These Terms cover your use of the BidProof website and our bid review service. They are an agreement between you and BidProof, so please read them before you upload a bid or pay for a review.
We have written them in the same plain language we use in our reports. Where a term carries a specific legal meaning, we have kept it and said what it does.
By using our website or our service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use them.
The short version
This summary is here to save you time. It is not part of the agreement. The numbered sections below are.
We read the bid you send us and check its numbers against independent data. Our report is a second opinion; the decision stays yours. You pay us and nobody else pays us anything. We cannot promise a solar system will save money, and we will not pretend otherwise. If something goes wrong on our end, the most we can owe you is what you paid us. You can opt out of the arbitration section within 30 days, and Section 13 shows you how.
1. What BidProof does
BidProof is an independent review of a residential solar bid. Here is the whole of it:
- You send us a bid you received from a solar provider: a proposal or quote, and the contract as well if you bought the contract review.
- We read the documents and check what they claim against independent sources, including a solar production model for your address, current utility rate data, published equipment lists, and finance benchmarks.
- We send you a written report. It carries a PASS, REVISE, or FLAG verdict, explains what we found, and lists the questions we would take back to your solar provider.
What the report is: one informed, independent read on the bid in front of you, so you can go back to your solar provider with specific questions instead of a general feeling.
What the report is not: a recommendation to sign or to walk away. A promise about what a system will produce or save. An endorsement or certification of any installer, product, or lender. Engineering, legal, financial, or tax advice.
We are paid by you and are accountable only to you. We take no commissions, referral fees, or advertising money from installers, sales representatives, lenders, or manufacturers. We do not sell your personal identifiable information, and we do not send solar providers to you. Solar providers or sales people may pay for our services on your behalf, but they can never influence the outcome of the report which is sent directly by our company to your email address.
2. The report is a second opinion
Our report reflects what we found in your documents on the day we ran the review. A few things follow from that, and we would rather say them here than have you discover them later.
- The decision is yours. We do not tell you to sign, negotiate, or walk away. We tell you what we found and what we would ask.
- We work from the documents you send. We check the bid, not your house. We do not visit your property, assess your roof, or inspect your electrical system, and we do not independently verify every line of every document. If something in a bid contradicts itself or is missing, we say so rather than guess.
- A PASS is not a warranty. It means the checks we ran did not surface a material problem. It does not mean the bid is free of problems, or that the installer will do good work.
- A FLAG is not an accusation. It means something did not line up with independent data or with commonly used industry terms, and is worth a conversation. Most flags have legitimate explanations, and our report names them where we know them.
- Solar moves quickly. Prices, equipment availability, incentive programs, and utility rates all change. A review is a snapshot, not a standing opinion.
Before you commit to a 25-year agreement, get more than one bid, confirm the installer’s license and insurance with your state, read the contract itself, and talk to a qualified professional where the stakes call for one. Our report is built to make those conversations easier, not to replace them.
3. What we are, and are not, to you
We work for you. That is the design of the business: you pay us, we answer to you, and nobody in the solar supply chain pays us anything.
Independence is not the same as representation, so here is where our role ends. Using our service does not create any of the following:
- A fiduciary relationship. We are not your fiduciary, trustee, or agent, and we do not owe you fiduciary duties.
- An advisory relationship. We are not your lawyer, accountant, financial advisor, or engineer. Our report is informational. It is not personalized professional advice.
- An agency relationship. We do not act on your behalf. We do not negotiate with your solar provider, speak to them for you, or represent you in a transaction.
- A contractor relationship. We do not design, install, repair, or maintain solar equipment, and we are not affiliated with any company that does.
Our role is to give you an independent read on the documents you send us. What you do with it is yours to decide.
4. Payment and refunds
You pay before we begin. Payment is not refundable once the review starts, because we begin work and incur real cost per review, including third-party data calls and processing, as soon as your payment clears.
There are two exceptions, and we will not make you argue for them. If the documents you sent do not contain enough for us to run a review, we refund you. If we cannot deliver a report for a reason on our side, we refund you. Write to us at support@bidproof.com and we will sort it out.
5. Limits on our liability
This is the section where a $49 review meets a 25-year contract, so it is worth reading closely.
