-term project carried out by Freelancers found on the Platform.

Job/Mission/Project: this term designs the scope of precise tasks that clients delegate to Freelancers for a financial compensation.

User: this term designates any person using the platform in any way that is in agreement with the terms of services.

Content: this term designs any information, message, statement, rating, comment, remark, rating, personal data or file (text, image, photo, video, keynote presentation, codes, etc.) that a user publishes on the platform.

Services: this term designs any service provided by the manager of the platform to its users. Services include notably but not exclusively, the hosting and the referencing of the freelancer personal profiles and of the published projects, the intermediation in the establishment of business relations between the Freelancers and the Clients and the provision of the project management and contact tools. More personalised services, such as the search and the selection of Freelancers can also be provided to Clients.

Digital Signature

The registration on the platform as well as the immediately subsequent acceptance of the terms of services and use induce the fact that they have been properly read and approved by the user and induce the commitment on the behalf of the user to respect the terms of use of the platform.

Registration on the Platform

The registration on the platform is the mandatory condition of benefiting of the services of i-Lance. Therefore, users must create their own personal account. Each user must be an adult natural or legal person, legally capable of singing legal documents and conducting a legal business activity.

The user acknowledges hereby that all the personal and administrative data that he or she provides during the registration are accurate. The user commits to update his or her personal and administrative data as soon as a change occurs. The user also commits to provide accurate invoicing data.

Each user account is protected by a login presented under the form of a personal e-mail address and a password that is being chosen freely by the user during the registration and can be modified by the user at any time. Some forms of Freelancer profiles are publicly visible by registered and non-registered visitors of the platform. The User is free to choose the professional information that he/is willing to publish on his/her personal profile, beyond the required fields.

Access to the Platform and its Services

The platform is divided on two distinct spaces:

– The public space with among other elements, the landing page, the information on the functioning of the platform, contacts, terms of services and use, blog articles, project offers and freelancer profiles. This space represents the showcase of the platform and is being used essentially for marketing in order to encourage visitors to register on the platform.

– The user space that gives access to all the functionalities of the platform.

Platform Services

Among the services included in the platform (but not exclusively):

– The platform offers referencing services for Freelancers, conducting a legal business activity that is part of the listed scope of fields offered by the platform;

– Referencing service for the projects listed by clients for each proposed field of activity

– A fast and easy intermediation service for business contact making between Clients and Freelancers;

– The provision of the project management tools, a private messaging system, a virtual scope in order to optimize the cooperation between Clients and Freelancers and an invoicing system;

Fully personalized services can also be offered to a selection of Clients and Freelancers at the discretion of the manager of the platform.

Functioning of the Platform

Users (Clients and Freelancers) register and create a personal professional profile on the platform. The profiles of Freelancers are can either be visible and publicly accessible by all the visitors of the platform, should they be registered users or not; or private and invisible. Client profiles are systematically hidden for the purposes of privacy. Once the profile is duly completed, users are invited to fill in their administrative information, such as the VAT number and their contact details.

Once the profile is created, the administrative information is filled, Clients can post their project proposals. The project proposal details all the needs, the required skills, the deadline, the way of working and the estimated budget. Project proposals can be viewed by any visitor of the platform. The profile of the Clients positing project proposals is anonymous and Freelancers see the Client’s identity only once he/she is being hired by the Client. Clients can also hire Freelancers by contacting them personally through the platform’s messaging system.

When the Client selects the Freelancer that he/she would like to hire, Client and Freelancer must agree on the precise terms of their cooperation. The Manager of the Platform does not impose any precise terms and leaves the freedom to the concerned parties to negotiate their own terms. A virtual scope can be created in order to simplify the monitoring of the workflow as well as the communication. Client and Freelancer can freely choose the terms of payment. Client will be able to give a rating and a feedback to Freelancers once the project is finished and the rating and the feedback will be displayed on the Freelancer’s profile.

The platform offers an invoicing service between clients and freelancers. Freelancers will be able to invoice Clients directly through the platform and without the intervention of the manager of the platform. However, the Manager of the Platform is not responsible for and does not intervene at the invoicing.

Rating and Feedback System

After the execution of each project, Client will have the possibility to give a rating on the scale of 5 and a feedback for the Freelancer’s services as part of the project. Ratings and feedbacks will be displayed on the Freelancer’s profile and will be visible to any visitor of the platform in order to increase the visibility and the attractiveness of the profiles. Only the persons who have worked with Freelancers on projects on the platform will be able to give ratings.

