Terms of Service

These terms govern your use of Daily Holmes (the "Service"), operated by Offbeat Tech, LLC. By using the Service you agree to them. If you don't, please don't use it. If you buy a subscription, the billing sections below are the part that costs you money, so please read them.

The service

Daily Holmes publishes one deduction case a day. The daily case is free to play. The archive, the older cases, is open to free players for a small number of plays each calendar month; the current ration is stated in the app where the archive is locked, because we adjust it as the Bureau grows. Beyond that ration the archive is part of a paid subscription called The Inspector's Desk.

Accounts

You can play the daily case without an account. An account is required to keep a record across devices and to hold a subscription. Accounts are created with an email address and a password, or by signing in with Google, through our authentication provider. You are responsible for keeping your credentials to yourself and for everything done through your account. One account per person. Do not share, sell, or transfer an account, and do not create an account for anyone under the age at which they can consent in their country.

You can delete your account at any time from your profile page. Deleting an account cancels any active subscription, ends access at once, and removes your account record. Some records we are legally required to keep, such as invoices and tax records, survive deletion. The Privacy Policy explains which and for how long.

The Inspector's Desk

The Inspector's Desk is an optional paid membership. It is sold three ways: a subscription at USD 3.99 per month, a subscription at USD 29.99 per year, or a single one-time payment of USD 49.99 for a lifetime membership (the "founding seat"). There is no free trial. A membership gives you unlimited archive plays, streak protection, the full reading of your record, a private members room in our Discord community, and the Inspector rank.

A membership is a licence to use the Service while it is active. It is not a purchase of the cases, the images, or any file. We may add to what a membership includes. If we remove a benefit that mattered when you subscribed, we will tell members by email before the change takes effect, and you may cancel as described below.

The founding seat is a licence for as long as the Service operates, not a perpetual product: "lifetime" means the lifetime of Daily Holmes. It never renews and is never charged again. If we ever discontinue the Service permanently, we will give founding members at least 30 days' notice, and members who bought the seat within the preceding 12 months may ask for a partial refund in proportion to that period.

Automatic renewal and billing

This section applies to the monthly and annual subscriptions only. The founding seat is a single payment: nothing in this section renews it, and no card is stored against it for a future charge.

A subscription renews automatically. When you subscribe you are charged the price shown at checkout, in United States dollars, for the term you picked. At the end of every term the same payment method is charged again for another term of the same length, at the then current price for your plan, without further action by you. This continues until you cancel. A monthly plan renews every month on the day of the month you subscribed. An annual plan renews every year on that date.

Payment is taken through Stripe, using Stripe's hosted checkout and billing pages. Your card number never reaches Daily Holmes servers. We receive a customer reference, a subscription reference, and the status of your payments. We send an email receipt for each charge, and, where a jurisdiction requires advance notice of a renewal, a reminder before the renewal date.

If a charge fails, we may retry it for a short period and may suspend Desk benefits until it succeeds. If it keeps failing, the subscription ends and your account returns to the free tier with your record intact.

Cancelling

You can cancel a subscription at any time, from the billing portal linked on your Desk page, which is operated by Stripe. Cancelling stops the next renewal. It does not cut your access short: you keep every Desk benefit until the end of the period you have already paid for, and after that your account continues on the free tier. We do not prorate an unused part of a term, except where a refund applies or the law requires otherwise.

A founding seat has nothing to cancel: it never renews. If you hold a subscription when you buy a founding seat, the subscription is set to end at the close of its current paid period and is not charged again; the seat carries your membership from then on.

Refunds

If you change your mind within 14 days of a charge, write to bureau@dailyholmes.com and we will refund that charge in full. This applies to every charge, the founding seat included. You do not need to give a reason. Refunds are returned to the payment method used. A refunded founding seat releases the seat and the membership with it. Outside that window we are not obliged to refund, but if something on our side went wrong, tell us anyway and we will make it right.

