Vendor Terms of Service

These Vendor Terms of Service ("Vendor Terms") govern your business's participation in Perchworth as a listed vendor. They are in addition to the Member Terms of Service, which apply to the individual person who opens the account on behalf of the business. If anything in these Vendor Terms conflicts with the Member Terms, these Vendor Terms control for vendor-specific topics.

By submitting a vendor application you agree, on behalf of the business you represent, to these Vendor Terms.

1. Authority to bind the business

The individual completing the vendor application represents and warrants that they are an officer, owner, employee, or authorized agent of the business listed, and that they have the authority to bind that business to this agreement. Perchworth may, at its discretion, ask for documentation of that authority before approving or at any point during the listing.

2. Listing eligibility and accuracy

To be listed, the business must:

• Be a real, currently operating business.
• Hold every license, certification, registration, or permit required by federal, state, or local law to perform the services you list. For state-licensed services in particular — including but not limited to in-home care agencies, hospice, residential care facilities, mental health services, durable medical equipment, and pharmacy — the license must be in good standing in every state you claim to serve.
• Be free of an unresolved fraud judgment, consumer protection enforcement action, or active disciplinary action by a state licensing board, where any of those are material to the services you list. You must disclose these in your application.
• Provide accurate, current information in the listing: legal business name, operating name (if different), license number and state, service categories, service areas, contact email, contact phone, and website. You are responsible for keeping these current — when something changes (you add a state, drop a service, change phone numbers), update the listing within seven days.

Perchworth may suspend or remove a listing whose information is materially inaccurate or out of date.

3. Application review

Every application is reviewed by a human reviewer before the listing goes live. We may approve, request changes, or reject. Common reasons for rejection include: non-operating businesses, missing licenses, category mismatches, copy that reads as fear-based sales rather than service description, and pitches that depend on conflicts of interest we don't allow (see below).

Approval is not a recommendation, endorsement, verification of quality, or warranty of any kind. It means we reviewed the documentation you provided and found nothing disqualifying at that point in time.

4. Editorial standards — what we don't allow

Perchworth's editorial position is that the senior-care industry routinely uses manipulation tactics against caregivers in crisis, and that Perchworth is a place where they don't work. The about page names them. Vendors listed on Perchworth agree not to use these tactics in their listing copy, contact-form responses, on-platform reviews, or anywhere a Perchworth member encounters them. Specifically prohibited:

• Manufactured scarcity — claims about waiting lists, one-spot-left, or this-month-only availability that are not literally and currently true.
• Manufactured urgency — pressure to sign, tour, or pay within an artificial deadline ("your hospital-discharge window closes tomorrow").
• Fear-of-the-fall messaging — copy designed to elevate fear about a fall, hospitalization, or medical event as the lead reason to choose your service, without context.
• Fake social proof — invented testimonials, purchased reviews, or claims about your reputation that cannot be substantiated.
• Identity-pitching — copy positioning senior living or your service as a marker of identity, status, or community belonging, rather than the practical service it provides.
• Undisclosed commercial conflicts — see the next section.

Repeated or material violations are grounds for suspension or removal. We'll tell you the specific language we're flagging when we ask for changes.

5. Conflicts of interest, kickbacks, and lead-buying

Perchworth does not accept lead-gen vendors, placement services, referral aggregators, or businesses whose primary revenue model is reselling leads they did not generate themselves. We do not allow paid-placement arrangements where ranking, position, or visibility is sold separately from a fully-disclosed sponsored listing.

If your business pays or accepts a fee for referring a specific consumer to a specific senior-care provider, you must disclose that arrangement to the consumer at the time of the referral. This applies on-platform (in contact-form replies and on-site content) and off-platform when you are responding to a Perchworth-sourced inquiry. We may ask for confirmation of disclosure practices.

Federal and state anti-kickback rules — including the federal Anti-Kickback Statute (42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7b) where federal healthcare programs are involved — are your responsibility to comply with; we do not provide legal advice on them. We will remove vendors involved in kickback arrangements we become aware of.

