Velociraptor Systems

"Gigs"

• Gigs are projects with an estimated time of less than 20 hours. These are billed at $40/hr, to the nearest 15 minutes (up or down).
• There is a minimum bill of 1 hr.
• Extended gigs that pass the 20 hour mark and are comprised of primarily maintenance work and small changes transition to "Extended Phase" billing.
• Extended gigs that pass the 20 hour mark, have a current account, but still have (or request new) major work are billed at the "Contract Projects" rate.

Contract projects

• Contract projects have an estimated time of at least 20 hours, and are billed at $36/hr. If the estimated contract time exceeds 100 hrs, the rate drops to $32/hr. These are billed to the nearest 15 minutes (up or down).
• There is a 10% down payment for contract projects for our agreed projected hours. This is applied to the last 10% of estimated hours. This is non-refundable and applies regardless of total project duration.
• If the estimated time frame is exceeded, the first 5% of subsequent hours (rounded to the nearest 15 minutes) are free, to a maximum of 10 hours.
• You may specify an hour cap. At 80% of this cap, progress can be assessed and the cap adjusted. If the cap is exceeded, you will be notified and work will pause at the nearest stable (non-error-generating) step to the cap, such as "Coming Soon" pages, until the cap is reassessed.
• If you decline an estimate and hour cap, the hourly rate drops to $30/hr. The down payment then becomes a flat $300 dollars. This is non-refundable and applies regardless of total project duration.

Extended phase

• Extended phases are contract projects that have succeeded in their major goals, and are transitioned to a phase of minor maintenance and updates. These are billed at $28/hr. There is no minimum amount of work per period.
• If work is requested during a period, the minimum bill is 30 minutes, and afterwards is billed to the nearest 15 minutes (up or down).
• Maintenance work for completed projects during the grace peroid falls under this category.

Emergency Work & Website Repair

• This work can be requested at any time for priority service for website restoration
• The rate for this is $100/hr if requested between 9AM PST and 9PM PST weekdays, $150/hr otherwise (nights & weekends).
• Non destructive service is NOT assured, but will be attempted.
• Repair success is NOT assured, due to the necessarily remote nature of the problems.
• A deposit of at least 1 hour's work (non-refundable) is required prior to work beginning.
• Time billed includes waiting for client response.
• Discounts do NOT apply.

Students & Non-Profits

• If you are an undergraduate or graduate student at a 4-year university, and can provide evidence of your attendance, all rates are discounted to $20/hr.
• Evidence of attendance requires a .edu email address and one other piece of evidence, such as a picture of your student ID card. Feel free to suggest any other pieces of evidence if you cannot supply a picture of your student ID.
• The same rate applies to non-profit, 501(c)(3) organizations. A document with this information, such as a tax report or other bill, is required for this rate.
• The footer described below is required for this rate.

Referrals

• New clients referred here by prior clients recieve a $4/hr discount to their nominal rate, to a minimum of $20/hr.
• Prior clients responsible for the referral recieve a $4/hr discount to their nominal rate, to a minimum of $20/hr. This is cumulative for multiple referrals. This applies only to future work.

You can expect:

• Notification of delays of greater than 48 business hours in progress.
• Access to email address, phone number, and various messaging clients (AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk, MSN, and Skype).
• Description of work done upon request (aligned with billing cycle).
• Email updates of major completed steps, with reference screenshots, upon request (aligned with billing cycle).
• Testing across the latest versions of Opera (development builds), Chrome (development builds), Internet Explorer (stable), Safari (stable), and Firefox (stable) on Windows 7 at 1080p; testing on Ubuntu (Linux) on Firefox (stable) and Chrome (development) at 800x480; and legacy testing on Internet Explorer (via compatibility modes).
• Refinement suggestions for most responsive and compatible user experience
• Suggestions for forward-compatibility.

Billing

• Bills for all projects are assessed weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly at the client's discretion.
• Monthly bills are first assessed on the 20th day of each month, regardless of the initial start date. If this date falls on a weekend, bills are sent out on the Friday before, but treated as if sent on the 20th.
• Invoices are provided by us, and the electronic bills are provided as a Paypal or Google Checkout invoice.
• If you wish to pay non-electronically, please let us know at the start of contract. There will a $2 service fee for non-electronic methods of payment.
• When payment is received, you may request an archive of current website content. This is not provided unless requested, and request must be made within 24 hours of payment.
• If payment is not received within 7 USPS working days, you will be notified. If you cannot provide proof of payment, you will be assessed a late fee equivalent to 30 minutes per day (retroactive from due date) until payment is received.
• If payment is not received within 7 USPS working days after a notice of a late payment, and an arrangement cannot be worked out, your site is eligible to reversion to last payment or to be taken down, at the discretion of Velociraptor Systems.
• Payment is accepted by Paypal, Google Checkout, EFT, and checks. Both Paypal and Google Checkout accept most major credit cards.

Clarifications

• When the client is not timely in response or payment, you acknowledge your work may have been deprioritized for someone behind you in the work queue. You waive all rights to assurances of timeliness.
• All created content is the property of the client.
• Software libraries, algorithms, and code remain property of Velociraptor Systems and are licensed as described in the About section (usually LGPL), and may be leveraged by Velociraptor Systems in other projects.
• If you wish to retain full IP and patentability to code developed for your project by Velociraptor Systems, and not have them provided to you under the LGPL, all rates are increased by $20/hr over what is specified above.
• If specific exemptions are made for you, please retain a record of these exemptions. All other terms here remain in force.
• Basic content, such as notifications or other interactions-specific messaging, is provided as a complimentary service. However, full text is expected to be provided by the client, and content revisions are not included in any estimates.
• Content revisions do NOT count toward the hours invested for purposes of rates.
• Full content generation increases the hourly rate by $12/hr
• All effects mentioned here, unless otherwise noted, are cumulative. This means that a "gig" with full client IP retention and content generation by Velociraptor Systems is billed at $72/hr.

Expiration

• These terms expire and your account is closed when no requests for updates have been made in 90 days. Resuming work after this period accepts any changes to these terms, re-evaluated based on current requests.
• For example, if after 6 months of inactivity, 3 hours of work is requested, it is evaluated under "Gigs" and charged accordingly. Modifiers, such as referrals or student pricing, persist.
• Your account may be kept current by optionally paying a long-term support (LTS) fee of $60 every 90 days.
• LTS includes 3 hours of free work every period.
• You are not responsible for this fee until notified by us.
• LTS terms expire 7 days after notification of bill due.
• There is no penalty for not paying the LTS fee.

Footer

• You may optionally agree to a small "Site designed by Velociraptor Systems", with a link, at the bottom of each page. If you do so, your rate is discounted by $2/hr, to a minimum of $22/hr.
• If this footer is removed within 1 year of a month in which at least 10 hours of work was done, you owe retroactivley the $2/hr difference for all work done in the previous 365 days.

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