Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting has a responsibility to protect each of our clients and provide the best service possible. The customer is expected to have a basic knowledge of how the Internet functions, the types of use which are generally acceptable on the Internet, and the types of use which are to be avoided. Common sense is the best guide as to what is considered acceptable use. Also common sense is the rule when uploading files during high traffic usage times on the Internet. Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting offers space for your site on our servers and has nothing to do whatsoever with your access to reach our servers or the time it takes to upload, etc. The following guidelines were designed to ensure these services.

CONTENT

All services provided by Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting may be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage, or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any United States Federal, State, or City law is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, material we judge to be threatening or obscene, or material protected by trade secrets and other statutes, violation of U.S. export restrictions, harassment, fraud, trafficking of obscene material, drug dealing, and other illegal activities. The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting from any claims resulting from the use of the service that damages the subscriber or any other party.

NOTE: Pornography and sex-related merchandising is prohibited. This includes sites that may infer sexual content, or links to adult content elsewhere. This is also true for sites that promote any illegal activity or content that may be damaging to our servers or any other server on the Internet. Links to such materials are also prohibited.
A few examples of non-acceptable content or links are: pirated software; hacker's programs or archives; warez sites; mp3 archives

Design With Merritt and Hosting will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.

SERVER RESOURCES

Any web site that uses a high amount of server resources (such as CPU) will be given an option of either paying extra (which depends on the resource needed) or reducing the resource needed to an acceptable level. Misuse of system resources, including but not limited to employing posts or programs which consume excessive CPU time or storage space, permitting use of mail services, mail forwarding capabilities, POP accounts, or autoresponders other than for the customer's own account, resale of access to CGI scripts installed on Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting's servers (without a valid reseller account), or attempting to use a single customer account for third party web sites by allowing more than one domain pointer to be used to reference pages within the customer's site will not be allowed. Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting shall be the sole arbiter of what is considered to be a high server usage level.

CHAT ROOMS

Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting does not allow clients to install their own chat rooms. Chat rooms tend to be a large system hog and we cannot permit it as an account option. Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting does provide Java chat rooms for free or a small extra fee that should meet most users' needs and run without hindering the performance of the servers. Non-Java chat rooms (cgi or perl based) are not allowed.

BACKGROUND RUNNING PROGRAMS

Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting may allow programs to run continually in the background, these programs will be considered on an individual basis and an extra charge will be incurred based on system resources used and operational maintenance needed. If you wish to run background programs please contact us at support@designwithmerritt.com before doing so.

IRC

Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting does not allow IRC or IRC bots of ANY KIND NO MATTER HOW SMALL to be operated on our servers.

MAIL CONFIGURATIONS

Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting supports email connectivity to our servers directly. This means you specify pop3 and smtp server names in your email client to connect to us directly to receive email on behalf of your domain. Any requests for MX record changes to support any other configuration will result in additional charges.

FOREIGN DOMAIN REGISTRATIONS

Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting will host any domain from any foreign registry however the user is responsible for the registration of any name not a .com, .org, .net, or .edu domain. An .edu domain is for accredited, degree granting educational institutions. EDU requests (if you feel you warrant an .edu domain) are not guaranteed by Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting and if not approved by the registrar, you may be forced to obtain an .org domain.

NET ABUSE

The sending of commercial advertising through email (AKA spamming) from a Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting server, referring to an URL on a Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting server, or using an email address that is maintained on a Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting server is STRICTLY PROHIBITED. This includes but is not limited to activities such as using a non-existent email return address on a commercial solicitation, allowing spamming by third parties to promote a web site hosted by Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting, trolling (posting outrageous messages to generate numerous responses), mail bombing (sending multiple messages without significant new content to the same user), subscribing someone else to a mailing list without that person's permission, cross posting articles to any newsgroup without their permission, and commercial advertisements. In general, any kind of commercial advertising in areas on the Internet not intended for such purposes is prohibited. Government laws construed as protecting this practice do not apply. If you are found to have spammed, then we will immediately, without warning, terminate your account with no refund. In addition, we will impose a $100 penalty for each spam policy violation. We reserve the right to refuse or cancel service to known spammers. Lastly, we reserve the right to determine what violates this policy.

SERVER ABUSE

Any attempts to undermine or cause harm to a Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting server or using an email address that is maintained on a Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting machine is STRICTLY prohibited. We reserve the right to deactivate any script (even our own) if it is used to such an extent that it poses a threat to the performance of our network.

Any sub-networks of Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting must adhere to the above policies. The failure to meet or follow any of the above guidelines are grounds for immediate account deactivation. We reserve the right to REMOVE any account (deactivated or not) within 15 days prior notice except for spamming which warrants immediate removal with no refunds of monies paid to Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting.

Complaints about violators of our policies should be referred to Support@designwithmerritt .com. Each complaint will be fully investigated. Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting reserves the right to fully investigate any reported violations and to determine the proper consequences.

BILLING POLICY

INVOICES

Upon your first invoice you will be provided with information and instructions on how to pay and how to setup automatic deductions by credit card or Pay Pal if desired.

5 days past due results in access restriction of your site.
10 days past due results in account deactivation (no one can see your site).
20 days past due results in account deletion.

There is a $5 late fee applied to accounts not paid in full by the 20th of the month for the next month.

You will be charged a $25 fee if your account is deleted. This amount will be added to your outstanding balance and will become part of the debt amount which will be reported to our collection agency.

You will be notified via email if your account is past due, however, we are not obligated to do this. It is the customer's responsibility to ensure timely payments are made. If you change email addresses, you must inform billing.

If your account has been deleted due to non-payment, a $50.00 reconnection fee will need to be paid plus all monies due to make your account current.

Our hosting plans include a 30 day money back guarantee. If you experience extreme problems uploading, excessive server downtime, etc. and are dissatisfied with your service, you will receive a full refund (minus setup fees and overage charges) if you cancel your account within 30 days of the activation of your account. Our refund policy DOES NOT apply to any additional items or services; this includes but is not limited to POP accounts, Real Audio/Video, Java Chat, E-commerce services from 3rd party vendors, or anything else we provide for an additional fee above and beyond the basic hosting costs. Any requests for cancellation must be received in writing via email, regular mail or fax. Cancellations over the telephone are not accepted.

ALL OTHER REFUNDS

For customers who have purchased a quarterly, semi-annual or annual plan and wish to cancel their account before the end of their plan, Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting will refund the balance (this does not include setup fee, overage charges as described in the above paragraph, and additional item charges) of your account, however, Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting will charge based on the full monthly rate for services rendered. Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting will not approve any transfer where there may be an outstanding balance, all accounts have to be current and checks cleared by your bank and your refund will be mailed to you within 10 days of your cancellation notice or as soon as check clears whichever comes first. Design With Merritt Web Design and Hosting does not refund for less than a 30 day period so if you choose to cancel, the next monthly anniversary date will be considered your cancellation date. If you cancel and your plan had no setup fee, a fee of $49 will be added to your balance to cover setup and domain name registration charges.

CANCELLATIONS

The cutoff for cancellations is the 20th of each month. If you do not notify us by that date, you will be responsible for the next month's payment which is due on the 20th.