Terms of Service

Effective Date: Phase-0 (pre-launch); commercial activity has not commenced.

These Terms of Service ("Terms") form a binding agreement between Ellis Intelligence LLC, a Colorado limited liability company doing business as PlainNotice ("PlainNotice", "we", "us"), and the customer subscribing to or using the Service ("Customer", "you").

The Service is for use by businesses — including employers, landlords, and property managers that obtain a background report from a screening CRA and owe the adverse-action notices, together with any client companies they manage. The Service is not for use by consumers.

1. The Service

1.1 PlainNotice is a software-as-a-service application that helps the employers, landlords, and property managers who obtain a background report and owe the adverse-action notices produce and time those legally-required notices under the Fair Credit Reporting Act ("FCRA"), 15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq. The Service generates the jurisdiction-specific pre-adverse and final adverse-action notice content from the data and decision reason the Customer supplies, enforces the per-jurisdiction waiting-period clock, tracks applicant disputes, and produces a timestamped chain-of-custody audit record — all within an environment the Customer runs under its own name (with white-label branding available for the optional reselling-CRA channel). The Customer reviews and approves each notice and sends it under its own name; the Service does not deliver, transmit, or otherwise send any notice to the applicant. The Customer is the sender and the responsible party.

1.2 Tier-specific features and limits (including any request-volume or usage bands) are described at plainnotice.com/pricing. Tier names, and the figures behind them, live on that page and are never restated in these Terms. Tier names and the channel/partner annual tiers (Entry, Volume, High-Volume). Figures live at plainnotice.com/pricing and are never restated here. Direct-user pricing for the primary Customer is under review.

1.3 Business Use Only. The Service is intended for use by businesses for business purposes.

1.4 PlainNotice Is Not a Law Firm and Does Not Provide Legal Advice. PlainNotice is a software vendor providing notice-generation, clock-enforcement, dispute-tracking, and audit-record tooling for the adverse-action sequence. PlainNotice is not a law firm, attorney, or FCRA compliance consultant in any jurisdiction. PlainNotice does not: - Provide legal advice - Render compliance opinions - Guarantee that any notice, timing decision, or workflow satisfies FCRA or any state law requirement in your specific circumstances - Represent you or your Client Companies in any regulatory proceeding, investigation, or litigation - Determine whether an adverse-action decision itself is lawful

The multi-state timing matrix the Service enforces, and the notice templates from which the Service generates notice content, are maintained internally by us and are not represented to you as having been reviewed, validated, or endorsed by counsel; nothing about them constitutes legal advice to you, ongoing or otherwise. The Service generates the pre-adverse and final notice content from the data you supply, but the notice you review, approve, and send — and its §1681m(a) elements — remain your own responsibility; you must review and approve every notice before you send it. You remain solely responsible for your FCRA compliance. Engage qualified FCRA counsel for legal advice specific to your circumstances. See also the standalone Disclaimers and Liability document at plainnotice.com/disclaimers for the full framing.

1.6 No Affiliation, Endorsement, or Regulatory Action. PlainNotice is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or officially recognized or supported by the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC"), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB"), any state regulator, or any other government agency, or the U.S. Government in any way. PlainNotice does not predict, forecast, or represent how the FTC, the CFPB, any state regulator, or any other agency will assess, review, or act on any notice, waiting-period determination, or other Service output, and PlainNotice does not act, and is not authorized to act, on behalf of the FTC, the CFPB, or any other government agency in any capacity. PlainNotice is not FCRA counsel, a compliance advisor, or a consumer reporting agency. Using PlainNotice does not create any government-recognized status. PlainNotice's outputs, marketing pages, and app UI render as plain text/typography only — no seal, badge, ribbon, watermark, or certificate-style graphic, or other supportive-looking insignia — so no surface visually or verbally suggests such affiliation, endorsement, sponsorship, official recognition, predictive authority, or action on any government agency's behalf.

