Terms & Conditions

At Thorntons we want to put a smile on your face, not only with our delicious chocolates but also with our fantastic customer service. We also want to ensure we bring you our great products and service in the right way, so below are our terms and conditions which apply when you are ordering products from our website and which we regularly update in line with legal requirements.

Don’t worry, the conditions do not affect your legal or statutory rights – you can find out more information about your rights from your local Citizens Advice Bureau or Trading Standards office.

We make sure that we handle any personal information you provide to us in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. If you’d like even more info on this we have a separate section on Our Privacy Policy so please take a look at that.

Any documents or links which we refer to in these terms and conditions form part of these terms. Please read these terms and conditions carefully and check you understand them before ordering products from our site. By ordering any of our products, you agree to be bound be these terms and conditions (including our privacy policy, delivery information and terms and conditions relating to promotions.)

We may change these conditions from time to time to reflect changes in how we accept payment from you or changes in relevant laws and regulatory requirements. Each time you order products from us, you should check these terms and conditions to make sure you understand what terms will apply to our contract with you at that time.

These terms and any contract between us will only be in the English language.

Contact Details

Thorntons Direct (located at www.thorntons.com) is operated by Thorntons Ltd. (a company registered in England and Wales with registration number 00174706) whose registered office and main trading office is at 889 Greenford Road Greenford Middlesex UB6 0HE. Our VAT number is 172 8413 60. If you need to contact us, or wish to make a complaint, please use our contact form, call our contact centre on 0345 121 1911 or email us at customercare@thorntons.co.uk.

Products

All products shown on our site are subject to availability. If the product you have ordered is not available, we may substitute your product for a substantially similar product of equal or higher value. Of course, if time allows we will attempt to contact you in relation to the proposed substitution, but as the majority of orders are time critical, we may not have time to get in touch with you. However, if the main characteristics of the goods are different to the goods ordered, we will give you the option to reconfirm or cancel your order.

If we are unable to supply you with a product because of an error in the price on our site, we will inform you of this by email and we will not process your order.

All of our products have a shelf-life of 6-8 weeks, unless otherwise specified in the product description.

The images of the products on our site are for illustrative purposes only and your products may vary slightly from those images.

We are under a legal duty to supply goods that conform with the contract agreed between us.

Our Contract with You

These terms and conditions will apply to any contract between us for the sale of products to you, the consumer. Our products are only intended for use by consumers (that means people who want to buy our products for their personal consumption or as gifts for friends or family and not for any business purposes e.g. for resale). We reserve the right to reject or cancel your order if we reasonably think that you are buying our products for business purposes and/or where your order exceeds £250 but we will attempt to contact you (using the contact details you have provided during the order process) to discuss this before cancelling your order.

To place an order on our site for a particular product, please click “Add to basket”.You can then click on the basket icon at the top of the page and follow the steps (including providing payment and delivery information) to complete your order. Our order process allows you to check and amend any errors before submitting your order to us.

After placing an order, you will receive an email from us acknowledging the contents and any personalisation of your order. However, please note that this does not mean that your order has been accepted. Your order will only be accepted by us (and a contract formed) when we dispatch the products to you. We will send you an email confirming that the products have been dispatched.

Delivery

We use Royal Mail in order to provide the highest possible level of service, wherever you are and whatever your specific requirements.

Delivery will be completed when we deliver the products to the address you gave us and the products will be at your risk and responsibility from completion of delivery. You own the products once we have received payment in full, including all applicable delivery charges.

We reserve the right to amend delivery charges where necessary for orders over £250, as the website delivery options are for orders which do not exceed delivery costs. Additional costs may apply where a large number of items are ordered or where delivery to multiple addresses is requested.

Due to the remote nature of some locations, there are some postcodes within the UK to which we unfortunately cannot offer our standard delivery services. Deliveries to these postcodes will instead be made via our named day delivery service, (excluding Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays and bank holidays). Example of areas include Northern Ireland, Scottish Highlands, Guernsey, Outer Hebrides, Isle of Man, Isle of Wight, Isles of Scilly, Jersey, Shetland Islands, and Aberdeen. For further information on restricted postcodes please contact customer support team.

