Terms Of Service
Terms of Service (TOS)
The terms of services for this brand and associated other 2030 Ventures brands constitutes agreement to these terms.
All Investor Relations, Strategic Advisory and Consulting, Digital Marketing, Custom Development, Branding and Creative, Video Production, and Ongoing services provided by we are subject to the following terms and conditions.
Communication & Project Management
Our staff is available via phone and email for project communication and/or sales discussion. Physical meetings with investors, clients, partners or the press are by appointment only and will be subject to pre-qualification and virtual phone/email discussion prior.
Video chat sessions for current active clientele may be scheduled ahead of time to be conducted over Skype, Google Hangout, Facebook Video, various web conferencing solutions such as Webex or Go-To-Meeting or other platforms as decided between our team and the client.
Cloud hosted tools such as Google Docs and Google Sheets are utilized to store important project information, tasks, project assets and can or will be shared with the client to access.
Project management software may be utilized to manage tasks, progress and status, important assets (image, video, text, audio, documents, other) and more.
Usual response time to sales and production requests is within 12-72 hours or 1-3 business days excluding weekends and holidays, depending on the complexity of work and/or question.
Hours of Operation
Our standard business hours are Monday-Friday from 9am-5pm Pacific Standard Time (PST). If you require maintenance or project work after the posted hours, such as on nights, weekends or holidays, you will be charged our base rate of $85 per hour with an additional charge of $45 per hour for after hours assistance. Certain VIP offerings and monthly solutions offerings may include all hours access for critical projects and will be stated explicitly on the packaged product or in a proposal.
For some of our brands, investors, VIP clients, or premium subscription clients extended night, weekend and holiday hours may be offered or available and will be specifically included in your proposal or package.
Certain 2030 brands offer 24/7 support via phone, live-chat or e-mail for certain requests and will be stated explicitly.
Estimates & Contracts
Estimates provided to prospects will be honored for up to 30 days, certain quotes may expire within 48-72 hours. A new quote will then be provided upon request. Contracts that have been written, but not signed by the client will only be accepted within 30 days of the delivery date. A new contract may be drawn up upon request.
New estimates issued are subject to price-increases based on team availability, rate changes, and other factors.
Privacy Policy
We hate spam just as much as you do. We will never share your information with third parties unless required to do so by law or requested by you. The information we collect from you will be used to maintain your services with us and to represent the quality of our work to others, such as in our online portfolio.
As needed by a project, client information may be provided to subcontractors or fulfillment partners as to complete a project.
Specific partners and other 2030 brands may send you special targeted emails, text-messages, direct mail, online search or social media ads that may be relevant.
Charges & Fees
Many packaged services ranging from strategic advisory & consulting to investor relations, technology integration, creative & branding, production, digital marketing, and others have fixed set prices for a specific feature set. Pre-made packages are to be purchased at the publicly or privately available price displayed. In certain circumstances discounts may be made available to customers for a limited time, total quantity available to the public, or across lifetime of service.
For invoiced and packaged services credit card payments will be subject to a 3% processing fee and a fixed fee of $1.50 for each payment.
Ongoing services such as website maintenance, hosting, search engine optimization and social media or others require an active credit card or debit card on file. Payment via check is available; however, it requires a minimum of 3 months (1 business quarter) to be paid for ahead.
Discounts for some services are given for quarterly, semi-annual (6 months) and annual prepayments (1 year).
All new custom quoted creative or design projects require a minimum of an initial 50-65% deposit that will be due at contract signing. The remaining balance will be due upon acceptance of the completed web development project before it is released to the client or published to the internet.
Specific projects that exceed five thousand dollars US may be allowed to be split into up to three payments subject to approval based on scope, client history with our firm, client location and other factors. An initial deposit of as low as 1/3 of the total project cost will be due at contract signing. A second payment of 1/3 the total project cost will be due upon acceptance of the design. The final balance will be due upon acceptance of the completed web development project before it is released to the client or published to the internet.
