Terms of Service

The Service compiles, enriches, and re-publishes retail store location data and related public-record attributes (demographic, program-authorization, and site-selection signals - see Data Sources & Definitions for the current list) into a queryable catalog, available as a one-time export or an ongoing subscription, and accessible through the web application and a programmatic API. The Service is intended for business and commercial use in market research, site selection, and related retail-intelligence purposes.

You must be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract to use the Service. If you register on behalf of a company or other legal entity, you represent that you have authority to bind that entity to these Terms, and “Client” refers to that entity.

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials, sign-in codes, and any API keys issued to you, and for all activity that occurs under your account. Notify us immediately at contact@afferentsignal.com of any suspected unauthorized use.

(a) Pricing. Fees for a one-time purchase or subscription are shown to you at checkout before payment and are calculated by the Service in real time from the current store count and pricing tier for the banner(s) or category you select; the amount confirmed at checkout is binding. All payments are processed by our third-party payment processor (Stripe); we do not store your card details.

(b) One-time purchases. A one-time purchase delivers a snapshot of the selected data as of the purchase date. It is yours to keep indefinitely under the license in Section 5, but it is not automatically refreshed - see Section 4.

(c) Subscriptions. A subscription bills on a recurring monthly basis and automatically renews each period until cancelled. You may cancel at any time from your dashboard; cancellation takes effect at the end of the then-current billing period, and you retain access through that date. Some subscriptions require you to already own, or to concurrently purchase, the corresponding one-time baseline snapshot for the same banner or category before the subscription can be activated, as disclosed at checkout.

(d) Fee changes. We may change subscription pricing prospectively; any change will apply starting with your next billing period after notice, which may be given by email or in-app notice at least 14 days in advance. Continuing a subscription after a price change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the new price.

(e) Refunds. Because data is delivered digitally and immediately upon purchase, one-time purchases are non-refundable except where required by applicable law. Subscription fees already billed for a completed period are non-refundable; cancelling stops future billing but does not refund the current period.

(f) Taxes. Fees are exclusive of any applicable sales, use, or similar taxes, which you are responsible for unless we are required by law to collect them.

You acknowledge and agree to the data provenance, synchronization cadence, regulatory-latency, and “AS IS” disclaimers set out in full on the Data Sources & Definitions page, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference. In summary, and without limiting that page: the Company undertakes commercially reasonable efforts to refresh its database on a recurring, automated basis, but refresh timing for any individual record is not guaranteed to occur within a fixed number of days and may vary by banner and dataset; upstream government sources carry their own reporting and publication lag (including a 30-to-90-day authorization lag for newly opened retail locations); and store closures, license changes, and similar events are subject to third-party reporting delays that the Company does not control. By subscribing to or purchasing access to the Service, you specifically acknowledge you have read and understood this refresh schedule and its limitations before relying on the data for any business decision.

We may add, modify, deprecate, or temporarily suspend access to any field, dataset, banner, or API endpoint at any time, including for scheduled maintenance or upstream source unavailability, and will use commercially reasonable efforts to avoid material disruption to active subscriptions.

Subject to your compliance with these Terms and payment of applicable fees, the Company grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable license to access and use the Service and the data you purchase or subscribe to, solely for your own internal business purposes (including as an input to your own internal analysis, reports, and decision-making). This license does not include any right to use the Service or its data in the ways described in Section 6.

This section exists because the value of the Service is the compiled, continuously maintained dataset itself, and unrestricted redistribution would destroy that value. Unless you have a separate written agreement with the Company expressly authorizing it, you will not, and will not permit any third party to:

• Resell, license, sublicense, rent, lease, broker, or otherwise commercially distribute the Service, the API, or any data obtained through them, whether alone, bundled with other products, or as part of a paid or free offering to others;
• Republish, mirror, syndicate, or make the data (in whole or in any substantial part) available to any third party, including via a public website, data marketplace, internal tool made available outside your own organization, or bulk export shared with clients, partners, or affiliates;
• Use the data to build, train, fine-tune, or evaluate a machine-learning model, dataset, or product that is itself offered, licensed, or sold to third parties;
• Use the data to create or contribute to a product or service that competes with the Service;
• Share, pool, or sublicense your account credentials or API key(s) with any person or entity outside your own organization, or provide access to the Service on behalf of a third party who has not independently purchased access;
• Circumvent, disable, or attempt to circumvent any rate limit, usage cap, authentication mechanism, or other technical restriction on the Service;
• Scrape, crawl, or programmatically access the Service outside of the documented API using your issued credentials, or use any automated means to access the Service that is not the documented API;
• Reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to derive the source code, underlying methodology, or non-public data structures of the Service, except to the extent such restriction is prohibited by applicable law;
• Remove, obscure, or alter any proprietary notice on data obtained from the Service.