2. Account

2.1 Account creation requires an authorized representative of the Customer entity.

2.2 Each seat is for a single named individual. Seat-sharing is prohibited.

3. Subscriptions, Pricing, Billing

3.1 Standard auto-renewing subscription, billed via Stripe (card) or invoice for High-Volume and enterprise annual tiers; annual prepay discounts where offered; per-notice overage charges apply per pricing schedule.

3.2 Pricing at plainnotice.com/pricing. 30-day notice for material changes.

3.3 Billing via Stripe.

3.5 Refunds. Monthly fees are non-refundable for the current period except pro rata on our material breach or on discontinuation under §10.

3.6 No Service-Level Credits or Refunds. The Service carries no uptime or response-time commitment. No service credit, fee credit, refund, or other remedy arises from any delay, outage, missed response target, or unmet support expectation. The §12.1 limited-warranty remedy and the §10.2 pro-rata refund on our own discontinuation remain the only remedies.

3.7 State-Rule Updates. State-specific waiting-period requirements and local ordinances change. We update the multi-state rule overlays periodically; we do not guarantee that any state rule reflects every current requirement at any given moment. You must independently verify that your use of the Service satisfies applicable law in each jurisdiction where you take adverse action. Verify state-rule currentness with qualified FCRA counsel before reliance.

4. Customer Data; Nested Tenancy

4.1 Ownership. As between us, you own all Customer Data you submit ("Customer Data"), including applicant records needed to generate the notices and run the waiting-period clock, dispute records, clock-state data, the generated pre-adverse and final notices, and outputs. The Service generates and stores the notice content produced from the data you supply, for you to review, approve, and send under your own name.

4.2 License to Us. You grant us a limited license to host, store, transmit, display, and process Customer Data and Client Company data solely to provide the Service.

4.3 No Training / No Selling. We do not sell or share Customer Data, and we do not use it to train any model or to improve a Service used by other customers. See our Privacy Policy.

4.4 Per-Tenant Isolation. Three-level isolation: PlainNotice → Customer → Client Company. Row-level security enforces that no Customer can access another Customer's data, and no Client Company's applicant records can be exposed across Customers. A reselling screening CRA may white-label the Service for its own Client Companies as the optional secondary channel.

4.5 Applicant Data Sensitivity. Applicant data processed through the Service is consumer-report-adjacent data subject to FCRA's handling and security requirements. You are responsible for ensuring your collection, use, and retention of applicant data complies with FCRA and applicable state law.

5. Acceptable Use

5.1 No reverse engineering, no scraping, no building a competing product from the Service, no resale.

5.2 AUP. Use is governed by the Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") at plainnotice.com/acceptable-use. The PlainNotice addendum to the AUP covers post-decision use of the Service, multi-client representations, the human review required before you deliver any generated notice, and the rule that delivery of every notice is yours.

5.3 Notice Generation and Delivery. The Service generates and assembles the pre-adverse and final adverse-action notice content from the data and decision reason you supply, and hands the finished notice to you. You review, approve, and deliver every notice to the applicant using your own systems, under your own name. The Service does not transmit, mail, email, or otherwise deliver any notice to the applicant, and never contacts the applicant.

5.4 No Consumer-Facing Use. The Service runs the adverse-action sequence for the Customer that makes the decision. You may not use it to contact, notify, or send anything to a consumer or applicant — the Customer sends every notice under its own name — and you may not resell or expose the Service to consumers. Nested white-label deployment to Client Companies is available as the optional secondary channel (for example, a reselling screening CRA offering the sequence to its Client Companies under its own brand).

