Writing terms people will actually read

You copied a terms page off a shop you admire, swapped the business name, and you've never read it end to end. It mentions a returns warehouse you don't have and a 24-hour support line that is you, asleep.

Terms are worth writing, and they're worth writing badly rather than not at all, as long as "badly" means short and true. They do two jobs: set an expectation before someone spends $145 on a custom sign, and settle the argument after. A document that does neither because nobody opened it is doing nothing. The version that works is six answers, in your own words, placed where the buyer is already looking.

Copying a big shop's terms is worse than writing four sentences yourself, and not for the reason people assume.

Two jobs, and only one of them is legal

The job everyone thinks terms do: protect you if things get formal. Real, occasionally.

The job they actually do, four hundred times more often: stop the argument happening. A buyer who knew, before paying, that custom orders take three weeks and can't be cancelled after cutting begins is a buyer who doesn't message you on day nine asking where it is and then asking for their money back.

That reframing changes where the words go. Terms written for the first job live on a page linked in tiny grey text at the bottom, because that's where lawyers put them. Terms written for the second job live in the product description, in the order confirmation, and in the message you send when you take a deposit, because that's where buyers are.

You can do both. Write the short human version where people are, and keep the longer version somewhere linkable for when a business customer or a platform asks.

The six questions

Almost every dispute a small seller has traces back to one of these being unanswered. Answer all six and you've written your terms.

1. When will I get it? The single biggest source of messages. Give a range, and give it from the right starting point. "Ships in 2 to 3 business days, then 3 to 5 in transit" is useful. "Fast shipping" is not, and it will be read as tomorrow.

2. What if it doesn't turn up? Say who chases the courier, how long you wait before treating it as lost, and what you do then. Waiting periods vary by service and country, so give the buyer your number: "if it hasn't moved for 7 days we send a replacement" is a promise you can keep.

3. Can I change my mind, and by when? This is your returns window and the conditions. Unused, unopened, with tags, within a stated number of days, buyer pays return postage or you do. Pick and state.

4. What if it arrives broken or wrong? Different from changing your mind and should be treated differently. Photo within a stated time, replacement or refund, you cover the postage. Making this generous is cheap: it happens rarely and it's the case where a bad experience becomes a public one.

5. What am I not doing? Custom work you don't take, materials you won't source, countries you don't ship to, colour matching you can't promise. The refusals prevent more trouble than the promises.

6. How do I reach you, and how fast? "Messages answered within one working day, Monday to Friday" is worth more than a phone number you won't answer. It sets the clock and it stops the second message at 9pm.

Six answers, roughly 200 words. That's a set of terms.

Copy-paste terms are worse than none

Three reasons, and the third is the one that costs money.

They promise things you can't do. Somebody else's document says 30-day free returns with a prepaid label, because they have a warehouse and a courier contract. You have a kitchen table. Now you're either breaking your own published terms or eating a cost you never priced.

They describe a business that isn't yours. A buyer reading about our "fulfilment centre" and our "customer care team" when they've been DMing you personally for a week learns that your words don't mean anything. That's a small trust leak in a business where trust is the entire product. Proving you are a real seller is about the opposite move, and copied boilerplate quietly undoes it.

And a clause you didn't understand can be unenforceable in your country while sounding confident in the document. Consumer protection rules in most countries set a floor that a seller's terms can't go below, and a term that tries to goes below it simply doesn't bind the buyer. "No refunds under any circumstances", pasted in from somewhere, is the classic. It doesn't do what the person pasting it hopes, and a buyer who knows that now reads the rest of your document as bluff. Find your own country's consumer rules and check the current position before you write anything absolute.

Write terms you'd be happy to have read back to you by an annoyed customer. If a clause only works when nobody notices it, cut it.

Marisol, custom signs, Austin

Marisol makes LED neon-look signs to order in a garage in East Austin. $145 for a standard word sign, $210 to $340 for custom shapes, three weeks from deposit to dispatch. Roughly 18 orders a month, mostly from Instagram, half paid by card and half by transfer.

Her first year's terms were one line in her bio: "custom orders, no refunds."

Here's what happened, and what each fix cost her.

What went wrong	How often	The sentence that fixed it
"Where is it?" on day 8 of a 21-day build	Constantly	"Custom builds take 3 weeks from the day your deposit clears. I message you a photo at the bending stage, around day 10."
Buyer changed the spelling after the tube was bent	4 times in a year	"Spelling and layout are locked when you approve the mock-up. Changes after that are a new build at 50%."
Cancelled at day 15, wanted the deposit back	Twice	"The 40% deposit covers materials and is non-refundable once I've started. Before I start, it's fully refundable."
Sign arrived cracked	3 times in ~200	"Send me a photo within 48 hours and I remake it, no questions, no return needed."
Buyer wanted an exact Pantone match	Ongoing	"I work from 14 tube colours. I'll send you a photo of the closest two. I can't colour match."

Five sentences. She put them in the product description, not on a terms page, and the "where is it" messages dropped by roughly two thirds in a month, mostly because of the promise of a photo on day 10.

The photo promise is the sentence that did the most work and it isn't a term at all. It's a scheduled reassurance that removes the reason for the message. Most of what people call a terms problem is a communication-timing problem wearing a legal costume.

The one that saved her real money was the deposit clause. Two cancellations at $210 with materials already cut is $420 of loss in a year on maybe $38,000 of revenue, and the fix was one sentence sent before any money moved. Taking a deposit before you start covers how to structure that so the buyer feels safe about it rather than suspicious.

Put the words where the decision is

A terms page gets opened by lawyers, competitors, and roughly nobody else. Distribute the six answers across the four moments a buyer is actually paying attention.

In the product description. Lead time, what's not included, what you can't promise. This is the highest-value real estate you own and most sellers waste it on adjectives. Writing product descriptions that sell covers the persuasion side; the constraint side belongs in the same block of text.

At the moment of payment. If you take bank transfer, the instructions field is where you say what reference to use, how long you'll hold the item, and that you'll confirm by message once it clears. If you take cash on delivery, the delivery notes field is where you say what happens if nobody's home and whether the rider can wait.

In the order confirmation. Restate the delivery window with actual dates, restate the returns window, and say when they'll next hear from you. How to write an order confirmation is the template; the terms bit is two lines inside it.

In the reply you send twice a week anyway. Save the six answers as phone shortcuts. If you're typing the same clarification for the ninth time, it belongs in the product description and you've just found the gap.

What not to put in

Some things are worse in than out.

Don't write a delivery promise you can only hit in a quiet week. Promise the slow version and beat it. Delivery times you can actually promise works through how to build a window you can hold in December, not just in March.

Don't write blanket disclaimers of everything. A wall of capital letters saying you accept no liability for anything reads as a warning about you rather than a protection for you, and much of it won't hold anyway.

Don't invent a company you aren't. If you're one person trading under your own name, say so. It's more persuasive than "the Company" and it avoids implying a legal structure you don't have. Whether you should have one is a separate question, covered in do you need to register your business.

And don't write anything about data or messaging you don't intend to follow. If you're going to message buyers again, say so plainly at the point they give you their number: what you'll send, roughly how often, and how to stop. That sentence is both the honest thing and the thing that keeps your list usable.

What Sailo will and won't do about any of this

Sailo will put your words in front of a buyer. Product descriptions carry your lead times and refusals, the bank transfer fields take free-text instructions alongside the bank name, account name, account number, IBAN and SWIFT, and cash on delivery has a free-text delivery notes field. WhatsApp orders arrive with the item, options, address and total already written out, which removes a whole class of "that's not what I ordered" arguments before they start.

What Sailo will not do is enforce a single line of it.

On bank transfer, cash on delivery, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, email and phone orders, Sailo never touches the money. There's no escrow, no hold, no balance to claw back, and no dispute team. If your terms say a deposit is non-refundable and the buyer disagrees, that conversation is entirely between you and them. Sailo can't even tell you the transfer arrived. Only your bank can.

Card is the exception and it has its own shape. It needs a Stripe account cleared for charges, the money lands in your own Stripe account, and Sailo takes 1–3% of the goods after discounts, excluding delivery and tax. Card also brings chargebacks, which run on the card networks' rules rather than on your terms. A well-written returns policy helps you argue a chargeback. It doesn't decide it.

So the honest framing: your terms are a communication tool backed by your own willingness to honour them, plus whatever your payment rail gives you. On manual rails that's nothing, which is exactly why the words have to be clear enough that you never need to fall back on them.

Write yours in twenty minutes

Open a note. Write the six headings from the middle of this article. Answer each one in one or two sentences about your actual business, using numbers wherever a number exists: days, hours, percentages, dollars.

Then paste that block into your longest-selling product's description today and watch what happens to your messages over the next fortnight. The questions that keep coming are the answers you got wrong.

Once it's settled, the two documents that sit next to it are a returns position you've thought about calmly rather than at 11pm, in writing a refund policy people trust, and a realistic view of what a policy can and can't rescue you from, in insurance and what can actually go wrong.