To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, BidProof and its owners, officers, employees, agents, and affiliates will not be liable to you for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising out of or relating to your use of our services. That holds regardless of the theory of liability, whether contract, tort, strict liability, or otherwise, and even if we were advised such damages were possible. It includes lost profits, lost savings, loss of data, the cost of replacement services, and any damages tied to your decision to accept, reject, or negotiate a solar bid.
If we are nonetheless found liable to you for a claim arising out of or relating to our services, our total cumulative liability will not exceed the amount you actually paid us for the review that the claim is about.
Some states do not allow these exclusions or limits. Where that is the case, our liability is limited as far as the law allows. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for fraud, gross negligence, willful misconduct, or anything else that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.
6. What we commit to, and what we cannot promise
What we commit to
- We run the checks described in our published methodology, against the data sources named there.
- We ground our findings in sourced data rather than opinion. Where a finding rests on a number, we show the number and where it came from.
- When we cannot read or reconcile something in your documents, we tell you that instead of filling the gap with a guess.
- We deliver the report you paid for.
What we cannot promise
- That a solar system will save you money. What a system produces and saves over 25 years depends on weather, utility rates, and how you use power. No one can promise that, and we will not.
- That we caught everything. Our review of your bid is thorough but we can’t catch any issues that 1) would only be apparent from a visit to your home or 2) would require more information than what was provided.
- That third-party data is correct. Production models, utility rate data, and equipment lists come from outside sources that can be outdated, incomplete, or wrong.
- That the service is uninterrupted or error-free, or that the website is free of defects or harmful components.
How we use AI, plainly
Software does the arithmetic and applies documented thresholds. AI reads your documents to pull out the fields, reads contract language to check whether required elements are present, and writes the report in plain language. AI can misread a document. So can a person. That is one reason our report shows its work and tells you what to ask rather than asking you to take our word for it.
The legal backstop
Our services are provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, BidProof disclaims all warranties, whether express, implied, or statutory, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement. We are not responsible for errors, omissions, delays, or other problems caused by AI tools, outside service providers, or third-party data sources, or for any decision you make based on our report. These disclaimers do not affect warranties that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.
7. Your part
- Send us the real documents. Complete and unaltered, as your solar provider gave them to you. Our report can only be as good as what we are given.
- You may black out sensitive numbers. We do not need your Social Security number or your bank account number, and we would rather not have them. If one appears in a document, black it out before you send it. If you black out something we do need, we will tell you.
- Use the report as one input. Get other bids. Confirm the installer’s license, insurance, and experience with your state. Read the contract before you sign it, whatever our verdict says.
- Keep your account secure, if you create one. You are responsible for activity that happens under it.
- Tell us if something looks wrong. If a fact in our report does not match your documents, write to us. We will look.
8. Things you agree not to do
When you use our website or services, you agree not to:
- Send us false, altered, or fabricated bid documents.
- Present our report to anyone as a guarantee, an endorsement, or a professional certification. It is none of those.
- Use our report for an unlawful purpose.
- Try to reach our systems, data, or accounts without authorization.
- Interfere with or disrupt our website or services.
- Copy, resell, or redistribute our evaluation methodology, reports, or content beyond the sharing described in Section 10.
- Use bots, scrapers, or similar automated tools on our website without our written consent.
- Send us content that infringes someone else’s intellectual property.
9. If your use of our service causes us a legal problem
If someone brings a claim against us because you broke these Terms, misused the service, broke the law, or violated another person’s rights, you agree to cover the resulting claims, losses, damages, liabilities, costs, and expenses, including reasonable legal fees. This covers us, our affiliates, and our respective officers, directors, employees, agents, and service providers.
We will promptly tell you about any claim covered by this section, and you will give us reasonable assistance in defending it. We will not settle a claim in a way that imposes liability or an obligation on you without your prior written consent.
This section does not apply to the extent a claim results from our own gross negligence, willful misconduct, or violation of applicable law.
10. Our work, and what you can do with your report
The website, our reports and certificates, our methodology and analysis frameworks, and our text, graphics, logos, and software are the property of BidProof or its licensors, protected by applicable intellectual property laws.
