Terms of Service

Agreement to These Terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of thestampvault.com, the Envelope Press tool at envelopepress.thestampvault.com, and everything you buy from us ("the Services"). The Stamp Vault ("we", "us", "our") is an independent retailer of United States postage. We are not affiliated with, authorized by, or endorsed by the United States Postal Service. By placing an order, creating an account, or using the Services, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Services.

Please read “Binding Arbitration and Class Action Waiver” below carefully. It requires most disputes between us to be resolved by individual arbitration rather than in court, and it gives up your right to a jury trial and to take part in a class action. You may opt out of it within 30 days of first accepting these Terms, and opting out costs you nothing — see that section for how.

Eligibility and Your Account

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Services, and old enough to form a binding contract to place an order. You are responsible for the accuracy of the information on your account and for everything done through it:

• Keep your sign-in credentials confidential; you are responsible for activity under your account
• Give us a shipping address you control and an email address you check — order, dispatch and support notices go there
• One account per person or business; do not create additional accounts to obtain free searches, promotional pricing or other one-per-customer benefits more than once
• Tell us promptly at the support address below if you believe your account has been used without your permission

We may suspend or close an account that is used in breach of these Terms, and we may cancel and refund any order associated with it.

What We Sell

The Services cover four distinct things, and different terms apply to each:

• Stamps — genuine, unused United States Forever Stamps sold at a discount to face value, shipped to you
• Stamp Club — an optional monthly membership that ships a book of 20 Forever Stamps each month; see the membership terms below
• Envelope Press self-serve — an address-finding and envelope-printing tool you operate yourself, paid for with prepaid search credits
• Envelope Press fulfillment — we print your materials, supply the envelope, paper and postage, and mail your campaign for you

Stamps we sell are genuine and valid for postage. Product photographs and stamp designs are illustrative; the specific issue or design you receive may differ from the image shown, though the postage value will always be as described.

Orders, Prices and Payment

Placing an order is an offer to buy. A contract forms when we accept the order, which we do by confirming it and charging your payment method:

• The price shown to you at checkout is the price you pay — that total, including any discount, is what is sent to our payment processor
• Prices are in U.S. dollars and may change at any time, but a change never affects an order already placed
• Sales tax is calculated at checkout based on your shipping address and is added to the total shown
• Volume discounts and promotional codes apply as described where they are offered; codes may be limited in quantity, time or eligibility, may not be combined unless we say so, and have no cash value
• Payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number
• We may decline or cancel an order — including after it is placed — where an item is out of stock, where a price or description was obviously wrong, or where we suspect fraud or abuse. If we cancel, we refund you in full

Shipping, Returns and Refunds

Shipping timelines, the return window and the refund process are set out on our Shipping & Returns page, which forms part of these Terms. Refunds and remedies for Envelope Press are different in kind and are set out in the Envelope Press Refund & Service Policy. Risk of loss passes to you on delivery by the carrier; if a package is lost or arrives damaged, contact us and we will replace or refund it as described on the Shipping & Returns page.

Stamp Club Membership

Stamp Club is a recurring monthly membership. These terms apply in addition to the rest of these Terms:

• Billing is monthly and automatic. Your membership renews on the same day each month until you cancel, and each renewal is charged to the payment method on file
• Your price is locked. The monthly price you sign up at stays your price for as long as you remain continuously subscribed. If we raise the price of Stamp Club, the increase applies only to members who join after the change
• The lock depends on staying subscribed. If your membership ends — whether you cancel it or it lapses for non-payment — and you later rejoin, you rejoin at the price then in effect
• You can cancel at any time from the Manage plan button on your account page, which opens our payment processor's billing portal
• Cancellation takes effect at the end of the billing period you have already paid for. You keep your membership and receive any shipment for that period; you are not charged again afterwards
• We do not pro-rate or refund a partial month, because the shipment for that period has already been prepared or sent
• There is no option to skip or pause an individual shipment. If you want a break, cancel and rejoin — noting that rejoining resets your locked-in price
• If a renewal payment fails, our processor retries it for a limited period. If it continues to fail, the membership ends and the price lock ends with it
• Keep your shipping address current on your account. We are not responsible for a shipment sent to an out-of-date address you left on file
• We may change what a membership includes, or end the Stamp Club programme, on reasonable notice by email. If we do, you may cancel and we will refund any period paid for but not yet shipped

Envelope Press: Your Materials and Mailing Lists

When you upload a logo, an insert or any other material, or when you select addresses to print or mail, you are responsible for what you send and to whom:

• You keep ownership of your materials. You grant us only the licence we need to store, print, reproduce and mail them in order to carry out your order
• You confirm that you hold the rights to everything you upload, including logos, images, text and any third-party content in your insert
• You are responsible for the lawfulness of what you mail and for having a proper basis to mail the recipients you choose, including under any marketing, privacy and consumer-protection rules that apply to you
• Mail must comply with United States Postal Service rules and with applicable law
• We may refuse or stop an order whose content appears to be unlawful, fraudulent, deceptive, hateful, harassing, sexually explicit, or intended to impersonate another person or business — including mail designed to look like an official government or bank notice
• Addresses returned by the address finder come from open map data and are provided as-is; residential entries are addressed to “Current Resident” and we never look up occupant names
• Lead results are for your own mailings. Do not resell, redistribute or publish them, and do not scrape, automate against, or otherwise extract data from the tool beyond ordinary use

If we refuse an order on these grounds we will tell you and refund what you paid for the refused work.

