Website Terms of Use & Acceptable Use Policy

1. Scope of these Terms

These Website Terms of Use & Acceptable Use Policy apply to your access to and use of the GRP Express Website and digital services.

This includes, where available:

• public Website pages;
• the GRP Express ecommerce store;
• customer accounts;
• trade accounts;
• account-specific pricing;
• quotation and quote-basket functionality;
• saved projects;
• reordering functionality;
• cut-list tools;
• material planning tools;
• panel optimisation tools;
• product selection tools;
• calculators;
• technical resources;
• downloads; and
• other digital features made available by GRP Express.

These Terms apply in addition to our Terms & Conditions of Sale where you purchase Products from us.

Additional terms may apply to particular trade account services or restricted functionality.

2. Permitted use

You may use the GRP Express Website for legitimate personal or business purposes connected with the services we make available to you.

Permitted uses may include:

• browsing and researching GRP Products;
• viewing publicly available prices;
• comparing Product options;
• reviewing technical information;
• preparing genuine purchasing requirements;
• requesting quotations;
• placing and managing orders;
• managing a customer or trade account;
• preparing genuine customer projects;
• using tools made available for your legitimate purchasing or project-planning requirements; and
• downloading information that we expressly make available for download.

Ordinary use of publicly available Website information for legitimate purchasing, research or comparison purposes is not prohibited by these Terms.

3. Prohibited use

You must not use the Website or our digital services:

• for an unlawful or fraudulent purpose;
• to obtain unauthorised access to systems, accounts, data or services;
• to impersonate another person or organisation;
• using false or misleading information to obtain restricted access;
• to interfere with the normal operation of the Website;
• to introduce malicious software, viruses or harmful code;
• to overload, disrupt or degrade our systems or infrastructure;
• to circumvent authentication, access controls or technical restrictions;
• to attempt to access areas or information for which you have not been authorised;
• to abuse Website forms, communications systems or account functionality;
• to carry out fraudulent purchases or payment activity;
• to infringe intellectual property, confidentiality, privacy or other legal rights;
• to misrepresent GRP Express Products, information or services; or
• in any way that may reasonably cause material harm to GRP Express, our customers, our suppliers or other Website users.

4. Automated access, scraping and data extraction

You must not use automated systems to access, collect or extract information from the Website in a manner that is unauthorised, excessive, disruptive or inconsistent with these Terms.

Except where expressly authorised by us or permitted by applicable law, you must not use:

• web scrapers;
• crawlers;
• spiders;
• bots;
• automated scripts;
• data-mining tools;
• automated browser systems;
• API calls that we have not authorised; or
• other automated extraction technology

to systematically collect or reproduce:

• Product data;
• pricing information;
• stock information;
• technical data;
• commercial information;
• account-specific prices;
• quotation data;
• project information;
• tool outputs;
• Website content; or
• other structured data from GRP Express systems.

You must not carry out repeated or systematic extraction designed to build, maintain or update a separate database or dataset derived substantially from GRP Express data.

This section does not prohibit ordinary indexing of publicly accessible pages by general-purpose search engines that we have not technically blocked or otherwise restricted, provided that such indexing does not involve unauthorised access to restricted areas.

5. Trade accounts and restricted services

GRP Express may provide approved business customers with access to trade account services and restricted functionality.

Restricted services may include:

• account-specific pricing;
• commercial terms;
• quantity pricing;
• saved quotations;
• quote baskets;
• saved projects;
• order history;
• reordering tools;
• cut-list functionality;
• panel optimisation tools;
• material planning tools;
• project pricing;
• account-specific delivery arrangements; and
• other trade-only functionality.

Access to these services is provided solely for the legitimate internal purchasing, estimating, procurement, project-planning and account-management purposes of the approved customer.

Approval for a trade account does not give the account holder unrestricted rights to copy, extract, redistribute or commercially exploit information available within the restricted area.

6. Competitive intelligence and commercial misuse

Restricted GRP Express services must not be accessed or used primarily for competitive intelligence, market surveillance or the systematic collection of GRP Express commercial information.

