Service Agreement.

1 — Who this is between

"I" / "me" refers to Conor Dobbs, doing business as The Sound Method, sole proprietor, Sacramento, California. "You" / "Client" refers to the individual, household, or business that subscribes to a plan. This agreement starts when you subscribe to a plan (through this site or an order I send you) and continues month to month until cancelled under section 9.

2 — What you get

You get the plan shown on your order or the plans page at the price shown there, billed monthly in advance. In plain terms:

• Business On-Call IT + AI Ops — help desk for your devices, accounts, email, printers, and Wi-Fi; device and account setup and offboarding; managed backups with restore checks; practical AI tooling setup; and, on Pro, proactive monitoring, a monthly tune, a standing monthly working session, an inbound AI receptionist / missed-call text-back flow, and a monthly one-page report. Covers one business location, up to about ten users.
• Personal On-Call IT — help for one person or household: computers, phones, home network, backups, account security, "is this a scam?" checks, and setup guidance. Remote-first; on-site visits are billed separately.

The exact feature set for your tier is the one listed on the plans page on the day you subscribe. I can improve or adjust a plan's included features over time; I will not quietly remove something you rely on without telling you first.

3 — What's not included

So there are no surprises, these are outside every plan and are quoted separately before any work starts:

• · Hardware, software licenses, and paid subscriptions — these are pass-through at cost. You either pay the vendor directly or reimburse me at cost. No markup.
• · Cabling, physical infrastructure, and server-room buildouts.
• · 24/7 live human coverage. The AI receptionist catches inbound around the clock; human work happens in coverage hours (section 4). No plan promises a live person at 2 a.m. — that is an honest limit of a one-person shop.
• · Compliance audits (HIPAA, CMMC, PCI, SOC 2, and similar) and anything requiring a licensed professional.
• · Data-recovery lab work (physically damaged drives, forensic recovery).
• · Large project work — migrations, new-office standups, big buildouts — which is scoped and quoted separately (typically hourly or fixed-bid).
• · More users or additional locations than your plan covers, which move you to a higher tier or a custom quote.

4 — Service levels (what the SLA words mean)

• · Response means the time to a human reply and the start of triage within coverage hours. It is not a time-to-fix guarantee — how long a fix takes depends on the problem, on vendors, and on parts.
• · Business hours means Monday–Friday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Pacific, excluding U.S. federal holidays.
• · Response targets: Essential — next business day (same-day best effort); Pro — same business day, aiming within four business hours; Personal — next business day, same-day best effort.
• · After-hours triage (Pro) — inbound is caught 24/7 by the AI receptionist; urgent issues get a human callback the next business morning.
• · These are good-faith targets, not guarantees carrying penalties or credits. If I consistently miss them, the right remedy is to cancel (section 9) — there is no automatic refund or service credit for a missed target.

5 — Your side of it

For this to work, you agree to:

• · Give me accurate information and timely access to the systems, accounts, and devices I need to do the work.
• · Hold the licenses and rights to the software and systems you ask me to work on, and confirm you are authorized to grant me access.
• · Keep your own copy of critical data. I set up and monitor backups, but you remain the owner of your data and are responsible for having it backed up. Backups are a safety net, not a guarantee against every loss.
• · Not ask me to do anything unlawful, or to bypass a vendor's terms, a license, or a security control you do not have the right to bypass.
• · Pay on time so the plan stays active.

6 — Remote access & consent

Most work is done remotely. Remote sessions use an attended tool (currently RustDesk): a session only connects when you approve that specific connection, and you can watch the screen and end the session at any time. I do not install always-on, unattended remote access on a personal device without telling you. On business plans, monitoring agents (if any) are named in your onboarding so you know exactly what is running. You can revoke access at any time; doing so may limit what I can help with.

7 — Your data & confidentiality

Delivering support means I may see files, accounts, credentials, and system data on your devices. I treat all of it as confidential. I access only what is needed for the task in front of me, I do not copy your data off your systems except as needed to do the work you asked for, and I never sell it or share it with anyone outside what is needed to deliver the service. How I handle personal data generally — what is collected, who processes it, your rights, and retention — is in the Privacy Policy. If a job requires sharing data with a third party (for example, connecting your system to a vendor you choose), I do it only on your instruction and for that purpose. On cancellation, I return or delete the working data I hold on request, keeping only what law or tax records require.

8 — AI tooling

Some of what I set up uses AI — assistants, drafting tools, an inbound receptionist, automations. AI can be wrong. Anything an AI produces for your business should be reviewed by a person before it is relied on for a decision that matters, and I will say so when I hand a tool over. Any AI voice or messaging I set up for you is inbound-only (it answers; it does not place outbound sales calls or texts), and it always introduces itself as an AI assistant — it never pretends to be a person — consistent with California law. I am not responsible for the output of third-party AI models beyond setting them up correctly and configuring them as agreed.

9 — Billing, term & cancellation

• · Plans are month-to-month, billed in advance through Stripe, and renew automatically each month until cancelled.
• · Cancel any time. Email me and your plan ends at the close of the current paid month; service and any SLA end then. The current month is not pro-rated or refunded, because the slot and standby are already committed.
• · A one-time onboarding/setup fee may apply as stated on your order; it is non-refundable once onboarding has begun.
• · If payment fails and isn't fixed within a reasonable grace period, I may pause the plan and its SLA until it's current.
• · I can decline or end service with reasonable notice (for example, if the work falls outside what the plan is meant for, or the relationship isn't working). If I end it mid-month for a reason that isn't your breach, I refund the unused part of that month.

10 — What I promise, and what I don't

I do the work with reasonable skill and care, in a professional manner. Beyond that, the service is provided "as is." I don't promise that a system will never fail, that no data will ever be lost, that no security incident will ever happen, or any particular business outcome, revenue, or result. Technology, vendors, and attackers are outside my full control. Where the law allows, this replaces any other warranty, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose.

11 — Limit of liability

This is the important one, so it's in plain words:

• · My total liability to you for any and all claims arising out of the service — however they arise — is capped at the total fees you paid me in the three (3) months before the claim.
• · I am not liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages — including lost profits, lost revenue, lost or corrupted data, downtime, or loss of goodwill — even if I was told they were possible.
• · I am not liable for the acts, outages, bugs, pricing, or failures of third parties — software vendors, hardware makers, internet or cloud providers, payment processors, or AI model providers — or for data loss where a current backup was not maintained.
• · Nothing here limits liability that the law does not allow to be limited (such as for fraud, willful misconduct, or gross negligence). Some of these limits may not apply to you if your state's law forbids them; in that case they apply as far as the law allows.

12 — Indemnity

You agree to cover me against third-party claims that come from your content, your data, software or systems you told me to work on that you didn't have the rights to, or your use of a deliverable in a way we didn't agree to. I'll do the same for a third-party claim that my work infringed their intellectual property. Each of us will tell the other promptly about any such claim.

13 — Chargebacks

If you have a billing problem, email me first — I'd much rather sort it out directly. Filing a chargeback instead of contacting me, on a charge that matches this agreement, is a breach. I may pause or end service and decline future business in the case of an abusive dispute.

14 — Governing law & disputes

This agreement is governed by the laws of the State of California. We'll try to settle any dispute first by good-faith email. If it isn't resolved within thirty days, it will be settled by binding arbitration in Sacramento County, California. Each of us brings claims only on our own behalf, not as part of a class.

15 — The rest

If any part of this agreement is held unenforceable, the rest still stands. I may update this agreement; the effective date at the top reflects the current version, and material changes to active plans are communicated by email before they take effect. You can't transfer this agreement without my okay. This agreement, plus your order and the plans page, is the whole deal for the service plans.

16 — Accepting this

Subscribing to a plan — through this site or an order I send you — means you've read and agreed to this Service Agreement, the Terms, and the Privacy Policy. Questions first: hello@thesoundmethod.me.