The following are the terms and conditions for the use of services provided by BMI Global. The web hosting packages (further referred as accounts, web-servers, hosting accounts) are offered on paid basis to individuals who are at least 18 years old or minors with parental permission, and to businesses or corporations (further referred as client or clients).
The services provided by BMI Global are out-sourced services, including web-space and email services. BMI Global will do its best to ensure a prompt and fair level of service to its clients. Frontpage support refers to MS Frontpage 2000 and MS Frontpage 2002. Frontpage 98 is no longer supported.
Billing and accounts receivable policy
Backup and Storage policy
Bandwidth usage policy
Web Space usage policy
Customer support policy
Acceptable usage and content policy
Policy on Spam and
Unsolicited Commercial Email
Disclaimers and limitation of liability
Indemnification
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1. Billing and accounts receivable policy
All customers of BMI Global must abide by all the terms set forth in this and all other policies. Violation of any of these terms may result in the immediate termination of an account.
Billing may be done on quarterly, annual, or as-is basis. Prices are subject to change in the future, but are guaranteed through your paid billing period.
1.1 Paying for your account
BMI Global accepts only one method of payment for all transactions, that is being by good cheque. BMI Global may from time to time enhance its payment process and may soon adopt credit card or other related services as alternative payment method. (In addition, payment with a credit card will ensure that your account is not accidentally deactivated due to lost mail or other problems. )
Please send updates to BMI Global regarding your credit card information if you receive a new credit card number and/or expiration date. Problems may arise with your account if your card expires. There is a reactivation charge of USD25 for accounts deactivated because of non-payment. Accounts paid by credit cards are charged monthly. BMI Global will in the future accept MasterCard and American Express.
1.2 Payments from international clients
For international orders the preferred method of payment is either by issuing a draft in Hong Kong Dollars or use of one of the credit cards mentioned above.
1.3 Updating your billing information
Clients can submit updated billing information to BMI Global by fax at 852-25440882. Please include your credit card number, name and exipry date, your domain name and contact details.
1.4 Billing for your domain from Internic (Network Solutions) and other Domain Registries.
Network Solutions Inc., the company who runs Internic, will bill you separately for your domain registration fee for domain names that clients registers themselves. The current NSI fee schedule is found by going to http://www.networksolutions.com
If we register a domain name on your behalf, you will reimburse us for the payments and may include our nominal administrative fees.
1.5 Account cancellation
The initial set-up fee and first quarterly or annual billing service charge (such as hosting fees) for an account is non-refundable. If an account is cancelled after the billing cycle for a certain period, the account will be billed for the entire period.
30 days written notification is required before account cancellation may take place. Please send notice via email to info@bmiglobal.com . You will receive a cancellation confirmation at the email address you nominated. If you do not receive a confirmation within 3 days of cancellation, contact info@bmiglobal.com.
Please note no other means is acceptable and/or valid to cancel the account.
1.6 Upgrading and downgrading account types
To upgrade or downgrade your account simply e-mail sales@bmiglobal.com.
No upgrade fee is charged to upgrade the current hosting account to a higher account. When downgrading you will be charged the set-up fee for your new account package.
BMI Global reserves the right to reject an account. BMI Global reserves the right to terminate an account immediately if the account infringes our terms and conditions. BMI Global reserves the right to terminate an account with 7 days notice at any time.
2. Backup and Storage policy
All customers of BMI Global must abide by all the terms set forth in this and all other policies. Violation of any of these terms may result in the immediate termination of an account.
BMI Global's outsourced services backs up all server configurations and contents on a regular basis, which helps in restoring the existing configurations and contents in case of hardware failure. It is not always possible to restore the data for clients and therefore we encourage our clients to back up their contents on regular basis. BMI Global will provide help or assistance, where it can, to recover the lost data due to any reason but, accepts no responsibility or liability for possible permanent data loss.
To maintain the high performance of the servers we need to clean/delete the stats log files from time to time. Usually this deletion process occurs on the beginning of each month. Customers are advised to make copies of the log files regularly and before deletions, as BMI Global does not provide an individual log files recording or storage facility. BMI Global accepts no responsibility or liability for loss of log files after deletion of log files.
