Terms of Service

The short version

• HOAChime helps you log and answer owners' records requests. You and the associations you manage stay responsible for what is released, what is withheld, and meeting the law.
• Your data belongs to you and your associations. You can export it at any time. We use it only to provide HOAChime.
• Monthly or yearly subscription, no contract. Cancel any time; you keep access until the end of the period you paid for.
• Deadline calculations and state-law summaries are tools, not legal advice.

1. The agreement

These Terms are an agreement between PALDAM LLC, a California limited liability company ("PALDAM", "we", "us"), and the company or association that creates a HOAChime account ("Customer", "you"). The person who accepts these Terms confirms they have authority to bind the Customer. If you have a signed order form or written agreement with us, it controls where it conflicts with these Terms.

2. Who may use HOAChime

HOAChime is for community association management companies, and for condominium, homeowners, planned community and cooperative associations that manage their own records. It is a business service. We may decline or close an account that is not opened for that purpose, that gives false information, or that is used to harm others.

When you use HOAChime for an association you manage, you confirm you are authorized by that association to handle its records and owners' requests.

3. Trial, plans, billing and taxes

• New accounts get a free trial for the period shown on our pricing page when you sign up. No card is needed for the trial. When it ends, the account pauses until you choose a plan.
• Plans are priced by the number of associations in your account and include the storage shown on the pricing page. To add associations beyond your plan, you move to a larger plan. We never block an owner's request because of a plan limit.
• Subscriptions are billed in advance, monthly or yearly, by card through Stripe, or by invoice where we agree to it. Prices are in US dollars and do not include sales or similar taxes, which we add where the law requires.
• Unpaid invoices may lead to the account being paused after we have emailed you a reminder. Pausing never deletes data.
• We may change prices for future billing periods with at least 30 days' email notice. A change never affects a period you have already paid for.

4. Cancelling and ending the agreement

You can cancel at any time from your account's billing page or by emailing us. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period; payments already made are not refunded except where the law requires. We may end the agreement with 30 days' notice for any reason, in which case we refund any prepaid fees for the unused period, or immediately if you seriously breach these Terms or use HOAChime unlawfully.

5. Using HOAChime properly

You are responsible for your staff's use of your account, for keeping passwords and sign-in methods secure, and for giving each person only the access their job needs. You agree not to:

• use HOAChime to break the law or anyone's rights, including privacy rights;
• try to get into another customer's data, test our security without written permission, or overload or disrupt the service;
• upload malware, or copy, resell or reverse-engineer HOAChime;
• use HOAChime to handle protected health information as a covered entity or business associate under HIPAA, or to store payment card numbers for processing.

6. Your data

"Customer Data" means the information you and your staff put into HOAChime, and the information owners submit through your request pages, including Association Records. Customer Data belongs to you and the associations you act for. You give us permission to store, process, copy and transmit it only to provide, secure and support HOAChime for you, and as these Terms or the law require. We do not sell Customer Data, use it for advertising, or use it to train an AI model.

You are responsible for having the right to upload Customer Data and for its accuracy, including the dates requests were received and the state, type and other details of each association.

7. Records requests and legal responsibility

HOAChime calculates deadlines from the dates, association details and settings you enter, and shows plain-English summaries of state laws with their citations. These are tools to help you meet your obligations; they are not legal advice and do not replace the judgement of the association, its board and its attorney. Statutes change, governing documents can add duties, and courts interpret the law. You and the association decide what to release, what to withhold and when, and remain responsible for meeting every legal deadline and requirement.

If you believe a rule in HOAChime is wrong, tell us at support@hoachime.com and we will review it.

8. Redaction and scanned documents

HOAChime's privacy scan and scanned-paper reading use fixed patterns to suggest personal details to black out. Suggestions can miss something or mark something that should not be hidden, especially in poor scans or handwriting. A person on your staff must review every document before it is released. Once you release a locked copy, the blacked-out content is removed from that copy.

9. Exporting and deleting your data

• You can export your requests, histories, messages and released records at any time while your account is active or paused.
• When your subscription or trial ends, the account is paused and your data is kept unchanged for 90 days. After that, we delete Customer Data from our live systems within 30 days. An administrator can ask us to delete it sooner; we confirm the request first, because deletion cannot be undone.
• Backup copies expire as backups rotate, within 35 days of deletion from live systems.
• Within your account, your retention setting decides how long working files are kept after a request closes. Request records, released copies, checklists and request histories are kept for the life of the account.

10. Security and incidents

We protect Customer Data with administrative, technical and organizational safeguards suited to its nature, including encryption at rest and in transit, separation of each customer's data, access controls and logging. If we confirm unauthorized access to your Customer Data, we will tell you without undue delay, and in any case within 72 hours of confirming it, with what we know and what we are doing about it, and we will help you meet any notice duties you have.

11. Service and support

We may improve and change HOAChime over time. We will not remove a core feature you rely on (receiving requests, deadlines, redaction, release, history or export) during a paid period without at least 60 days' notice and the option to cancel with a refund of unused prepaid fees. Planned maintenance is scheduled outside US business hours where we can. Support is by email and in-app tickets on US business days.

12. Our property and your feedback

HOAChime, its software, design and content belong to PALDAM. These Terms give you the right to use HOAChime during your subscription; they do not transfer ownership. If you send us suggestions, we may use them without obligation to you.

13. Confidentiality

Each of us will protect the other's non-public business information that we receive under this agreement with reasonable care, use it only for this agreement, and share it only with people who need it and are bound to protect it, unless the law requires disclosure.

14. Warranties and disclaimers

We will provide HOAChime with reasonable skill and care and substantially as described on our website. Apart from that, and to the extent the law allows, HOAChime is provided as is, and we do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free or that it will ensure any particular legal outcome.

15. Limits on liability

To the extent the law allows, neither of us is liable to the other for indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages, or for lost profits or revenue, arising from this agreement. Each party's total liability arising from this agreement is limited to the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim. Because you and the association decide how and when to answer each request, we are not responsible for statutory damages, penalties or attorney fees arising from an association's response or failure to respond, except to the extent caused by our breach of these Terms. These limits do not apply to a party's fraud or wilful misconduct, your payment obligations, or the indemnities below.

16. Indemnities

We will defend you against a third-party claim that HOAChime, as we provide it, infringes that party's intellectual property, and pay the resulting damages and costs. You will defend us against a third-party claim arising from Customer Data you had no right to upload or from your use of HOAChime in breach of these Terms, and pay the resulting damages and costs. The party seeking protection must tell the other promptly and let it control the defence.

17. Law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Before starting any legal claim, each of us will first try in good faith to resolve the dispute by email for 30 days. Any claim not resolved that way will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Sacramento County, California, and each of us agrees to their jurisdiction.

18. General

Neither of us is responsible for delays caused by events beyond our reasonable control. You may not transfer this agreement without our consent, except to a company that acquires your business; we may transfer it to a company that acquires ours, and these Terms will continue to apply. If a part of these Terms cannot be enforced, the rest remains in effect. Not enforcing a right is not a waiver of it.

19. Changes and notices

We may update these Terms. We will email account administrators at least 30 days before a change that materially affects them takes effect; continuing to use HOAChime after that date means accepting the change. Earlier versions remain available on request. We send notices to the email address of your account's administrators. Send notices to us at support@hoachime.com or by mail to:

PALDAM LLC
2108 N Street #1668
Sacramento, CA 95816