6. FCRA-Specific Disclaimers and Software Behavior

6.1 Outputs Assist You; You Review, Approve, and Send. The Service's outputs are (a) the generated pre-adverse and final adverse-action notice content, produced from the state-rule templates and the data and decision reason you supply, and (b) the waiting-period clock's status (started, running, cleared) and the associated audit record. All outputs are computed from the state-rule overlays and templates in the Service at the time of computation, and state-rule overlays and templates may not reflect subsequent changes to FCRA, state law, or local ordinance. Where the Service uses AI to refine notice text, it only plain-languages and formats the reason you supply — it does not invent, infer, or upgrade a reason, or add or remove a §1681m(a) element. You are responsible for reviewing and approving every adverse-action notice the Service generates, for sending it under your own name, and for its accuracy and legal sufficiency, independent of the Service's clock output.

6.2 Hard-Gate on the Clock-Cleared Signal. The Service enforces a hard software gate that prevents the Service from reporting the per-jurisdiction waiting-period clock as cleared until (a) the applicable waiting period has actually run, and (b) the jurisdiction's timing rule in use is a currently-supported version in our system. This gate is a software control; it is not a legal guarantee, it does not represent that the rule has been reviewed or endorsed by counsel, and it does not substitute for your own pre-delivery review and approval of the notice the Service generates and you send. Because you rely on this signal to decide when it is permissible to deliver a final adverse-action notice to an applicant — an external party outside your control once delivered — and that decision can draw regulatory scrutiny, this control carries higher consequence than a generic status indicator, and your own review obligation under §6.1 applies in full regardless of gate status: if the gate is bypassed, disabled, or fails to operate due to a software defect, that failure does not shift responsibility for the notice — which you review, approve, and send — to us. You remain solely responsible for confirming, before any notice is delivered, that the applicable waiting period and all notice-content requirements (including every FCRA §1681m(a) element) have been satisfied under the law as applied to your specific facts.

6.3 Not Legal or Compliance Advice. Outputs, clock countdowns, state-rule flags, audit records, and any other Service artifacts are not legal advice and are not compliance opinions. They are software-generated outputs to assist your compliance administration. PlainNotice does not guarantee FCRA compliance for any specific adverse-action decision or notice.

6.4 No Counsel Representation. You will not represent to any applicant, regulatory body, court, carrier, or third party that PlainNotice is FCRA counsel, a compliance advisor, or that a notice was prepared or endorsed by a licensed attorney, unless that is independently true based on your own counsel's review.

6.5 Disclaimer Preservation. Where the Service applies a "Generated by PlainNotice — not legal advice; your FCRA compliance obligation remains with you" footer or watermark to a clock-status or chain-of-custody export artifact, you may not remove or obscure that footer except at High-Volume tier per documentation and subject to any restrictions FCRA counsel identifies. The generated adverse-action notice document itself is your own artifact you send under your own name and does not carry a PlainNotice footer or watermark; it is your artifact and your responsibility.

6.6 Banned Representations. You will not represent that PlainNotice "guarantees" FCRA compliance, produces "bulletproof" notices, or that the Service is "set-and-forget." These representations are false and create liability. You will not make these representations in any marketing, onboarding, or customer-facing materials related to the Service.

7. Regulatory Contingency

7.1 We operate subject to the evolving FCRA regulatory landscape, Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB") guidance, and state-law developments. If a regulatory body issues guidance or rule that affects our lawful operation in a particular state or for a particular use case, we may modify, restrict, or withdraw the Service accordingly.

7.2 If we withdraw the Service from a jurisdiction in response to regulatory action, we will provide at least 30 days' notice and refund pro rata any prepaid fees for the period after withdrawal.

7.3 You acknowledge that regulatory developments — including CFPB rulemaking, FTC guidance, and state law amendments — could affect your access to or use of the Service. We will communicate any material regulatory development promptly.

8. Intellectual Property

8.1 Service IP. We own the Service, including the state-rule overlays, clock-enforcement logic, and chain-of-custody architecture. No rights granted to you except as expressly set forth.

