Terms of Service

PLEASE READ THESE TERMS OF USE CAREFULLY.  THEY CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS, REMEDIES AND OBLIGATIONS, AS WELL AS EXCLUSIONS AND LIMITATIONS ON YOUR LIABILITY.

Value Connect Inc. is committed to providing an excellent user experience. By using our website or services, you agree to comply with and be legally bound by the following Terms of Use.  If you do not agree to these Terms of Use, you must not use our website or services.

The term “VC”, “we”, or “our” refers to Value Connect Inc. and any of its affiliates that are authorized to use VC’s name or trademarks.  The term “you” refers to the users of our services or viewers of our website. 

1          ACCESSING VC’s SERVICES

1.1        Acceptance. Your access, purchase, acquisition, upload, and/or storage of any product, service or software from www.valueconnect.ca or myvalueconnect.com (including but not limited to: www.valueconnect.ca, its international versions and any other service powered by VC for third parties) via web, personal computer, mobile device, connected device, application programming interface (“API”) or otherwise (collectively “the Services”) is expressly conditioned on your compliance with and acceptance of these terms and conditions. If you do not agree to be bound by these terms and conditions your only remedy is to cease accessing or using the Services. For greater certainty, the term “Services” includes, without limitation, use of VC’s digital real estate appraisal report writing software.

2          THE SERVICES

2.1        Services. The Services include the provision of digital media download, upload, streaming and storage services designed to enable you to create, upload, store and review residential appraisal data and reports. The services are for your own commercial use and you are not authorised to make copies of or otherwise distribute any software, code, information, materials or documents. VC may at any time limit the number of devices that you may use to access the Services. VC may discontinue any aspect of the Services in its sole discretion without notice to you.

2.2        Commercial Single-Use Only. The Services are for commercial use by a single end user (one user per licence) and may not be accessed, used, transferred, re-sold, or sub-licensed for commercial gain in any manner that permits multiple end users to use a single licence, other than as may be otherwise agreed to by the parties in writing.

2.3        Third Party Content. The Services may contain links to third party websites, content or services (including datasets). You acknowledge and agree that VC is not responsible or liable for: (i) the availability or accuracy of such websites, services or datasets; or (ii) the content, products, or services on or made available by such third party websites or services. Links to third party websites, services or datasets do not imply any endorsement by VC of the third party websites or services or the content, products, or services available from them. You acknowledge sole responsibility for and assume all risk arising from your use of any third party websites, content or services.

3          FEES

3.1          Applicable Fees. Fees and other charges for use of our Services are set out on our website or in a written agreement between the relevant parties.  The fee structure may change from time to time.  If the fees applicable to your use of our Services change, we will provide you with thirty (30) days written notice by e-mail or by a notice when you log into our website or use our Services, after which your continued use of our services will constitute your agreement to the new fees.  Failure to dispute any fees or charges within thirty (30) days of the date the fees or charges are invoiced or otherwise charged to your account constitutes your acceptance of the fees and charges.

3.2 Taxes. You are responsible for all applicable taxes associated with your use of our Services, including any applicable taxes associated with our fees or other charges you may incur through the use of our Services.

4          SUPERVISION

4.1        Supervising Use of the Services. Appraiser firm owners, managers and/or supervisors of candidate, staff and sub-contractor appraisers who wish to allow their candidates, staff or sub-contractors to access or use the Services must have reasonable and appropriate safeguards in place to supervise such access and use, in order to ensure the candidate’s, staff’s and sub-contractor’s compliance with these Terms of Use.

5          AGE RESTRICTION TO REGISTER FOR SERVICES

5.1        Registering for the Services. You must be at least 18 years of age to agree to and enter into an agreement and register for the use of our Services.

5.2        Full Access. If you are an appraisal company owner, supervisor or manager allowing your staff, candidate(s) or sub-contractors access to the Services you are allowing them access to all of the Services. You are fully responsible for his or her use of the Services, including all financial charges and legal liability that are incurred. If you do not agree to (or cannot comply with) any of these terms and conditions, do not register and do not attempt to access the Service.

