The agreement between you and Sleep Balance Academy PC covering use of the website, purchases, and access to clinical services. It contains an arbitration agreement, and it explains what that agreement does not cover.
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1Who you are agreeing with
This agreement is between you and Sleep Balance Academy PC, an Iowa professional corporation. In this document, Sleep Balance Academy, we, us and our all mean that company. You and your mean the person reading this and, where you are acting for someone else, the person you are acting for.
Sleep Balance Academy is a separate company from Nefense Professional Corporation. If you bought something from Nefense, this document does not govern that purchase. Each company publishes its own terms on its own site.
This agreement covers three things: your use of our website and educational content, anything you buy from us, and your access to clinical services we make available. Some of those are also covered by other documents, listed in section 4, which form part of this agreement.
2Clinical care, and what this website is not
Sleep Balance Academy is a professional corporation. Clinical services offered here are provided by clinicians licensed in the state where you are located at the time of your visit. Before a visit begins, you are told who your clinician is.
Everything on this website that is not part of a visit with your clinician is general information and education. It is not medical advice, it is not a diagnosis, and reading it does not create a clinician and patient relationship.
Buying a product from us is not a prescription and is not a clinical recommendation for you personally. Some items may be sold only on the order of a licensed clinician; where that is the case, we will not ship the item without a valid, current order that identifies the ordering clinician.
3Who may use this site
You must be at least 18 years old to create an account or to buy anything from us. A parent or legal guardian may create an account and arrange care for a minor, and in doing so accepts this agreement on the minor's behalf as well as their own.
You are responsible for keeping your sign-in details private and for what happens under your account. Tell us promptly if you believe someone else has used it. We will not ask you for your password.
We may suspend or close an account where there is fraud, a threat to someone's safety, a serious breach of this agreement, or a legal requirement. Where it is practical and lawful to do so, we tell you first and give you a chance to respond. If we close your account, we refund amounts you have paid for services not yet delivered and for products not yet shipped, and closing an account does not delete your medical record, which we keep for the period the law requires.
4Other documents that form part of this agreement
These documents apply to you as well, and they are part of this agreement. Where one of them says something more specific than this document does, the more specific document governs on that point.
Shipping Policy. How and when we ship, and what happens when a delivery goes missing.
Returns and Refunds Policy. What can be returned, on what timeline, and what we do about a defect, a damaged item, the wrong item, or a recall.
Clinical Cancellation, No-Show and Billing Policy. Cancellations, missed appointments, and how clinical services are billed. These are separate from merchandise returns.
Subscription and Auto-Renewal Terms. How recurring orders and plans work, and how to stop one.
Privacy Policy. How we handle your information.
Notice of Privacy Practices. Your rights as a patient over your health information, and how we may use and disclose it.
Product Safety and Medical Disclaimer. Warnings, intended uses, and limits that apply to what we sell.
5Orders, prices and payment
Prices are in US dollars. Taxes and shipping are calculated at checkout and shown to you before you pay. Placing an order is an offer to buy; the sale is made when we accept your order, which we normally do by confirming it or by shipping.
Occasionally a price or a description is wrong. If the error is obvious and material, we may decline or cancel the order rather than fulfill it at the wrong price. If we do, we tell you and we refund you in full. We do not charge you the corrected price without asking you first.
We state when the charge is taken at the point you enter your payment details. For a clinical service that a clinician must review before it can be delivered, we tell you plainly whether you are being charged then or later.
We may limit quantities, decline an order, or cancel an order we cannot lawfully or safely fill. If we cancel after you have paid, you get a full refund.
6Educational content and memberships
Access to courses, programs and other educational content is a license to you personally for the period stated when you bought it. It is not a transfer of ownership. You may not share your access, resell it, or reproduce the material outside what the law allows.
If we withdraw content you have paid to access before your access period ends, we either replace it with something equivalent or refund the unused part of what you paid, and you choose which.
7Content you post
You keep ownership of reviews, photographs, questions and anything else you post. By posting it on a public part of our site you give us permission to host, display, reproduce and adapt it for the purpose of operating and promoting the service, worldwide and without a fee.