8.2 Feedback. Standard perpetual-license grant on feedback.

8.3 Customer References. We may identify you as a customer (name, logo) on the customers page unless you opt out.

8.4 IP & Assignment Rider. An IP & Assignment Rider addressing ownership and assignment of intellectual property is incorporated by reference into these Terms and controls over this §8 and over §15.4 on the subjects within its scope.

8.5 Present assignment of Derivative IP. To the extent any Derivative IP would otherwise vest in Customer — by operation of law, under any work-made-for-hire or commissioned-work doctrine, because Customer's use, Inputs, or Feedback contributed to it, or on any other basis — Customer hereby irrevocably and presently assigns to Company all right, title, and interest in and to that Derivative IP, effective automatically upon its creation and without further action or consideration.

9. Privacy and Data Processing

9.1 Privacy Policy at plainnotice.com/privacy. We are the controller for marketing-site visitors and Customer account/billing contacts, and the processor for the compliance data you place under your tenant. Where the Data Processing Addendum and these Terms conflict as to the processing of Customer Data, the DPA controls; this Privacy Policy is a notice, not a contracting instrument.

10. Suspension and Termination

10.1 By You. Cancel per §3 anytime; effective end of period. 10.2 By Us. Material breach, AUP violation, non-payment. 30 days' notice with pro rata refund for any discontinuation we initiate, paid within 30 days after the effective date of termination. Regulatory withdrawal per §7. 10.3 Client Company Continuity. If a subscription with onboarded Client Companies is suspended, Client Company data enters read-only for 30 days for Customer-led export. Open adverse-action cases with running clocks will be flagged; the Customer is responsible for managing those cases through other means during the suspension period. 10.4 Effect. Applicant/case data and the generated notices are deleted within 30 days of termination, except that PlainNotice retains applicant data and the chain-of-custody audit log for the configured Retention Period under the DPA (§9.1) — a single configurable window defaulted to preserve the tamper-evident audit chain's evidentiary value — and except where retention is otherwise required by law, FCRA record-retention obligations, or an active litigation hold, or where export is requested. The DPA controls for data-retention matters within its scope. 10.5 Survival. Sections 4 (data), 6 (outputs/disclaimers), 8 (IP), 11 (Confidentiality), 12 (Warranties), 13 (Liability), 14 (Indemnification), 15 (General) survive.

11. Confidentiality

Treat all Customer Data and Client Company data as confidential information. Standard processor confidentiality commitments apply. Given the sensitivity of adverse-action and applicant data, confidentiality obligations survive 5 years post-termination for business confidential information; trade-secret protection indefinite; applicant data subject to any longer retention or destruction obligations under FCRA or applicable state law.

12. Warranties and Disclaimers

12.1 Limited Warranty. The Service performs substantially per documentation. Exclusive remedy: repair or pro rata refund.

12.2 Disclaimer. EXCEPT AS EXPRESSLY SET FORTH IN §12.1, THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE." WE DISCLAIM ALL OTHER WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND ANY WARRANTY ABOUT STATE-RULE CURRENTNESS, NOTICE LEGAL SUFFICIENCY, WAITING-PERIOD CALCULATION ACCURACY, OR FCRA COMPLIANCE FOR ANY SPECIFIC ADVERSE-ACTION DECISION.

12.3 No Compliance Guarantee. We do not warrant that any notice, clock calculation, dispute-tracking record, or chain-of-custody export will satisfy FCRA §1681m(a) or any state-law adverse-action requirement as applied to your specific facts, jurisdiction, or regulatory environment.

13. Limitation of Liability

13.1 TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, NEITHER PARTY WILL BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, SPECIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOST PROFITS, LOST REVENUE, LOST DATA, OR ANY DAMAGES ARISING FROM A FAILED CONTRACT, DISQUALIFIED BID, REGULATORY ACTION, OR FCA PROCEEDING, EVEN IF ADVISED.

13.2 OUR TOTAL CUMULATIVE LIABILITY ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE FEES YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM.