BMI Global provides access to a real time graphics stats server (by Media House) for each domain. We encourage our customers to export all the necessary stats records on regular basis. Due to involvement of third party services and complex nature links between domains and the stats server, neither BMI Global nor any third party holds any responsibility or liability for any stats data loss or corruption (if occurred).
Further it is strongly advised that you retain a copy of each and every file or data-type before uploading it on the BMI Global servers, as BMI Global does not accept any responsibility or liability for permanent loss of data, in any form.
3. Bandwidth usage policy
All customers of BMI Global must abide by all the terms set forth in this and all other policies. Violation of any of these terms may result in the immediate termination of an account.
BMI Global has an extremely capable 3rd-party service provide who in turn has connection to the major backbones of the Internet. As the needs arise, our bandwidth is continually upgraded to accommodate the growing needs of our users. However, if any one web site produces an abnormally large amount of web site traffic for extended periods of time, this can cause slowdowns throughout our entire network.
Accounts on higher-level hosting plans will be granted more leniency in regards to bandwidth usage. Here is a guideline of which plan might best fit your needs based solely on bandwidth. Please note that other items such as CGI or email might require you to purchase a different, more suited, package.
If an account is found to be using excessive bandwidth, the owner of the account will be contacted about upgrading his account or negotiating extra bandwidth charges.
If you have any questions about this or any other policies held by BMI Global, please feel free to email us at info@bmiglobal.com.
4. Web Space usage policy
All customers of BMI Global must abide by all the terms set forth in this and all other policies. Violation of any of these terms may result in the immediate termination of an account.
BMI Global provides limited web space to store files and data. The size of the web space depends upon the account size you have chosen.
If an account is found to be using more web space than allocated, the client will be contacted about reducing the web space to their account limit, or upgrading the account or negotiating over-used web space. The owner will have 7 days to correct this problem – reduce web space to limit, upgrade the account or purchase an extra web space.
Separate invoice may be issued for excess web space utilised.
Please note that stats log files for your domain are stored in your web space and is part of your account. Sometimes these files are the reason for the over-size of an account. It is the customer’s responsibility to download the logs files regularly and delete them from the server when necessary.
For further information in this regard please contact info@bmiglobal.com.
5. Customer support policy
All customers of BMI Global web hosting must abide by all the terms of these policies. Violation of any of these policies may result in the immediate termination of an account.
It has been the goal of BMI Global since our founding to provide top-quality customer support and satisfaction. We would like to take this opportunity to clarify what our role is in providing web presence service.
There are certain features such as CGI, ASP, ODBC, SSI, real audio, etc., that we provide to our user. However, due to the complex nature of supporting such services, we are unable to support users in learning how to use such features. We will verify that the settings are correct on our end, but to help users correctly set up their own files, we must charge a fee based on professional rates.
In this document, we wish to clarify what issues shall receive free technical support ('general issues') and which shall be charged for ('advanced support'). We make great effort to provide a fast turn-around on support for all general support issues. The time frame for advanced support will vary depending upon the complexity of the issue. If you have any confusion as to what issues would fall into the general support category and which would have a charge, please e-mail info@bmiglobal.com .
We have outlined below several examples of general support issues and some advanced support issues:
5.1 General support issues [no charge]
You may obtain free technical support on issues similar to the following by emailing info@bmiglobal.com .
Problems logging into an account. [Password set-up incorrectly, ftp login incorrect, etc.]
Problems uploading files due to server issues [permissions incorrectly caused by us].
System configuration problems caused by us.
Web site not loading due to errors on our part [DNS incorrect etc.].
E-mail accounts not functioning. However, the client is advised to regularly maintain their mailboxes to avoid exceeding their allocated capacity of the website. BMI Global will not be responsible for other effects such as misplaced password, for which separate administrative fees of USD20/- will apply.
Modification of domains or internic contacts [free or on case-by-case basis]
BMI Global wants to insure that you have complete domain service with your account. This means being able to reach a web site at a fully qualified domain name URL (i.e., http://www.yourdomainname.com).
Included with the creation of each new account is the registration (separate or modification of a domain name with network solutions, inc. (Internic) to work with our servers. If, after this initial processing, you need to modify this existing domain, there will be a USD25.00 service charge. This fee will be applied for modifying information on your billing address or any of your contacts. We encourage our customers to complete these actions themselves by filling out an easy to use internic templates found at http://rs.internic.net/rs-internic.html
For modification of domains registered with other registries, BMI Global will be pleased to assist the client for a separate fees, though the client is also encouraged to complete these actions themselves.
