Terms of Sale

Updated: Thursday 13 April 2023.

Contact is via email, only, at

Pay Attention!

You are required to read this entire page prior to making a purchase. I’ll try to emphasize a few terms even more:

• Returns
  • Within 30 days of delivery, return in original condition, for any reason, with tracked shipping paid by you. The original purchase amount will be refunded, subject to the details below.
  • Within 1 year of delivery, return for any manufacturing defect, subject to the details below. The original purchase amount, and the cost of tracked, return shipping will be refunded, subject to the details below including Warranty conditions.
• This is pretty much a device made by 1 engineer. It is raw, not pretty, & continuing to evolve.
• The goal of the device is to prevent the theft of your bike. It knows that it will be attacked, perhaps with an angle grinder. Thus it cannot prevent damage to itself. It is sacrificial! And you won’t get any money back when that happens! Hopefully, it will at least discourage the thief.
• Don’t use this in freezing cold. Prolonged exposure to rain is untested.

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Table of Contents

Sale
Warranty
Shipping & Taxes
Returns & Refunds
Repairs & Upgrades
Replacement Parts
Intellectual Property

Sale

By purchasing the product/device:

• you understand that the goal of the device is to deter, or hamper, the theft of your bike, even at the expense of sacrificing itself;
• you understand that a thief’s first instinct is to smash the device, & so it will very likely be damaged during a theft;
• you understand that the device is not designed to survive impacts or attacks, or even to remain unscathed;
• you understand that, depending upon the specifics of the attack, the device might NOT last long enough to achieve its goal of hampering the theft;
• you understand that drawing attention to the theft might NOT result in hampering or defeating the theft, or of recovery of your stolen property;
• you understand that preventing theft of bicycles has mostly to do with your parking practices;
• you understand that no guarantee is offered that usage of the device will prevent or even hamper a theft, and that YOU ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE REPLACEMENT COSTS of your property and of the device/product.

Maximum liability is the purchase-price of the product.

Warranty

1 year for manufacturing defects, for the original purchaser. The warranty is not transferable. There is no warranty, expressed, express or implied, that your property will not be stolen or damaged; this applies to both the M!nder and any object to which it is attached.

If the M!nder was dropped, attacked, vandalized, or tampered with–such as during a theft attempt, or while accessible to anyone who can harm it–then the warranty will be void, even if this occurs during the initial, one-year, warranty period.

Any misuse or mishandling is not covered. This includes recharging the device in any manner which may damage the device or its battery pack, or which may cause the protection circuitries to shut the device, or the battery pack, down.

The warranty will become void if a power source other than the battery pack provided by, or explicitly tested and approved by, bikeMinder.ca is used.

There is no warranty coverage for rust. There is no warranty coverage for repeated or prolonged exposure to heavy rain, or to snow or freezing temperatures. Prolonged exposure to heavy rain is untested, and may damage the device.
Freezing (at or under 0 C) temperatures are untested, as are temperatures above 40 C. Like with other lithium batteries, prolonged exposure to temperatures near, or below, 0 C will shut the device.

The device is not designed to withstand falls, drops, attacks or vandalism. It may well be damaged or destroyed.

The maximum liability is limited to the purchase-price paid for the M!nder.

Repairs, replacements or upgrades carried out by anyone other than the creator of the M!nder will void its warranty.

Shipping & Taxes

Shipping

Any import duties/tariffs would be the responsibility of the customer.
The shipping carrier may charge a handling fee for brokerage; this, too, will be the responsibility of the customer, if it arises.
If the shipment is withheld, or ceased, by Customs, release and any fees will be the responsibility of the customer. No responsibility is accepted for the actions of the Customs authority of the recipient.

Taxes

The customer is responsible for paying any taxes that may be payable to their taxation jurisdictions.
Sales tax is collected from customers in Canada. For other countries, responsibility remains with the customer.

Returns & Refunds

All outgoing shipments are individually photographed. And this is not a device that can suffer damage during transit. You must photograph your delivered shipment, before and after opening, for any claims related to damage-during-transit.

All returns have to be authorized by me beforehand. If you ship without asking me, it will be your fault and at your cost; the received shipment may be discarded.
The return address is in Vancouver, Canada, with details provided in the authorization email.
The shipping service will need to be approved by me.
Only the original purchaser can request a return.
If the M!nder was dropped, attacked, vandalized, or tampered with–such as during a theft attempt, or while accessible to anyone who can harm or mishandle it–then no returns or refunds will be accepted. The product is not designed to survive such, and it must be treated with care. In fact, the M!nder expects to lure the attack away from the bike, and be damaged in the process.

