1. The agreement

These terms are between you and The Pen & Post. Buying a plan, redeeming a gift or using an account means you accept them. Our privacy policy is part of them.

2. Your account

You need an account, and the details on it need to be true — particularly the postal address, since it is where kits go and what is printed as the return address on every envelope. Keep your sign-in to yourself. Tell us if you think somebody else has it.

You must be 18 or over.

3. What a plan buys

A plan is a number of cards for a year, paid once at the start:

• Starter — 6 cards a year, $79.
• Standard — 12 cards a year, $149.
• Family — 24 cards a year, $249.

Cards are spent as your dates come round, not on a schedule — a March with three birthdays in it draws three cards. The allowance runs on its own year from when it starts.

Unused plan cards do not carry over. When the allowance year turns, the count goes back to the full plan and anything unspent is gone. Cards you have bought separately as a top-up are different: those never expire and stay on the account until they are used. Cards earned by referring somebody belong to the year they were earned in and reset with the rest.

Prices include postage. There is nothing else to buy.

4. What we do, and the one thing we don’t

We choose a card for each occasion, address the envelope, put a real stamp on it, and get the whole batch to you about two weeks ahead. On the morning a card needs to post, we email you.

We do not write the card. That is the part that carries the meaning and it is yours. If handwriting a card is not something you can do, this is the wrong product and we would rather say so than take the money.

5. Choosing cards

You pick a style for the account and may override it on any single date. Within a style we choose the particular card, and we do not repeat one we have recently sent you. Cards are bought in small runs from independent publishers, so any given design is finite and we cannot promise a specific one.

6. Timing

Kits arrive roughly two weeks before the first occasion they cover. Once a kit is with you, posting on time is yours to do — the mail-by date is printed on the insert and we email you the morning it matters.

Add a date at the last minute and we will do our best and tell you honestly whether it can land in time. Once a kit is handed to the postal service, how fast it travels is not something we control.

7. Addresses

Addresses are yours to get right. We check them against postal records and flag what looks undeliverable, but we cannot know that somebody has moved. A card sent to an address you gave us has been delivered as far as we are concerned, and re-sending it draws another card from your allowance.

Dates marked hand delivered come with the name on the envelope and no address or stamp, and are yours to give in person.

8. Where we ship

The United States only, both to you and to the people you write to.

9. Paying, and renewing

Plans are annual and paid up front through Stripe. They renew automatically on the anniversary at the price then published, and we email you before that happens. If we change the price, the new one applies from your next renewal and never mid-year.

10. Cancelling, and refunds

You can cancel at any time from your billing page. Cancelling stops the next renewal; the year you have already paid for runs to its end, and the cards in it stay yours to spend until then.

Within 30 days of a payment, ask and we will refund it in full, less the cost of any kit already sent to you. After 30 days a paid year is not refundable, because the cards and postage for it have been bought.

If we cancel your account for a reason that is not your doing, we refund the unused part of the year.

11. Gifts

A gift is one payment for one year. Whoever receives it makes their own account, adds their own dates and addresses, and when the year is up it simply ends — there is no card on file and nothing to cancel. Gift codes are single-use and are spent by the first person to redeem one, so send yours to the person it is meant for. Gift codes are not redeemable for cash and, once redeemed, are not refundable.

12. Referrals

Refer somebody with your code and, once their plan is paid for, we add free cards to your current allowance. Referral cards belong to the year they were earned in, cannot be exchanged for money, and do not apply to accounts you set up yourself.

13. Capacity

Everything here is packed by hand, so we sometimes close signups and run a waiting list. It does not affect anyone already subscribed.

14. Using it properly

Do not use this service to send anything harassing, threatening or unlawful, to post to somebody who has asked you to stop, or to hold addresses you have no legitimate reason to have. We may close an account for any of these, and cooperate with law enforcement where we have to.

15. What you give us

You keep everything you add. You give us permission to use it for the one purpose of running this service for you — addressing envelopes, planning shipments, sending you your own reminders. Nothing else. See the privacy policy for what that means in practice.

16. When something goes wrong

We aim to get every card to you in good time, but we cannot promise the service will never be interrupted, and we do not control the postal service.

If we get something wrong — a card that never arrived, a kit that went astray, a date we missed — tell us and we will put it right, by replacing the cards or refunding them. To the extent the law allows, that is the limit of what we owe you, and our total liability is capped at what you have paid us in the previous twelve months. We are not liable for indirect losses, including the consequences of a card arriving late.

Nothing here limits liability for fraud, or for anything that cannot lawfully be limited.

17. Ending it

You may close your account at any time. We may close one for a breach of these terms, or because we are stopping the service — in which case we refund the unused part of your year and give you as much notice as we can.

18. Which law

California law, and the courts of California, unless the law where you live gives you the right to bring a claim closer to home.

19. Changes

If we change these terms in a way that matters, we will email account holders. Carrying on using the service afterwards means accepting the change; if you would rather not, cancel and we will refund the unused part of your year.

20. Asking us something

Write to [email protected] and a person will answer.