Enforcement. We may monitor API and account usage for patterns consistent with a violation of this section (including anomalous request volume, credential sharing indicators, or bulk-export patterns inconsistent with internal use). A violation of this section is a material breach of these Terms and grounds for immediate suspension or termination under Section 10, without refund, in addition to any other remedy available to the Company at law or in equity, including injunctive relief, as monetary damages alone may be an inadequate remedy for unauthorized redistribution of the data.

(a) The Service. The Company owns all right, title, and interest in and to the Service, including the platform, software, API, user interface, and the compilation, selection, coordination, enrichment, and arrangement of the underlying data into the Service’s catalog (the “Compilation”), independent of any rights in the underlying facts themselves. Nothing in these Terms transfers any of that ownership to you. “Afferent Synapse” and its associated logos are trademarks or service marks of the Company; no license to use them is granted except as necessary to refer to the Service by name.

(b) Underlying public data. Certain underlying facts made available through the Service originate from United States federal, state, or local government sources that are generally in the public domain or published for public use, as identified on the Data Sources page. Nothing in these Terms is intended to claim exclusive ownership over facts that are not independently protectable; the restrictions in Section 6 apply to the Service and the Compilation, and to your access to them, regardless of the underlying facts’ own public-domain status.

(c) Feedback. If you provide feedback or suggestions about the Service, we may use them without restriction or obligation to you.

API keys are issued per account and are how we attribute usage to a paying customer; treat them as a credential, not a shareable resource (see Section 6). There is no hard rate limit enforced by default today, as noted on the API documentation page; we reserve the right to introduce rate limits, throttle usage, or require you to adjust a usage pattern that we reasonably believe places excessive load on the Service or is inconsistent with internal use, with notice where practicable.

Non-public information either party discloses to the other in connection with the Service - including pricing not generally published, account-specific usage data, and non-public product or technical information - is confidential and may be used only to exercise rights or perform obligations under these Terms, and disclosed only to personnel or advisors with a need to know, except as required by law.

These Terms remain in effect while you maintain an account or an active purchase with the Service. We may suspend or terminate your access, with or without notice, if you materially breach these Terms (including Section 6), fail to pay fees when due, or if we reasonably believe your use poses a security or legal risk to the Service or other users. You may terminate by cancelling any active subscriptions and closing your account. Sections 3(e)-(f), 5-9, 11-16 survive termination.

Except as expressly stated on the Data Sources page, the service and all data are provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, completeness, title, and non-infringement. The company does not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that any data will meet your specific requirements.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, in no event will the company be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or any loss of profits, revenue, data, or business opportunity, arising out of or related to these terms or the service, even if advised of the possibility of such damages. The company’s total aggregate liability arising out of or related to these terms or the service will not exceed the amount you actually paid to the company in the twelve (12) months preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations of liability, so some of the above limitations may not apply to you; in that case, liability is limited to the greatest extent permitted by law.

You will indemnify, defend, and hold harmless the Company and its officers, employees, and agents from any third-party claim, loss, liability, and expense (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising from: (a) your breach of these Terms, including any violation of Section 6; (b) your misuse of the Service or the data; or (c) your violation of applicable law in connection with your use of the Service.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Delaware, and each party consents to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make a material change, we will provide notice by email or an in-app notice before the change takes effect. Continuing to use the Service after a change becomes effective constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms; if you do not agree, you must stop using the Service and, for a subscription, cancel it before the change takes effect.

Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Data Sources page and any order confirmation shown at checkout, are the entire agreement between you and the Company regarding the Service, and supersede any prior agreements on the same subject.

Assignment. You may not assign these Terms or your account without our prior written consent; the Company may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of substantially all of its assets.

Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full effect, and the unenforceable provision will be reformed to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable.

No waiver. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to do so later.

Force majeure. Neither party is liable for a failure to perform caused by circumstances beyond its reasonable control, including upstream government data-source outages or changes.

Questions about these Terms, or notices required under them, should be sent to contact@afferentsignal.com.