6. Communication with members

When a member sends you a message through the contact form at /vendors/[your-slug], your reply goes directly to their email — Perchworth is not in the path. That means:

• You must respond professionally, on-topic, and in a reasonable timeframe (we suggest 48 hours, business days).
• You may not add the member to any marketing list, CRM-pipeline drip campaign, or sales sequence without their explicit, written opt-in. The contact form is a consent to one conversation, not to ongoing marketing.
• You may not share the member's email or contact details with any third party — including a parent-company, partner agency, or lead-resale buyer — without the member's explicit consent. This applies even when the third party is your normal business partner.
• You may not send unsolicited follow-ups after the member has declined or stopped responding. Three follow-ups over two weeks is the operating ceiling unless they re-engage.
• You may not redirect the member off the platform under false pretenses (asking them to install an app to chat, create an account on your portal, or use a different service to communicate, when the contact form would have been sufficient).

We retain a copy of the message the member sent you for up to 12 months for dispute resolution and abuse triage — see the privacy page. We do not log your reply, but the member may report your reply to us with screenshots if it violates these terms.

7. Reviews

Members can leave reviews of your business on your listing page. The review rules:

• No astroturfing. You may not create accounts, ask employees to create accounts, or hire third parties to leave positive reviews. Each member account's review history is correlated with their activity; manipulation is detectable and grounds for removal.
• No retaliation. If a member leaves a negative review, you may not threaten, dox, blackball, or contact them outside the platform in retaliation. You may post one factual reply to a review (a capability that may be added in a future release) when the review contains specific, addressable errors.
• No conditioning service on reviews.You may not condition a discount, a follow-up service, or any other benefit on a member writing a positive review.
• You may report a review that you believe violates the Member Terms (defamation, doxxing, paid-by-a-competitor evidence). We will review the report; we may or may not remove the review based on the evidence.

8. Sponsored placement (when offered)

Perchworth may offer paid sponsored placement to vendors. When offered, sponsored placement appears only in specific, fully-labeled positions: interleaved sponsored cards in space listings (capped at one per eight organic items) and sidebar slots. Sponsored cards are visually distinct and labeled as such.

Sponsored placement does not appear in comment threads, post bodies, calculator pages, dashboards, or document pages. Disguising paid content as community contribution is the exact pattern Perchworth's brand says we don't do, and it's a hard line.

Sponsored placement is billed by Stripe under a separate sponsorship agreement; the rate card and term will be disclosed before any charge. Buying sponsored placement does not influence editorial review, organic ranking, or response to abuse reports.

9. Vendor subscription fees (when offered)

Listing in the Perchworth directory is currently free. We may introduce a vendor subscription — basic and featured tiers — to support the platform. If we do:

• Active vendors will get at least 60 days' notice by email before the subscription requirement takes effect.
• Pricing will be disclosed clearly. Featured tier benefits will be clearly described and limited to clearly-labeled placement and visibility features — not preferential treatment in moderation or review outcomes.
• Billing is through Stripe. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current period; no pro-rated refunds for partial periods.
• Lapsed-billing accounts are suspended (listing hidden) for 30 days before deletion.

10. Protected health information (PHI)

Perchworth is not a covered entity under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and we do not handle protected health information. You may not transmit, attach, or otherwise share PHI about identifiable members or their care recipients through the Perchworth contact form, reviews, or any other on-platform surface. If a member sends you PHI through an off-platform channel during a normal business interaction, that is between you and them — but Perchworth itself does not knowingly collect or store PHI, and you should not paste it back into our system. For the official definition of PHI, see the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals.

11. Suspension and removal

We may suspend or remove a vendor listing for any of:

• Violation of these Vendor Terms or the Member Terms.
• Material misrepresentation in the application or listing (false license claims, inflated service area, fabricated reviews, undisclosed conflicts of interest).
• A pattern of member complaints — for example, multiple members independently reporting the same off-platform sales behavior, ghosting after contact, or high-pressure tactics.
• Public-record enforcement action (state licensing board, attorney general, consumer protection agency, FTC) that bears on the services listed.
• Operational reasons that affect platform integrity (security incident on your end, prolonged non-responsiveness, abuse of the contact channel).

