Billing/Refund Terms
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Effective Date: October 14, 2026 | Version 1.0
These Billing/Refund Terms govern Contractor membership fees on the HammerDuck platform. They are incorporated into, and should be read together with, the HammerDuck Terms of Service and the HammerDuck Contractor Agreement. HammerDuck does not charge Customers for any use of the Platform; this document applies only to Contractor accounts. If a Founding Contractor offer applies to your account, the Founding Contractor Agreement also applies and controls over these Billing/Refund Terms on the specific terms of that offer.
1. Products and Prices
Standard Contractor Membership costs $25 per month; bidding is included in the membership, with no separate per-bid charge. Founding Contractor Membership costs $20 per month, locked for as long as your account remains active and in good standing; Founding Contractor status is available only by HammerDuck’s pre-approval, as described in the Founding Contractor Agreement. HammerDuck may offer additional membership products in the future, which will be priced and disclosed before purchase.
All membership pricing is stated and billed "per month": your Stripe subscription, once it begins, renews monthly on the same calendar date it began. Every date and time referenced anywhere on the Platform, including billing dates, is Eastern Time.
From the Effective Date of these Terms until December 1, 2026 (the "Billing Commencement Date"), HammerDuck is free for every Contractor: no card is required and no fee is charged, and a Contractor with a completed business profile may bid, propose visits, and message during this period. Beginning on the Billing Commencement Date, bidding, proposing visits, and starting new conversations require a membership on file — trial, paid, Founding, or fee-waived. A Contractor with no payment card on file as of the Billing Commencement Date can still sign in, browse the job board (with an "Add a card to bid" prompt), and continue any conversation that already exists, but cannot bid, propose a visit, or start a new conversation until a card is added; that Contractor’s profile stays published in the meantime.
2. Free Trials
Each Contractor account receives one free period, one time only, running from the day the Contractor registers a payment card or the Billing Commencement Date, whichever is later: 30 days for a standard member and 60 days for a Founding Contractor. A Contractor may register a card any time from the Effective Date onward; nothing is charged before the free period ends, and nothing is ever charged before December 31, 2026. The free period is recorded the first time it starts and cannot be reset, and cancelling and re-subscribing after it ends means billing starts immediately with no new free period.
To prevent trial abuse, HammerDuck limits each free trial to one per payment card, one per business, and, for Founding Contractor trials, one per founding-eligible identity. If the card you enter has already funded a trial on another account, your new trial ends immediately and billing begins that day. If your account’s e-mail, phone, business name, or Google Place ID (each stored as a hash, not in plain text, as described in the Privacy Policy) matches a previous trial, your new trial is withheld — you may still join, billed from day one — and the dashboard will tell you which identity matched and how to appeal by e-mailing customerservice@hammerduck.com. HammerDuck’s founder may clear a false match by hand upon review.
A valid payment card is required at checkout whenever you choose to add one; you may add a card any time from the Effective Date onward, and nothing is charged before your free period ends, as described in Section 1. The checkout screen discloses the price and the date of your first charge before you confirm.
Stripe sends an automatic reminder e-mail seven days before any free period ends. The membership card shown before checkout states the applicable terms in date-based form — for example, "Free until Dec 31, 2026, then $25 per month. Cancel anytime," or, for a Founding Contractor, "Your card is first charged $20 on Jan 30, 2027 — nothing to do unless you want to cancel."
3. Bidding Requires an Active Membership
You must hold an active membership — trial, paid, Founding, or fee-waived — to place a bid, including a site-visit bid. The Platform will not accept a bid from an account whose membership has lapsed.
4. Bidding Limits
A Contractor may place one bid per project, including a site-visit bid, and each project accepts at most five bids, first come, first served. A Contractor may hold at most ten open bids at a time across all projects. A bid is "open" while it is submitted or shortlisted and the project is still open; a bid stops counting toward this limit when the project is awarded, completed, cancelled, or closed, or when the bid is declined. The Platform will not accept an eleventh open bid from a Contractor until one of that Contractor’s open bids clears in one of these ways. There is no monthly allowance of any kind, and bidding within these limits costs nothing beyond the membership fee described in Section 1.
5. Price Changes
HammerDuck reserves the right to increase membership prices. If we do, we will send advance written notice by e-mail to every subscribing member before the change takes effect, and a new membership price will apply starting with the first renewal after the notice period ends. The $20 Founding Contractor membership rate is locked for as long as your account remains active and in good standing, as described in the Founding Contractor Agreement, and is not subject to any price increase under this Section while that condition is met.
Because a membership price increase is a material change to the terms of your automatic renewal, the notice described in this Section will clearly and conspicuously state the change and will be provided together with information on how to cancel your membership, presented in a manner you can retain, as required by O.C.G.A. § 10-1-439.9(c).
6. Cancelling Your Membership
You may cancel your membership at any time using the "Cancel membership" control on your dashboard’s membership card. HammerDuck’s cancellation flow is self-service: there is no phone cancellation line, no e-mail-only retention process, and cancelling shows you a single confirmation screen. Once you cancel, you keep full access — including bidding, proposing visits, and starting new conversations — through the end of your current paid or trial period; after that date, your account becomes lapsed as described in Section 7. Until the period ends, your dashboard shows "Your membership ends on" followed by that date, with a "Keep my membership" option that reverses the cancellation if you change your mind.