No Manufacturing Defects

You will pay the costs of shipping the product back to me, using a trackable service agreed-upon with me, and with proper packing and packaging. The product must be received in its original condition.

You are purchasing the product at a far cheaper price than it would be at a physical shop–minimum 40% cheaper. As well, you are not walking into a shop–which’d be at your own transportation cost, with shipment/delivery taken care of by you.
When shopping on this site, you enjoy the lower price, but you are accepting the risk of return costs. The price has not been adjusted to account for defect-free returns, so this will cost me the fees of payment processors, and the costs of packing and shipping the product to you! Abuse of this privilege will result in a change of policy.

Please ensure that you really want the product before placing an order! Ask any questions you have on mind. I’d rather lose a sale than to deal with capricious returns! I’m not a large enterprise, and cannot absorb the costs.

Requests are considered only within the first 30 days after delivery, and only from the original purchaser.

Note: Refunds can take many weeks to reflect in your bank/card account.

Note for customers from the EU, on the May 2022 European Commission’s additions to consumer rights: All shipments are from the west coast of Canada, as is the return address. As with all other customers, if you change your mind about the purchase, you will be responsible for associated costs. (It is not ‘free’, financially or environmentally, to fly an object across the planet!) For a product that is not in its original condition, you might even lose money! If you don’t like that, don’t buy from half-way across the planet; support your local shops! Walk in there, have a conversation with a human being. And if that shop wants to carry the M!nder (which will be at a retail price of at least $210 CAD), let me know! 🙂

Cosmetic Flaws

Cosmetic flaws and shortcomings are not considered defects. See No manufacturing Defects, above. This product is not mass manufactured; it is created on a very small scale, and put together by hand. As much as 99% of the work that went into it is unseen by its user. After function, size, weight and price, aesthetics are a very distant bottom in the stack of priorities.

Manufacturing Defects

This refers to functional defects i.e. anything that affects the operation of the device. Care of the product, as instructed in the M!nder manual, is the responsibility of the purchaser.

Note: Every purchase is photographed, inside and outside, prior to shipping. All shipments are tracked.

The procedure is as follows:

• Send an email to me beforehand to outline the reason(s). (Emphasis: Email! I do not track social media.) Include photos clearly showing any manufacturing defects.
  • Shipping will be at your cost, and must be trackable. As well, to control the cost, the choice of service has to be approved by me–in other words, you can’t spend $100 to ship it to me!. As the product contains lithium batteries, you must obey any corresponding rules that your choice of carrier might have.
    After I receive your shipment:
    • If a manufacturing defect is found, I will refund the original purchase-price.
      As well, I will ask for the shipping invoice of its return journey, to refund the full amount of the shipping-method agreed upon.
      Note: Refunds can take many weeks to reflect in your bank/card account.
    • If a manufacturing defect is not found, you will have to pay for trackable shipping to you, plus a fee of $50 CAD for my assessment and handling. Uncollected products will be owned by me, and may be discarded, recycled, reused, or resold at a discount.

Repairs & Upgrades

Much time and effort has been put into designing a repairable, upgradeable product, as opposed to being like a phone/tablet that cannot be used after a few years. As of today, 6 May 2022, however, this is an experiment yet to be tested with real customers. There is no guarantee, or even a promised level of effort; only tentative steps towards that goal.

Replacement Parts

Parts and products may be discontinued.

Intellectual Property

Any attempt at reverse engineering of the device is prohibited. This includes extraction, analysis and de-compilation of the firmware. I, Ali Bahar, am the inventor of the M!nder, and the author, creator, architect, designer, developer, tester and owner of its firmware, and of the enclosure’s design; and all of the application-specific aspects of the electronic hardware’s design have been architected and tested, and are owned, by me. Other than for some initialization and API code, used under licence, by the vendor of the micro-controller (which, for the initial release of the M!nder, is Microchip), I am the sole author and owner of the firmware, and of the enclosure’s design, and the sole owner of application-specific aspects of the electronic hardware’s design. Any extraction, duplication or distribution of the firmware is prohibited. The purchaser of the product is granted ONLY A LICENCE FOR USAGE of the firmware, within the device originally purchased from me. This means that the purchaser does not own the firmware running in the product purchased. Similarly, ownership of the designs of the enclosure, of the electronics circuitry (except for the internals of the chips), and of the rest of device, remain mine. All rights are reserved.

Modification

Any modification made to the product that affects its behaviour must be accompanied by removal of any insignia, indicators and the like which associate it with M!nder and bikeminder.ca. This excludes upgrades purchased on bikeminder.ca.

Jurisdiction

The legal jurisdiction for any disputes will be Vancouver, BC, Canada, with court proceedings in English.