Terms of service.

1. Who this is between

These terms are an agreement between you and Armaan Singh, a sole proprietor trading as Pencils Down Labs (“we”, “us”). They cover this website, the problems and solutions on it, and any account you make here. By making an account or buying access you agree to them. If you do not agree, please do not use the site.

2. Your account

There are no passwords here. Signing in means asking for a six digit code and typing it back, so anyone who can read your email can sign in as you. Keep that inbox to yourself. One account belongs to one person and to one email address, and what you have bought is attached to the account rather than to the device you read it on.

Tell us at support@pencilsdownlabs.com if you think somebody else is using your account. We can change the address on an account for you, which is the fix when the one you bought with was typed wrongly.

3. Age, and parents

This is built for students preparing for a college admissions test, so many of the people using it are under 18. If you are under 18, a parent or guardian has to read these terms and agree to them for you, and they are agreeing alongside you. Nobody under 13 may make an account, and if we learn that an account belongs to somebody under 13 we will delete it and refund anything paid for it.

A parent or guardian may write to us about a child's account, including to ask what it holds or to have it deleted, and we will act on that request.

4. What you are buying

Access, not a file and not an object. Each tier opens a different part of the same set: the worked solutions on their own, the full problems with their layered nudges and solutions, or all of that plus the Build Up scaffolding on every problem. What a tier includes is stated on the pricing page beside its price, and that description at the moment you pay is the one that applies to your purchase.

Nothing physical ships from this site. The printed book is sold through Amazon and that purchase is a separate contract with them, described in section 9.

5. How long access lasts

Digital access lasts 12 months, and the clock starts when you pay rather than when you first sign in. That is deliberate: buying in September for a test in May should not be punished by an activation date nobody remembers setting. If you have bought unusually far ahead of the test you are studying for, write to us and we will move your date by hand.

What lapses at the end of the term is the interactive platform: answer checking, progress that follows you between devices, the Build Ups, the calculator, notes and flags. What does not lapse is described in the next paragraph.

Worked solutions earned by a verified owner of the printed book do not expire. The book promises its solutions online, the book is an object you own permanently, and a promise attached to it cannot be switched off after a year. That grant stays for as long as we run this site.

6. Nothing renews itself

There is no subscription here and no stored arrangement that could charge you again. When a term ends it simply ends. If you want more time you can buy an extension of six months at 50% of that tier's current price, and only by choosing to. An extension is added to the end of the access you already hold, so renewing early costs you nothing.

7. Prices, payment, and tax

Prices are in US dollars and are charged through Stripe, who handle the card details. We never see or store your card number. Any tax that applies is calculated at checkout and shown before you pay.

Launch prices are described as launch prices everywhere they appear, and they will rise. A price rise never affects a purchase already made: what you paid is what you paid, and the access you bought is unchanged.

8. Refunds

Ask within 3 days of purchase or before you have attempted 10 paid problems, whichever comes first, and we will refund you in full. Two limits rather than one, because a period alone is a policy anybody can work around by reading quickly, and what is really being asked is whether the thing has been consumed.

The free sample problems do not count toward that total. They are the trial, and a window that ticked down while somebody worked the free set would be charging them for trying it.

Write to support@pencilsdownlabs.com from the address on the account. A refund ends the access it paid for, on the day it is issued. Outside those limits we are not obliged to refund, though you are welcome to ask and we would rather hear from you than not.

9. The printed book, and proving you own one

The book is bought from Amazon, and that sale, its delivery and its returns are between you and Amazon under their terms. What we provide is the online half the book promises: the worked solutions, matched to the problem numbers printed in it.

To open those you answer a short challenge about the copy in front of you, twice in a row on different questions. Attempts are rate limited and a run of failures locks the challenge for a while, so please do not automate it. If the challenge will not pass for you and you genuinely own the book, write to us and we will grant it by hand. We may withdraw a grant obtained by sharing answers to the challenge or by any other misrepresentation.

10. What you may do with the content

Everything here is original work and it stays ours. While your access is live you have a personal, non transferable license to read the problems, the nudges, the solutions and the Build Ups for your own study, and to print or copy a reasonable amount of it for that purpose. A tutor or teacher may work through problems with the students they teach.

11. What you may not do

Please do not share your account or your sign in codes with anybody else, and do not sell, sub-license or redistribute the content. Please do not copy the set in bulk, whether by hand or with a script, crawler or any other automated collection, and do not use it to build a competing product or to train a machine learning model. Please do not attempt to reach content your account has not been granted, or to interfere with the site's operation.

The problems and solutions are the whole of what this business sells. Redistribution is the one thing that ends it, which is why this section is here rather than in a footnote.

12. Tutors, and sharing your progress

A tutor can ask to follow your work, and nothing is shared until you accept on your own account page. If you do accept, they can see which problems you have tried, what you answered, how many nudges you had open and which Build Ups you finished, and they can set you problems to work through. They cannot answer anything as you, clear your progress, read the notes you write on a problem, or change anything about your account. You can stop sharing at any time, from the same place you accepted.

13. The content changes

We correct problems, rewrite solutions, and occasionally withdraw a problem that turns out to be flawed. A withdrawn problem keeps its number, because copies of the printed book fix those numbers permanently, and the site says what happened rather than making it disappear. We may also add problems, and adding one does not change what the book contains.

14. No promise about your score

This is study material. We believe in how it is built and we cannot promise a result: no score, no improvement, no admission, and nothing about how any question on any real exam will be worded. SAT is a registered trademark of the College Board, and Pencils Down Labs is not affiliated with or endorsed by the College Board.

15. Availability

We aim to keep the site up and we do not guarantee it is uninterrupted or error free. Maintenance, an outage at one of the services this runs on, or a fault of our own can all take it offline for a while. If an outage is long enough to cost you a meaningful part of your term, write to us and we will extend your access.

16. Ending your access

You can stop using the site at any time and ask us to delete your account, which removes the account and, with it, your progress, notes, flags and pencil. Payment records survive that, because a record of a payment has its own retention duty, and a report you filed about a broken problem survives it without your name attached, because that is a fact about the problem.

We may suspend or end an account that breaks section 11, and where the breach is not serious we will say so first and give you a chance to put it right. If we end your access for a reason that is not your fault, we will refund the unused part of your term.

17. Disclaimers

The site and its content are provided as they are, without warranties of any kind beyond those the law does not let us exclude. Some places do not allow certain exclusions, and where that is so, this section applies as far as it is permitted and no further.

18. Limit of liability

To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you for anything arising out of these terms or your use of the site is limited to what you have paid us in the 12 months before the claim, and we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss. Nothing here limits liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

19. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms, and the date at the top says when they last changed. A change never reduces the access you have already bought or shortens a term you have already paid for. If a change is significant we will email the address on your account before it takes effect.

20. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, without regard to its conflict of laws rules, and the courts of North Carolina are where a dispute is heard. If you are a consumer somewhere with laws that give you rights you cannot sign away, this section does not take those away from you.

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest of it still stands.

21. How to reach us

Write to support@pencilsdownlabs.com, or use the form on the contact page. Messages reach a person and are answered by email.