6          PRIVACY POLICY

6.1        Personal Information. If you register for any of the Services you will be asked to provide basic personal information. The information may be used for notifying you of changes or updates to the Services, or to provide Services to you or otherwise to carry out our business. VC will not sell, rent or otherwise disclose any of your personal information, including your email address, to any third party without your consent unless: 1) we are required to by law; 2) if it is necessary to provide the Services; or 3) in good faith, to protect or defend the rights or property of VC and other customers or users.

6.2        Communications from Us and Mailing Lists. To keep you informed about the operation of our website and the Services, VC may send service announcements to the email address you provided during registration. Such lists are strictly optional and may be unsubscribed from at any time.

6.4        Payment Information. If you pay VC for the Services, your payment information will only be used to check that it is a valid method of payment and to process your payment. No payment information is kept by VC

6.6        Your Rights. You have the right to be told what personal information is held about you. Should you wish to exercise that right, or if you have any questions concerning the VC privacy policy, please write to:  privacy@valueconnect.ca.

6.7        Cookies and Third Party Advertising. Our website uses cookies.  By using our website and agreeing to these Terms of Use, you consent to our use of cookies in accordance with these Terms of Use.  Cookies are files sent by web servers, to web browsers, and stored by the web browsers.  This enables a web server to track web browsers.

6.8        Aggregated Information. To monitor and improve the performance of our technology, VC may collect other data such as search criteria, results, downloads and purchases. VC only shares this data on an aggregate basis for instance to chart reporting companies for compilation of sales charts. VC may also gather information such as date, time, connection speed and IP address of all Service users. VC may use third party service providers to help track the activity and user flows for our website or Services. These third parties may use cookies and/or web beaconing technology to facilitate such tracking. Such tracking would track an individual user’s movements but the data would not be tracked in a personally identifiable way. Such data may be collected, used, transferred and disclosed for any purpose, including for commercial purposes.

6.9        Security. VC has implemented technology and security features, as well as internal guidelines, to safeguard the privacy of your personal information from unauthorised access or improper use. We employ SSL encryption to secure your personal data and payment information. While we make every effort to ensure that your information is secure on our system, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure.   We implement reasonable precautions appropriate to the sensitivity of the information, and follow standard industry practices to safeguard your personal information.

7          USER ACCOUNT, PASSWORD AND SECURITY

7.1        Password Security. If a particular Service requires you to open an account, you will complete a registration process by providing certain information and registering a username and password (“Credentials”) for use with that Service. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your Credentials. You are not authorised to share your Credentials with any other person. You may have a credit card or other payment method stored with VC. If your Credentials are used by a third party (whether or not authorised), the third party may be able to make purchases with your payment method. You will be fully liable for any actions made with your Credentials. VC advises you to change your password frequently and to always keep it secure.

7.2        Unauthorized Access. You agree to immediately notify us of any unauthorised use of your Credentials or any other breach of security. In no event will VC be liable for any loss or damage resulting from the disclosure of your Credentials. If you believe someone has accessed any Service using your Credentials without your authorisation, it is your responsibility to inform VC and set up a new password or contact VC’s customer services department to delete your account.

8          USAGE RULES

8.1        Use of Content. You acknowledge that all third party information, text, graphics, logos, photographs, images, moving images, sound, illustrations and other materials (“the Content”), whether posted publicly or transmitted privately, are the sole responsibility of the person from whom such Content originated. We do not control or endorse the Content and cannot guarantee the accuracy, integrity or quality of such Content and you acknowledge that by using the Services you may be exposed to Content that is offensive to you. VC will not be liable in any way for any Content or for any loss or damage of any kind resulting from the use of any Content transmitted via the Services. You agree to bear all risks associated with the use of any Content, including any reliance on the accuracy or completeness of such Content.

8.2          License. Subject to other obligations that may be applicable under a written agreement between the parties, you are granted a non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license (a) to access and use our website and Services solely in accordance with these Terms of Use; and (b) to print out discrete information from our website solely for internal purposes.

