Pricing policy

This policy explains how charging works on Aussie Outage Tracker: the currency, who you are paying, when your card is charged, what happens if a payment fails, how prices change and when you can get money back. What each thing costs is on the pricing page. This policy forms part of our terms of use.

1. Currency and tax

Every price we publish, quote or charge is in Australian dollars (AUD), whether or not the page repeats the currency beside each figure. A "$" on this site always means Australian dollars.

Prices include GST. The amount shown is the amount charged, and it contains the GST: one eleventh of the price. Every line on our tax invoice shows the GST it contains. The amount charged is the published price wherever you are. If your billing address is outside Australia, the price is the same but contains no GST: your invoice is marked GST-free.

If your card is in another currency, your bank or card issuer converts the Australian dollar amount and may add its own fees. Those are between you and your bank.

2. Who you are paying

You are buying from MODLL PTY LTD (ABN 79 639 342 484), trading as Aussie Outage Tracker. We issue the tax invoice for every charge and email it to the account owner, with a PDF copy, as soon as the payment goes through. Every invoice is also in the dashboard under Settings › Billing.

Card payments are processed by Stripe (Stripe Payments Australia Pty Ltd). You enter your card into Stripe's own form inside the dashboard, it goes from your browser straight to Stripe, and we never see or store your full card number.

Customers on an Enterprise arrangement are invoiced directly by us in Australian dollars, on the terms agreed with them, and are not charged by card.

3. What is free

The public map, the state and suburb pages and the feed status page are free and need no account. The subscriber dashboard is free too: sites, alert rules, alerts, history, export, digests and every member of your team. A directory listing for your business, its own page and its marker on the map are free. None of these needs a card, and none of them will start charging without notice to you.

4. The data API

• The API plan. $49 AUD a month, including GST, with 2,000 calls included in each calendar month, Sydney time, across every key on your account. API access needs the plan: without an active plan, no API key works.
• Starting it. You start the plan in the dashboard, under Settings › API, once a card is saved. It is charged straight away for the rest of that month: the monthly price, times the days left in the month counting the day you start, divided by the days in the month, rounded to the cent and never less than $1.00. Start on 25 October, with 7 of the month's 31 days left, and the first charge is $11.06. The plan turns on as soon as that payment is confirmed, usually within seconds, and the month's included calls apply in full.
• Each month after that. On the 1st, $49 for the month ahead, on the monthly charge described in section 6.
• Calls beyond the plan. $10 AUD per 1,000 calls, including GST — a cent a call — for each call beyond the 2,000 included in a calendar month. They are added up once at the end of the month, rounded up to the nearest cent, and charged on the 1st of the next: 2,345 calls in a month is 345 beyond the plan, which comes to $3.45 AUD on top of it.
• What counts as a call. One request answered successfully (an HTTP 2xx response). A request we refuse (a 4xx: a bad parameter, the rate limit, a missing or revoked key) and a request that fails on our side (a 5xx) are counted so you can see them, and are never charged and never use an included call. Checking your own usage, the service status and the OpenAPI document are always free.
• Limits. Each key may make 60 requests a minute across every endpoint; requests over the limit are refused and not charged. One request returns up to 500 outages and reads up to 31 days of the archive. A larger extract of the archive is available as a bulk export, by request and at a price we quote; nothing is exported until you have agreed that price.
• Cancelling. At any time, under Settings › API. The plan stays on until the end of the month you have already paid for, and that month is not refunded. Starting it again before then costs nothing. Calls beyond the plan in that last month are charged on the 1st, as usual.

Your usage so far this month, and what the calls beyond the plan would cost at today's count, is shown in the dashboard under Settings › API and is available from the API itself.

