Terms of service

01This agreement

These terms are between you — the client placing an order, whether an individual or a company — and Sycamore Analytical, Alamo Plaza, 2796 Sycamore Drive #204, Simi Valley, CA 93065.

Placing an order, sending us a sample, or using the client portal means you accept these terms. If you are agreeing on behalf of a company, you are confirming you have the authority to bind it.

Our shipping and sample handling policy, refund policy and privacy policy form part of this agreement. Where the shipping policy sets out a practical detail — quantities, retention, refused shipments — that detail is a term of this contract.

02What we do

We perform analytical testing on research materials submitted to us and issue a certificate reporting what our instruments measured about the sample we received. That is the entire scope of the service.

03What you are telling us

Every time you send a sample, you are representing that:

• You have the right to send it and to have it tested.
• It is a research material within what we accept, and is not a controlled substance, a biological specimen, infectious material, or hazardous material.
• What you declared about it — compound, lot, amount — is accurate to the best of your knowledge.
• Sending, testing and holding it does not breach any law that applies to you or to us.

These matter. We plan our handling around what you declare, and a misdeclared sample can endanger the people who open it.

04Accounts

You are responsible for what happens under your account, for keeping your password to yourself, and for telling us promptly if you believe someone else has access to it. Tell us when someone leaves your company and we will unlink their login; until you do, they keep the access you gave them.

Accounts are for the company they belong to. Do not share one login across separate businesses — ask us to link a second login instead.

05Orders and pricing

An order is placed through the portal and is accepted when we confirm it. Prices are those shown when you place the order. We may change prices for future orders at any time; a change never affects an order already accepted.

You may cancel an order and receive a full refund at any time before analysis begins — including after the sample has arrived and is sitting at intake. Once analysis has begun the work is chargeable whether or not you still want the result. The moment analysis starts is timestamped in the chain of custody, so which side of that line a cancellation falls on is a matter of record rather than of argument.

Our refund policy sets out the rest — results, our errors, samples we cannot test, and how a refund is paid — and forms part of this agreement.

06Payment

Invoices are payable within 30 days of issue unless we have agreed otherwise in writing. Where card payment is offered, it is handled by a third-party payment processor; card details never reach us.

We may hold a certificate until the order it belongs to is paid. We will not withdraw or alter a certificate already released because of a payment dispute — a certificate in circulation has to stay reliable, and using it as leverage would make every certificate we issue worth less.

You are responsible for any taxes and duties on your order other than taxes on our income.

07Certificates

The certificate we issue is the record of the work. It reports what was measured, against the specification recorded for that panel, on the date shown.

• Do not alter a certificate. Reproduce it in full or not at all. Do not crop, edit, redact, or reproduce part of one in a way that changes what it says.
• We may withdraw a certificate if we discover an error, if the sample turns out to have been misdeclared, or if it is being misused. A withdrawn certificate stops verifying, and we will tell the account holder why.
• A corrected certificate supersedes the one it replaces and carries its own report ID.

08Publication and verification

Every certificate is private by default. You decide, one certificate at a time, whether it can be checked by the public, and you can reverse that decision. See the privacy policy for exactly what each state discloses.

Publishing is a decision with consequences worth understanding: a published report ID can be checked by anyone who has it, including anyone who reads it off a product label. That is what makes it useful, and it is not something we can partially undo for people who have already looked.

09Your branding on our certificates

When you upload a logo or company details for your certificates, you keep ownership of them, and you grant us permission to print them on certificates we issue for you and to display them on verification pages for certificates you have published.

You confirm you have the right to use that branding. We may decline to print branding that we believe infringes someone else's rights or misrepresents who commissioned the testing.

Our name, marks and certificate design remain ours. You may state that material was tested by Sycamore Analytical and reproduce our certificates in full; you may not use our name or marks to suggest we endorse, approve or recommend a product.

10How you may use a result

You may share, publish and rely on your certificates in your own business. Two limits, and both exist for the same reason — a certificate is only worth something if it means what it says:

• Do not present a result as something it is not. Not as a safety determination, not as approval for human or veterinary use, not as regulatory clearance, and not as a statement about a lot we did not test.
• Do not imply we endorse a product. We measured a sample. That is a different statement from recommending what you do with it.

11What we do not warrant

We perform testing with reasonable skill and care, using methods appropriate to the panel ordered. That is the warranty we give, and we stand behind it.

Beyond it, and to the fullest extent the law allows, the service is provided without other warranties, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. In particular we do not warrant:

• That results will meet any specification you hoped for. We report what we measure.
• That a sample is safe, effective, lawful, or fit for any use.
• That any turnaround time will be met. Turnaround is a working target, not a term of this contract.
• That the portal will be available without interruption.

12Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law:

• Our total liability arising out of or relating to an order is limited to the amount you paid for that order.
• We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost business or reputational harm, even if we were told they were possible.
• We are not liable for loss or damage to a sample in transit, before we sign for it — see the shipping policy.
• We are not liable for a sample disposed of after the 30-day retention period.

Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

If a result is wrong because we made a mistake, tell us. Within the retention period we will re-test the same material at our cost and issue a corrected certificate; where a retest is not possible, we refund what you paid for that sample. That is the remedy we can actually give, and it is the one worth having. See the refund policy.

13Indemnity

You agree to indemnify us against claims, losses and reasonable legal costs arising from: a sample you sent that was misdeclared or outside what we accept; your use of a certificate in a way these terms do not permit; branding you gave us that infringed someone else's rights; or your breach of these terms.

14Suspension and termination

You may close your account at any time by writing to us. We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms, that sends material outside what we accept, or where we are required to by law.

Closing an account does not withdraw certificates already issued. Sections on certificates, use of results, disclaimers, liability, indemnity and governing law survive termination.

15Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The state and federal courts located in Ventura County, California have exclusive jurisdiction, and both parties consent to that venue.

If any provision is held unenforceable, the rest stays in force.

16Changes

We may update these terms. The effective date at the top reflects the current version. Changes apply to orders placed after they take effect, never retroactively to an order already accepted. We will email account holders about any material change.

17Contact