8.3          Proprietary Materials. The content, organization, graphics, images, logos, icons, audio clips, design, software, compilations, magnetic translation, digital conversion and other matters related to our website or Services are protected under applicable copyright, trademark, patent and other proprietary (including but not limited to intellectual property) laws and regulations.  The copying, redistribution, use or publication by you of any such material or any part of our website, except as explicitly permitted under these Terms of Use, is strictly prohibited.  You do not acquire any ownership rights to any material viewed through our website or accessible through the use of our Services, except as explicitly provided for under these Terms of Use or otherwise agreed to between the parties.  The posting of information or materials on our website does not constitute a waiver by us of any right in such information or materials.  Some of the content on our website may be copyrighted work or otherwise proprietary material of third parties.

8.4          Prohibitions and Intellectual Property.  VC owns all legal rights to our website and any information, material or documents contained on our website (collectively referred to as “Materials”).  Subject to other obligations that may be applicable under a written agreement between the parties, your license for access and use of our website and Services, and any Materials, is subject to the following restrictions and prohibitions:  You may not (a) copy, print (except for the express limited purpose permitted herein), republish, display, distribute, transmit, sell, rent, lease, loan or otherwise make available in any form or by any means all or any portion of our website or any Materials retrieved therefrom; (b) use our website or any Materials to develop, including as a component, any information, database, information base, or similar resource, in any media whatsoever, that is offered for commercial distribution of any kind, including through sale, license, lease, rental, subscription, or any other commercial distribution mechanism; (c) create compilations or derivative works of any Materials; (d) use any Materials in any manner that may infringe any copyright, intellectual property right, proprietary right, or property right of any third party; (e) remove, change or obscure any copyright notice or other proprietary notice; (f) remove, decompile, disassemble or reverse engineer any portion of our website or any software associated with our Services; (h) use any automatic or manual process to harvest information from our website; (i) use our website for the purpose of gathering information for or transmitting unsolicited commercial messages; or (j) use our website in a manner that violates any applicable law or regulation or interferes with or disrupts VC or the network(s) that support our website and Services.

8.5        Monitoring. We have no obligation to monitor the Services but may, at our sole discretion, review materials or content available on our website or through our Services to remove any material that breaches these Terms of Use or is otherwise objectionable.

9          TERMINATION

9.1        Termination. Unless otherwise agreed to by the parties in writing, VC has the right to terminate your access to any or all of the Services at any time, without notice, for any reason, including without limitation, breach of these Terms of Use.  You may terminate your use of our website and Services at any time.  The obligations and liabilities incurred prior to the termination date shall survive the termination of these Terms of Use.  Upon termination of your use of our website or Services, for any reason, you remain liable for any fees or charges incurred prior to termination.

10         EQUIPMENT

10.1      Equipment. VC makes no warranty that any particular computer, portable device, or other hardware will be compatible with VC’s Services.

10.2        Use of VC Equipment.  If supplied by VC, you must use the portable computing device provided to you when using our Services during the property inspection.  Unless otherwise agreed to by the parties in writing, the device provided to you by VC for use in connection with our Services must be returned to VC within fifteen (15) days of the termination of this agreement.  Unless otherwise agreed to by the parties, if you fail to return the device provided by VC within fifteen (15) days of termination of this Agreement, you shall pay VC $1,000.

11         USER POSTED MATERIAL

11.1      Posted Material. VC does not claim ownership of any materials you post, upload or submit to any area of the website or Services. However, by doing so you grant VC a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to sub-license, copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, publicly display, edit, translate or publish such content for any purpose.

12         INDEMNITY

12.1        General. You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless VC, its suppliers, affiliates, partners, associates, employees, agents, successors, assigns or content or service providers, and each of their respective directors, officers, employees, consultants, agents and suppliers from and against any breach by you of these Terms of Use and any claim, costs or damages of any kind, including reasonable legal fees, arising from any and all claims, suits or demands pertaining to your use of the website or our Services, or arising out of your breach of these Terms of Use or your violation of any rights of any other user or third party.

