Terms

§1 What the service is

Chance Merchant is a mock admissions committee run by AI models. Every reader note, rating, decision and report is written by AI, not by a person, and no admissions officer reviews it. It estimates how an application might be read. It is for information and practice only. It is not an admissions decision, a prediction you can rely on, or professional admissions, educational, financial or legal advice.

We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to any college or university. School names are used only to say which school a read is modelled on, and their names and marks belong to them. “Common App” is a trademark of The Common Application, Inc., which has no connection with us either. Where a report says a rating scale is reconstructed, the scale is our own estimate and not the school's.

§2 No guarantee

Results are written by AI models and can be wrong, incomplete or different from one run to the next. Real decisions depend on things we never see and on the rest of the applicant pool. A result here says nothing certain about what any college will decide.

Don't decide where to apply, whether to apply, or whether to commit to a binding round on our result alone. Those choices are yours, and you are responsible for them.

§3 Who can use it

You must be at least 13, and you confirm that you are when you sign in. If you are under 18, you may use the service only if a parent or guardian has read these terms and agrees to them for you; by ticking the box at sign-in you confirm that they have. A parent or guardian who agrees for a minor is responsible for that minor's use of the service, including any payments.

Pay only with a card you are allowed to use. If the card belongs to someone else, such as a parent, you need their permission for each payment.

You sign in with a Google account and are responsible for what happens under it. Keep it secure and tell us if you think someone else has used it.

§4 Your content

Your application stays yours. You give us permission to store it and process it, including by sending it to the providers listed under Subprocessors, only in order to run the service for you. That permission ends when you delete the content or your account. Our privacy policy describes how it is handled.

No AI training. We don't use what you submit, or the reports made from it, to train or fine-tune AI models. The AI providers receive it through their business interfaces, under terms that say they don't train on it either. Nobody on our side reads your application except to answer a request from you, fix a fault or investigate abuse.

Only submit information that is yours to share. Don't include private details about other people beyond what a college application normally asks for.

Copyright. Submit only writing and files that are your own or that you have the right to use. What you submit is shown to you alone and is never published or shown to other users. If you believe something on the service infringes your copyright, write to vnevdev@gmail.com with what the work is, where you found it and how to reach you, and we will look into it and remove what infringes.

§5 Acceptable use

• Don't try to break, overload or get around the limits of the service.
• Don't write instructions to the AI readers into an application to steer a result. They are told to ignore them.
• Don't access another person's account or data.
• Don't scrape it or resell it.
• Don't present a report as a statement from a college or an admissions officer.
• Don't use it to break the law.

§6 Price

How a run is priced is described on the Pricing page. Before every run you see its bill, with every line below on it, and nothing is charged until you confirm it. Payments are handled by Stripe. A bill is made of:

• the read, priced by the length of your application;
• a cloud fee of $0.20 on every run;
• when a card pays any part of it, a card processing fee (shown as “Stripe fee”) on the part the card pays: 30¢ is added, then 3% of the total, rounded up to the next cent. Buying credits carries the same fee once, and runs paid from credits carry none;
• a round-up to the next whole dollar, if the box is ticked. The box starts ticked on every bill. The label says how much it adds, the amount goes to us, and you can untick it before you pay. If you paid a round-up you didn't mean to, write to us and we will return it;
• card payments can't be smaller than $0.50. If your bill is less, the card is charged $0.50 and the difference is added to your balance.

Prices don't include any sales tax that may apply. We may change prices; a change never affects a bill you already confirmed.

You can pay for a run by card, or buy credits and pay from your balance. Credits are US dollars held in your account. They don't expire, can be spent only on runs here, and can't be transferred to another account or withdrawn as cash.

If a run fails, what it cost is returned to your balance; if you paid for it by card and want the money back on the card instead, write to us. A run that finished is not refunded because you disagree with its result.

Unused credits. Write to us and we will refund credits you bought and haven't spent to the card that paid for them. The card processing fee on the original purchase is not returned. Ask before deleting your account: deleting it gives up any balance left in it. If we close the service, or close your account for a reason other than fraud or abuse, we refund your unused purchased credits. Nothing here limits a refund the law gives you.

§7 Ending

You can stop using the service and delete your account at any time from your Profile page. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms or abuses the service, and we may change or stop the service at any time.

§8 No warranty

The service is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent the law allows, we make no warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of accuracy, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. We don't promise that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free or secure, or that saved drafts and reports will never be lost. Keep your own copy of anything you can't afford to lose.

§9 Limit of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive losses, or for any loss that comes from relying on a result, including an admissions outcome, a missed opportunity, an application fee or a decision about where or how to apply.

Our total liability for everything connected with the service, for all claims together and whatever the legal ground, is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim and US$50.

“We” here includes the people who build and run Chance Merchant. These limits are part of the price: the service costs what it does because of them.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that the law doesn't allow to be limited, such as for fraud or for harm we cause on purpose. Some places don't allow some of these limits, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

§10 Your responsibility

If someone brings a claim against us because you broke these terms or the law, or because of content you submitted, you agree to cover the reasonable costs that result, to the extent the law allows.

§11 Disputes

If something has gone wrong, write to vnevdev@gmail.com first and give us 30 days to put it right. Most problems, including any refund, are settled that way.

To the extent the law allows: you and we will each bring claims only on our own behalf, not as part of a class or group action; and a claim connected with the service must be started within one year of the day you could first have brought it.

§12 Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Pennsylvania, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, unless the law where you live gives you the right to bring it elsewhere.

If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still applies. These terms and the privacy policy are the whole agreement between you and us about the service. If we don't enforce a term once, we can still enforce it later. We may transfer these terms to a company that takes over the service; you can't transfer your account. The sections on warranty, liability, your responsibility and disputes continue after your account is closed.

§13 Changes

We may update these terms. The date above shows the latest version. If a change matters, we will ask you to accept the new version the next time you open the portal, and it applies to you from then. If you don't accept it, you can still delete your account, and unused credits you bought are refunded on request.

§14 Contact

Questions go to vnevdev@gmail.com.