That permission lasts while your content is posted, and for a reasonable period afterwards for backups, records and legal obligations. You can ask us to take your content down and we will, subject to the records we are required to keep. If we want to use your review or story in advertising, we ask you separately first.
Do not post anything that is not yours to post, anything false, anything that identifies another patient, or anything unlawful. Our rules for reviews, including how we moderate them and when we will not publish one, are in the Review and User Content Terms.
8Acceptable use
While using our site and services, do not:
break the law, or use the service to help someone else break it
try to get into an account, a record or a system you are not authorized to reach
scrape, crawl or bulk-download the site, or work around a technical limit we have set
interfere with the service, its security, or other people's use of it
misrepresent who you are, including impersonating a clinician or a member of our staff
resell a clinical service, or obtain a clinician-ordered product for someone other than the patient it was ordered for
9Our intellectual property
The site, its design, our text, images, video, course materials and our brands belong to us or to our licensors and are protected by copyright, trademark and other law. We give you permission to use them for your own personal, non-commercial use of the service, and nothing more.
If you believe material on our site infringes your copyright, send a notice to support@sleepbalanceacademy.com identifying the work, identifying the material and where it is on our site, giving us your contact details, and confirming you have a good faith belief that the use is not authorized. We respond to properly made notices and to counter-notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
10Products made by other companies
We sell some products that other companies manufacture. Those products carry the manufacturer's own warranty, and the Warranty Policy explains how ours and theirs fit together.
We do not disclaim responsibility for the products we choose to sell you. If a product we sold you is defective, damaged, not what you ordered, or subject to a recall, come to us and we will put it right under the Returns and Refunds Policy, whoever made it.
11Availability of the service
We work to keep the site and the patient portal available, but we do not promise uninterrupted service. Maintenance, a failure at a supplier, or something outside our control can interrupt it.
If a technology failure interrupts a scheduled visit, we do not charge you for the visit that did not happen. What we do instead is set out in the Clinical Cancellation, No-Show and Billing Policy.
12What we promise, and what we do not
Except where this agreement, another document listed in section 4, or the law says otherwise, the website and the educational content are provided as they are. We do not promise that the site will be error free, that content is complete or current, or that it will produce a particular result for you.
Three limits on that:
Clinical care. It does not apply to clinical care. Care is measured against the professional standard of care, not against a warranty in a website agreement, and nothing here lowers that standard.
Products. It does not remove a warranty that the law gives you on a product we sold you. Some states do not allow certain warranties to be excluded, and in those states the exclusion does not apply to you.
Our own promises. It does not affect any promise we make elsewhere in this agreement, including our commitments on returns, refunds, recalls and missing deliveries.
13Limits on what we owe you
Where the law allows us to limit our liability, we limit it as follows. Neither of us is liable to the other for indirect or consequential loss, or for lost profits, lost revenue or lost data. Our total liability arising out of this agreement is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim, or one hundred dollars.
That limit does not apply to any of the following, and we do not ask you to agree that it does:
death or personal injury caused by our negligence
professional negligence in the delivery of clinical care
fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, or willful misconduct
our obligation to refund money you paid for something you did not receive
liability for a defective product, to the extent the law does not permit it to be limited
anything else that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded in your state
Some states do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages. Where that is your state, the limits above apply only as far as that state allows, and the rest of this section still stands.
14Indemnity
If someone brings a claim against us because you broke this agreement, used the service unlawfully, or infringed someone else's rights, you agree to cover our reasonable costs and any damages awarded for that claim.
This does not apply to a claim that arises from something we did wrong. We will tell you promptly about any claim we expect you to cover, we will not settle it without asking you first, and you may take over the defense with counsel we reasonably approve.
15Rights this agreement does not touch
Nothing in this agreement waives, limits, or conditions any of the following, and we do not require you to give any of them up in order to receive treatment, to have a claim paid, or to enroll.