13.3 No Liability for Adverse-Action Outcomes or Regulatory Actions. We are not liable for: any applicant's claim arising from the content, timing, or delivery of a notice you sent; any finding, inquiry, investigation, or enforcement action by any regulatory, administrative, or enforcement body of any kind — including without limitation the FTC, the CFPB, any state attorney general, any state regulator, or any other agency — that a notice, waiting-period, or any other aspect of your use of the Service was non-compliant with FCRA, any state law, or any other statute or regulation; any allegation that a Service output misled an applicant, regulatory body, or any other party; any class action or individual claim arising from your compliance decisions under FCRA or any other law; or any allegation arising from your representation to any party about our role or the legal sufficiency of our outputs. This carve-out is stated as broadly as possible and applies uniformly regardless of the specific statute, regulation, or regulatory or enforcement body involved; a party asserting that this carve-out does not apply to a particular claim, statute, or regulatory or enforcement body bears the burden of establishing that, rather than us bearing the burden of having disclaimed each one individually.

14. Indemnification

14.1 Stated in the contract you execute. Both indemnities — ours for IP infringement and yours — are stated in full on the face of §12 of the PlainNotice Engagement SOW ("12. Indemnification"), the contract you execute. For direct-tier Customers, SOW §12 is incorporated by the click-signed Order Form you accept, with the full agreement text rendered on the page. Those provisions govern; this §14 is a cross-reference and does not restate them.

14.2 No separate indemnity. These Terms state no indemnification obligation separate from, additional to, or narrower than SOW §12, and nothing in these Terms enlarges or limits it. Where these Terms refer to the §14 indemnity (§10.4 survival), the reference is to SOW §12.

15. General Provisions

15.1 Governing Law. Colorado. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods ("CISG") does not apply. 15.2 Disputes. Binding arbitration via JAMS in Boulder County, CO. Each party waives any right to a jury trial and to participation in any class, collective, or representative proceeding. Either party may seek injunctive relief in court for §5, §6, §8, or §11 breaches. 15.3 Notices, Force Majeure, Entire Agreement, Modifications (30-day), Severability, No Waiver, Independent Contractors. Standard. Written notice under these Terms (email to the billing contact or in-product notice) is deemed given when sent or first displayed; any notice period runs from that date, and failure to read a notice does not extend it. 15.4 Assignment; Change of Control. You may not assign, delegate, or transfer these Terms, in whole or in part, whether by operation of law, merger, or change of control, without our prior written consent; any attempted assignment in violation of this sentence is void. We may, without your consent and without notice except as any applicable data-protection law requires, assign or transfer these Terms and all of our rights and obligations under them, in whole or in part, (a) to a successor or acquirer in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of substantially all of our business or assets, or (b) to an affiliate, subsidiary, or newly formed entity in connection with a corporate conversion, reorganization, or contribution or drop-down of assets undertaken to effect a sale, reorganization, or transfer of the specific business line or product to which these Terms relate. Upon such an assignment, all of our rights under these Terms pass to the assignee, the assignee assumes our obligations arising after the assignment, and your continued use of the Service constitutes acknowledgment of the assignee as "PlainNotice" going forward. A change in our ownership, control, equity holders, or entity form is not a breach of, default under, or ground to terminate, suspend, renegotiate, or re-price these Terms, and does not trigger any right of termination, consent, first refusal, most-favored-nation, audit, or refund on your part. This §15.4 controls over any contrary term in a Customer purchase order or procurement addendum.

15.5 Regional and Supplemental Terms. No additional jurisdiction-specific term applies beyond the multi-state waiting-period rule overlays (CO / CA / NY-NYC / IL / WA) described in the Service. Where a supplemental jurisdiction-specific term applies, it controls over a conflicting general term of these Terms for that jurisdiction only.

Contact

PlainNotice — Ellis Intelligence LLC Email: legal@ellisintel.com Address: 1500 N Grant St, Ste N, Denver, CO 80203, USA