Cancellation, Refunds and Returns

If we miss the agreed delivery date for any goods, you may cancel your order straight away if (a) we have refused to deliver the goods or (b) delivery within the delivery deadline was essential (taking into account all the relevant circumstances) or (c) you told us before the contract was made that delivery by the agreed delivery date was essential. If you do not wish to cancel your order straight away (or do not have the right to do so in the circumstances set out above), you can give us a new deadline for delivery, which must be reasonable, and you can cancel your order if we do not meet this deadline. If you do choose to cancel your order for late delivery in the circumstances set out in this paragraph:

• you can do so for just some of the goods or all of them, unless splitting them up would significantly reduce their value;
• if any of the goods have been delivered to you, you will have to return them to us and we will pay the reasonable costs of this; and
• after you cancel your order we will refund any sums you have paid to us for the cancelled goods and their delivery.

Unfortunately once an order has been placed and confirmed we are unable to amend this. We can offer cancelation and refund to allow you to replace order if the original order hasn’t been shipped. If you would like to cancel an order you can call one of our Chocolate Advisors on 0345 121 1911, or submit a request through the contact us form.

Unfortunately, damage and delay are the only situations where we can offer a refund personalised items. For these items, you do not otherwise have a right to cancel your order or any contract between us and we are not otherwise able to offer refunds or allow for a return of those items, in accordance with the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013.

If you have any questions or concerns, our customer service team would be happy to talk to you about this in more detail.

If you are a consumer, have purchased any of our other products (which are not personalised items) and your order value is less than £250, you have a right to cancel the contract up to the end of the day which is 14 calendar days after the day on which you receive the goods in accordance with the following provisions. This means that if you change your mind during this time or decide for any other reason that you do not want to receive or keep the goods, you can notify us of your decision to cancel the contract and receive a refund. If your order value is over £250, your order will be placed on hold whilst a customer representative contacts you to confirm stock, best before dates, any other questions you might have and to approve the order. Once an order over the value of £250 has been approved, due to the perishable nature of our products we reserve the right to reject a refund request unless products within the order are damaged. In this case, a refund will only be offered on the value of damaged goods, not on the whole order and evidence of damage on delivery will be required.

Please note, you will have three months from the date your order is accepted to contact us in relation to any issues or complaints concerning the delivery of your order (e.g. non-delivery of orders or damaged goods received). We are unable to investigate any issues after this amount of time has lapsed and, therefore, will not be able to offer a refund or replacement product.

You must return the goods to us without delay and in any event not later than 14 calendar days after the day on which you let us know that you wish to cancel the contract. Please return the goods to;

Customer Services
Thornton Park
Somercotes
Alfreton
Derbyshire
DE55 4XJ

The easiest way to cancel a contract for your order less than £250 is to send an email to customercare@thorntons.co.uk. Your cancellation is effective from the date you send us the email or return the form.

We will process your refund as soon as possible and in any case within 14 calendar days after the day on which we receive the goods back, or if earlier, within 14 calendar days after the day on which you provide evidence of having sent the goods back. If you have not received the goods from us before cancelling the contract and your order value is less than £250, we will make any refunds due to you within 14 days after you inform us of your decision to cancel the contract.

We will refund the price of the products in full, plus any applicable delivery charges you paid to the credit card, debit card or gift card that you made payment with (although in relation to delivery charges, the maximum refund will be the costs of delivery by the least expensive delivery method we offer, provided this is a common and generally accepted method of delivery). Please note that we are permitted by law to reduce your refund to reflect any reduction in the value of the goods, if this has been caused by your handling in a way which goes beyond what is necessary to establish the nature, characteristics and functioning of the goods.

You will be responsible for the cost of returning the products to us, unless the products are damaged, not as described or there is a delay in delivery, in which case we will reimburse you for any reasonable costs you incur in returning the products to us (and will also reimburse you in full for the price of the products, together with any applicable delivery charges).

Age Restriction

We take a very responsible approach when it comes to selling alcohol so products containing bottled alcohol are only available for purchase or supply to persons over the age of 18 in accordance with legal requirements. You will be asked to confirm this during the order process by entering your date of birth. We perform an instant online identity verification check to confirm you are over 18. If this check is unable to confirm you are over 18, we will look to contact you to verify your details - this forms part of our contract of sale. We will not be able to dispatch your order until we have been able to speak with you to verify your details. If you are underage, please do not attempt to order alcohol products on the site.

Icing and printed messages

We want to give your chocolates that personal touch and enable you to share the love with Thorntons wherever we can but we do reserve the right to reject icing messages if they are deemed to be:

• Offensive, discriminatory or contain sexual language;
• Defamatory in nature;
• Politically motivated;
• Misinterpreted by the wider community or viewed as inappropriate;
• Enticing hatred or harm towards an individual or a particular group; or
• An infringement of a third party’s intellectual property.

Pricing and Payment

We accept payment by Visa, American Express, Mastercard and Maestro. All orders are positively credit card sanctioned prior to dispatch, so please ensure that the details you provide us with are correct. We require you to supply the registered address of the credit card holder which is used to validate your order with your credit card company. We cannot accept responsibility for an order being held back as a result of incorrect or invalid payment details being given.

The total value of your order will be displayed on the order confirmation screen. The displayed price is the amount in pounds sterling. If you are ordering from outside the UK, we will apply an appropriate exchange rate.

Prices for our products are as quoted on our site and may change from time to time, but changes will not affect any order after we have dispatched the products relating to that order. The price of our products does not include delivery charges, which are quoted on our site from time to time.

Our Website contains a large number of products and it is always possible that, despite our best efforts, some of the products listed may be incorrectly priced. We will normally verify prices as part of our dispatch procedures. If a product's correct price is higher than the price stated on our website we may at our discretion reject your order without liability to you and notify you of such rejection. We are under no obligation to supply products to you at an incorrect (lower) price, even after we have sent you an order confirmation, if the pricing error is obvious and unmistakable and could reasonably have been recognised by you as a pricing error.

Offer Terms & Conditions

To see our full terms & conditions for offers and promotions please click here.

VAT Receipt

All prices include VAT at the appropriate rate, (currently 20%). If you are eligible to reclaim this sales tax, on request we can supply you with a VAT receipt.

Corporate Orders

This section only applies if you are placing an order on behalf of a business.

If you are purchasing products from our site on behalf of a business, you confirm that you have the authority to bind that business. These terms and conditions (and all documents referred to in them) constitute the entire agreement between you and us and supersedes all previous agreements, whether written or oral, relating to its subject matter. In entering into a contract with us, you acknowledge that you do not rely on any statement or representation that is not set out in these terms or documents referred to in these terms. Neither of us will have any claim for innocent or negligent misrepresentation based on any statement in these terms and conditions.

We only supply our products to you for internal use and you agree not to use the product for re-sale purposes. Except as expressly stated in these terms and conditions, we do not give any representation, warranties or undertakings in relation to the products and any representative, condition or warranty which might be implied or incorporated into these terms and conditions by statute, common law or otherwise is excluded to the fullest extent permitted by law. In particular, we are not responsible for ensuring that the products are suitable for your purposes.

We will under no circumstances be liable to you for loss of profits, sales, business, revenue, business opportunity, anticipated savings, goodwill or any indirect or consequential loss. Nothing in these conditions limit or exclude liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation or any other liability which cannot be limited or excluded by law.

Subject to the above paragraph, our total liability to you in respect of all losses arising in connection with the contract (whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty or otherwise) will not exceed 100% of the price of the products.

We reserve the right to amend delivery charges where necessary for corporate orders placed via the website, as the website delivery options are for consumer orders which do not exceed delivery costs. Additional costs will apply where a large number of items are ordered or where delivery to multiple addresses is requested.

Our liability

This section only applies if you are a consumer. If we fail to comply with these terms and conditions, we are responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breach of these terms and conditions or our negligence. Loss or damage is foreseeable if it is an obvious consequence of our breach or contemplated by you and us at the time when we entered into the contract.

We only supply the products for domestic and private use. You agree not to use the products for any commercial, business or resale purposes and we have no liability to you for any loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption or loss of business opportunity.

We will not be liable or responsible for any failure to perform or delay in the performance of any of our obligations under a contract that is genuinely caused by an event out of our reasonable control.

Other Important Terms

We may transfer our rights and obligations under a contract to another organisation, but this will not affect your rights or our obligations under these terms. Any contract is between you and us and no other person shall have any rights to enforce any of its terms.

If any part of these terms and conditions is unenforceable, the enforceability of any other part of these terms and conditions shall not be affected.

These terms and any contract we enter into are governed by English law. If you are a consumer, the courts of England and Wales will have non-exclusive jurisdiction to settle any claim or dispute arising in connection with a contract. For business users, the courts of England and Wales will have exclusive jurisdiction.