Terms of Service

1. Agreement to these Terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and Vertex Media & Commerce LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company doing business as Vertropic ("Vertropic", "we", "us"). They govern your use of vertropic.com, any personal page we prepare for you, and every purchase made through them (together, the "Services").

By using the Services, ticking the box at checkout, or paying, you accept these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you buy for a company, you confirm you are authorized to bind it, and "you" includes that company.

2. Who can use the Services

The Services are for business use by professionals and organizations. You must be at least 18 and able to form a binding contract. We may decline any order, including where a release would breach Section 7, in which case we refund anything you paid.

3. What you are buying

The Headliner is a press-release service. For the price shown at checkout, it includes:

• A press release written by our editors about you or your business, with your full name in the headline, which you review, edit and approve before anything is published.
• Distribution of the approved release to our news distribution package: usatoday.com and its network, including USA TODAY Network metro dailies, Gannett local papers and the Essentials news network, 487 U.S. news sites in total, plus a second, separate release on a national newswire.
• A placement report listing every live link.
• The bonuses described on your personal page at the time of purchase.

Releases are paid press releases issued under your name. Publications label them as press releases; they are not editorial coverage, reviews or endorsements by any publication, and we never present them as such. The list of sites in a distribution package is set by our distribution partners and can change; if a named site is replaced, it is replaced with one of comparable reach. Work agreed separately in a signed proposal is governed by that proposal, and these Terms fill any gaps.

4. How delivery works

• After payment, we contact you within one business day to collect your details and prepare your draft.
• You approve the final draft in writing. An email reply or a click on an approval button counts as written approval. Nothing is published before you approve.
• Your release goes live within 5 business days of your approval. Business days are Monday to Friday, excluding U.S. federal holidays.
• We send your placement report once the release is live.
• Releases are published permanently, with no renewal or upkeep fee. Each news site hosts its own pages and keeps its own editorial and removal policies, which we do not control.

5. Your content and responsibilities

You are responsible for the facts, figures, claims, photos, logos and links you give us or approve. By approving a draft you confirm that:

• the statements in it are true and not misleading, and you can substantiate any figure in it (for example sales volumes, rankings or awards);
• you own or have permission to use every photo, logo, listing and trademark you supply;
• it complies with the rules of your profession and market, including fair-housing, advertising, licensing and brokerage rules where they apply to you; and
• it does not defame anyone, infringe anyone's rights or break any law.

You give us a non-exclusive license to edit, format, publish and distribute your content for the purpose of delivering the Services, and to show the published release as an example of our work unless you ask us not to.

6. Editorial standards

Every release is checked against our editorial rules and those of our distribution partners. We may edit a draft to meet them, and we do not publish content that is false, deceptive, hateful, sexually explicit, about regulated products in ways those partners prohibit, or that makes medical, financial or legal claims that cannot be substantiated. If a distribution partner rejects a release, we revise it with you and resubmit at no cost. If it cannot be published in a form you approve, you receive a full refund.

7. Prices and payment

Prices are in U.S. dollars and shown before checkout. You can pay once ($997) or in 3 monthly payments of $397 ($1,191 total). The payment plan charges the same payment method on the same day each month and ends automatically after the last of the 3 payments; it never renews. If a plan payment fails, we contact you before taking any other step, and an unpaid balance remains due.

Payments are processed by Stripe; we never see or store your full card details. Buy-now-pay-later options such as Klarna are provided by those companies under their own terms. Applicable sales taxes are calculated at checkout. Your statement shows the charge as VERTROPIC.