Any check payments that do not clear will be charged a $35 fee. We retain the right to hold all graphics, and project development with the exception of content and graphics provided by the client, until payment is received for such items. (see copyright & ownership clause).
Payments
We accept payments via Check, PayPal and all major Credit Cards including Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover. For certain projects nationally or globally we accept bank-wires, branch deposits, or select alternative transfer systems such as Zelle. Any card based payments should come from PayPal available funds, debit checking credit card. Your project will not be released to you or uploaded until full payment is received.
Payments can be made directly from invoices sent to clients, online via our website’s bill pay feature by entering a custom amount or picking out an existing packaged product/service or retainer offering.
The packages available may include consulting hour retainers, investor relations, website and custom website design, social media, video production (ground or aerial), graphic design & branding services, collateral design (brochures, expo booths, other) digital strategy and security optimization among others.
Limited-time coupons may be offered directly via your account representative, via email newsletters, social media advertisements, and other marketing means. Unique coupons may also be offered to a client with an expiration date to incentivize fast clearance of invoices or project payments. Finance and admin staff are under no-obligation to extend missed deadlines of coupons provided to customers and full price may be required to move forward after expiration.
Late Payments
Payments invoiced for work completed or for a signed contract are due immediately. For larger or enterprise customers longer payment terms may be offered up to 30-days terms.
A 1.5% penalty late payment will be assessed compounding monthly along with a fixed fee of $25 will be added to invoices paid later than 30 days. Unpaid invoices will be sent to our third-party collections agency. In addition, extended late payments after 60 days may/will be sent to business credit bureaus such as Dun and Bradstreet along with personal credit bureaus such as Experian, Equifax or Transunion. Our goal is to work with customers and their needs and be understanding as to avoid any scenarios such as this as a negative listing on credit reports can typically show and negatively affect credit scores for 7 years. If payment is received after a collection has been added to a client’s personal or business credit we will do our best to work with the agencies to remove the notice; however no guarantees can be made as to the outside credit agencies removal policies.
In case collection is necessary, the client agrees to pay all legal and third-party involvement fees that were incurred in the process to collect the owed amount.
Certain services may carry a different late fee structure determined by our management.
Returned Payments
Any returned payments for any reason will result in a $35 returned payment fee and a 3% re-invoicing fee. After a returned payment we may require an alternative form of payment such as bank-wire, branch cash deposit, check, or Zelle. Services currently in use may be paused or restricted such as a website being suspended or temporarily changing access credentials until the payment is resolved.
Cancelations
If a client is in need to cancel a recurring annual service or contract please inform us in writing one month prior to the renewal date.
On-going terms: If for any reason a client decides to terminate an on-going consulting, marketing, IR, marketing or maintenance package they will need to pay the balance for the amount of remaining months.
Cancelations mid-month are in-eligible for full refunds, partial prorated refunds may be available depending on the service and how long was prepaid previously.
Final decision and discretion of refunds will be given to our management team.
Our team reserves the right to terminate a contract or project with a client at any time.
Service Credit
All custom and pre-packaged web design clients will have a text/image link on their website in the bottom footer of every page saying it is designed by our firm with our company name and/or logo. We put care into ensuring any brand mention is subtle as to not distract your customers and appreciate your understanding as it provides us visibility for our work to other potential clientele around the world. Exact messaging may change and may also include our logo or similar image asset. This is non-negotiable. By hiring us to work on your website you are agreeing to this, and that you understand that this link may NOT be removed without our consent. You may pay a fee of two hundred and fifty dollars to have this link permanently removed. Should you have a new layout designed for your site by a company other than us, you may remove the credit from your website. Thank you.
Certain other projects may include our brand’s logo or mention; in some circumstances we may or may not offer a discount for including our branding within a project’s final output.
Slow Projects
From the time a project is ordered, you have six (6) months to start your project or we reserve the right to cancel it and keep any funds received. We put a lot of planning into projects, and set aside time slots for our team and allocate resources in order to perform the work. This does not apply to monthly recurring services such as consulting & advisory, global/national investor relations campaigns, social media management, advertising campaign management, and similar projects.
Affiliates and Partners
Throughout our various brands and web-properties we may extend the opportunity to become a partner, affiliate, white-label or other form of reseller.
Any affiliate registered with us will be involved as an independent contractor and third-party. The commission structure publicly displayed upon signup may be subject to change at the discretion of our management team. Typically affiliate payouts are paid within 30 days of cleared payment each month from the referred client. Affiliate commissions typically range from 2.5% – 15% based on the service, volume of referred clients by affiliate, and other factors that our management team may take into consideration.
Investor Relations
All IR services are to be paid for prior to service fulfillment. Investor event presentations are to be paid in full prior to an event. In certain circumstances such as for past presenters or large corporate sponsorships a payment agreement contract may be signed offering a partial final balance payment to be due after the event. Investor introductions are to be paid for prior to each billing period such as quarterly, semi annual or annual. In some circumstances we may allow or offer monthly billing for select services subject to change and at the discretion of our management team.
Collateral created by our team such as pitch decks, brochures, web, business plans, expo booths are designed with content provided by your firm and we are not liable for any mis-representations or false claims made by the client. Certain offerings include custom content writing where we must craft text or image content based on our best understanding of your brand from the explanations and resources provided by the client or publicly available. It is the responsibility of the client to approve of any creative output from our team and to act in an ethical manner making true responsible depictions of their brand’s product or service.
For firms using our digital platforms to publish their investment opportunity or being connected to potential backers we will not be held liable for mis-representations about your brand or bad-performance. We are providing access to relationships in a self-serve or active manner depending on the service retained and are not to be held responsible for the final outcome of any interaction with a potential capital source, partner, or client introduced or connected to with one of our digital platforms.
Creative & Web Design
During the project briefing, it is the client’s responsibility to provide us with clear guidelines along with the flow or specific details you may require. When such details are not provided, we will proceed with our understanding of your requirements and quote accordingly. At a later stage, if a discrepancy arises, it may lead to additional costs to accommodate the changes. Thus, it is essential that you clarify every aspect of your website development and ensure that you have been quoted on the right requirements.
Once proposal has been finalized, any additions, changes or enhancements in the functionality or design of the project will affect the proposal and may incur additional cost and a revised delivery date. All additional work, over and above the estimates is charged separately. Under no circumstances will we be liable for any delays caused by change in the project brief.
Any complexity related to specific deliverable, must be advised in advance and included in the proposal for costing purposes. We operate in good faith and rely on our clients to disclose the full picture of their expectations. Any discrepancy arising due to unclear requirements or expectations will not be borne by our company.
Website content and all related materials need to be provided to us within the first two weeks of starting the project. Any delays thereafter may delay the project and may incur additional charges if it goes beyond reasonable timeframe.
The client must recognize that at times there may be unforeseen circumstances that will delay the development process, particularly with reference to the integration of third party software. We will try our best to complete the project as agreed in the proposal. As long as it is within a reasonable period, the client agrees not to penalize us for any genuine delay, when every effort to keep the project on the proposed schedule is taken.
We take no responsibility for any third-party products, consulting, design, marketing results, copyright infringement, software or components used in website development such as payment gateway, SSL certificates, plugins, security, etc. We recommend our clients to take regular back-ups to avoid any disruptions. For best results clients should subscribe to our premium hosting and management services to have regular backups taken daily, weekly, monthly or at other intervals depending on the package or proposed solution offering. Further we offer security services to help keep web properties clean of malware and protect from data-loss as best we can along with recovering fast from any potential threats that do arise.
We offer some packages in coordination with our other fully owned brands and select third party providers. Changes to the third-party provider’s rules and policies may ultimately affect the services we provide or the terms and conditions herein.
Domain registration charges are not included as a part of the proposal unless mentioned otherwise.
Hosting charges are not included in the quotations unless mentioned otherwise. We can organize an appropriate hosting solution if required, a quote for which will be submitted separately and approved by the client. We do have packaged hosting solutions available with discounts available for pre-payment quarterly, semi-annually, annually, and longer terms such as 2-3 years. If you would like a website placed on your own server we can provide all of the access credentials to the files, database and other assets once a project is fully paid off including any extra hours worked above and beyond a proposal or packaged offering. We can help move the files and database to your new host for a custom quoted fee based on the scope of work to move the website and test.
Once the website is delivered we can provide additional value added services as addons or provide services included in a purchased package or proposal. These may include training, content editing, design improvements, product uploading, newsletter and social media integration, analytics access and more.
For e-commerce websites, a certain amount of product uploading and creation may be included with your package or proposal. If not stated otherwise, the default amount is 5 products with up to 30 minutes spent on each product including title, description, price, options such as delivery method, size, color, versions or other factors. On-going product management and updating is available through our website and content management services monthly or at a quoted rate.
Where clients decide to organize their own hosting, we should be consulted before finalizing the type of hosting and database, as it should meet the requirements of the technology used for the development. Please note that we’ll require full access with hosting support for testing and deploying the application. We will not be liable for any delays or errors caused by direct or indirect actions of the hosting company.
We cannot give access to their test servers and test websites to the clients or any third party.
Copyright of the completed web designs, custom images, pages, source code and source files created by the Developer for the project shall be with the Client upon final payment (including any overages on hours worked) only by prior written agreement. Without agreement, ownership of designs and all code is with the Developer.
Web Property Maintenance & Management
Packages are available or can be custom quoted for on-going website management & maintenance. Specific amounts of hours and services included will be listed in a package or a quote. Services may include: website content updating, software updating (server, plugins, third party platforms), mobile version improvements, e-commerce product updates or additions/removals, and more. Unused hours can roll over up to 60 days unless otherwise stated.
Any urgent/critical tasks requiring immediate or less than 24-48 hours turnover
Services retained will be billed in a recurring fashion typically quarterly or annual, but monthly may be offered to certain customers, in specific circumstances, or other certain times.
Copyright & Ownership
Upon completion of the project, we can transfer all rights and ownership of CUSTOM designs and programming written by us to the client if agreed to prior. Software and third party graphics or programs are not transferred to the client and remain under copyright of their respective owners.
Ownership and copyright of all template or stock imagery used during services remain with us or the content creator and are not transferred to the client.
We reserve the right to resell custom designed websites or other creative collateral, software or other creations designed by our team that remain unpaid by the original client, unaccepted mockups or other graphics created by us but not in legal use by the client.
We reserve the right to display websites and graphics that have been designed by us on their website, and in any marketing material to aid as examples of our work.
Refunds
We require a deposit before we begin work on any project. A request to terminate services must be presented to us in writing. We may provide a guaranteed turnaround for your project in your proposal/estimate. If we fail to complete your project within 90 days of the guaranteed end date AND you have turned in all content, images and information requested by us, you may be eligible to receive a partial refund within 30 days of your written request.
Otherwise, please follow the refund terms below:
Video production projects are non-refundable primarily due to planning, travel, time resources utilized.
Refunds will be processed within 30 business days of request by the client, if there is a refund amount due based on the terms above.
Because we resell hosting for a larger company, we are unable to offer refunds on hosting, SSL and domain services. If you are dissatisfied with the hosting services provided, we will be happy to work out a solution with you that will meet your company needs.
Other monthly services such as strategic advisory, consulting, global advertising, SEO, blogging, website maintenance, hosting and others are non-refundable. Upon request, a 25% credit of what was paid may be able to be applied to other services, a decision left to the discretion of the EMP management team.