Acceptable Use

You agree not to use the Services to:

• Break the law, infringe anyone's rights, or help anyone else do either
• Resell our stamps as your own postage business in a way that misrepresents their origin, or represent yourself as affiliated with us or with the United States Postal Service
• Interfere with, overload, probe or attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Services, our accounts, or other users' data
• Use bots, scrapers or automated tools against the site, or circumvent credit limits, free-search limits, promotional limits or rate limits
• Reverse engineer or copy the Services, or use them to build a competing product
• Upload anything containing malware, or any content you do not have the right to use

Intellectual Property

The Services, including the site design, text, graphics, logos and software, belong to us or our licensors and are protected by intellectual property law. The Stamp Vault and Envelope Press names and logos are ours. Nothing in these Terms transfers any of that to you, beyond the right to use the Services as intended. Stamp designs are the property of the United States Postal Service and are reproduced only as the stamps themselves.

Disclaimers

We stand behind what we sell: the stamps we ship are genuine and valid for postage, and we will put right work we get wrong. Beyond that, and to the extent the law allows:

• The Services are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement
• We do not warrant that the Services will be uninterrupted, timely, error-free, or that data shown by the address finder is complete, current or accurate
• We do not control the United States Postal Service. Delivery times, delivery itself, and tracking scan accuracy are outside our control and are not guaranteed
• We make no guarantee about the results of any mailing — including deliverability, whether recipients still live or trade at an address, response rates, or any commercial outcome
• Nothing we provide is legal, tax or marketing advice

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you. You may have rights under consumer protection law that these Terms do not affect.

Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law:

• We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost business, lost goodwill or lost data, even if we were told such damages were possible
• Our total liability arising out of or relating to an order, or to your use of the Services, is limited to the amount you paid us for the order giving rise to the claim
• Where no payment was made, our total liability is limited to one hundred U.S. dollars (US$100)
• These limits apply whatever the legal theory — contract, warranty, negligence, strict liability or otherwise — and survive termination of these Terms

Some jurisdictions do not allow the limitation or exclusion of liability for incidental or consequential damages, so the above may not apply to you in full. Nothing in these Terms limits liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless The Stamp Vault and its owners, employees and contractors from any claim, loss, liability, or reasonable legal cost arising out of materials you upload, mail you send through the fulfillment service, your breach of these Terms, or your misuse of the Services. We will tell you promptly of any such claim and will not settle it in a way that imposes an obligation on you without your consent.

Resolving Disputes: Talk to Us First

Almost everything is quicker to fix by email than by lawyers, and this step is required before either of us starts a formal proceeding:

• Write to us at the support address below with a description of the problem, what you would like us to do, and the email address on your account. We will work with you in good faith for at least 30 days to resolve it
• We will do the same before bringing any claim against you
• These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and by the Federal Arbitration Act as to the arbitration section below
• For any dispute not resolved in arbitration — including a small claims matter, a request to stop infringement of intellectual property, or a proceeding to enforce an arbitration award — the exclusive venue is the state or federal courts located in Los Angeles County, California, and you and we each consent to personal jurisdiction there
• Any claim must be brought within one year after it arises, to the extent the law allows that limit

Sending that notice, and giving the 30 days, is a precondition to starting an arbitration or a lawsuit. It exists so that a problem we can simply fix gets fixed.

Binding Arbitration and Class Action Waiver

If we cannot resolve a dispute informally, you and we agree that it will be settled by binding individual arbitration rather than in court. This section is governed by the Federal Arbitration Act:

• What it covers — any dispute, claim or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms, the Services, or anything you buy from us, including claims that arose before you accepted these Terms and claims that arise after your account ends
• Who decides it — a single arbitrator administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, which are published at adr.org. The arbitrator's award may be entered as a judgment in any court with jurisdiction
• How it is run — by written submission, telephone or video wherever the AAA rules allow. If an in-person hearing is needed, it takes place in Los Angeles County, California, or anywhere else you and we agree
• Who pays — filing and arbitrator fees are allocated under the AAA Consumer Arbitration Rules. Where those rules would have you pay a filing fee greater than the cost of filing the same claim in court, we will pay the difference
• No class or representative actions — you and we may each bring claims only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, consolidated, private attorney general or other representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person's claims and may not preside over any class or representative proceeding
• No jury — you and we each give up the right to a trial by jury
• Remedies — the arbitrator may award the same individual relief a court could, but only in favour of the individual party seeking relief and only so far as needed to provide that relief
• Exceptions — either of us may bring an individual claim in small claims court where it qualifies, and either of us may ask a court for an injunction to stop infringement or misuse of intellectual property. Nothing here stops you reporting a matter to a government agency
• Opting out — you can decline arbitration entirely. Email us within 30 days of first accepting these Terms saying that you opt out, with your name and the email address on your account. That is all it takes; there is no form and no cost. Opting out changes nothing else in these Terms, and we will not refuse you service or treat you differently for it
• If part of this fails — if the class action waiver is held unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim alone is severed and proceeds in court, and the rest of this section still governs everything else. If this whole section is held unenforceable, disputes go to the courts named above
• Changes — if we change this section, the change does not apply to any dispute we already had notice of, and you may reject the change by writing to us within 30 days of it taking effect
• This section survives the closing of your account and the end of these Terms

Changes, Termination and General Terms

The practical housekeeping:

• We may update these Terms. When we make material changes we will revise the effective date below and, where appropriate, notify you by email or on the site. Changes do not apply retroactively to orders already placed
• Continued use of the Services after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms
• You may stop using the Services at any time. We may suspend or end access for breach of these Terms
• If any provision is held unenforceable, the rest stays in force and that provision is limited to the minimum extent necessary
• Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it
• These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, Shipping & Returns page and Envelope Press Refund & Service Policy, are the entire agreement between us on their subject matter
• You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them in connection with a sale or transfer of the business
• We are not liable for failure or delay caused by events outside our reasonable control, including postal disruption, natural disaster, or failure of a third-party service we depend on