5.2 FrontPage errors [USD25.00 charge]
FrontPage can be a terrific site building tool if used properly. Unfortunately, many users experience problems such as the infamous 'FrontPage error.' the majority of problems with FrontPage are created by the user, however, we usually get blamed for not setting up the extensions correctly. To prevent this situation from happening in the future, we now test all FrontPage extensions as part of the installation process.
If a FrontPage error occurs, caused by the user, we will confirm the need to be repaired, and attempt to fix it at the user’s request. If we are successful in resolving the problem, a USD25.00 charge will be applied. If we are unable to correct the problem, no charge will be made. Please note that this charge will be applied each and every time the fix is applied. This means that if after we fix the problem and the user creates it again, the fix charge will be applied again. It is good economic sense to understand the problems involved.
Here are some simple rules of thumb to avoid FrontPage errors:
Do not modify permissions.
Do not make modifications to pages pertaining to the particular web bot.
Do not try and edit customisable web bot features.
Do not use periods (.) in a web name
Miscellaneous services
5.3 The following requests will be completed for a one-time charge of USD20.00:
Clean up or reinstallation of an account. If you desire to start over from scratch, we will delete and recreate your account. This includes the option of reinstalling FrontPage extensions.
5.4 Advanced support [$75.00 per hour]
Technical assistance with any user-supplied CGI script, ASP extensions, java applets, etc., is not included in the 'general support' category. If you will require assistance with your web site development including Frontpage development, setting up or debugging a CGI program we will provide it at the rate of $75.00 an hour, billed a minimum of 60 minutes in advance. If the error was found to stem from incorrect system settings (caused by BMI Global), the fee will be waived. Services falling under this category would include:
Custom CGI scripts and applications
Web site development
Making image files smaller in file size
Technical support with user CGI, ASP, Java etc.
6. Acceptable usage and content policy
All customers of BMI Global web hosting must abide by all the terms set forth in this and all other policies. Violation of any of these terms may result in the immediate termination of an account.
BMI Global strictly prohibits any account hosted on our servers from containing certain types of material. These include, but are by no means limited to:
Adult oriented material, such as pornography, and/or other offensive material as deemed by BMI Global.
Any material that is not suitable for minors.
Material that is considered illegal by any governing body.
Warez (commercial software made available for free over the internet).
Illegal mp3 files.
Other illegally obtained or distributed software and/or files.
Documentation on hacking, software piracy, counterfeiting, bomb making, etc., posted with the intent of fostering criminal activity.
Any other questionable material, as determined by BMI Global.
Any material, which is meant to harm, bash, offend, or pull down another group, be it political, religious, racial, sexual, or otherwise.
Sites promoting or fostering hate crimes toward any other group.
Any site hosted by BMI Global which provides offensive adult services, as deemed by BMI Global, will be stopped, without due notice to the client, in expectation of a site clean up, there shall be a minimum service charge of USD150/- to reactivate the site and work done on confirmation of acceptance, of site content, and further charges at the rate of $75.00 per hour after the first hour. There will also be a charge of USD1.00 per MB of data transfer if the site accumulates data during that period. BMI Global will not tolerate offensive adult web sites.
No email address provided by BMI Global shall be used to send 'Spam,' or un-solicited mass email messages. Any account found in violation of this will be cancelled immediately without due notice to the client.
Any activity that overloads our servers and/or hides access to sites hosted by BMI Global will not be permitted nor tolerated. This includes, but is not limited to:
Providing email service to large numbers of people not affiliated with you or your company (i.e., running a service similar to iname or netaddress).
Any other usage of provided system resources, which would constitute abuse in any form.
Any such activity can and will result in the immediate termination of your account.
If you are unsure of anything that you would like to place on your web site, please contact us regarding this matter before you sign up. This will relieve stress and time on both sides.
We reserve the right to cancel any account at any time, with or without notice to the client, for any reason deemed necessary by the management of BMI Global.
We reserve the right to change the terms of this acceptable usage and content policy at any time for any reason deemed necessary.
If you know of any account that is abusing these practices, please email info@bmiglobal.com and describe the abuse, and provide us with the URL or email address of the party you are reporting, if at all possible.