5. Advertising

• What you buy. One advertising position, in one state (or nationally, where the position allows it), for one day, Sydney time.
• How the price is set. By auction. You set the most you would pay for a day. At 9pm Sydney time each night, the highest bid for each position in each state wins the next day and pays the next-highest bid, or the starting price if nobody else bid. Equal bids go to the one placed first. You never pay more than you bid.
• Starting prices. Each position in each state has a starting price, which is the least a day can sell for. Starting prices are shown in the dashboard before you enter a card. We may change them; a change applies to auctions held after it and never to a day already won.
• Budgets. You set a monthly budget for each position. We never charge more than it in a calendar month: if the budget left cannot cover the next day at your bid, your bid sits that auction out.
• What you are charged for. The days you won, at the price each one was won for. Nothing for days you did not win, and nothing for renders or taps, which we report to you but never bill on.
• Approval, and taking an ad down. Ads and listings are screened before they run, and we may decline or remove one that breaches our terms. If we take down an ad that won a day, for any reason, you are not charged for that day, even if it had already been showing. You are never charged for a day your ad was not eligible to run.
• The rest of a day. If a position becomes free part-way through a day, the next-highest eligible bid from that day's auction may be given the rest of it, at the price that auction would have set (the next-highest remaining bid, or the starting price), reduced to the share of the day left and rounded up to the cent. It is never more than your bid for that share of the day, and it counts against your budget. If no bid qualifies, the position shows our own fallback until the next day.
• Agreed directly. You can also agree a position with us directly, for a set period at a set price. It is charged once to your saved card when it is placed, or invoiced if we agree that instead. A declined charge is handled as in section 7. If it is taken down before its period ends, any refund is handled under section 9 and is not automatic.

6. How and when you are charged

On the 1st of each month, Sydney time, we charge your saved card once, with a line for each thing: the API plan for the month ahead, if you have it, and the calls beyond the plan and the advertising days won in the month before. Advertising days and calls beyond the plan are always charged after the month they were used in, never in advance; the API plan is always charged in advance, and never for more than one month at a time.

Two charges are made at other times: the first, pro-rated month of the API plan, when you start it (section 4), and a position agreed directly with us, when it is placed (section 5). Saving a card charges nothing, so if you only advertise, your first charge is on the 1st after your first day won: win your first day on 20 October, and the charge on 1 November covers the days won from 20 to 31 October. We never charge for two months of usage at once, except where an earlier charge failed and is being collected. A month with nothing to charge produces no charge, and there is no minimum.

You can save more than one card. Saving a card makes it your default, the one charged, and the card it replaces stays saved as your backup; you can switch between them in the dashboard. If a charge to your default card is declined and your backup card has not expired, we try the backup once before telling you the payment failed.

7. If a payment fails

We email you, and the dashboard shows what is owed and how to fix it. Until the amount is paid, API calls are refused and your advertising bids sit out each auction. The amount remains owed. If the first payment for the API plan does not go through, the plan does not start.

A failed payment never affects your free features, your sites, your alert rules or the outage archive. It stops reading; it never stops recording. Once the payment goes through, the API and your bids resume.

8. Price changes

• The API plan and the price of calls beyond it. We will give at least 30 days' notice of an increase, by email to every account with the API plan and on the pricing page. A reduction may take effect straight away. A new monthly price applies from the first month that starts after it takes effect, and a new price for calls only to calls made after it takes effect.
• Advertising. Prices are set by your own bids and the auction, as described in section 5. Starting prices may change at any time, for auctions held after the change.
• Free features. If we ever decide to charge for something that is free today, we will tell account holders in advance, and nothing will be charged without you choosing to pay for it.

9. Refunds and credits

Charges are for what has been delivered, or for a month of access paid in advance: API calls that were answered, advertising days that were won, and the API plan, which is not refunded when you cancel part-way through a month because it keeps working until that month ends. For that reason charges are not generally refundable. We will refund or credit you where:

• we charged you in error, or charged more than this policy allows;
• a position you won was not shown for a material part of the day because of a fault on our side; or
• the law requires it.

Nothing in this policy limits any right you have under the Australian Consumer Law. Refunds are returned to the card that was charged, through our payment processor, and can take a few business days to appear. A refund is shown on the tax invoice for the charge it refunds, as an adjustment with the GST it returns.

10. Questions about a charge

If a charge looks wrong, tell us within 60 days of the charge at support@aussieoutagetracker.com.au, and we will look at the usage and auction records behind it with you. Please come to us before disputing a charge with your bank: while a chargeback is open, your advertising is paused and your ads are taken off the site until it is resolved.

11. Stopping

You can stop at any time, with no notice period and no fee. Cancel the API plan (it runs to the end of the month already paid for), revoke your API keys, switch off your advertising positions, or remove your saved card in the dashboard. Calls beyond the plan and advertising days already used in the current month are charged at the end of that month; nothing after that.

12. Enterprise

Where we have agreed an Enterprise arrangement with you, its pricing, invoicing and payment terms are the ones in that agreement, and they apply instead of sections 4, 6 and 7 to the extent they differ. Everything else in this policy still applies.

13. Contact

Billing questions: support@aussieoutagetracker.com.au, or write to MODLL PTY LTD, Victoria, Australia.