In particular, users of customer and trade account services must not:

• systematically collect account-specific pricing for competitive analysis;
• use a trade account primarily to monitor changes to GRP Express pricing or commercial strategy;
• compile a competing price database from restricted GRP Express information;
• share restricted commercial information with a competing supplier without our authorisation;
• misrepresent their identity or business purpose to obtain access to restricted information;
• use restricted access to replicate GRP Express tools, workflows or commercial functionality;
• reverse engineer proprietary calculation or optimisation processes except to the extent expressly permitted by law;
• systematically test restricted tools for the purpose of reconstructing their underlying logic;
• use restricted outputs to develop or improve a directly competing calculator, optimiser, quotation engine or purchasing system; or
• permit a third party to use their account for any of these purposes.

This section does not prevent a genuine customer from comparing a GRP Express quotation or price with another supplier as part of an ordinary purchasing decision.

7. Account credentials and authorised users

You are responsible for taking reasonable steps to keep your account credentials secure.

You must not:

• share individual login credentials with unauthorised persons;
• allow a competitor or unrelated third party to access your account;
• sell, transfer or commercially provide access to your account;
• use another person’s credentials without authorisation; or
• attempt to bypass user or account restrictions.

Where a business requires access for several employees or authorised users, it should use the account-user functionality made available by GRP Express rather than sharing a single individual’s credentials where separate accounts are available.

A business customer is responsible for managing the access of users it authorises to use its trade account.

You should notify us promptly if you believe account credentials have been lost, compromised or used without authority.

8. Restricted and confidential information

Information available behind a customer or trade account login may include information that is not made generally available to the public.

This may include:

• account-specific prices;
• customer-specific commercial terms;
• project pricing;
• discount structures;
• quotation information;
• restricted technical information;
• proprietary workflows;
• calculation processes;
• optimisation functionality; and
• other information that is identified as confidential or should reasonably be understood to be commercially confidential.

Business users must take reasonable steps to protect genuinely confidential information obtained through restricted GRP Express services.

Such information may be shared internally with employees, officers, contractors or professional advisers who genuinely need the information for the customer’s legitimate purchasing or project purposes and who are subject to appropriate confidentiality obligations.

Confidentiality obligations do not apply to information that:

• is lawfully in the public domain other than through a breach of an obligation;
• was lawfully known to the recipient before disclosure;
• is lawfully received from an independent third party without a duty of confidentiality;
• is independently developed without use of the restricted information; or
• must be disclosed by law or a competent authority.

9. Calculators, planning tools and outputs

GRP Express may provide calculators, optimisers, selectors, cut-list tools, project tools and other digital functionality to assist customers.

Unless otherwise stated, these tools are intended to assist with genuine purchasing, estimating and project-planning activities.

You may use outputs generated for your legitimate internal business, purchasing or project purposes.

You must not, except where expressly authorised by us:

• copy or reproduce the underlying software;
• extract the underlying source code;
• circumvent technical protections;
• reverse engineer proprietary logic except to the extent permitted by law;
• systematically query a tool to reconstruct its formulas, datasets or decision logic;
• create a substantially similar competing service by copying protected elements of the tool;
• resell access to the tool;
• operate the tool as a service for unrelated third parties without permission; or
• use automated systems to submit excessive or systematic requests.

Tool outputs should be checked by the user before being relied upon. Calculators and planning tools do not replace appropriate professional engineering, design or technical advice where such advice is required.

10. Intellectual property and database rights

The Website and its contents may include intellectual property owned by or licensed to GRP Express or Vital Distribution Ltd.

This may include rights in:

• Website design and layout;
• text and written content;
• photographs and graphics;
• videos;
• logos and branding;
• trade marks;
• Product descriptions;
• software and source code;
• databases and structured datasets;
• calculators and digital tools;
• user interfaces;
• commercial workflows; and
• other original or protected material.

Nothing in these Terms transfers ownership of intellectual property to a Website user.

You may view and use Website content as reasonably necessary for legitimate use of the Website and our services.

You may download, save or print materials that we expressly make available for those purposes.

Except where permitted by law or expressly authorised by us, you must not reproduce, commercially exploit, republish, distribute or create unauthorised derivative works from protected GRP Express content.

Nothing in these Terms is intended to restrict rights that applicable law expressly provides to lawful users and which cannot lawfully be excluded by contract.

11. Website and system security

You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Website, servers, infrastructure, customer accounts, databases, APIs or other systems connected with GRP Express.

You must not, without our prior written authorisation:

• conduct penetration testing;
• perform vulnerability scanning;
• attempt password attacks;
• test authentication controls;
• attempt privilege escalation;
• intercept communications;
• probe restricted network services;
• circumvent rate limits;
• attempt denial-of-service activity; or
• undertake another activity that may compromise or disrupt our systems.

