Terms of Service

By placing an order with EPAWA Weather Consulting, LLC (hereinafter "we", "us", "our"), you agree to be legally bound by the following terms and conditions. If you do not agree to be legally bound by all of the following terms then please do not access and/or complete your purchase. We may change these at any time and we’ll do our utmost in informing you, though it would be prudent to review this regularly yourself as your continued usage of our service(s) after changes mean you agree to be legally bound by these terms as they are updated and/or amended.

By completing your purchase of any of our services this shall constitute your understanding that certain factors outside of our control may impact the quality of services received. These factors include "acts of god", your cellphone provider black-listing our text-messaging number(s), etc. If at anytime you feel that you have not received a Daily Forecast or Weather Alert please contact us immediately at [email protected] and we will investigate any potential causes and direct you further.

BILLING/PAYMENTS:

The billing system is self-managed. Once a member, you have the ability to amend or cancel services at any time by logging into the secure client login at https://mpm.epawaweather.com/.  All monthly, quarterly, biennially, and annually recurring subscriptions will automatically renew on their due date, using the SSL secured payment method on file, until such time that the subscription is cancelled by the end user. It is up to the end user to log into the billing system and cancel services or amend/add-on services, not EPAWA. The EPAWA staff can assist with questions about sign-up or technical issues by emailing us at any time at [email protected]. We cannot sign up or cancel services for you, but can assist with a "how to" tutorial for those that are having difficulty. We made the system as user friendly as possible for all to manage their accounts easily and effortlessly.

Payments are at a fixed rate, but periodic price increases for our services may occur. If you have an active account that is current, you will not be subjected to price increases, and are at a grandfathered monthly/quarterly/semi-annually or annually recurring rate that you originally agreed to. Should you stop services at any time and restart at a later date, the price will be at current rate at that time and cannot be adjusted to the old rate. This also applies to the Winter (seasonal) text alerts that renew automatically every November 1st. The current rate for services at the time of the November 1st auto-renewal will be the charged amount for that year in the event there was a price increase from the previous year of services.

Payments are processed by a secure 3rd party billing system that we have no access to, and we don’t have the ability to view or manually change stored credit cards. It will be up to the user to maintain his or her current credit card information on file by logging into the billing system at https://mpm/epawaweather.com, and then selecting "billing" in the top menu and "manage credit card" from the dropdown menu.

REFUND POLICY:

There are no refunds or partial refunds for canceling services early before termination date of your current paid services. For example, if you signed for monthly severe text alerts in the spring, and wanted to cancel at the end of August, and you canceled in September instead after you were charged for another month, you will continue to receive those alerts until the end of the billing cycle, and no partial refunds will be issued. In addition, there are no "trial periods" offered. Once a subscription begins and services have been rendered, no refunds shall be granted. We will assist users in switching services laterally to another product if the product ordered was done in error at the time of the original order placement. Please email us at [email protected] or open a ticket in the billing system to reach us for assistance.

PREMIUM FORUM USERS READ BELOW:

If you have purchased our Premium Weather Forum Addon with your purchase please note that the follow terms and conditions apply to that service as well:

The following are permanent rules of the EPAWA forum. All members are expected to conduct themselves accordingly, and agree to the terms and conditions set forth as a prerequisite to gaining access to this forum.

A. USER ROLES:

1. Meteorologists: Designated by the "red tag" color, meteorologists can be either EPAWA meteorologists or contributing meteorologists outside of the EPAWA staff.
Such meteorologists that are "outsiders" will be designated as such by their affiliation. All EPAWA staff have full control and privileges of the forum, including all
moderation privileges. Meteorologists outside of EPAWA will have the same permissions as a regular member, but distinguished as a "red tag" poster for their
knowledge, insight, and accomplishments.

2. Administrators: Designated by the "green tag" color, administrators are responsible for keeping the forum running smoothly. They are there to help you, but also
there to enforce these forum rules and regulations. ALL administrators should be treated as the "voice of EPAWA" and are designated/appointed representatives of
EPAWA staff. They will assist others with "how to" tutorials on how to navigate the forum, posts, etc. and assist those having issues with other members.
Administrators should be contacted directly for any forum support directly. Administrators have the permissions to create and delete posts, delete comments, move
comments to appropriate threads, warn members in violation of rules, and ban members with repeated violations.

3. Pro Weather Analyst and Student Meteorologists: Designated by the "orange tag" color, these individuals were designated by EPAWA to answer member questions,
and have proven themselves to be well versed in meteorology. They are either currently in college studying meteorology or a related field, or have shown their
knowledge through interaction with EPAWA staff and many years of weather hobbyist/enthusiast activity. While the designation carries no special permissions
above regular members, it is color coded as such to set them apart from regular members and alert those members that the person interacting is knowledgeable
of meteorology enough to be able to be trusted answering technical questions in the forum.

B. Rules of the Forum

We expect all members to follow all rules and use good judgement at all times. This entails no trolling, bashing, name calling, belittling, intimidating or making threats towards any member OR reputable organization. This is a group to learn, so no one, including the three special groups listed above are exempt.

All of the listed below are grounds for immediate termination of forum privileges without refund or partial refund:

No threats of physical violence through postings
No racist/sexist/ethnic/homophobic slurs

Weather Forum Rules – will be enforced with the three strike rule (see below)

No politics/religious discussion
No foul language
No personal attacks/off-topic arguing
Stay on topic with the thread you are posting in
Debate the idea, not the poster
Spell out your forecast/thinking/opposing viewpoint clearly
If you post a map, explain it
Keep banter to a minimum during Storm Mode* (see below)
No attacks on any meteorologist or meteorological organization, not just EPAWA

Detailed rules and warn procedures

Posting in any forum on this board amounts to a consent to abide by the forum rules as currently written and as amended from time to time. Notwithstanding any provision of the board or member rules to the contrary, each member at EPAWA premium forums, on behalf of himself/herself, his/her heirs and assigns, hereby waives any and all claims against EPAWA, its staff, administrators, agents, servants, employees, owners, successors, personal representatives and assigns, both at law or in equity, for libel, slander, defamation, negligence, personal injury and/or damages of any kind, including compensatory and punitive damages.

EPAWA Forum Warning procedures: "3 strikes" rule:

FIRST OFFENSE: A warning
SECOND OFFENSE (of same violation): 7 day suspension of posting abilities
THIRD OFFENSE (of same violation): Permanent ban from EPAWA forum without refund or partial refund

Off Topic Forums

Action for violating rules in the off-topic forums will be enforced by administrators at their discretion on a case-by-case basis, but will still conform to the "3 strikes" rule as described above. Please make sure that you are responding to the appropriate threads, i.e. banter does not belong in short range discussion. Posting in banter or off-topic sections does not allow for registered members to ignore Weather Forum Rules listed above.

GENERAL POSTING

The owners and or staff of EPAWA forums are not responsible for any messages posted. We do not vouch for or warrant the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any message, and are not responsible for the contents of any message. The messages express the views of the author of the message, not necessarily the views of this forum. Any user who feels that a posted message is objectionable is encouraged to address it with an administrator. We have the ability to remove objectionable messages and we will make every effort to do so, within a reasonable time frame, if we determine that removal is necessary. You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use this bulletin board to post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person’s privacy, or otherwise a violation of any law. Making posts that are racist or threatening in nature toward another member will result in an immediate ban.

FAIR USE POLICY

This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Users may make such material available in an effort to advance awareness and understanding of issues relating to civil rights, economics, individual rights, international affairs, liberty, science & technology, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. YOU MAY use material that is from a pay service (i.e. WeatherBell European model images) but they CANNOT be used outside of this forum, and are at your own risk.

Though legally each situation is evaluated independently according to guidelines that were intentionally left open to interpretation, we believe generally this policy represents "Fair Use" of any such copyrighted material for the purposes of eduction and discussion.

You are responsible for what you "publish" on the internet. You must be sure any copyrighted material you choose to post for discussion on this forum falls within the limits of "Fair Use" as defined by the law. For more information please visit: law.cornell.edu.

PRIVACY

All personal information collected by the EPAWA forum is strictly confidential. We urge ALL members not to share personal information, including, but not limited to email address, age, address and phone numbers with other members of the board. The board owner, administrator(s) and moderators will not be held responsible if you share this information with others.

ILLEGAL ACTIVITY

Using any part of EPAWA forum platform to contact our membership for your own personal gain is strictly forbidden. This includes contacting member’s to sell products and services. Any member caught will be removed and no longer be allowed to participate on this site. Sharing of copyright programs, ways to pirate or crack programs or other illegal activity (not limited to software) is strictly forbidden and may result in suspension or termination of your account with us. This includes posting links to warzs sites and illegally distributed movie or audio content. Any user caught in the act of trying to hack or disrupt any of the servers and/or software that this board is running on is grounds for immediate account termination and you will be reported to the authorities. Trying to circumvent board security and banning filters is also strictly forbidden and may result in immediate account termination. Visiting the board via a fake IP address is also grounds for immediate account termination. IP addresses are logged and tracked constantly by our server.

POSTING OF NEWS STORIES

We ask that when you post a news story that you also include a link back to the original source. Also, please give credit where it is due.

MODEL THREAD RULES

Threads discussing specific model runs (i.e. 00z NAM) are only to be used for discussing the current model run. Posts which deviate off-topic may be deleted, and multiple offenses will be dealt with either through a warning (see above) suspension of posting abilities. Our goal is to maintain a good flow of information and to see discussion from everyone in the model threads, but this does not mean there should be "how much for…" posts in these threads. If you want to discuss something outside the realm of the model, please feel free to start a new topic in the appropriate thread(s). Please adhere to the topic of each forum that you are posting to. Do not discuss long range threats in the short range thread, for example. Banter has its own thread and own place on this board.

HOW YOU CAN HELP: REPORTING POSTS

The EPAWA staff is consistently on the lookout for posts which violate the board rules, but we only have so many eyes. Please feel free to report objectionable posts as often as necessary. Each post has a "report this post" option at the top right corner of the post. The administrators will be notified of problems, and the issue will be resolved offline. In some cases a reported post may remain because a staff member does not deem it to be inappropriate.