8. Refunds and our guarantee

Besides the editorial case in Section 6, we offer three refunds. All are full refunds to your original payment method, paid within 10 business days of your request to press@vertropic.com:

• Before approval: Changed your mind before approving your draft? Email press@vertropic.com and we refund you in full. Nothing is published until you approve.
• Our guarantee: A closing within six months, or every dollar back. If your feature hasn't brought you a closing within six months of going live, email press@vertropic.com and we refund every dollar to your original payment method within 10 business days. No forms, no argument. You keep everything that was published.
• Our guarantee: 487 news sites. USA TODAY included. Live in 5 business days, or a full refund. Your release goes live on usatoday.com and across the network: 24 USA TODAY Network metro dailies, 210 Gannett local papers and the Essentials news network, 487 U.S. news sites in all, within 5 business days of your approving the final draft. You get one report with every live link, so you can click and verify each one. If it isn't live, we refund every dollar to your original payment method within 10 business days. No conditions, no forms.
• Our guarantee: Page one of Google for your full name within 5 business days of going live, or a full refund. Search your full name. If your USA TODAY release is not on page one of Google within 5 business days of going live, we refund every dollar to your original payment method within 10 business days, and everything stays yours: every published page, your authority page, the badge kit and the report. You keep all of it either way.

Outside these cases, payments are non-refundable once your release is live, because the work has been delivered and the publication cannot be undone. A refund under either guarantee does not remove anything that was published; it stays yours. If you paid by installments and qualify for a refund, we refund what you paid and cancel the remaining payments.

9. Talk to us before you dispute a charge

If something is wrong with your order, email press@vertropic.com. We reply within one business day and resolve most issues within five. Please contact us before filing a dispute or chargeback with your bank; a dispute filed without contacting us first delays your refund, and we will provide your signed approval, our correspondence and your placement report to the card network in response.

10. No guarantee of business results

Our work is designed to strengthen your credibility and visibility. Beyond the page-one guarantee in Section 8, search rankings, AI-assistant answers, traffic, leads and sales depend on factors we do not control, and we do not guarantee any of them. Our only guarantees are the ones in Section 8.

11. Intellectual property

Once you have paid in full, you may use your published release and its text however you like. The Vertropic name, site, designs, templates and software remain ours. Publication names and logos shown on our pages are trademarks of their owners, used only to identify where releases are published; their use does not imply affiliation with or endorsement of Vertropic.

12. Acceptable use

You agree not to misuse the Services: no unlawful, fraudulent or harmful use, no attempt to access accounts or systems that are not yours, no scraping or interfering with the Site, and no reselling of the Services without our written agreement.

13. Communications

You agree that we may contact you by email, phone or text message about your order and these Terms. Marketing messages are sent only as permitted by law, and every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link. Reply STOP to any text message to stop texts.

14. Third-party sites and services

The Services rely on and link to third parties, including news publishers, newswires, Stripe, scheduling and email providers. We are not responsible for their content, availability or policies.

15. Disclaimers

Except for the guarantees in Section 8, the Services are provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement, to the fullest extent permitted by law.

16. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data or goodwill. Our total liability arising out of or relating to the Services is limited to the amount you paid us for the order that gave rise to the claim. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

17. Indemnification

You agree to defend and indemnify Vertropic against third-party claims, and related losses and reasonable legal fees, arising from content you supplied or approved, or from your breach of these Terms.

18. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Wyoming, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Each party will first try to resolve any dispute informally by email for 30 days. If that fails, the dispute will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its applicable rules, held remotely or in Sheridan County, Wyoming, except that either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court. Claims may be brought only on an individual basis, not as part of a class or representative action.

19. Events outside our control

We are not responsible for delays caused by events beyond our reasonable control, such as outages at a publisher, newswire or payment provider, natural disasters or government action. If such an event stops us from publishing your release within the guaranteed time, the guarantee in Section 8 still applies: you may choose to wait or take a full refund.

20. Changes, termination and general terms

We may update these Terms; the date at the top shows the latest version, and the version in force when you paid applies to that order. We may suspend access for breach of these Terms. Sections that by their nature should survive will survive. These Terms, your checkout page and any signed proposal are the entire agreement between us. If any provision is unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. You may not assign these Terms without our consent. Electronic acceptance and records are valid as signatures.

21. Contact

Questions about these Terms: press@vertropic.com, +1 (302) 725-4446, or Vertex Media & Commerce LLC, 30 N Gould St, Ste R, Sheridan, WY 82801, USA.