Hire terms

1. Your booking

A booking request made online or by phone is not a contract until we confirm it by phone or email and you’ve paid. Prices shown online include everything we charge. We’ll always confirm the total before taking payment.

2. Payment and deposit

Hire charges are paid in advance. You can pay online when you send your booking request, or when we call to confirm. If we can’t confirm your booking, we refund any payment in full. We take a refundable security deposit as a card pre-authorisation. We release it within 5 working days of the equipment being returned in the condition we supplied it, apart from fair wear and tear.

2a. Power-cut pricing and delivery charges

For power-cut hire, the price depends on conditions where you are when you book. We check your postcode against National Grid Electricity Distribution’s live power-cut information and the Met Office weather warnings for South West England. If the Met Office has issued a weather warning and there’s no power cut reported in your postcode sector, you get the book-ahead discount shown on our price list when you book between the warning being issued and 12 hours before it comes into force. Otherwise, including from 12 hours before a warning starts until it ends, and when there’s no warning at all, we charge our normal price. If a power cut is reported in your postcode sector, or we’ve announced storm pricing on our website, we add the storm surcharge shown on our price list. Customers on the Priority Services Register never pay the storm surcharge. The price we confirm when you book is the price you pay for the days booked. Extra days are charged on the same basis.

Delivery and collection are charged once per hire, by the mile from our depot, with a minimum charge, as shown on our website. We work out the distance from your postcode. If a Met Office weather warning for South West England is in force on your delivery day, we add the bad-weather delivery surcharge shown on our website. Customers on the Priority Services Register don’t pay it. To avoid it, choose a delivery day outside the warning, or collect from our depot.

3. Hire period

Daily hire runs from the start date to the return date shown on your booking. Emergency hire has a minimum of two days. If you book power-cut hire “until my power’s back”, we book the first two days and the hire carries on while your power is off. You pay for each extra day at our published rates, with the weekly cap and longer-hire discount applied, until you tell us your power is back and we collect. We’ll confirm the final price when we collect. You can extend your hire if the equipment is available. Just call us before your return date. Late returns are charged at the daily rate. Longer hires cost less: we take a discount off each week after the first, as shown on the price list and your booking. The discount depends on the total length of the hire, so if you return early, we recalculate the price for the days you had the equipment.

3a. Long-term hire

Long-term hire is for 2 to 12 whole weeks. From 4 weeks you pay the long-term weekly prices on our price list. A hire of 2 or 3 weeks costs our normal price for those days, but never more than the long-term price for 4 weeks. It starts on the date you choose and ends exactly that many weeks later, when we collect the equipment. It is a fixed hire. It never runs for more than 12 weeks, which is always shorter than 3 months, and it doesn’t renew. You pay for the whole period in advance. If you return the equipment early, we don’t refund unused time unless we agree otherwise. Storm pricing doesn’t apply to long-term hire. You’re responsible for recharging the equipment during the hire.

3b. Storm Season

Storm Season is a fixed hire. It starts on the delivery date you choose, from 1 December up to 31 January, and ends on the last day of the following February, when we collect the equipment. It never runs longer than 3 months and doesn’t renew. The price covers the whole period, whether or not you have a power cut. If you start after December, you pay for each month or part-month, up to the winter price. You can cancel free of charge up to 7 days before delivery. After delivery, you can end the hire early, but the price isn’t refunded.

3c. More than one power station

You can book up to 4 power stations at once, for example one for each room. The most expensive one is full price, and each extra one is discounted as shown on your booking.

3d. Hire credit

When your hire has finished, we’ve collected the equipment and you’ve paid for the hire in full, you get 25% of what you paid for it as credit to spend in our shop. It covers the hire price (after any discounts or storm pricing), not delivery, collection, same-day delivery, swaps, damage charges or the deposit. You can use it on one order, placed within 30 days of the hire ending, using the same email address as the booking. If the order costs less than the credit, the rest isn’t carried over. Cancelled bookings don’t earn credit. The credit belongs to whoever the hire was for: if you booked for a business, or a business paid, the credit belongs to that business and can only be used on an order in its name. The credit has no cash value, can’t be exchanged for cash and can’t be transferred. We may change or end hire credit for future bookings, but we’ll always honour credit on hires booked before the change. Your statutory rights are not affected.

4. Cancellations

• Leisure hire: free cancellation up to 48 hours before the start date. After that, we may keep the delivery fee.
• Emergency hire: if your power comes back before we deliver, there’s no charge. Once delivered, the two-day minimum applies.

If you book online or by phone, you may have a legal right to cancel within 14 days. By asking us to start the hire within that period, you agree to pay for any days of hire already provided.

5. Looking after the equipment

• Use it on a flat, dry surface, away from rain, standing water, heat sources and children’s reach.
• Don’t open, modify or wire the equipment into a building’s fixed electrical installation or a vehicle’s hook-up inlet unless that installation is designed for it.
• Don’t plug in appliances that need more than the unit’s rated output.
• Plug one appliance into each single-socket lead we supply. On the shared quick-use lead (for things like a kettle or toaster), plug in one thing at a time. Only use the 4-way leads for charging battery devices such as phones, laptops and e-bikes, or for low-power things such as lamps, a Wi-Fi router, a TV or a fan, as shown on your booking. Plug fridges, freezers and medical equipment into their own single lead. Don’t add your own adaptors or multi-way leads, and don’t plug extension leads into each other.
• Keep each power station in the room it was supplied for. Don’t run extension leads from one room to another, under doors or across stairs. That’s why we supply a power station for each room.
• Don’t take the equipment outside mainland Cornwall without our agreement.
• Tell us straight away about any fault, damage or loss.

6. Damage and loss

Fair wear and tear is fine. You’re responsible for loss, theft and damage caused by misuse, water or negligence during the hire, up to the reasonable cost of repair or replacement. We’ll always show you evidence and costs before deducting anything from your deposit.

7. Delivery and collection

We’ll agree a delivery window with you. Someone aged 18 or over needs to be there, or you can tell us a safe, dry place to leave the equipment, at your risk. During storms and severe weather, delivery times are estimates and depend on safe road conditions.

8. Our responsibility

We test and fully charge equipment before every hire. If a unit fails through no fault of yours, we’ll replace it as quickly as we can or refund the affected days. A hired power station should not be your only source of power for life-critical medical equipment. We aren’t liable for losses caused by an interruption to power supplied by our equipment, except where the law says we must be. Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence.

9. Contact

Kernow Power Stations · Depot address to be confirmed, Truro, Cornwall · 01872 000 000 · hello@kernowpowerstations.co.uk