7. Policy on Spam and UCE
All customers of BMI Global must abide by all the terms set forth in this and all other policies. Violation of any of these terms may result in the immediate termination of an account, without notice to the client.
Recent growth of the Internet has also brought about more and more possibilities for abuse of this new communications medium. In response to this, we have developed the following position on abuse of Internet services provided by BMI Global in order to protect you, our customer, from Internet harassment and intrusions of privacy.
'Netiquette’ is a term, which has come to receive widespread use on the Internet. Netiquette is generally defined as the standards or practices an individual or organization engages in to engender responsible internet citizenship on their behalf, as well as refraining from standards or practices which would impose undue financial, time, or social constraints on other users of the internet.
The Internet, as large and complex as it is, has no single governing body. There is no Internet management to complain to when things go wrong. Every facet of the Internet is overseen by those organizations (such as BMI Global) whose networks are interconnected to form the Internet. This also means that every user of the Internet is responsible for their own-behaviour.
Because the Internet is simply an interconnected set of smaller networks, each entity using the Internet retains some liability for the cost associated with traffic and storage. for example, a single posting to a single newsgroup takes storage space on the local news server, then must be transmitted to a few more servers, which store the information on their hard drives, retransmitting to a few more servers, etc. when the costs of the storage space and transmission are all factored together, a single newsgroup posting can cost the collective internet thousands of dollars! There are similar costs associated with the bandwidth required to transmit email. Therefore, someone using email or news postings for abusive purposes can have a large financial impact on the networks involved.
Aside from the financial costs, someone who has fallen victim to some sort of Internet abuse has other costs in terms of decreased effectiveness of the Internet. For example, someone besieged by Spam email (a massive bulk email message to subscribers who did not indicate any desire to receive such email) spends additional time downloading and responding to email, which was never wanted in the first place. A newsgroup subscriber may see their favourite newsgroup overrun with meaningless off-topic advertisements, obscuring any effective information still remaining in that newsgroup.
When a client of BMI Global performs any one of these abusive activities, BMI Global pays a price as well. The additional time we have to spend responding to the complaints that pour in could be much better served fulfilling other responsibilities. Complaints do indeed pour in. if the domain “bmiglobal.com’ appears anywhere in the email headers, we will receive complaints. Even if someone is using the services of another ISP to send out 'Spam' advertising their BMI Global hosted site or that of its partners or associates or other 3rd-party vendors, we will get complaints.
In particularly egregious incidents, angry internet users have been known to 'mail bomb' ISPs by setting up programs to send so much email that the ISP’s mail server crashes, denying email access to every customer of the ISP. Our system is robust enough to escape most of this type of activity, but you can see that in a case like this, the effect would be that of one rogue user spoiling the party for everyone.
Because of the potential consequences of this type of activity, BMI Global has never taken a liking to this type of behaviour by our customers. in the past however, we have given people the benefit of the doubt, assuming they didn't know that their actions could have such unwanted effects. If we received a complaint about a BMI Global client-user abusing the Internet, our standard practice had been to warn the user that further behaviour of this type would result in termination of their account without notice to the client.
This strategy, although mostly effective, still let’s Internet abuse originate from BMI Global. Therefore, we've decided to switch to a more proactive strategy, making sure our customers know beforehand what is and is not appropriate on the Internet. All new subscribers to BMI Global's services will be informed of the consequences of internet abuse as part of our revised 'acceptable usage and content policy.' now that we've gone on the record with what is and what isn't acceptable use of the internet, any BMI Global client who abuses the resources of the internet in any of the following ways will permanently lose their access to the BMI Global network. These ways include:
Excessive posting of email to Internet users who previously have not indicated a desire to receive such email
Posting messages to multiple Internet newsgroups, which are not immediately relevant to the topics of the newsgroups
Posting advertisements on groups that don't specifically permit advertising. (How do you know? watch the group for a while before you post blindly. if other people are advertising openly, then you are pretty safe doing the same. don't advertise unless you are sure.)
Using the BMI Global network for any illegal purpose.
There are literally thousands of advertising and marketing resources that are effective and either low, or no cost. These include classifieds on every one of the thousands of malls on the internet, your BMI Global web space, registering with search engines, appropriate usenet postings, and many other completely legitimate methods of appropriate advertising.
