Terms of Use

LivingECHO welcomes you to our community comparison-shopping site for ecologically-friendly products and companies.

LivingECHO is committed to bringing our members the best in environmentally friendly and ecologically sustainable products. For information on how we select and rate the products that are sold through the LivingECHO website, please see our Product Requirements—Information for Customers page.

LivingECHO has rules and policies that we enforce in order to promote a safe and eco-friendly trading environment for all members. Please read the following carefully, as it describes LivingECHO's terms of service. By continuing to use our site, you accept these terms and conditions. If you do not agree to the terms contained in this document, please discontinue your use of the LivingECHO website.

Privacy Policy

All LivingECHO website users are bound by our Privacy Policy, which explains how LivingECHO collects, protects and uses your information.

Using LivingECHO—Basic Terms and Conditions

In order to use the LivingECHO website you must be able to form legally binding contracts, be at least 18 years old or have the involvement of a parent or guardian, and must not have been temporarily or indefinitely suspended from any LivingECHO website.

By using the LivingECHO website, you agree NOT to:

• Violate any of our policies.
• Violate any laws or third-party rights.
• Fail to pay for items purchased by you, unless the seller has materially changed the item's description after your purchase or a clear typographical error has been made (if either of those should happen, please Contact Us for further action).
• Make offers via LivingECHO-related email to any other LivingECHO user to buy or sell goods or services outside of the LivingECHO website.
• Manipulate the price of any listed product or service or interfere with another user's listings.
• Take any action that might undermine the various user feedback systems, such as displaying or exporting user ratings or comments off of LivingECHO. (See the Business Agreement for information about exporting feedback about your own business.)
• Interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper working of LivingECHO or any activities conducted on the LivingECHO website.
• Interfere with any transaction associated with LivingECHO, whether or not the transaction is conducted on the LivingECHO website.
• Distribute viruses or any other technologies that might harm LivingECHO or the interests or property of LivingECHO users.
• Harvest or otherwise collect information about LivingECHO users, including their email addresses, without their consent.

Violation of any of these terms and conditions or any of the terms and conditions outlined in the following sections, or of any other LivingECHO policy, may result in one or more of the actions listed in the Consequences of Abusing LivingECHO Policies section.

Copyrights and Restrictions

You may not copy, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, or publicly display any content from LivingECHO without the prior expressed written permission of LivingECHO and/or the appropriate third party, as applicable, except content you have created, including your personal or company information. (Businesses may export some other content under limited circumstances specified in the Business Agreement.)

Automated Access: The LivingECHO website contains robot-exclusion headers. Much of the information on LivingECHO is updated on a real-time basis and is proprietary or is licensed to LivingECHO by our users or third parties. You may not use any robot, spider, scraper, or other automated means to access LivingECHO for any purpose without our express written permission. You may not bypass our robot exclusion headers or other measures we may use to prevent or restrict access to LivingECHO.

LivingECHO works to ensure that listed items do not infringe upon the copyright, trademark or other rights of third parties. If you believe that your rights have been violated, please notify our support team and we will investigate.

If you have any questions about these policies, please Contact Us.

Feedback Policy

LivingECHO provides customers the opportunity to give feedback on their satisfaction with a seller or their products by assigning them a Company Rating. This system is designed to provide an honest and eco-friendly shopping experience for all users.

Users should be responsible in giving feedback. Once submitted, feedback becomes a permanent part of a seller's record.

All LivingECHO community members must abide by the following rules regarding feedback:

• Feedback may not be used for extortion or bribery of any kind. (For example, threats to leave negative or neutral feedback about a seller unless they provide goods or services not included in the original listing—which would be against the law as well as against LivingECHO policy.)
• Sellers may not attempt by any means to prevent buyers from giving feedback.
• Feedback may not be manipulated in any other way.

LivingECHO reserves the right to remove specific feedback from a company's overall rating. No other party may remove feedback from the LivingECHO website.

If you would like to report a violation of our feedback policies, if you need further assistance or if you have additional questions about feedback, please Contact Us.

Recourse: Flagging and Investigations

LivingECHO and the user community work together to keep LivingECHO working properly and the community safe. Users have the options of flagging postings on the LivingECHO site or requesting investigations of trading or other behavior that violate our policies.

Flagging

LivingECHO invites companies and users to self-publish articles, videos and catalog listings of eco-friendly products and services for free, subject to our Agreements and Policies. Users may use the flagging feature to identify articles, videos, companies, items for sale, or member comments that are inappropriate according to those Policies. This will help us ensure that potentially problematic items are reviewed and, if necessary, removed in a timely matter.

When flagging an inappropriate article, video, item listing, company description, or comment, please give a detailed and valid explanation of why you find the item or subject inappropriate. Only one flag per person per posting is allowed. Users should be responsible in using the flagging feature. Threats of spurious flagging may not be used to manipulate another user's postings or participation in transactions.

Once a post has reached a certain number of negative flags, it will automatically be deactivated until we can review it. If an article, video, item listing, or company listing has been removed but is actually in compliance with our Agreements and Policies, it may be reactivated, possibly with modifications made by the poster to prevent further misunderstandings.

If you have ideas for improving our flagging system, please let us know. If you need further assistance or have additional questions about flagging, please Contact Us.