Service Fees

The platform subscription fee allows Users to get access to the i-Lance platform. The Subscription plans are available on the website, have a duration of either one month either 12 months or will be tacitly renewed for subsequent terms of the same duration unless the User notifies the manager of the platform that there is no wish to renew the subscription plan. The manager of the platform reserves the right to change the amount of the commission or of the whole remuneration system without any further notice. The subscription service fee can be paid via credit card. Users may benefit from a free trial of the platform offered by the manager of the platform as from the first day of subscription.

The User is responsible for payment of all sums due under the subscription. The subscription must be paid immediately upon request. Failure to pay the Platform subscription fee will allow the manager of the platform to immediately stop the access of the User to the platform without formal notice. The choice of the manager of the platform not to apply the suspension immediately will not be considered as a waiver to apply such suspension at a later stage or in other circumstances. The subscription fee does not cover costs related to equipment and electronic communications required for the use of the platform.

The manager of the platform may suspend or terminate a subscription, without compensation or right to reimbursement, if it notices a breach by the subscriber of these Policy of Use. Users cannot cancel their subscription as long as a mission is marked as in progress. Therefore, the subscription plan will be automatically reconduct if a mission is in progress at the end date of the subscription. Would the Customer fail to pay its subscription when due, the manager of the platform may terminate the access to the services of the platform.

To terminate the subscription, Users can send an e-mail to contact@i-lance.eu to cancel their subscription or simply stop paying their subscription.

Litigation Cases Between Clients and Freelancers

The manager of the platform is not part of any agreement or contract concluded between Clients and Freelancers as part of the execution of a project. Therefore, the manager of the platform cannot be considered as responsible in any way in case of a litigation between Clients and Freelancers.

However, in case of a litigation between a Client and a Freelancer related to the quality of the deliverables, the manager of the platform can offer a purely informative quality control check at the request of the concerned Client and/or Freelancer.

User Commitments

By creating a profile on the platform, user accepts and commits to respect the General Terms of Use. Moreover, Users commit to use the platform and its services in respect with the Belgian, European and the User’s homeland laws. No criminal activity will be allowed on the platform. Therefore, Users accept that the manager of the platform keeps a scrutiny right on all the content that is being published on the platform in order to make sure that the use of the platform is being carried out with the respect of laws, that no criminal activity is being conducted on the platform and that Users respect the General Terms of Use. Users accept that the manager of the platform could moderate and if necessary, delete any content published on the platform in case if the content would violate law or the Terms of Use.

Users commit to provide all the required accurate personal details and to update them regularly as soon as a change occurs. Users commit to have a valid professional status and to carry out all the required administrative procedures and formalities to have a legal professional activity. It is the User’s responsibility to accomplish all the administrative, legal, tax and social duties related to the User’s professional activity and status. The manager of the platform will be able to request any document proving the legal compliance of the User and the User commits to provide such documents without delays. The Users recognises that he/she is the only responsible for the legal compliance and for all the administrative duties that he/she is required to do.

Users commit to not use the platform in a way that was not explicitly intended by the manager of the platform. It is forbidden to contact Users for advertisement, sales, promotions and any non-professional purposes. Users of the platform commit not to contact other Users of the platform for any purpose that would harm or compete directly or indirectly against the platform. Users give the right to the manager of the platform to delete any profile that would violate the Terms of Use.

Clients commit to only serious project offers that they actually need to execute and that they actually search Freelancers for. Clients recognise that the publication of any mock project offer would violate the Terms of Use and could lead to penalties and sanctions. Clients commit to detail the project and his/her precise needs as much as possible while posting a project in order to avoid any miscommunication and unclarity that could appear between Clients and Freelancer. Clients commit to pay Freelancers that they hire for the execution of their project, during the timeframe that was convened between the Client and the Freelancer.

Once a project or a part of it is executed, Client will validate manually the quality of the output. By validating the quality, Client approves the reception of the output of the freelancer and validates the quality of the deliverables in an irrevocable way. Therefore, the Client abandons in an irrevocable way any complains or litigations against the Freelancer and the platform with respect to the execution of the project. In case of non-payment or non-execution of a contract, the Freelancer or the Client commit themselves to launch a legal procedure outside of the platform and without the intervention of the manager of the platform though the regular legal system. The manager of the platform must be informed of such legal action and of their outcome.

Freelancers commit to respect the confidentiality of their exchanges with their Clients during the negotiation and the execution of the projects through the platform, regardless if a non-disclosure agreement has been signed between the concerned parties or not. Freelancers commit not to transmit any information, data or documents that they could receive from their Clients to any third party. All the exchanges between Clients and Freelancers are confidential and cannot be transmitted to a third party.