A former Founding Contractor who cancels and later resubscribes returns as a standard member at $25 per month with no new free period; a founding slot, once used, is not restored by signing up again, and the Founding rate does not return.
7. Lapse and Reactivation
A Contractor who has never added a payment method sees the "Add a card to bid" prompt described in Section 1; that is different from a lapsed account, described below. When your paid or trial period ends without renewal — whether because you cancelled or because a renewal payment ultimately failed under Section 8 — your account becomes "lapsed." A lapsed account can still sign in, view the open job board (dimmed, with a "Reactivate to bid" prompt), see its own pipeline, and continue conversations that already exist, but cannot bid, propose a visit, or start a new conversation. Reactivating removes these restrictions immediately; a member who reactivates after a lapse is billed at the standard $25 rate with no new free period, whether or not the lapsed account was previously a Founding Contractor.
A member whose fee is waived under a written HammerDuck fee-waiver rider does not have a "Cancel membership" control on the dashboard; to close such an account, e-mail customerservice@hammerduck.com.
8. Failed Payments
If a renewal payment fails, HammerDuck does not immediately lapse your account. You keep full access — bidding, messaging, visits — during a grace period, and HammerDuck notifies you both in-app and by e-mail of the deadline to fix your payment method, with a "Manage billing" link to Stripe’s Customer Portal, in addition to Stripe’s own failed-payment e-mail. The grace period is 14 days for a Founding Contractor’s first failed payment on that account (a one-time accommodation, consistent with the written notice-and-cure promise made to founders), and 3 days for every other failed payment, including every failed payment on a standard membership and every failed payment on a Founding Contractor account after the first. If Stripe collects payment within the grace period, HammerDuck gives you an in-app notice that payment succeeded and nothing else about your account changes. If the grace period ends unpaid, HammerDuck notifies you both in-app and by e-mail, and your account becomes lapsed as described in Section 7; if the account was a Founding Contractor account, it also loses the $20 rate and the Founding badge at that point, and any later resubscription is at the standard $25 rate as described in Section 6. Stripe continues to retry a failed payment on its own schedule; if every retry fails, the subscription is cancelled and any later re-subscription is at the standard $25 rate with no new free period.
9. Chargebacks
If you dispute a HammerDuck charge with your card issuer (a chargeback) rather than contacting HammerDuck directly, Stripe notifies HammerDuck of the dispute. HammerDuck may immediately suspend bidding, messaging, and visit access on your account while a chargeback is open, in the same manner as a failed payment under Section 8. If the chargeback is resolved in HammerDuck’s favor or you withdraw it, full access is restored. If the chargeback is not reversed, HammerDuck will treat your account as terminated for non-payment, with the same consequences described in Sections 6 and 8 for an uncured lapse, and HammerDuck reserves the right to decline future service to the payment method or identity involved. HammerDuck encourages you to contact customerservice@hammerduck.com about a billing problem before initiating a chargeback with your card issuer.
10. Refunds
There is no general right to a refund of a membership fee. Because bidding does not charge a Contractor anything beyond the membership fee, there is nothing to refund when a Customer cancels a project you bid on; HammerDuck simply notifies you, as described in Section 4. HammerDuck may, at its sole discretion, issue a goodwill refund of a membership fee (for example, to correct a billing error) through Stripe; to request one, e-mail customerservice@hammerduck.com describing the issue, and HammerDuck aims to respond within one business day. Card disputes are also subject to Stripe’s own terms as our payment processor.
11. Pre-Purchase and Renewal Disclosure
Before you are charged for the first time — whether at the start of a paid membership with no free period, or when a free period ends and converts to a paid membership — HammerDuck’s membership card and Stripe Checkout will each clearly state, in substantially this form: the plan you are purchasing and its price stated "per month"; the date your free period ends and your card is first charged; a statement that your subscription will automatically renew and charge your card on file each month, on that same date, until you cancel; and a link or button to cancel. This disclosure is shown at the point of purchase, in visual proximity to where you click to subscribe, so that your consent to recurring billing is clear and conspicuous, and you will be sent a confirmation you can keep, stating these same terms and how to cancel, consistent with O.C.G.A. §§ 10-1-439.8 and 10-1-439.9(a).
For as long as your membership continues to renew, HammerDuck will also send you a notice, before or within three days after each renewal charge (unless you have opted out of that notice), clearly and conspicuously stating that your membership will automatically renew unless you cancel it, the length of the renewal period, a link or other easily accessible way to cancel, and HammerDuck’s contact information, as required by O.C.G.A. § 10-1-439.9(b). This notice is separate from, and in addition to, the reminder described in Section 2 that is sent before a free period ends. Because each Contractor’s free period ends, and each Contractor is first charged, on a different date, this notice is sent individually before or after that Contractor’s own charge date rather than on a single calendar date common to all Contractors.
12. Taxes
Stripe Checkout collects the billing address you enter there so that Stripe can attribute each payment to a state for tax purposes; HammerDuck does not receive or store that address. HammerDuck will collect and remit sales, use, or similar transaction taxes on membership purchases to the extent required by applicable law. Whether Georgia or South Carolina currently requires tax to be collected on this specific product is a tax-nexus and taxability question outside the scope of these legal documents; HammerDuck should confirm the applicable treatment with a qualified accountant before enabling tax collection, and this Section will apply whatever treatment is determined to be legally required at that time.
13. Contact
Billing questions may be sent to customerservice@hammerduck.com. HammerDuck aims to respond within one business day.