We are not saying you can't advertise on the Internet. What we are saying is that we will cancel the account of any subscriber who uses BMI Global’ services to advertise inappropriately; primarily meaning, using unsolicited mass mailings, and spamming the usenet.
We’re aware of the many ways that someone can hide their identity on the Internet, and rest assured that a person's access would not be terminated until we are sure that they indeed are responsible for the abuse that appears to be coming from them. Hopefully this document should answer all of the questions of existing subscribers.
Any subscriber that violates the Spam policies of BMI Global will be charged $250.00 per hour for the time it takes us to 'clean-up' your Spam. This shall include but not be limited to the time required to answer mail from angry recipients of your Spam and/or repair of a damaged server due to the 'mail bombing' or other actions of the angry recipients in retaliation of you Spam. Please note also that it is now considered a crime in many parts of the world, to send UCE (unsolicited commercial email) as it falls into the category of 'junk faxes.'
BMI Global will turn over names and personal information of any person who violates any local or international laws, by-laws, or regulations to the appropriate local / national / international organisations and officials for further legal action.
If you have any further questions regarding our policy on Spam/UCE, please email us at info@bmiglobal.com.
8. Disclaimers and limitation of liability
The information and services included in or available through the BMI Global web site or sites or products related to the BMI Global service, may include inaccuracies or typographical errors. Changes are periodically added to the information herein. The BMI Global management may make improvements and/or changes to its service at any time.
BMI Global does not claim in any way that the web hosting services provided by them, will be uninterrupted or error-free, that defects will be corrected, or that the service or the server that makes it available, are free of viruses or other harmful components. BMI Global does not claim in any way that the use or the results of the use of the services provided by them or the materials made available as part of the service will be correct, accurate, timely, or otherwise reliable.
By being a client of BMI Global the client specifically agree that BMI Global shall not be responsible for unauthorized access to or alteration of your transmissions or data, any material or data sent or received or not sent or received, or any transactions entered into through the services provided by them.
The client specifically agree that BMI Global is not responsible or liable for any threatening, defamatory, obscene, offensive or illegal content or conduct of any other party or any infringement of another's rights, including intellectual property rights. The client specifically agree that BMI Global is not responsible for any content sent using and/or included in the services provided by them, by any third party.
BMI GLOBAL AND/OR ITS RESPECTIVE SUPPLIERS/VENDORS AND REPRESENTATIVES MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE SUITABILITY, RELIABILITY, AVAILABILITY, TIMELINESS, AND ACCURACY OF THE SERVICE FOR ANY PURPOSE. THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. BMI GLOBAL AND/OR ITS RESPECTIVE REPRESENTATIVES HEREBY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS WITH REGARD TO THE SERVICE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.
IN NO EVENT SHALL BMI GLOBAL AND ITS SUPPLIERS/VENDORS AND ITS REPRESENTATIVES BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, PUNITIVE, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THE SERVICE OR RELATED WEB SITES, WITH THE DELAY OR INABILITY TO USE THE SERVICE OR RELATED WEB SITES, THE PROVISION OF OR FAILURE TO PROVIDE SERVICES, OR FOR ANY INFORMATION, SOFTWARE, PRODUCTS, SERVICES AND RELATED GRAPHICS OBTAINED THROUGH THE SERVICE, OR OTHERWISE ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THE SERVICE, WHETHER BASED ON CONTRACT, TORT, NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY OR OTHERWISE, EVEN IF BMI GLOBAL OR ANY OF ITS REPRESENTATIVES HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF DAMAGES. BECAUSE SOME STATES/JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF LIABILITY FOR CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, THE ABOVE LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU. IF
YOU ARE DISSATISFIED WITH ANY PORTION OF THE SERVICE, OR WITH ANY OF THESE TERMS OF USE, YOUR SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE REMEDY IS TO DISCONTINUE USING THE SERVICE AND ITS RELATED WEB SITES.
9. Indemnification
You agree to indemnify and hold BMI Global, its parent, subsidiaries, affiliates, officers and employees, harmless from any claim, demand, or damage, including reasonable attorneys' fees, asserted by any third party due to or arising out of your use of or conduct on the services provided by them.
The Management
BMI Global Pte Ltd - Singapore
BMI Global Consultants Limited - Hong Kong