User Liabilities

Users are fully responsible for the content that they decide to post on the platform. The manager of the platform does not moderate the content before it is being published and thus rejects all the responsibility for the content published by the Users. It is forbidden to publish any offending, defaming, slanderous, racist, xenophobic, false content and any content that might disturb the public order and damage the reputation of Users and of the platform. Users are fully responsible for the direct or indirect consequences that they could bear in case if they publish false, incorrect, incomplete and/or misleading information on themselves. Similarly, Users are responsible for their updates as soon as a change arises.

Clients are fully responsible for the accuracy, clearness and exhaustivity of the description of the project offer that they post on the platform. Any potential error will have to be assumed by the Client and it goes the same for any potential budget surplus of the project that might result of this error. Users are the only responsible for the project contracts that they conclude through the platform and for the execution of these contracts. The manager of the platform intervenes only as a facilitator of the connection between Freelancers and Clients through the platform and the tools that it offers.

Users are fully responsible for their legal, administrative and tax obligations related to their professional activity and professional status. These obligations include among other things the billing, the invoicing, the tax forms, the VAT declarations, the social charges and others. The manager of the platform cannot be responsible or be accountable for the non-respect of these obligations.

The liabilities of the Platform

The manager of the platform commits himself to make everything possible to provide his services in a continuous and uninterrupted way. Nevertheless, it is possible that the access to the platform and to its services would be interrupted due to a technical problem, maintenance or integration of new functionalities. Similarly, users could face technical problems due to a malfunctioning of their IT equipment or Internet connection. The manager of the platform is not liable in case of the interruption of access to the services of the platform should it be intentional or not.

The role of the manager of the platform is limited to putting at the disposal of Users of a digital space helping to promote the visibility of Freelancers on the labor market and to offering tools simplifying the establishment of relationships and the cooperation between Freelancers and Clients. Users of the platform are fully independent parties of the platform and act at their own name only. The manager of the platform does not intervene in the contracts concluded through the platform between the various parties and therefore cannot be considered as an employer, employee or as an agent representing the interests of one of the parties using the services of the platform. The manager of the platform does nothing more other than offering a centralised space and tools allowing Users to make contacts between them without any intervention of the manager of the platform. Thus, the manager of the platform does not seal any contracts on the behalf of the Users of the platform. Users conclude contracts only between themselves in their own name.

Given that the manager of the platform does not intervene in any way in the contracts between Clients and Freelancers and that they conclude contracts between themselves, in their own name and at their own discretion, the manager of the platform cannot be liable for any inconvenience that could arise during the negotiation or execution of contracts between Clients and Freelancers. Indeed, Clients and Freelancers are fully responsible for the negotiation and execution of contracts concluded between them and of the possible inconveniences, claims and litigations that could arise. Users discharge the manager of the platform of any direct or indirect responsibility that could result from putting in a relationship Clients and Freelancers through the platform.

The manager of the platform is not liable for any cancelling of a contract, cancelling of a payment or non-payment of a contract by a Client or a Freelancer and for the consequences that could result out of such an event. Any litigation between Clients and Freelancer must be settled between themselves without any intervention of the manager of the platform.

The manager of the platform does all the possible to make sure that the information and documents provided by Clients and Freelancers are authentic, up-to-date and accurate. However, the manager of the platform cannot be considered responsible for the communication of inaccurate, false, misleading or non-up-to-date information by Users. The manager of the platform cannot be held liable for any damages that might result of potential legal violations made by Users (Clients or Freelancers).

The manager of the platform reserves the right to delete the account of any User without any further notice, if the manager of the platform considers that the User did not respect his/her commitments taken as part of the General Terms of Use.

Private Data

With respect to the Belgian law dated from 8th December 1992, "Loi vie privée" (Private Life Law), amended by the law dated from 11th December 1998 and with respect to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) entering into force on the 25th May 2018, the platform Users are informed that the manager of the platform is going to conduct automated data treatments of the personal data of its Users.

Only the data that has been personally provided by the Users during the registration to the platform will be subject to such treatment and will be saved on the databases of the manager of the platform. The purpose of the collection of this data is to offer access to the services of the platform; the invoicing of services; the identification of Users; the statistical treatment of the User data; the business prospection and the sending of newsletters. The collected data is not going to be sold to any third parties.

