An offer is an offer to participate in a transaction Civil Code of the Russian Federation, Article 435 "Offer" . For example, the seller writes the cost of the goods on the price tag. So he declares that he is ready to give the goods for the specified amount. The second party can ignore the offer or agree to it, or accept it. In the described situation with the store, a person will approach the seller and exchange the item for money.
The offer must clearly indicate all the essential conditions of a potential transaction. We will talk about exactly what conditions we are talking about below, but they describe all the important criteria of the contract. Acceptance in most cases should also be unambiguous Civil Code of the Russian Federation, Article 438 "Acceptance" . Let's say a customer pays for something or enters a code from an SMS. It's hard to say that he did it by accident — it clearly requires conscious action. However, sometimes silence is also considered an acceptance, but only if there is already an agreement on this matter between the parties, some law has been adopted or customs interfere in the matter.
The offer can be public, when anyone can respond to the offer, or personal. The second case works if, for example, a barber sends you a letter for your birthday with an invitation to a haircut at a reduced price. The promotion is available only to you, but you still don't have to agree to it — only if you are interested in it. But anyone will not be able to use the invitation, because it is personal.
The contract is the result of acceptance of the offer.
Let's say an educational platform sells courses. She posts the training conditions and its cost on her website and indicates that the payment will be accepted. This is an offer. The student finds the course and transfers money to the platform. He accepts the offer. From this moment on, an agreement has been concluded between the company and the client.
It is not necessary to sign the contract directly on paper.
First of all, we are talking about business, which sells goods and services via the Internet, but not only.
If the company produces standard goods or services, the offer can significantly simplify the interaction process. For example, a blogger sells a course on photo processing. He can make a website and place an offer on it with an offer to undergo training. Customers visit the page, pay, study. The alternative is to negotiate terms with everyone, sign a paper contract in which they will be specified. It sounds like something much more complicated.
Of course, if the goods or services are not typical, you will have to negotiate orders, so the offer will no longer work here.
If long-term cooperation is expected, the offer will help reduce the number of papers due to silence as an acceptance. So, one company makes another commercial per month. They could exchange acceptance and transfer certificates. One side sends two copies of the document, the other signs them, returns one back… And they can prescribe that silence (read: absence of claims) within five days from the date of receipt of the act is considered acceptance. Very convenient: if everyone is satisfied with everything, no need to bother. You will have to act actively only if problems arise.
Signing contracts is not only filling out papers. They need to be delivered to the second party, which involves some costs. Only after that the payment will be made. With the offer, you will not have to transport documents anywhere, and the money will be sent from the client of the company at the time of acceptance (if it is a payment, of course).
You've probably seen jokes about the instructions for microwaves, which say that you can't put a cat in the oven. In fact, this is not very funny: such tips arise in the wake of real incidents. Of course, you can always throw up your hands and say: well, this is who you need to be to send an animal to the microwave. And the other side will answer: "There was nothing in the instructions that you shouldn't do that. So it's your fault."
The offer helps to enable "foolproof". If you thoughtfully prescribe the conditions, you can absolve yourself of responsibility for strange and questionable actions of customers. After all, if a person has accepted the offer, it means that he agrees with its content. From now on, the cat's health is his responsibility.
We got to those essential conditions. There is no closed list of them, and "materiality" is often determined by the court in case of disagreement. And yet some things must be spelled out:
In general, the offer can be made in almost any form, there are no strict requirements here. To make it clearer how the document may look, let's look at the examples:
In short: there is absolutely no way to understand this. Who among us has not pressed the "Agree" button without reading long user agreements and other documents. Therefore, something else is important here.
Your task is to do everything so that the client cannot prove that he did not get acquainted with the offer because of you.
That is, you should propose a document so that it can only be ignored intentionally. For example, online stores often offer the user to tick the item before paying that he is familiar with the offer. And here they also give a link to it. This is a great option and a case when you can not reinvent the wheel. Feel free to use it.