Investigations

Please Contact Us to report problems or possible policy violations. If you are the victim of a violation of LivingECHO's policies regarding the buying and selling of products or services through our website, you may request that LivingECHO investigate the episode. The LivingECHO investigations team tries to resolve any reported cases of inappropriate postings and trading behavior. LivingECHO will consider the circumstances of an alleged offense and the user's posting and trading record before taking action. Disciplinary action may range from a formal warning up to termination of a user's account. For full information on how to report possible LivingECHO policy violations that cannot not be dealt with by flagging a posting, as well as a guide to what we do and do not consider an investigable problem, please read our Investigation Policy.

Consequences of Abusing LivingECHO Policies

Without limiting other remedies, we may limit, suspend or terminate service or user accounts, prohibit access to our website, remove hosted content, and/or take technical and/or legal steps to keep users off LivingECHO if we think that they are creating problems or possible legal liabilities or acting inconsistently with the letter or spirit of our policies.

LivingECHO will consider the circumstances of an alleged policy violation and the associated user's posting and trading record before taking action. If a complaint cannot be proven with certainty, LivingECHO may choose to take no action.

If we decide that action is warranted, we may:

• Remove any posting that violates LivingECHO's policies.
• Limit the account privileges of anyone who violates LivingECHO policies.
• Suspend or terminate the offender's account.
• Take any legal action necessary to protect LivingECHO, its users and affiliates, or third parties.

Shipping

LivingECHO sellers will make reasonable efforts to ship items ordered within two business days, if the items are available. If a product proves to be unavailable or otherwise cannot be shipped, the buyer will receive a refund. LivingECHO sellers' shipping rates, methods and terms are set by individual merchants, not by LivingECHO. That information will appear on the order summary page when you are ready to make your purchase.

LivingECHO sellers can ship to almost any address in the world, but there are some restrictions. Sellers may have different shipping options, so it is important to check the shipping restrictions for each seller.

When you purchase a product or products on the LivingECHO website, an Order Confirmation email containing information such as a shipping date estimate, the cost of shipping and the shipping method and carrier you selected will be sent to the email address that you provided us. When your package is shipped, you will receive a Shipment Confirmation email with the shipping date, the estimated delivery date and a tracking number (if available). LivingECHO members may also view all of their shipping information in the order summaries available on the Your Account page.

For more information about our shipping policies, restrictions on deliveries to certain destinations, how to track your order in transit, and what to do if your order is not delivered, please see our Shipping Policies and Information for Customers page. (Our shipping policies apply only to items purchased on the LivingECHO website; if you purchase something on the website of one of our affiliated sellers, you will need to contact that seller for shipping information.) LivingECHO encourages you to reuse or recycle packaging; information on how to reuse and recycle the materials our sellers use can be found on the Recycling Your Packing Materials page.

Refunds, Returns and Exchanges

LivingECHO does not handle returns or exchanges of any kind, except for orders that have never been shipped and/or completed. All returns, exchanges and refunds on items that have already been shipped to you must be handled directly with the relevant seller. Each company will have a different return, exchange and refund policy. To contact a seller, please refer to your Order Confirmation email, where you will find each seller's contact information. If you wish to cancel an order that was placed on the LivingECHO website and receive a refund on an item that has not yet been shipped, please contact us by email with the relevant order number in the subject heading.

If you do not receive a refund within four weeks of sending an item back, please contact the seller. If your claim remains in dispute, please Contact Us by email with the relevant order number in the subject heading.

Any questions or claims regarding any charges or billing for items purchased on the LivingECHO website must be raised with us in writing within sixty days after the date you are notified of the charges, or they will be considered final and will not be subject to any further dispute.

Liability

You may not hold LivingECHO responsible for other users' actions or inactions, including anything they post on the LivingECHO website or any other site.

We have no control over and do not guarantee the quality, safety or legality of items advertised, the truth or accuracy of listings, the ability of sellers to sell items, the ability of buyers to pay for items, or that a buyer or seller will actually complete a transaction.

We do not transfer legal ownership of items from the seller to the buyer, and nothing in this agreement shall modify the governing provisions of California Commercial Code § 2401(2) and Uniform Commercial Code § 2-401(2), under which legal ownership of an item is transferred upon physical delivery of the item to the buyer by the seller. Unless the buyer and the seller agree otherwise, the buyer will become the item's lawful owner upon physical receipt of the item from the seller, in accordance with California Commercial Code § 2401(2) and Uniform Commercial Code § 2-401(2).

We cannot guarantee continuous or secure access to our services. Operation of LivingECHO may be interfered with by numerous factors outside of our control. Accordingly, to the extent legally permitted, we exclude all implied warranties, terms and conditions. We are not liable for any loss of money, goodwill or reputation or any special, indirect or consequential damages arising out of your use of our websites. (Some jurisdictions do not allow the disclaimer of warranties or exclusion of damages, so such disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you.)

General Provisions

Each of the policies described above may be changed from time to time. Changes to our policies take effect when we post them on the LivingECHO website.

When using particular services on LivingECHO, you are subject to any posted policies or rules applicable to those services you use through LivingECHO. All such policies and rules are hereby incorporated into these Terms of Use.

Failure by LivingECHO to enforce strict compliance with any of our terms, agreements, or policies shall not be construed as a waiver of any part of those terms, agreements, or policies.

If you have any questions about billing or products, please Contact Us.

Our address is:
LivingECHO LLC
1930 N. Vermont Ave., #206
Los Angeles, CA 90027

Some LivingECHO-branded websites or other websites we operate may be governed by separate terms of use, agreements and privacy policies. The agreement that applies to each of our domains and sub-domains is always the agreement that is linked to in the footer of its individual website.

These Terms of Use are effective July 12, 2007 for current users and are effective upon acceptance for new users. The last update/amendment to these Terms of Use was July 12, 2007.