Terms and Acceptable Usage Policy Cnt.

Continued from the first page of the TOS and AUP.

UCE / SPAM Policy

The abuse and misuse of e-mail is a serious problem, and ServerGrade will not tolerate it. Definition of UCE (Unsolicited Commercial E-mail), or SPAM:

• The bulk UCE, promotional material, or other forms of sollicitation sent via e-mail that advertise any IP address belonging to ServerGrade or any URL (domain) that is hosted by ServerGrade.
• Unsolicited postings to newsgroups advertising any IP or URL hosted by ServerGrade.
• The use of web pages set up on ISPs that allow SPAM-ing (also known as "ghost sites") that directly or indirectly reference customers to domains or IP addresses hosted by ServerGrade.
• Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to facilitate a means to SPAM.
• Forging or misrepresenting message headers, whether in whole or in part, to mask the true origin of the message.

For further information on mail abuse, please visit the Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS) website.

Repercussions of SPAM:

Across the Web, it is generally accepted that SPAM is an inconsiderate and improper business practice. SPAM is not only harmful because of its negative impact on consumer attitudes toward ServerGrade, but also because it can overload ServerGrade's network and resources, especially on our shared (virtual) server environments.

Since it is unsolicited, users who receive SPAM often become angry and send complaints to our upstream providers. This upsets our providers who abhor SPAM for the same reasons that ServerGrade does - it causes negative consumer attitudes and drains resources. We strive to maintain favorable business relationships in the Web community and obviously will not allow any practice that threatens these relationships.

ServerGrade reserves the right to terminate, without warning, any account that violates this policy. Usage of ServerGrade services constitutes acceptance and understanding of this policy.

Use of the ServerGrade service to transmit any unsolicited commercial or unsolicited bulk e-mail is expressly prohibited. Violations of this type will result in the immediate suspension of the offending website on our Servers. You cannot use the web site (URL) hosted on our Servers in Bulk/SPAM email messages, even if you are sending those messages via other ISP. We reserve the right to suspend or terminate, any account, with or without notice, if we receive any SPAM complaint. ServerGrade may, at its option, charge $25.00 per SPAM complaint we receive for both Dedicated and Virtual Server customers. Resellers will be charged for resold accounts, receiving SPAM complaints. Reseller may choose to pass this charge down to their client. These are non-refundable charges and will be invoiced at the time of complaint notification.

ServerGrade reserves the right to decide what it considers "SPAM", "UCE", "mail bombing", or "bulk e-mail", and to determine from all of the evidence whether or not the e-mail recipients were from an "opt-in" e-mail list.

Should you choose to e-mail from ServerGrade servers, especially if you use mailing lists, you must read and adhere to the following guidelines, which are offered as a statement of Internet standards and best current practices for proper mailing list management and preventing e-mail abuse.

Basic Mailing List Management Principles for Preventing Abuse

Mailing lists are an excellent vehicle for distributing focused, targeted information to an interested, receptive audience. Consequently, mailing lists have been used successfully as a highly effective direct marketing tool.

Unfortunately, some marketers misuse mailing lists through a lack of understanding of Internet customs and rules of the forum pertaining to e-mail. Others fail to take adequate precautions to prevent the lists they manage from being used in an abusive manner.

