Providing the customer with the results of work by e-mail

Question

Email

    There is a customer, he is in another city and there is a work consisting of several stages. Upon completion of each stage of work, the Customer must submit the result of work on the stage for approval. If you provide the results of work by regular mail, on paper or electronic media, with our mail it will take many years, and this is not serious. Several questions arise:

• Is it possible to legally provide the results of work in electronic form via telecommunication channels to an e-mail address?
• What evidence can be presented in court about the receipt of these results by the Customer?
• How can this be written into the contract?
• What if each stage of work must be completed by an Interim Act?
• How do you work in this case or what do you think about this issue?

Answer 1

I worked on trust, but if something serious, then of course it's not worth it. In general, somewhere on Habré there was an article about this, and it seems that even e-mails can be used in court. But I'm not 100% sure. Search on habre.

Answer 2

It is enough to conclude an agreement. You can send a scan of the document by the same e-mail.

Answer 3

As for the legal side, I think this is formalized by an agreement, but you need to look carefully at the nuances of the legislation of a particular country (addressee / recipient).
Regarding the proof - an electronic digital signature for e-mail correspondence, as far as I know, uniquely identifies the sender and guarantees the integrity of the information.
Draw up as a separate item, say "method of presenting the results of the work" in which and describe the sub-clauses in which to stipulate the above.
Here you can draw up several contracts for each stage of work. Or describe in the contract that each stage is accepted separately according to the intermediate act of work performed (although I have not yet seen such an act).
I have never worked like this - I think it will be very long and dreary. It is worth taking on if the reward is large enough so that after a triple term from the planned one, the project will not cease to be profitable.

Answer 4

The contract may well provide for the delivery of intermediate stages by e-mail. And in the event of a dispute, the signed acts will play the main role here. Those. if the signed act indicates that the customer has received the work on the intermediate stage, that it has been completed in full and he has no complaints about the quality and timing, then this is quite enough.
Therefore, I would suggest the following scheme: 1) In the contract, you provide for the delivery of intermediate stages
(or even all work) in electronic form (soap, via FTP, somehow else)
acceptance of work
3) Having received and checked the results, the customer prints and signs the act and sends you
4) Having sent the act, makes payment (the sane customer understands that the paper act signed by him is the basis to demand money from him through the court, in which case)
5) You, having received the signed act, also sign it and send one copy back
To speed up, you can p.3 do not send the document by regular mail, but by express mail (for example, DHL or some other). If the cost of the work is not cheap, then a few hundred rubles will not do the weather.
Yes, and I would also advise to include such a clause in the contract - work on the next stage begins only after payment for the previous stage. This is in case the customer decides to pull with payment

Answer 5

1. Yes, but stipulate in the contract that e-mail, as a method of providing materials, is recognized by both parties.
2. The customer must immediately send a response letter with the text "received the results." If there is no letter for a long time, send it again, call the customer. In court, the response letter will be evidence. But it is better to use public mail like mail.ru or Google, so that letters are stored on their servers.
3. Google Tyoma Lebedev's contract on sites, there are clauses about e-mail.
4. How Yandex does it: the Act is printed, stamped and signed, scanned, sent to the soap. The original is sent next. Also, Russian legislation allows the transfer of documents via fax and they are legally significant.
5. We are working, everything is fine. But relationships with customers must be built primarily on honesty and trust, otherwise it is better not to work with them. Make it a rule that a contract is a document for the court, and there is no need to bring it to court.

Answer 6

use express mail (DHL, UPS, etc), do not rely on e-mail, because The customer will be able to get out if desired. And via express mail, send a copy to yourself and a copy to the customer with the acceptance certificate, indicate all this in the contract (which is sent in two copies to one another to the other customer), in this case you will be able to show in court that you sent the mail receipt stub customer.

Answer 7

> And send a copy to yourself and a copy to the customer via express mail
Why do you need a copy for yourself? What's the point? When sending to the customer, the document remains on hand, and you can always get a written confirmation of the delivery of the shipment to the addressee

Answer 8

One of the relatively legal ways to send messages and even conclude contracts is to use the WebMoney messaging system (God forgive me). At least the owners of certificates from personal and above satisfy the requirement of Part 2 of Art. 434 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation to the written form of the agreement on the possibility of reliably identifying the parties. I just don’t remember if there are any types of read receipts (at least visually) and the ability to transfer large amounts of texts (attach files). In extreme cases, you can notify by their “mail” about sending by ordinary soap and provide for a clause in the contract according to which if within N days after sending the notice of sending by webmoney a message is not received in the same place about non-receipt, it will be considered that delivered. And if it comes to court, then it will be possible to refer to the WebMoney logs.

Answer 9

I imagine forcing the customer to use WebMoney to send documents and results. I think it will be difficult to register legally, and not everyone will go for it. But your answer gave birth to the idea of ​​a startup, thanks!