Tsoft Internet Services Billing and Payment Information

This page is intended to inform Tsoft's users as to how bills can be paid, and our billing and payment policy. It's in the form of a Q&A or FAQ... if you have any other questions, please let us know.

How can I pay for my account?

We accept major credit cards (Visa/Mastercard/American Express/Discover), checks, and company purchase orders. We can automatically charge your credit card each month, send you an email invoice, or a paper invoice. We prefer credit card autocharge for smaller bills because it requires less followup in relation to the size of the bill (typically). We do accept check payments on all accounts, but there is presently a $1 surcharge for bills under $50 to encourage the move to autocharge--you can avoid the surcharge on our lower-cost accounts by paying two or three months at a time to get the total bill above $50.

When are my payments due?

When we autocharge your credit card, we'll charge the card on or shortly after the first day of each month for that month's service.

When we are invoicing you, we'll usually send an invoice by email, but can send a paper invoice instead or in addition to it by request. Invoices are sent approximately 15 days before the beginning of the term you're being invoiced for, and are due by the 1st day of the term (generally the 1st of some month). If we haven't received your payment by the fifth day of the term, your service is subject to interruption. If your account is more than 30 days past due, regardless of whether or not we have suspended your Internet access account, we may turn your account over to a collection agency at any time thereafter, and a $25 collection agency fee will be added immediately.

From when to when am I billed?

We are presently billing for N months at a time normalized to the first of the month. We'll bill your first month a pro-rated amount to line you up with the first of the next month, and then bill you regularly. Monthly usage amount limits, such as the included web server data transfer with part-time accounts, are always measured from the first to last day of the month. If you are planning to cancel your account, please let us know and we will bill you for the appropriate partial month or term. In the future, we may offer multiple billing dates but this system is presently intended to keep accounting simple for both us and users trying to track measured services.

For most of our services, if you cancel your account in the middle of a month or term, we will gladly refund the appropriate prorated portion of your monthly fees (for example, cancel on the 20th on a monthly term and you'll receive about 1/3rd of your fee back). If you signed up under a term contract, you may be liable for an early termination penalty or to complete the term, as you'd be advised when signing up for the service.

What is the payment address?

Payments by check should be sent to:

Tsoft
P.O. Box 4398
Mountain View, CA 94040-4398

This address is also printed at the top of our paper invoices. You should mark your check with your login/email name (or the primary account login/email if it's a parent billing account for multiple subaccounts) to ensure it gets properly credited. If you're a leased-line or other customer without a dialup or email login, your company name is sufficient.

What about measured bandwidth and other charges that aren't known until after the service has been used?

First we should point out that there are no hidden charges, these are all spelled out on the various service offering pages. Some accounts, such as measured colocation, will always incur a measured fee, but most user's on part-time accounts won't (other than ISDN hourly fees). Of course if you have a very popular website, you may (but 500MB is a lot of data transfered!).

These are billed at the end of the month for the previous month along with base fees for the next month (or term, etc). Of course if you've closed your account, we'll just bill you for the excess or measured usage incurred. We may request a payment of these fees during the middle of the month or term (or autocharge it to your credit card) if some of these charges have accrued, in our discretion. You can always email support and ask for your current standing and we expect to have an online system so you can constantly check on your own shortly.

And unfortunately the question we hope never comes up...

What if I don't pay my bill, or I dispute my credit card charges through my credit card company?

If you don't pay your bill, either because you fail to pay an invoice, fail to provide corrected information or alternate payment when a credit card is declined or otherwise fails, and the charges are legitimate, we'll make reasonable efforts to collect. If we haven't been able to collect, we may turn your account over to a collection agency and additional collection charges will accrue immediately. If your account is more than 30 days past due, regardless of whether or not we have suspended your Internet access account, we may turn your account over to a collection agency at any time thereafter, and a $25 collection agency fee will be added immediately.

If you dispute a credit card charge through your card company prior to contacting us, regardless of whether we made an error or not, you will be assessed a $25 fee. You may contact us by email or phone, but should also contact us in writing regarding the matter. If you believe there is an error in a credit card charge, you should contact us first and we will take care of it promptly (we are very fair an interested in making it correct, and we are making every effort to make errors as non-existent as possible). If the charges are legitimate and correct, and you dispute the charge(s) anyway, we will treat the amount plus a $25 fee for the charge-back as an unpaid balance and your service will be subject to interruption.

Delinquent bills are subject to a 1.5% per month finance charge, or the maximum allowed by law. The minimum finance charge is $0.50. Bounced or returned checks are subject to a $25 fee in addition to any charges which remain unpaid and finance charges. If we have reason to believe a bounced or returned check was fraudulent, we will turn it over to the district attorney's office, and we'll pursue civil legal avenues when necessary to secure payment on valid service charges in any case.

You can reach Tsoft by email at sales@tsoft.com, or phone at +1 510 843 8763. See our contacts page for full contact information, including modem dialup numbers.