Referral Program Terms

These Referral Program Terms (“Referral Terms”) govern the Chow Referral Program (the “Program”) offered by Flame Industries Inc., doing business as Chow (“Chow,” “we,” “us,” or “our”).

The Referral Terms supplement, and do not replace, the Chow Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, both of which continue to apply, including their provisions on dispute resolution, governing law, and limitation of liability. If something here conflicts with the Terms of Service on a Program-specific point, these Referral Terms control for the Program.

By enrolling in the Program, sharing a referral link, code or shared list, or accepting a referral, you agree to these Referral Terms.

1. Overview

The Program lets an existing Chow member invite a friend to Chow. If your friend accepts your invite and later becomes a paying annual Chow subscriber, you can earn a cash reward. Installing the app, starting a free trial, or subscribing to a weekly plan does not earn a reward on its own — only a completed annual subscription, accepted and purchased the way described below, does.

There are two ways a friend accepts your invite:

• Your referral code or link. You enroll in the Program, get a code, and your friend opens your link or enters your code in Chow.
• Your shared grocery list. You invite your friend to a shared Chow grocery list, and your friend joins it in the Chow app using your list invite. You do not need a code or to enroll first. A friend who only ever views a shared list in a web browser, without the Chow app, does not accept an invite for this purpose, and a list shared by someone who is only ever a web guest never earns a reward.

The Program is optional. You do not need to participate to use Chow.

2. Who can refer

To earn a reward for a friend, you must be a paying Chow subscriber when your friend’s qualifying purchase happens (Section 3). A free trial of a paid Chow plan counts; a promotional or complimentary grant of access does not. If you are not a subscriber at that moment you earn nothing for that friend, and you cannot earn it later by subscribing afterwards. Where Chow’s records do not yet show your own subscription when your friend’s purchase arrives, we allow up to 72 hours for them to appear; a subscription you started before your friend’s purchase counts.

To enroll for a referral code, you must also be at least 18 years old, be a resident of the United States, have a secured Chow account (today, an account linked to Sign in with Apple), and be a paying subscriber when you enroll and when your friend opens your code or link.

You do not need any of that to share a list. You can share a Chow grocery list, and a friend’s join is recorded for you, without enrolling, without a secured account and without a subscription. The requirements above for being paid — 18 or older, a US resident, a secured account and a PayPal address — apply when you claim a reward (Section 4), not when you share.

You confirm your age and residency when you enroll or when you claim a reward. We may ask you to verify either at any time, may ask you to verify your identity before paying a reward, and may deny or reverse a reward if a confirmation turns out to be false.

3. How a referral qualifies

A referral qualifies for a reward only if all of the following happen, in this order:

• Your friend accepts your invite before paying. Your friend must open your referral link or enter your referral code in Chow, or join your shared list in the Chow app, before starting a free trial or making their first payment to Chow. If your friend starts a trial or pays first and accepts an invite afterward, that purchase does not qualify — there is no way to attach an invite to a purchase after the fact.
• The most recent invite wins. If your friend accepts more than one invite — any mix of codes, links and shared lists — only the last one they accept is credited. An earlier one, including yours, is displaced.
• Your friend starts the annual plan within 30 days of accepting your invite, and pays for it. Your friend must start Chow’s annual subscription within 30 days of first opening your invite link, entering your code or joining your list — starting its free trial counts as starting the plan — and then complete a paid purchase of it. A trial started on day 30 that converts to a paid plan when the trial ends still qualifies; a plan started on day 31 does not. A weekly subscription, or a trial that never converts to a paid annual plan, never qualifies.
• Your friend must be a new Chow customer. A reward is available only the first time a given person becomes a paying Chow customer. A returning or already-paying customer does not generate a reward.
• Your friend stays subscribed for 45 days. The reward becomes earned once your friend has been a continuously paying subscriber for 45 days, counted from their first payment (not from when they accepted your invite or started any trial).

We check your own eligibility as a referrer when your friend’s qualifying purchase happens (Section 2), and, for a referral code, also when your friend claims it.

4. The reward and when it is paid

The reward is $10.00 USD per qualifying referred friend, paid once. There is no recurring, renewal, or lifetime commission — a friend’s subsequent renewals do not generate additional rewards.

A reward is earned once your friend has been a continuously paying subscriber for 45 days (Section 3). If your friend cancels or is refunded before that 45-day period is complete, the reward is not earned and does not become payable.

Claiming a reward. An earned reward is paid only after you claim it in the app. To claim, you must: confirm that you are at least 18 years old and live in the United States (two separate confirmations, both required); have a secured account (today, Sign in with Apple); and give a PayPal email address. Until you have made both confirmations — when you enroll for a referral code, or at your first claim — a reward you have earned waits as an unclaimed reward: it counts toward your cap (Section 6), and nothing about it changes while it waits. Once you have made them, a reward is ready to pay as soon as it is earned.

Once a reward has actually been paid out to you, a later cancellation or refund on your friend’s subscription does not claw the payment back — Chow absorbs that cost. A cancellation or refund that happens before payout, by contrast, cancels the reward.

Claimed rewards are paid manually, in periodic batches (normally monthly), by PayPal to the PayPal email address you provide in Chow. A reward cannot be paid until you have claimed it and provided a working PayPal address. We pay to the address you have given us at the time of the batch; a payment sent to that address is treated as paid to you, even if you entered it incorrectly, so keep it current. Any fees, holds, limits, or delays imposed by PayPal are between you and PayPal.

