Referral Program Terms

1. Who this is between

The program is run by Surname Switch ("we", "us"). You are a marriage celebrant or content creator we have approved and issued a unique referral code to ("you", a "referrer"). You can contact us any time at contact@surnameswitch.com.

2. Joining and your code

• We review every application by hand and may accept or decline any application at our discretion, without giving a reason.
• Your code is unique to you and is not transferable. You may share it with anyone you like, but the payouts under it belong to you alone.
• We may replace a code (for example if it is being abused by someone else) and will tell you if we do.
• Joining is free. There is nothing to buy and no obligation to promote us.

3. What your code does for your referrals

• When someone enters your code at checkout, the price drops on the spot: $5 off the Lite plan, $10 off the Powered plan, and $5 off an upgrade from Lite to Powered.
• One code per purchase. Codes apply at checkout only and cannot be applied to a purchase after it has been made.
• Codes have no cash value and cannot be exchanged for money by a customer.

4. What you earn

• You earn $10 for every qualifying Lite purchase, $25 for every qualifying Powered purchase, and $15 for every qualifying upgrade made with your code.
• An upgrade "tops up" an earlier Lite referral: if the same customer bought Lite with your code ($10 to you) and later upgrades with your code ($15 to you), you have earned the full Powered amount of $25 for that customer in total.
• There is no cap on how much you can earn.
• If we change these amounts, the change applies to future purchases only. Anything already earned stays at the old amounts.

5. What counts as a qualifying purchase

A purchase qualifies for a payout when all of these are true:

• Your code was entered at checkout and the payment was completed in full.
• The payment has not been refunded or reversed. This is strict: if we refund a purchase for any reason at all, including a goodwill refund where nothing went wrong, or the payment is disputed or charged back, that purchase does not qualify and no payout is owed on it. If we have already paid you for a purchase that is later refunded or reversed, we may deduct that amount from your next payout.
• It is a genuine purchase by a real customer. Purchases you make for yourself with your own code, purchases made to farm payouts, and anything else that is not a real customer buying the product do not qualify.

6. When we review and when we pay

The program runs on calendar quarters, with a settling month after each quarter so refunds and payment disputes have time to wash through before anyone is paid:

• January to March: reviewed and paid by the end of April.
• April to June: reviewed and paid by the end of July.
• July to September: reviewed and paid by the end of October.
• October to December: reviewed and paid by the end of January.

In the review month we send you a report of your qualifying purchases and the total owed. You then send us an invoice for that total (a reply to the report email is fine) and we pay it. We do not pay without an invoice, because the payout is business income to you, not wages.

7. Reports, and the limits of our reporting

Surname Switch is deliberately built to hold almost no customer information, and that limits what a report can contain. Your quarterly report shows, for each qualifying purchase: the date, the plan bought, the amount you earned, and the email address the customer used at checkout, so you can recognise your referrals. That is the extent of what we can report, and we cannot provide names, order details or anything further.

• Our payment records (held with our payment processor, Stripe) are the source of truth for what was purchased, refunded and owed.
• If you believe a report is wrong, tell us within 14 days of receiving it and we will check it against the payment records. After that the report is final for that quarter.
• Treat the report as confidential. Use it only to verify your payout, do not share it, do not add those email addresses to any mailing list or use them for marketing, and delete the report once you have been paid and any query is resolved.

8. Tax and invoicing

• All amounts are in Australian dollars and include GST if any applies. If you are registered for GST, issue your invoice accordingly.
• Your tax affairs are your own. We do not withhold tax from payouts and we do not provide tax advice.
• The program does not make you our employee, agent, partner or representative, and you cannot make promises or commitments on our behalf.

9. How you may promote your code

• Be honest. Describe the product and discount accurately, and never present yourself as Surname Switch staff.
• Follow the law, including the Spam Act: share your code with people who want to hear from you, and do not send unsolicited bulk messages promoting it.
• Do not run paid search or social ads on the Surname Switch name or brand terms, and do not list your code on coupon or voucher sites, without our written consent first.
• Use our logos and ready-made assets as provided in the kit, without altering the brand.

10. Changing or ending the program

• We may pause, change or end the program, or deactivate any individual code, at any time.
• If we do, qualifying purchases made before the change are still paid on the normal schedule. You do not lose what you have genuinely earned.
• The exception is misconduct: if a code has been used for self-referral, fraud, spam, or a serious breach of these terms, we may cancel the code and withhold payouts connected to that conduct.
• You can leave the program at any time by emailing us. We will pay out your qualifying purchases on the normal schedule.

11. Liability

Nothing in these terms excludes rights that cannot be excluded under Australian law. Beyond that, our total liability to you in connection with the program is limited to the payout amounts properly owed to you, and we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including loss of expected earnings from the program ending or a code being deactivated.

12. General

• These terms are governed by the laws of Victoria, Australia.
• We may update these terms from time to time. The current version is always the one published here, and continuing to share your code after an update means you accept the updated terms. Changes never apply backwards to amounts already earned.
• If part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands.