Legal · last updated 4 October 2026

Terms of service

This document has not yet been reviewed by a solicitor, and should be before it is relied on.

1. Who you are contracting with

DispatchThread ("we", "us") is a trading name of School Wear United Limited, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 07207802), with its registered office at 3 Crown Dale, London SE19 3PB. The quickest way to reach us is hello@dispatchthread.co.uk. By using the service you ("the customer") agree to these terms.

2. What the service is

DispatchThread is software that reads orders from your BigCommerce store, buys postage labels through your own Royal Mail account, prints packing slips and labels at your premises, and records shipments back to your store. We provide the software and the hosting for it. We do not provide postage, carriage, or any part of the delivery itself.

3. What you need to provide

• A BigCommerce store and an API account with permission to read orders and create shipments.
• Your own Royal Mail account or accounts, and credentials that allow labels to be bought on them.
• A Windows PC and a compatible thermal printer at each packing station.
• Accurate product weights and dimensions where the service is used to choose a format.

You are responsible for keeping those credentials valid and for the accuracy of the data in your store.

4. Postage and money

Every label is bought on your Royal Mail account, at your rates, and charged to you by Royal Mail. We never take payment for postage, take a margin on it, or hold your money. We are not liable for postage costs incurred through your use of the service, including labels bought in error.

5. Fees

Subscription fees are as set out on our pricing page at the time you subscribe, excluding VAT. Monthly plans are billed monthly in advance. Annual plans are billed yearly in advance. The one-off setup fee is charged on your first invoice and is included in annual plans.

If you add packing stations, sites or Royal Mail accounts beyond your plan, the difference is billed from the month the change takes effect. We will give at least sixty days' notice before changing the price of an existing subscription.

6. The free plan

The free plan has no time limit and requires no payment details. It allows up to fifty orders in each 30 day period, counted from when your system was set up, on one packing station and one Royal Mail account. An order counts once however many parcels it is sent in. When that allowance is used, no further labels can be bought until the next 30 day period begins or you move to a paid plan; your data is not deleted and the rest of the service keeps working.

Every account, free or paid, starts in read-only mode: it can read your orders but cannot buy a label, write a shipment or email your customers until you enable writing. From the moment you enable it, clause 4 applies.

We may withdraw or change the free plan for new customers at any time. If we change it for existing free accounts we will give at least sixty days' notice.

7. Ending it

Monthly plans may be cancelled by either party with one month's written notice. Annual plans run to the end of their term. On termination, your labels and shipment history remain in your Royal Mail and BigCommerce accounts, which are yours. We keep your DispatchThread data for ninety days in case you return, then delete it. You may ask us to delete it sooner.

We may suspend the service immediately if fees are more than thirty days overdue, or if use of the service threatens the security of our systems or another customer's data.

8. Availability

We aim for the service to be available whenever you are packing, and we do not deploy changes during a customer's known peak season without asking. We do not offer a contractual uptime guarantee at these prices, and we will not pretend otherwise. Planned maintenance is notified in advance where possible.

9. Liability

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

Subject to that, our total liability to you in any twelve month period is limited to the fees you paid us in that period. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of goodwill, or for postage costs, carrier charges, or refunds you give your own customers.

You remain responsible for what leaves your premises. The service helps you record what you shipped; it does not pack the box.

10. Your data

Your order and customer data remains yours. Our handling of it is set out in our privacy policy and, where we process personal data on your behalf, in our data processing agreement, which forms part of these terms.

11. Intellectual property

The software remains ours. You get a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use it for your own business for as long as your subscription runs. You may not copy, resell, or reverse engineer it.

12. Law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.