• The e-mail addresses of new subscribers must be confirmed or verified before mailings commence. This is usually accomplished by means of an e-mail message sent to the subscriber to which s/he must reply, or containing a URL which s/he must visit, in order to complete the subscription. However it is implemented, a fundamental requirement of all lists is the verification of all new subscriptions.
• Mailing list administrators must provide a simple method for subscribers to terminate their subscriptions, and administrators should provide clear and effective instructions for unsubscribing from a mailing list. Mailings from a list must cease promptly once a subscription is terminated.
• Mailing list administrators should make an "out of band" procedure (e.g., a means of contact by which messages may be sent for further correspondence via e-mail or telephone) available for those who wish to terminate their mailing list subscriptions but are unable or unwilling to follow standard automated procedures.
• Mailing list administrators must ensure that the impact of their mailings on the networks and hosts of others is minimized by proper list management procedures such as pruning of invalid or undeliverable addresses, or taking steps to ensure that mailings do not overwhelm less robust hosts or networks.
• Mailing list administrators must take adequate steps to ensure that their lists are not used for abusive purposes. For example, administrators can maintain a "suppression list" of e-mail addresses from which all subscription requests are rejected. Addresses would be added to the suppression list upon request by the parties entitled to use the addresses at issue. The purpose of the suppression list would be to prevent subscription of addresses appearing on the suppression list by unauthorized third parties. Such suppression lists should also give properly authorized domain administrators the option to suppress all mailings to the domains for which they are responsible.
• Mailing list administrators must make adequate disclosures about how subscriber addresses will be used, including whether or not addresses are subject to sale or trade with other parties. Once a mailing list is traded or sold, it may no longer be an opt-in mailing list. Therefore, those who are acquiring "opt-in" lists from others must examine the terms and conditions under which the addresses were originally compiled and determine that all recipients have in fact opted-in specifically to the mailing lists to which they are being traded or sold.
• Mailing list administrators should make adequate disclosures about the nature of their mailing lists, including the subject matter of the lists and anticipated frequency of messages. A substantive change in either the subject matter or frequency of messages may constitute a new and separate mailing list requiring a separate subscription. List administrators should create a new mailing list when there is a substantive change in either the subject matter or frequency of messages. A notification about the new mailing list may be appropriate on the existing mailing list, but existing subscribers should never be subscribed automatically to the new list. For example, if Company A acquires Company B, and Company B has compiled opt-in mailing lists, Company A should not summarily incorporate Company B's mailing lists into its own.

*This SPAM (UCE) Accepted Use Policy and all other ServerGrade.com.au policies are subject to change by ServerGrade without notice. Continued usage of the services after a change to this policy is implemented and posted on the ServerGrade site constitutes your acceptance of such change or policy. We encourage you to regularly check the ServerGrade site for any changes or additions. Visit our Terms & Conditions for further information regarding our policies.

Bandwidth Usage Policy

While purchasing a hosting account with ServerGrade, you are allotted a portion of bandwidth per month. You can use this bandwidth for anything you want besides things not permitted as outlined in the Terms & AUP. If you go over your allotted amount of bandwidth in a given month, your account may be suspended by Server Monitoring Software automatically, and you will be expected to pay for the additional bandwidth.

We provide a bandwidth estimate figure in your control panel. This is an estimate and is provided from the server level. Actual account bandwidth usage is measured for billing purposes at the port level. This policy exists because many users offer files for download via FTP which is not otherwise measured by the server directly at this time. Please note that because the bandwidth is monitored at the port, any and all traffic for your web site is tracked including, but not limited to: FTP uploads and downloads, mail sending and retrieval, normal Web traffic, etc. Everything that is pushed from our server to a third-party's machine is considered bandwidth and will be measured.

We have designed this policy because many users find that hosts offer "unlimited" bandwidth only to find out that it has a very real bandwidth limit. Further, they place restrictions on what you can use the bandwidth for (i.e. no image galleries because they are a large source of bandwidth consumption). We tell you up-front how much bandwidth you are allocated each month and you have the full amount to use.

If you are unsure of your bandwidth usage prior to moving your site to ServerGrade, contact us. We would be happy to review your current site statistics with you to help you choose the right package.

Payment Methods & Policy

Payment Methods

Credit Card:

We accept all major credit cards, Visa, Master, American Express, and Discover. '2CheckOut.com Inc.' and 'PayPal.com', on behalf of 'ServerGrade', processes all credit cards. After successfully filling the order form, our system will offer transfer you to the SSL Secure site of 2CheckOut.com Inc. or PayPal.com, and there you can make the payment of your order, easily and securely.

Please Note:
ServerGrade will proceed further in order to provide services, only after receipt of your payment.