Suspended vendors are hidden from the public directory but the listing is preserved for 30 days. We will tell you the reason when we can. You may appeal in writing; we will reply within a reasonable time. After 30 days the listing is deleted; we may retain reviews, reports, and contact-message logs for the audit periods described in the privacy page.

12. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Perchworth, the Operator, and our successors and assigns from any claim, damage, or expense (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from:

• The services your business actually provides to a member or any other person, including outcomes of those services.
• Inaccuracy of any information in your listing.
• Your violation of these Vendor Terms, the Member Terms, or any law applicable to the services you provide (including licensing, anti-kickback, consumer protection, and advertising laws).
• Content you post on Perchworth, including replies to reviews and contact-form responses (where Perchworth is named in a defamation, deceptive-practice, or similar claim).

13. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

Perchworth is provided to vendors "as is". Perchworth does not guarantee any particular volume of inquiries, leads, conversions, revenue, or visibility from being listed. Search rankings, member behavior, and inquiry volume are functions of many factors outside Perchworth's control.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Perchworth and the Operator are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising out of your participation as a vendor — including lost revenue, lost goodwill, or lost business opportunity. Our total cumulative liability to a vendor, for any cause and under any theory, will not exceed the greater of (a) the total subscription or sponsorship fees you paid to Perchworth in the 12 months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred U.S. dollars ($100).

14. Confidentiality

If, in the course of vendor support or partnership conversations, either party shares information marked or reasonably understood as confidential — pricing terms, unreleased product details, internal documents — the receiving party will protect it with reasonable care and use it only for the purpose for which it was shared. Aggregate, anonymized stats about Perchworth's usage (e.g., "X weekly active members in California") are not confidential.

15. Intellectual property

Your trademarks, logos, and copy provided for the listing remain yours. You grant Perchworth a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to display them on the Perchworth product, in marketing materials promoting the Perchworth vendor directory generally (e.g., "listed vendors include …"), and in transactional communications with members. This license ends when the listing is removed, except for archival and back-office uses described in the privacy page.

Perchworth's site, code, copy, calculator logic, prompts, and design are owned by Perchworth. You may not copy, scrape, mirror, or build a competing directory from Perchworth's content.

16. Governing law and disputes

These Vendor Terms are governed by the laws of the State of New Mexico, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute that cannot be resolved by good-faith discussion will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, and you consent to personal jurisdiction there.

17. Changes to these terms

We may update these Vendor Terms as the program evolves. For material changes — anything affecting fees, your obligations, our liability, or data use — we will email active vendors at least 30 days before the new version takes effect, and ask the listing's primary contact to re-acknowledge on next sign-in.

18. Entire agreement

These Vendor Terms, together with the Member Terms and the privacy page, are the entire agreement between your business and Perchworth about your participation as a vendor. They supersede any prior version. If any part of these Vendor Terms is held unenforceable, the rest remains in effect.

20. Third-Party AI Service Providers

Perchworth uses third-party artificial intelligence and large-language-model service providers (collectively, "AI Providers") to deliver features including member-facing document review, scenario configuration, content moderation assistance, and other AI-assisted capabilities we may add. The AI Providers we use may change from time to time without individual notice; the privacy page lists the providers currently in use.

Vendor content — your listing copy, your replies inside the Perchworth product (where applicable), member-reported content involving you — may be processed by AI Providers in the course of moderation review or other product features. We require AI Providers, where contractually possible, to commit to (i) processing data only as needed to deliver the feature, (ii) not training models on inputs without explicit additional consent, and (iii) short retention windows on transient processing data.

You acknowledge that AI outputs may be inaccurate or biased, and that AI-assisted moderation does not substitute for human review of contested cases. Perchworth is not liable for AI Provider outages, latency, output errors, or changes in provider behavior beyond the limits stated elsewhere in these Vendor Terms. If a vendor believes an AI-assisted moderation decision was wrong, the appeal process in section 11 applies — humans review appeals.

21. Contact

Questions about these Vendor Terms: write to the Operator through the contact channel listed on the privacy page. We'll respond within a reasonable time.

By submitting a vendor application, the individual signing confirms that they have read these Vendor Terms of Service, that they have the authority to bind the business listed, and that the business agrees to be bound by these terms as of the "Last updated" date above.