Terms of Service

General

        We encourage you, the visitor, to read this document carefully.  By using our service, you consent for us to enforce the terms spelled out in this document and agree to abide by them.
    

Registration

By registering to be a member of Pollapse, members consent to terms outlined in this document and agree with our privacy policy which can be viewed here.
Our service offers both individual accounts and brand accounts to members.  A member may open only one individual account.  Further, a member may open any number of brand accounts, but each account must be associated with a disparate payment method.  By registering, members affirm that their individual accounts correspond only to themselves; and that the personal information, demographic information, and location are truthful.  Should a member wish to change personal details, like his/her name, email address, or location, he/she may do so at any time.  We reserve the right to terminate any duplicate, fraudulent, or non-activated accounts at any time.

Subscriptions

Brand accounts require a subscription.  By opening such a account, you authorize us to recurringly bill the payment method you provide on a monthly basis until the subscription is expressly cancelled, you close your account, your account is suspended, your account is terminated, or billing fails for any reason.  A brand account will only activate once the first payment has been successfully charged.  All payments are nonrefundable as they pay for the incoming billing period.

You reserve the right to cancel your subscription at any time during your membership.  Upon voluntary cancellation of your subscription, your account will remain active until the end of the current billing period.  Requesting a cancellation marks the subscription for automatic cancellation at the end of the current billing period.  (For example, if you activated your account on July 1st and canceled your subscription on June 15th, your account would remain active until August 1st.)  Once you cancel your subscription, you reserve the right to renew at any time.  If renewal occurs before your subscription automatically cancelled, the next payment is not collected until the beginning of the next billing period.  If the renewal falls within the recently current billing period, the next payment is not collected until the start of the next billing period.  If renewal falls outside of the recently current billing period, payment is collected immediately.  If the payment method on file becomes invalid for any reason, such as elapsed expiry or insufficient funds, the subscription will automatically cancel and the member will be locked out of the account until a suitable payment method is provided.  If an account is voluntarily closed, reactivating it will automatically renew the subscription.

Administrative suspension of a brand account results in a temporary cancellation of the subscription, meaning the subscription can be renewed, if necessary, after the suspension lifts.  Administrative termination of an account results in immediate termination of a subscription.

Account closures and behavior controls

Members reserve the right to close their account at any time without penalty.  Voluntarily closed accounts may be reopened via our automated system.

Strikes are issued to members who violate the terms of service to notify them of a breach in this contract.  A strike automatically expunges after a week.  If three strikes are issued in a one-week period, disciplinary action is taken.

An account is temporarily suspended when three strikes have been issued within a one-week period.  Each suspension lasts three days.  During a suspension, a member is locked out of his/her account.  A suspended brand account has its subscription canceled for the duration of the suspension without refund.  A suspension automatically expunges after six weeks to allow members to avoid the next level of discipline.

The last line of defense against delinquency is permanent account termination (i.e. banning).  This usually results when three suspensions are issued within a six-week period, however, in egregious cases, one may be issued instantly.  Brand accounts that are banned have their subscriptions terminated without refund.

Members can inform us of violations of these terms of service by using the flagging feature found throughout the site or by telling us via our contact form.  Guests are also welcome to use our contact form.

Intellectual property

We assume copyright over the content of this website.  Pollapse® is a registered trademark of Idealify®.  To make our datasets easily digestible, we offer charts which may be shared freely provided they are not doctored using tools outside of our service and attribution to us remains intact.  If attribution is missing, you may include the text "Provided by Pollapse" such that it is readily legible.  The charts and datasets provided by us remain our intellectual property.

Member brands retain intellectual-property rights over their respective names, logos, and imagery.  If a brand detects that a member is using their likeness in a way that infringes upon their rights, we encourage the brand to contact us using the contact form, taking care to provide the appropriate contact details, so that we can, if possible, rectify the situation.  To assure visitors that brands are legitimate, we encourage brands to link their Pollapse-hosted polls on their site.  Aside from that, we proactively verify registrants prior to account activation.