Your right to file a complaint with the US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, or with any other government agency, including a state attorney general, a licensing board, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Food and Drug Administration.
Your right to report a safety concern about a product or about your care.
Your rights under the Notice of Privacy Practices and under state privacy law.
Any right that the law of your state says cannot be waived by an agreement like this one.
Nothing in this agreement prevents a government agency from investigating us or from obtaining relief on your behalf.
16Resolving a dispute
16.1 Talk to us first
Most problems are solved quickly by telling us about them. Before starting an arbitration or a lawsuit, send us a Notice of Dispute at support@sleepbalanceacademy.com or to our legal notice address below. Say who you are, how to reach you, what happened, and what you want us to do about it. If we have a dispute with you, we will send you the same thing.
Both of us then have 60 days to try to sort it out. Either of us may ask for a phone or video conversation, and both of us should take part in good faith. If we settle it, that is the end of it. If 60 days pass without a resolution, either of us may start a proceeding. The 60 days do not run against a deadline the law gives you: any statute of limitations is paused while this step is under way.
16.2 What is not covered by arbitration
The arbitration agreement in 16.3 does not apply to any of the following, and you do not give up your right to go to court about them.
Clinical claims. Any claim about your clinical care, including professional negligence, informed consent, and any other claim sounding in tort against us or a clinician. Claims of this kind are arbitrated only if you and the clinician sign a separate written agreement to arbitrate that meets the requirements of the state where you received care. You are not required to sign one, and we will not make care, payment or enrollment conditional on your signing one.
Sexual assault and harassment. A dispute alleging sexual assault or sexual harassment. Under the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, you may choose whether such a dispute goes to arbitration or to court, and the choice is yours alone.
Small claims. Either of us may bring an individual claim in small claims court instead, as long as it stays in that court and is brought on an individual basis.
Urgent protective orders. Either of us may ask a court for an injunction or similar order to stop misuse of intellectual property, unauthorized access to a system, or a disclosure of confidential or health information.
Claims the law keeps in court. A claim for public injunctive relief, and any claim that the law of your state says cannot be sent to arbitration. Where a court decides such a claim must be heard in court, it is heard in court and the rest of this section still applies to everything else.
Government enforcement. Action by a government agency. Nothing here stops a regulator or an attorney general from acting, including on your behalf.
16.3 Individual arbitration
Except for what section 16.2 excludes, you and Sleep Balance Academy agree that any dispute between us arising out of or relating to this agreement, the website, a purchase, or our relationship, including a dispute about whether this arbitration agreement applies, will be resolved by binding individual arbitration rather than in court, and that each of us gives up the right to a jury trial for those claims.
The arbitration is administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules in effect when the arbitration is started, as modified by this section. The Federal Arbitration Act governs the interpretation and enforcement of this arbitration agreement. If the AAA will not administer the arbitration consistent with this section, either of us may ask a court to appoint an administrator or an arbitrator instead.
Costs. Fees follow the AAA Consumer Arbitration Rules. Where those rules require you to pay a filing fee that is more than the fee to file the same claim in your local court, we pay the difference. We also pay the arbitrator's fees and the AAA's administrative fees to the extent those rules place them on us, and we will not seek our attorney fees from you unless the arbitrator finds your claim was frivolous or brought for an improper purpose.
Where and how. You may choose a hearing by telephone or video, a hearing on documents only, or an in-person hearing in the county where you live. We will not ask you to travel to Iowa for a hearing.
The arbitrator and the award. One arbitrator decides the case and may award the same individual relief a court could award, including statutory damages and attorney fees where a statute provides for them. The award is written, gives reasons, is final, and may be entered as a judgment in any court with jurisdiction.
Many similar claims at once. If 25 or more similar claims are filed against us by or with the help of the same counsel or coordinated group, the AAA's supplementary rules for multiple case filings apply, and both sides will cooperate with a staged process so cases move in batches rather than stalling. Nothing in this paragraph delays your individual claim beyond what those rules allow.
16.4 Individual basis only
Claims covered by 16.3 are brought individually. Neither of us may bring a class, collective, consolidated or representative action in arbitration, and the arbitrator may not preside over one or award relief to anyone who is not a party.
This paragraph is severable in a specific way: if a court decides the individual basis requirement is unenforceable for a particular claim, that claim, and only that claim, is taken out of arbitration and heard in court. Everything else stays in arbitration. If the individual basis requirement is found unenforceable as to all claims, then this whole section 16.3 does not apply and disputes go to the courts identified in section 17.
16.5 How to opt out of arbitration
You can refuse the arbitration agreement and keep everything else. Doing so costs nothing and changes nothing else about your account, your care, your orders or your prices.
Send an email to support@sleepbalanceacademy.com with the subject line "Arbitration opt-out", or mail a letter to our legal notice address below.
Include your full name, the email address on your account, and a statement that you do not agree to arbitrate.
Send it within 30 days of the date you first accepted these terms, or within 30 days of the date a new arbitration section takes effect, whichever applies.
We will confirm we received it. If you opt out, section 16.3 and section 16.4 do not apply to you and disputes go to the courts identified in section 17. If we change this section later, you get a fresh 30 day opt-out window for the change, and a change does not apply retroactively to a dispute we already knew about.
17Governing law and where claims are heard
Iowa law governs this agreement and any dispute arising out of it, without applying conflict of law rules that would point somewhere else.
That choice does not take away a protection your own state's law gives you that cannot be waived by agreement. If you are a consumer or a patient resident in another state, those protections still apply to you.
For any claim that is not in arbitration, the state and federal courts serving Dubuque County, Iowa have jurisdiction, and both of us consent to it. This does not prevent you from bringing a claim where the law of your state entitles you to bring it, and it does not prevent either of us from enforcing a judgment elsewhere.
18Notices
We send notices to the email address on your account, or by posting them where you will see them when you sign in. Keep your contact details current; a notice we send to the address you gave us counts as delivered.
Send a formal legal notice to the legal notice address below. Everything else, including anything about an order, a return, a bill or your privacy rights, should go to support@sleepbalanceacademy.com, which is monitored.
19Changes to this document
We update this document when what we do changes, when the law changes, or when we find wording that is unclear. Every version is kept, and each one records the date it took effect.
How you find out depends on how much changed. A correction that does not change your rights is simply published. A change that does affect your rights is announced before it takes effect. A change that materially alters what you agreed to is not applied to you by silence: we ask you to accept it, and continuing to browse the site is not treated as acceptance.
If you want a copy of an earlier version, or want to know what changed and when, write to support@sleepbalanceacademy.com and we will send it to you.
20The rest
If part of this is unenforceable
The rest still applies. A court or arbitrator should give an unenforceable term the narrowest reading that makes it lawful rather than striking the whole document.
If we do not enforce something straight away
We have not given up the right to enforce it later.
Transferring this agreement
You may not transfer it without our consent. We may transfer it to a company that acquires our business, and we will tell you if that happens.
The whole agreement
This document and the documents listed in section 4 are the whole agreement between us about their subject matter, and they replace earlier versions. Nothing here limits a statement we made to you that the law says we cannot disclaim.
Events outside our control
Neither of us is responsible for a delay or failure caused by something genuinely outside our reasonable control. If that happens to us, we tell you, and if we cannot deliver what you paid for, we refund you.
Doing this electronically
You agree that we may give you agreements, notices and records electronically, and that an electronic acceptance is as binding as a signature on paper. You may ask us for a paper copy of anything at any time and we will send it at no charge.
We record your acceptance of these terms against the exact version you accepted, so that both of us can later tell what the agreement said at the time.
21Contact
Where to send a formal legal noticeSleep Balance Academy PCAttention: Legal Notices
1749 Creek Wood Dr
Dubuque, IA 52004
Use the address above only for service of a formal legal notice. For everything else, including orders, returns, billing, safety concerns and privacy requests, use the contact below. A notice sent to the wrong one of these still reaches us, but it takes longer to reach the right person.