The manager of the platform reserves the right to upload cookies on the computers of its users during the connection to the platform in order to ensure the most optimal functioning of its services. The purpose of the cookies is to save the information related to the browsing of the platform by the users. This information can include the user identity, the browsed pages, the date and the time of the connection. Cookies are uploaded for a period of 6 months. Users reserve the right to prevent the upload of cookies on their computers by configuring their Internet browsers in such a way that they prevent the upload of cookies. However, in such event, Users will not have access to all the functionalities of the platform.

In case of the deletion of a User profile, the manager of the platform will keep the user data for a period of 5 years starting at the day of the deletion. Users dispose of the right to access the collected data, to modify and to delete their personal details on the platform and they are allowed to deny the right to the platform to proceed to the automated treatment of their personal data for valid reasons. In order the exercise this right, Users must send an e-mail to the manager of the platform at support@i-lance.eu.

Hyperlinks

Users have the right to create hyperlinks sending to their profile page on the platform, to their job offers on the platform or any other webpage on the platform. However, it is forbidden for Users to create hyperlinks with websites that are not compliant with law or that could harm the reputation, the image or the interests of the platform. Therefore, the manager of the platform reserves the right to forbid a hyperlink based on a case-by-case assessment without providing any explanations, as long as it is considered that the commitment of the User with respect to the Terms of Use is broken. Furthermore, the existence of a hyperlink sending to the platform from a third-party website does not imply in any way that there exists a partnership or a cooperation between the platform and the website in question. Indeed, the manager of the platform declines all the responsibility with respect to the content or the offered services on third-party websites where hyperlinks to the platform could be posted.

The platform can also contain hyperlinks to external websites, should they be partners of the platform or not. Should the website be a partner of the platform or not, the manager of the platform does not dispose of any right of review of the posted content or the products or services that are being offered on the website in question. Therefore, the manager of the platform cannot be held responsible for any direct or indirect damage or inconvenience that might result from an access to a third-party website through a hyperlink published on the platform.

Intellectual Property

The web platform as well as all the elements that it contains, such as the elements of design, the texts, the images, the photos, the videos, the logos, the brands, the domain names, etc. are the exclusive ownership of the manager of the platform. Therefore, these elements are protected by the intellectual property laws and the author rights. Any partial or full reproduction of the platform or of one of the elements composing the platform is forbidden and represents a criminal offense under the intellectual property law.

Users publishing content on the platform keep the full ownership of all the content that they publish. By creating a profile and publishing any type of content on the platform, users give the permission to the manager of the platform to use, stock, host, reproduce, publish, modify and translate that content. Similarly, Users allow the manager of the platform to use the content for marketing and promotional purposes on physical or digital marketing supports, such as brochures, social media, blogs, media, etc. This permission is valid for all the countries of the world and as long as the User is registered on the platform, this permission cannot be denied to the manager of the platform. The permission to diffuse content ends as soon as the User unregisters from the platform and deletes the profile.

Duration of the Agreement

As soon as the user accepts the general terms of use during the registration, a contract is concluded between the manager of the platform and the user for an unlimited period of time. If the User does not respect the commitments related to the general terms of use, the User will be notified of it by e-mail by the manager of the platform. The manager of the platform reserves the right to suspend or to delete a user account and to deny any future access to the services of the platform and this without any damage compensations that the manager of the platform could request to the User.

Modifications of the Terms of Use

The manager of the platform reserves the right to modify all or a part of the general terms of use. In case of a modification of the terms of use, the manager of the platform will inform the Users of the bought changes as soon as they are being published on the platform. In case if a User does not accept the changes, the User will dispose of 24 hours from the date of the notification of the change to inform the manager of the platform of the concerns. In the absence of any complaints regarding the changes of the terms of use, Users will be considered as having accepted the new terms of use.

Nullity of the Agreement

In case if one clause or several clauses of the terms of use would be declared as void following a change of the legislation, of a directive or by the decision of the justice, it would not affect the validity and the respect of the general terms of use as a whole. The incapacity of the manager of the platform to fully exercise its rights that are being recognised as part of the general agreements of the terms of use between the Users of the platform and the manager of the platform, does not represent in any case a renunciation to exercise those rights.

Client Service

Users can contact the manager of the platform for any question related to the general terms of use or for any question regarding the services proposed by the platform by clicking on “contact” on the main page, or by sending an e-mail on support@i-lance.eu.

Applicable Law

The terms of use have been edited under the Belgian law. Any litigation related to their conclusion, interpretation and/or execution comes under the sole competence of the Lower Court of the French-speaking authorities of Brussels.

Latest update

30th July 2020