Unclaimed rewards expire after 12 months. You have 12 months from the day a reward is earned to claim it. A reward still unclaimed after that expires and will not be paid, to the extent permitted by applicable law. Deleting your account cancels every reward that has not been paid, including unclaimed ones, and an account that is lost, or that you never secured with Sign in with Apple and can no longer open, cannot claim. The app shows your unpaid rewards.

Rewards are personal to you. They cannot be transferred, assigned, sold, or exchanged, and there is no alternative form of payment.

5. What does not count

For clarity, none of the following earns a reward:

• a friend installing Chow without accepting your invite;
• a friend starting or using a free trial that is never converted to a paid annual subscription;
• a friend subscribing to the weekly plan, at any point;
• a free trial or purchase your friend starts before accepting your invite;
• an annual plan started more than 30 days after your friend first opens your invite link, enters your code or joins your list;
• a friend who only views your shared list in a web browser, a friend who is already on your list, and a list shared by someone who is only ever a web guest;
• a friend’s purchase that happens while you are not a paying subscriber (Section 2);
• referring yourself, or using your own referral code or link on your own purchase, in any way we can identify;
• a friend you paid, or offered to pay, to accept your invite or to subscribe;
• a claim or purchase made in breach of Section 7; and
• a friend who has already been a paying Chow customer before.

We do not promise, and this Program does not provide, a reward for an install alone, at any point in this process. Your friend does not receive a discount, credit, or other benefit from the Program.

6. Caps, changes, and ending the Program

You can earn up to $1,000 USD, total, for the life of your participation in the Program, counting every qualifying reward, including those still in the 45-day hold, unclaimed or paid. Once you reach that cap, further qualifying referrals do not generate additional rewards.

We may change, limit, pause, suspend, or end the Program at any time, for any reason, including changing the reward amount, the qualifying product, the attribution window, the holding period, or the cap described in these Referral Terms.

A change applies to referrals going forward. A reward you have already earned under the terms in force at the time it was earned will be honored under those terms, even if the Program later changes or ends — subject always to the fraud and abuse provisions in Section 10.

7. How you may share your invite

Your invite is meant to be shared with people you know. You may also post it publicly. When you do either:

• Say that you may earn a reward. If you recommend Chow anywhere your audience might not know you are paid — a social post, a video, a review, a group chat you do not run — you must clearly disclose that you may earn a reward if someone subscribes (for example, “I get a referral reward if you sign up”). This is required by U.S. Federal Trade Commission guidance on endorsements, and it is required by us.
• Be accurate. Say only what is true about Chow, and do not make claims about its features, prices, or results that Chow itself does not make.

You may not:

• send unsolicited bulk or automated messages (email, text messages, direct messages, or comments) containing your invite, or post it anywhere that prohibits it;
• run paid advertising for your invite, or bid on “Chow” or related search terms;
• register domains, social handles, or accounts that use Chow’s name or marks, or present yourself as Chow or as endorsed by Chow;
• pay anyone, or offer to pay or share your reward with anyone, to claim your invite or to subscribe; or
• use bots, scripts, or purchased accounts, or otherwise generate claims that are not genuine referrals.

You are responsible for complying with the laws that apply to your own messages, including anti-spam and telemarketing laws, and for any harm caused by a breach of this section.

You participate as an independent member. Nothing in the Program makes you Chow’s employee, agent, partner, affiliate, or representative, and you have no authority to make commitments on Chow’s behalf.

8. Payout and taxes

You are responsible for any taxes owed on a referral reward you receive. Chow does not withhold taxes from Program payouts.

We may ask you for information reasonably required to pay you — for example, a valid PayPal address, or tax information (such as a Form W-9) if we are legally required to collect it. A reward cannot be paid until you provide the information we need.

9. Privacy

As a referrer, you can see your own referral counts and reward amounts. You do not see your friend’s identity, account details, or purchase history.

As a referred friend, the referrer does not see your identity or your account details — only that a referral occurred and, eventually, its reward status.

When a friend joins your shared list from your invite, we record that you invited them, for this Program only; the members of a shared list see who is on it, as described in the Privacy Policy. When you claim a reward we record that you confirmed you are at least 18 and live in the United States, and when.

To pay you, we collect and store the PayPal email address you provide. We use it only to send Program payouts and to keep the records described here.

After account deletion we keep only a limited financial record of each referral reward — the amount, the qualifying purchase reference, product and date, the reward’s lifecycle dates, and a pseudonymous key in place of your account — for as long as tax and fraud-prevention rules require, currently up to seven years from the payout or cancellation of the reward, and then delete it. Your PayPal address, your referral code and your claims are deleted with your account. Our Privacy Policy describes how we handle personal information more generally.

10. Fraud, disabled codes, and our records

We may investigate, withhold, deny, reverse, or reclaim a reward, and may disable a referral code or a referrer’s or referred friend’s ability to participate in the Program, if we reasonably believe the Program is being abused — including self-referral, fake or duplicate accounts, coordinated or automated claiming, breach of Section 7, or any other attempt to generate rewards without a genuine referral.

Our records control. Chow’s records determine whether an invite was claimed, when it was claimed, when a purchase was made, whether a friend was a new customer, and whether a reward was earned. Where our records and your recollection differ, our records control, and our reasonable, good-faith determination of eligibility is final. Chow cannot attach a referral to a purchase after the fact.

Participating in the Program is also subject to the Acceptable Use section of the Chow Terms of Service.

11. Contact

Questions about the Program or these Referral Terms may be directed to hello@usechow.app.

See also the Chow Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.