12.2        Irreparable Harm.  You acknowledge that any breach of any term or provision of these Terms of Use will result in immediate and irreparable harm and damage to VC, and that, in the event of any such breach, VC shall be entitled to equitable relief by way of temporary or permanent injunction, in addition to any and all other relief as a court of competent jurisdiction may deem appropriate, or as otherwise set out in these Terms of Use.

13         DISCLAIMERS AND LIMITATION OF LIABILITY

13.1        Disclaimer. The Services are provided on an "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" basis without any representation or endorsement made and without warranty of any kind whether express or implied, including but not limited to the reliability, timeliness, quality, suitability, truth, availability, accuracy or completeness of the website or Services.  Except as specifically set forth in these terms of use, all conditions, representations and warranties regarding the website, our services or any content, whether express, implied, statutory or otherwise, including without limitation, any implied warranty of merchantable quality, merchantability, fitness for a particular use or purpose, or non-infringement of third party rights, are disclaimed to the maximum extent permissible by applicable law by VC.

13.2        Limitation of Liability. Under no circumstances shall VC or any of its suppliers, affiliates, partners, associates, employers, agents, successors, assigns, or content or service providers, and each of their respective directors, officers, employees, consultants, agents and suppliers, be liable to you or any other user or any third party for any damages of any kind, including without limitation loss of profits or other economic loss, or for any direct, indirect, exemplary, incidental, punitive, special or consequential damages, even if advised of the possibility of such damages, arising out of: the use of the website, services or any content; the reliance on any statement or adviCe from any content; the inability to gain access to or use the website, services, or any part thereof, or to any content; or out of any breach of any warranty, express or implied.  TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE TOTAL LIABILITY OF THE COMPANY FOR DAMAGES GRANTED IN ANY CLAIM, ACTION OR LEGAL PROCEEDING RELATING TO OR ARISING FROM THE USE OF OUR SERVICES, WHETHER ARISING FROM A BREACH OF THESE TERMS OF USE, BREACH OF WARRANTY, NEGLIGENCE OR ANY OTHER KIND OF CIVIL OR STATUTORY LIABILITY RELATING TO THESE TERMS OF USE, IN CONTRACT OR IN TORT, EXCEED THE TOTAL PAYMENTS PAID BY YOU TO US FOR USE OF OUR SERVICES IN THE SIX (6) MONTHS PRECEDING ANY SUCH CLAIM, ACTION OR LEGAL PROCEEDING.

14         SEVERANCE

14.1        If any of these terms and conditions should be determined to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable for any reason by any court of competent jurisdiction, then the parties agree that the court should endeavour to give effect to the parties’ intentions as reflected in the provision, and the other provisions of these Terms of Use remain in full force and effect.

15         GOVERNING LAW

15.1        These Terms of Use and any separate agreements whereby we provide you Services shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Province of Ontario and the applicable laws of Canada, without regard to conflict of laws provisions.  You hereby consent and submit to the jurisdiction (personal or otherwise) of the courts of the Province of Ontario (City of Guelph) in any action or dispute related to these Terms of Use, the website or our Services.

16         CHANGES TO TERMS

16.1        We may revise these Terms of Use at any time.  We may, at our sole discretion, notify you of a change to these Terms of Use, for example by announcing the change on our website, by e-mailing you about the change, or by notifying you when you log into our website or use our Services.  Your continued use of our website or Services constitutes your consent to the contents of any updated Terms of Use.

17         ENTIRE AGREEMENT

17.1        These Terms of Use, and any provisions incorporated by reference, constitute the entire agreement between you and VC and govern your use of the website, superseding any prior agreement, whether oral or written.

18         NO THIRD PARTY RIGHTS

18.1        No provision of these Terms of Use provides any person or entity not a party to this agreement with any remedy, claim, liability, reimbursement, or cause of action or creates any other third party beneficiary rights.

19         CONTACT

19.1        For any questions relating to our Services, website or these Terms of Use, please contact us at info@valueconnect.ca.