Payment Policy

All payments are due prior to the beginning of the monthly, quarter, or yearly term as appropriate. If you order using a credit card then for each successive period, your contract and subscription is renewed automatically unless we are notified otherwise and confirm 48 hours prior to billing. Billing period is determined by the billing option you choose at the time of ordering. Your billing period also applies to any additional items and services ordered after the initial activation of your account. Fee for such items and services will be prorated so that the start date matches that of the first domain. For payment, we accept above-mentioned methods, direct deposits, international wire transfers, Australian money orders and cheques.

We invoice exclusively via e-mail. We DO NOT send out physical invoices. All credit cards are billed automatically on your monthly, quarterly, or yearly term as appropriate or we eill provide you a secure method to pay online.

Domain names purchased using our discounted domain name offers require both the web hosting account be maintained, and the domain name subscription be maintained either PayPal or 2Checkout.com, to remain eligible for future domain name renewals at the dicounted price. Domain names where the subscription is cancelled may be renewed by creating a new subscriptionat our regular price.

Late Payments:

Any account whose payment status is not current as of the start of the next billing period is deemed late. Generally, customers are given 5 day grace period after which the account is put on suspension. Reactivation of closed accounts requires payment of the balance due in full. For late payments please send us an email.

To Cancel your account:

In order to protect our customers' security and privacy, we only accept account cancellations via email, prior to their renewal date, with a receipt or other proof of identity.

You will not receive a refund for time that your account resided on our servers, or any unused time, unless your cancellation is made within the first 15 days of the account sign-up. Setup fees & Credit Card Transaction fees, when applicable, are non-refundable. You are obligated to pay for your account even if you do not use it. Because we have provided you with usernames, passwords, DNS entries, and Control Panel, you have the ability to use your account. The fact that you do not do so is not relevant - you are still obligated to pay for the account. Even an unused account uses valuable system resources that could be used for other customers. If you have a past-due balance on your account at the time the account is closed (either by your request or due to non-payment), the remaining balance must be paid within 30 days of when the account is closed. If we do not receive payment on the remaining balance in that time, we will begin efforts to collect any fees owed. We apply a $50.00 collection fee to cover our costs in attempting to collect your debt. If our internal collection efforts fail, we reserve the right to turn the account over to a 3rd-party (either collections agency or attorney) for further action. We also reserve the right to report your unpaid balance to credit reporting agencies as well as ISP/web host information services. ServerGrade uses a pre-check for fraudulent charges and chargeback oriented purchasers. Customers having one or more chargebacks for any reason will be required to sign additional paperwork.

Staff Abuse and Legal Action

ServerGrade staff work hard to deliver an excellent quality service, and we're more than happy to deal with clients in a calm and respectful manner. Clients who fail to show normal courtesy when requesting support, flood our support system, abuse and swear at staff, and make threats (implied or otherwise) of any nature, may be have their accounts removed and terminated.

Any notification we receive of the possibility of legal action against us, requires us to suspend the site and communication until all legal issues are resolved, as per our legal advice.

Clients who use our service and are polite, which thankfully is almost everyone, will get prompt and detailed assistance with their enquiries.

Legal Protection

ServerGrade does not provide legal protection for client sites. Any site using our hosting may have to be transferred to a different host immediately if we, or our suppliers, receive legal threats against us for hosting your site.

There are premium hosts that offer this kind of legal protection, however we are not one, and ServerGrade is unwilling to face legal action against us for hosting your site, or any part of it.

Privacy Policy

The privacy of our customers is extremely important to ServerGrade. We strongly believe in the individual's rights to privacy and that personal information is not a commodity and should not be treated as one. At all times, we will never share your personal information with any third parties without your permission.

Your email addresses are not for sale or trade and are strictly guarded. Our Acceptable Usage Policy prohibits our customers from sending unsolicited bulk commercial email (aka "spam") using our services. If it is brought to our attention that one of our customers is violating this policy, we take steps to stop them and ensure it doesn't happen again. We also do everything within our power to keep non-customers from using our email servers for spam.

All client information such as email, phone numbers, addresses, etc is used only for internal purposes. This contact information is used to get in touch with you when necessary and for announcements and a monthly newsletter if we implement one. Financial information that is collected is used to bill you for products and services.