Your report is yours to use. You may keep it, print it, and share it: with your solar provider, with a second installer you are getting a bid from, with your family, with your lender, or with an advisor you are working with. That is what it is for.
What you may not do is republish it commercially, resell it, or present it as your own work or as a certification you performed. Our methodology and report formats stay ours.
11. Your documents and your data
You own the documents, information, and data you send us. We do not acquire ownership of it.
You give us a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, process, and transmit your data, only as far as reasonably necessary to run your review, keep the service secure and working, and comply with applicable law. Our employees, contractors, and service providers may handle it for those purposes only, and under appropriate confidentiality obligations.
We do not sell your data. We do not use it for any purpose beyond those above. We do not pass your information to installers, sales representatives, or lenders.
We delete the bid documents you upload 30 days after you submit them. We keep your report for seven years so you can retrieve it, unless you ask us to delete it sooner. The license above ends when your data is deleted from our systems, except where we are required to retain it by law or it remains in routine backups, in which case we retain and protect it under our data-retention practices. Our Privacy Policy has the full detail.
You confirm that you have the rights and permissions needed to send us your data and to grant the license above, and that our permitted use of it will not violate any law or another person’s rights. Please keep your own copies, and please do not send us anything you are not authorized to share.
This section does not limit any rights we have in our own services, software, technology, or materials that we provide independently of your data.
12. Ending access
You can stop using BidProof at any time.
We may suspend or end your access if we reasonably believe you have violated these Terms, or where we need to for legal or security reasons. If we end your access, we will still make reasonable efforts to deliver any completed report you have already paid for.
Sections that are meant to outlast the relationship do: Sections 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, and 11.
13. If we disagree
Start by telling us. Most problems turn out to be a misunderstanding about scope, and we would rather fix it than argue about it.
Informal resolution. Before starting a formal proceeding, write to us at support@bidproof.com and describe the dispute. We will work with you in good faith to resolve it within 30 days.
Binding arbitration. If that does not resolve it, either of us may elect binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules. Arbitration takes place in Los Angeles County, California, or, if you prefer, in the county where you live. Each party bears its own costs, except that BidProof pays all AAA filing and arbitrator fees above what it would have cost you to file in court. The arbitrator may award the same relief a court could, including injunctive and declaratory relief.
Individual claims only. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, you and BidProof each agree that disputes are resolved individually. Neither of us may bring a claim as a plaintiff or class member in a class, consolidated, or representative proceeding. If that is found unenforceable for a particular claim, that claim alone is severed from arbitration and may proceed in court.
Small claims. Either of us may instead bring an individual action in small claims court, if the claim fits within that court’s limits.
Opting out, which we make easy. You can opt out of the arbitration and individual-claims provisions within 30 days of first agreeing to these Terms. Email support@bidproof.com with your name, address, and a sentence saying you are opting out. That is the whole process. Opting out costs you nothing and changes nothing about the service you receive. If you opt out, either of us may bring claims in court.
Nothing in this section stops either of us from seeking injunctive or other equitable relief in court over intellectual property or unauthorized access to our services.
14. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-law principles. If the arbitration provision does not apply to a dispute, it will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Los Angeles County, California, and both of us consent to the jurisdiction of those courts.
Nothing in this section limits your rights under the consumer protection laws of the state where you live. Where those laws give you greater protection than these Terms, those laws apply.
15. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms. When we do, we will update the date at the top of this page and post the revised version on our website. For material changes, we will notify you by email, if we have your address, or through a prominent notice on our website, at least 30 days before the changes take effect.
Continuing to use our services after updated Terms take effect means you accept them. If you do not accept them, please stop using our services.
16. The rest
- Entire agreement. These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and BidProof about your use of our services.
- Severability. If a provision is found unenforceable, the rest stays in full force.
- Waiver. If we do not enforce a provision once, we have not given up the right to enforce it later.
- Assignment. You may not assign or transfer your rights under these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign ours without restriction.
- No third-party beneficiaries. These Terms create rights for you and BidProof, and for no one else.
17. Contact us
If you have questions about these Terms, write to us:
BidProof
3940-7 Broad Street, PMB 121
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
Email: support@bidproof.com