Non-Communication
If we are unable to communicate with a client on a project for a duration of at least sixty days (60) by phone or email during the design and development process, the project will be canceled without prior notice and no refund will be issued.
Chargebacks
We will not negotiate chargebacks with any person or company. Our Refund policies are clearly stated above, and all clients are asked to read and agree to our terms of service prior to the start of any project. We charge a $25 fee for any chargebacks in addition to re-payment of the amount charged back due upon receipt.
Liability
Services purchased from us are provided “as is” without warranty of any kind that the web design project, consulting or other services will be uninterrupted or error free. In no event shall we be liable to the client for any direct, indirect, special, punitive, incidental, or consequential damages arising out of the use of the website, consulting, products, services, and/or goods provided to the client. This includes, without limitation, lost profits, business interruption, loss of data or other losses directly resulting from the use of the website, services, and/or goods provided to the client. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the web design is with the client.
International Customers
We are happy to accept projects from customers outside of the United States. However, we do require full payment of all projects prior to beginning your project. Depending on the invoice amounts, client’s company size, client location, and other factors we may require a payment via check, bank-wire, or an alternative method. This is non-negotiable and in-place to protect from fraud orders, unfair chargebacks, or other issues that can arise.
Notice: This Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of California. Exclusive jurisdiction and venue is governed in the district court of Orange County, California.
Acceptance
Please note that by submitting your Deposit or downpayment for our services you are agreeing to all of our terms of service as written here. We reserve the right to change or update these terms at any time without prior notice.
Subcontracting
We reserve the right to subcontract any services that we have agreed to perform for you as we see fit.
Ongoing Support & Internet Marketing Services
Are subject to the above terms and are paid on a yearly, monthly or hourly basis depending on the agreement details as stated in the original estimate(s).
Licensing
Once you have paid us in full for our work we grant to you a license to use the website and its related software and contents for the life of the website.
Search Engines
We do not guarantee any specific position in search engine results for your website. We perform basic and advanced search engine optimization according to current best practices and industry standards. The longer the engagement and more aggressive the budget, the higher the likelihood of fast rankings across multiple keywords, web properties or other digital assets.
Consequential Loss
We shall not be liable for any loss or damage which you may suffer which is in any way attributable to any delay in performance or completion of our contract, however that delay arises.
E-Commerce
You are responsible for complying with all relevant laws relating to e-commerce, and to the full extent permitted by law will hold harmless, protect, and defend and indemnify EMP and its subcontractors from any claim, penalty, tax, tariff loss or damage arising from your or your clients’ use of Internet electronic commerce.
Cross Browser Compatibility
By using current versions of well supported content management systems such as “Wordpress”, we endeavour to ensure that the web sites we create are compatible with all current modern web browsers such as the most recent versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari. Third party extensions, where used, may not have the same level of support for all browsers. Where appropriate we will substitute alternative extensions or implement other solutions, on a best effort basis, where any incompatibilities are found.
Additional Expenses
You agree to reimburse us for any requested expenses which do not form part of our proposal including but not limited to the purchase of templates, third party software, stock photographs, fonts, domain name registration, web hosting or comparable expenses.
If travel is required to your location, venue, project, office, or job-site we will bill separately for it unless expressly included in a custom proposal.
Non-disclosure
We (and any subcontractors we engage) agree that we will not at any time disclose any of your confidential information to any third party. Depending on the project certain information may be shared with our team and or a third-party agency to complete and provide the services retained.
Disclaimer
To the full extent permitted by law, all terms, conditions, warranties, undertakings, inducements or representations whether express, implied, statutory or otherwise (other than the express provisions of these terms and conditions) relating in any way to the services we provide to you are excluded. Without limiting the above, to the extent permitted by law, any liability of EMP® under any term, condition, warranty or representation that by law cannot be excluded is, where permitted by law, limited at our option to the replacement, re-repair or re-supply of the services or the payment of the cost of the services that we were contracted to perform.