You must not knowingly introduce malware, ransomware, spyware, viruses, trojans, worms, malicious scripts or other harmful technology.

12. Reporting security vulnerabilities

If you believe you have identified a security vulnerability affecting the GRP Express Website or services, please report it to us promptly through our Contact page.

Please provide sufficient information to allow us to understand and investigate the issue.

You should not exploit a suspected vulnerability, access data that does not belong to you, disrupt our services, publicly disclose sensitive details before we have had a reasonable opportunity to investigate, or use the issue to demand payment or another benefit.

Reporting a suspected issue does not by itself give permission to conduct security testing or access systems beyond the authorisation you already have.

13. Information submitted by users

You may be able to provide information through enquiries, quote requests, account applications, project tools or other Website functions.

You must not knowingly submit information that:

• is unlawful;
• is fraudulent or deliberately misleading;
• infringes another person’s intellectual property rights;
• breaches confidentiality obligations;
• contains malicious code;
• contains personal information you are not authorised to provide; or
• is otherwise inappropriate for the purpose for which the relevant service is provided.

Where you upload drawings, cut lists, specifications or other project information, you confirm that you are entitled to provide that information to us for the relevant purpose.

Information about how we handle personal information is available in our Privacy Policy.

14. Third-party services and links

The Website may contain links to third-party websites or use services provided by third parties.

Unless expressly stated otherwise, a link does not mean that GRP Express controls or endorses all content or activities of the third-party website.

Third-party websites and services may have their own terms, privacy policies and acceptable-use requirements.

15. Monitoring and protection of our services

We may use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect our Website, customers, accounts and commercial systems.

These measures may include:

• access controls;
• authentication controls;
• rate limiting;
• fraud detection;
• security logging;
• monitoring unusual account activity;
• automated abuse detection;
• restrictions on excessive requests;
• restrictions on bulk exports; and
• temporary or permanent blocking of abusive activity.

Any processing of personal information carried out for security, fraud-prevention or account-management purposes will be handled in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

16. Restriction and suspension of access

We may take reasonable action to protect the Website, our customers and our business where we reasonably believe that these Terms have been breached or that an account or service presents a material security, fraud, commercial or operational risk.

Depending on the circumstances, we may:

• limit access to particular functionality;
• require additional account verification;
• reset or disable compromised credentials;
• temporarily suspend an account;
• restrict automated or excessive activity;
• withdraw access to trade-only functionality; or
• terminate access where a serious or repeated breach has occurred.

Where reasonably practicable and appropriate, we may contact the account holder about suspected misuse before taking permanent action.

We may act immediately where we reasonably consider this necessary to protect security, prevent fraud, stop unauthorised access or prevent material harm.

Restriction of Website or trade account access does not remove any payment or contractual obligations that already exist.

Nothing in this section limits statutory rights that cannot lawfully be restricted.

17. Website availability and changes

We aim to provide a reliable Website and online service but do not guarantee that every feature will be available continuously or without interruption.

We may temporarily restrict or suspend functionality for:

• maintenance;
• security;
• system upgrades;
• technical changes;
• capacity management; or
• other operational reasons.

We may add, modify or remove Website functionality as the GRP Express service develops.

18. Responsibility and liability

These Website Terms govern use of our Website and digital services. Separate terms concerning Product purchases, delivery, defects, warranties and liability relating to Products are set out in our Terms & Conditions of Sale.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or restricts liability where it would be unlawful to do so.

Consumers retain any statutory rights that apply to them.

Business users are responsible for ensuring that their use of information, calculators, planning tools and Website functionality is appropriate for their own requirements.

19. Governing law and disputes

Consumers

If you are a consumer, nothing in these Terms removes any right you may have to bring proceedings in a court that has jurisdiction under applicable consumer law.

Business users

If you are acting in the course of a business, these Terms and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them shall be governed by the law of England and Wales.

The courts of England and Wales shall have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes involving business users, except where otherwise agreed in writing or required by law.

20. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Website Terms of Use & Acceptable Use Policy from time to time to reflect changes in:

• our Website;
• customer or trade account functionality;
• digital tools;
• security requirements;
• technology;
• our business; or
• applicable legal requirements.

The latest version will be published on the Website with the applicable effective or update date.

Where a material change affects an existing restricted service and it is appropriate or legally necessary to bring that change specifically to an account holder’s attention, we will take reasonable steps to do so.