Price changes and the founding rate

Members who subscribed at the founding rate keep that rate for as long as the membership stays active. A membership stays active while it renews without interruption on the same account. It stops being active if you cancel, if you delete the account, or if a renewal fails and the subscription lapses. Resubscribing after a lapse means resubscribing at the price current on that day. Switching between the monthly and annual plan keeps your founding status on the plan you move to, at the founding price for that plan if one was set.

None of this applies to the founding seat: it has no renewals to protect a rate on and no lapse to fall out of. Once bought, it stands until the account is deleted, the charge is refunded, or the Service is discontinued as described above.

For everyone else, we may change prices. A price change never applies to a term you have already paid for. We will email you at least 30 days before a change takes effect for your subscription, and you can cancel before the new price is charged.

Taxes

Prices are shown in United States dollars. Depending on where you live, sales tax, VAT, or an equivalent may be added at checkout and shown before you pay. Any such tax is collected and remitted as required by law.

Advertising

The free tier is supported in part by advertising. Advertising scripts load only after you accept them in the consent banner, and they never load for a member of The Inspector's Desk. If you are paying, you do not see ads, whatever the banner says.

Acceptable use

Don't scrape the Service with automated tools. Don't spam submissions. Don't post abusive, hateful, harassing, or illegal content in deductions, tips, case submissions, or the community rooms. Don't publish a case answer where players who have not solved it will run into it. Don't try to obtain Desk benefits without paying for them. We may remove anything that violates these rules without notice.

The community rooms

The Bureau's community, including the members room that comes with a Desk membership, runs on Discord, a separate service with its own terms and its own privacy policy. We can grant or remove access to our rooms, but we do not control Discord. If Discord is unavailable, or if your Discord account is closed by Discord, the rest of your membership is unaffected and no separate refund arises for that benefit alone.

User submitted content

When you submit a case, a tip, or a public deduction, you keep the copyright. You grant Offbeat Tech, LLC a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to publish, edit, moderate, translate, or remove that content on Daily Holmes and in promotional contexts (for example, sharing your tip on social channels). Public submissions are attributed when a handle is provided.

AI scoring and feedback

Scores and written feedback are produced by a third-party AI model. They are subjective, occasionally wrong, and should not be taken as a measure of intelligence, taste, or skill. We tune the model and the prompts, but cannot guarantee accuracy.

Intellectual property

Case photographs, questions, answer keys, bonus facts, the Daily Holmes brand, and the site design are owned by Offbeat Tech, LLC or its licensors. AI-generated case images are clearly labeled on the case page. A subscription does not transfer any of this to you. Reuse outside fair use requires written permission.

Disclaimer of warranty

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not promise that a case appears every single day without fail, that the Service is never interrupted, or that a third party we depend on, such as our payment, hosting, AI, or community providers, is always available. Nothing here excludes a warranty that cannot lawfully be excluded, and consumers keep any statutory rights their local law gives them.

Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Offbeat Tech, LLC shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages arising from your use of the Service. Our total liability for any claim shall not exceed the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose, or one hundred United States dollars. Nothing in these terms limits liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

Suspension and termination

We may suspend or close an account, or block sessions, that violate these terms. If we close a paying member's account for a reason that is not their fault, we refund the unused part of the current term. If we close it for a serious breach of these terms, we do not. You can stop using the Service at any time, cancel a subscription at any time, and delete your account at any time.

Changes to the terms

If we change these terms in a material way, we'll show a banner on the site for at least two weeks before they take effect, and we will email members directly. Continued use after that counts as acceptance. A change that affects what you pay is handled under Price changes above, not by a banner alone.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New Mexico, United States, without regard to conflict of laws principles. Disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Bernalillo County, New Mexico. If you are a consumer, this does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory rules of the country where you live, and you may bring proceedings in your local courts where the law gives you that right.

Contact

Offbeat Tech, LLC, 1209 Mountain Road Pl NE, Ste N, Albuquerque, NM 87110, United States.

Anything about the game, your membership, a refund or a cancellation: bureau@dailyholmes.com

The company itself: support@offbeatwork.com

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