Content

Because we are based in the United States, our operations are governed by their laws.  As such, since there are laws restricting certain content, like child pornography, illicit information disclosure, intellectual-property infringement, and criminal activity, we do have a legal responsibility to remove such content.  To make the site viewable to the masses, we reserve the right to remove objectionable content that would make it unsuitable for a subsection of the population, like minors.

With the potential to reach billions of people, we cannot accept liability for the actions of our members.  The views expressed by our members do not necessarily reflect ours.  We are not liable for any loss or damages that may be sustained from misuse of our service.

While the United States Constitution prohibits Congress from limiting speech, as a private entity, we are not restricted by this amendment and retain authority over what is allowed on our site.  Linked content which violates our terms of service is prohibited.

Advertising

By using our service, individual members and guests consent to allow us to deliver advertisements while they are on our site.  To maximize your security and convenience, we do not allow pop-up ads.  We also do not knowingly host any spyware or malware on our site.  We take no accountability for the content on advertisers' websites or those of member brands.

The content of advertisements are governed by these terms of service and we reserve the right to deny them publication, remove them from circulation, or otherwise take action against the member who submitted them.  We encourage members to utilize our contact form to notify us of objectionable advertisements so that we can remove them from circulation.

One of the perks of registering as a brand is that member brands can view the engagement statistics of their advertisements, meaning only the author of an individual advertisement is intended to view its data.  By visiting our site, you consent to having your anonymized profile visible to these members.  Members who include personally identifiable information in their profiles waive their right to anonymity, though we still make efforts to minimize their exposure.

We also reserve the right to display advertisements provided by third-party ad servers.  We do not accept responsibility for the content of these ads.

Featured poll listings

Featured polls are expressly indicated with the heading "Featured" on our homepage and in the "Browsing" section.  Said another way, in addition to a brand's poll being promoted in the location and category that they choose, we will also rotate the poll on our homepage, during their chosen time slot, for visitors viewing from the chosen location.  In the aforementioned sections, the featured poll shall appear atop other polls.  A poll becomes featured when a brand successfully reserves a time slot for its prominence.

Brands may reserve time slots, in which we will promote their polls, through auctions and/or closeout sales which usually happen daily.  A brand may attempt to reserve a time slot five days ahead of time.  To avoid confusion, all time slots are reported with respect to the brand's local time as reported by their browsing device.  Each individual time slot is 30 minutes in length, but a given poll may be featured across any number of time slots.

The final price of an auction is determined by the bidder with the highest bid within 24 hours of the start of the auction.  Once a bid is placed, it may not be retracted.  At the conclusion of an auction, the winner will be billed.  If a winner fails to pay for an auction within 24 hours of winning, we reserve the right to reclaim the unpaid time slot.  The fee paid for auctions is generally non-refundable except when we remove the underlying poll for violating our Terms of Service.

Periodically, time slots may be purchased instantly in a closeout sale, at a price determined by Pollapse.  Purchases in closeout sales are generally non-refundable except when we remove the underlying poll for violating our Terms of Service.

To protect brands from accidentally deleting polls which are scheduled to be featured and thus paid, these polls may only be deleted by the author after they have been featured or if we determine that they have violated our Terms of Service.  To mitigate scheduling conflicts with other featured polls, a featured or soon-to-be-featured poll cannot be re-categorized until after it has been featured.

We reserve the right to remove any featured or soon-to-be-featured polls which violate out Terms of Service.  In these cases, poll authors are entitled to a full refund.

Data mining

To enable us to best serve the community, scraping of our datasets is prohibited as doing so can constrain resources required to serve the greater community.  We reserve the right to block or throttle any user agents engaged in such activity.  Visitors who have interest in a Web service for accessing our data may let us know via our contact form.

Changes

We reserve the right to modify or discontinue any of our functionalities at any time.  We also reserve the right to modify these terms of service according to our discretion at any time.  As a courtesy, we may notify visitors of these changes.

Communication

For crucial events pertaining to your account, you consent for us to contact you via the site and/or email.  We will not contact you using such methods for non-essential alerts unless you opt in to receive them.

Because of the limitations of email and phone, we encourage visitors to utilize our contact form  to contact us regarding any comments or questions pertaining to the site.  We reserve the right to blacklist visitors who spam the contact system.