Agreement to these Terms
Using Rbundle means agreeing to this, the Acceptable Use Policy, the Privacy Policy and the Legal Services Notice.
These Terms of Service (“Terms”), together with the policies referenced in them, govern your access to and use of the Rbundle website and services at rbundle.com (the “Marketplace”), operated by Rbundle, LLC (“Rbundle,” “we,” “us,” or “our”).
By using the Marketplace, creating an account, or clicking to accept, you agree to be bound by these Terms and by the Acceptable Use Policy, the Privacy Policy, the Cookies Policy and the Legal Services Notice, each incorporated here by reference. If you do not agree, do not use the Marketplace.
The Marketplace is offered to users old enough to form a binding contract, acting for a business. It is not directed to consumers acting in a personal capacity and it is not directed to children.
The original language of these Terms, and of everything else on the site, is English. Any translation is offered for convenience; where a translation conflicts with the English, the English controls.
CONFIRM with counsel: entity name and registered address, the age and capacity representation, and whether a consumer-facing carve-out is needed in any state where the Marketplace operates.
What Rbundle is, and what it is not
We are the marketplace, not the professional. We do not advise, endorse, recommend or warrant anyone.
Rbundle is a marketplace for professional services in which the business requesting the work stays anonymous while it shops. A Buyer describes a need once, as a standardised Common Request for Proposal, and receives sealed, fixed-fee proposals from vetted Providers. The Buyer's identity is not disclosed to any Provider until the Buyer selects a proposal to engage.
Rbundle is a neutral facilitator. Rbundle does not itself provide any of the listed professional services and does not give professional advice. We connect the two sides, standardise the request, and screen Providers — but we do not advise, endorse, recommend, guarantee or warrant any Provider or any service, and we do not guarantee any outcome, quality, result, or fitness for a particular purpose.
Every engagement is a direct relationship between the Buyer and the Provider. Rbundle is not a party to it. Verifying a Provider's credentials is a threshold screening gate, not an endorsement and not a warranty of that Provider's work.
Rbundle does not run an auction. Proposals are sealed and submitted once. No Provider sees another Provider's proposal or price, there is no second round in which to revise a number, and the Marketplace does not rank proposals by price.
Key definitions
The capitalised words used throughout these Terms.
- Marketplace
- The Rbundle website and services at rbundle.com.
- Buyer
- A person or business that uses the Marketplace to seek a Listed Service. Also called a Customer.
- Provider
- A person, firm or company that offers a Listed Service and competes to provide it. Also called a Seller.
- Listed Service
- A professional service offered through the Marketplace and described in the Services List.
- Common RFP
- The standardised set of questions a Buyer completes to solicit proposals for a Listed Service.
- Request
- A submitted Common RFP. Each Request carries a code rather than a name.
- Bundle
- Two or more Listed Services requested as a single item and quoted as a single Proposal. A Bundle is engaged in full or not at all.
- Proposal
- A Provider's response to a Request, stating scope, fixed fee, timeline and deliverables, with the Provider's own supporting document.
- Engagement
- The relationship formed when a Buyer selects a Proposal and contracts with that Provider for the work.
- Verification
- Rbundle's firm-level screening of a Provider's identity, licensure and insurance.
- Direct Invitation
- A Request that a Buyer sends to one or more named Providers rather than, or in addition to, the open Marketplace.
- Account
- A pseudonymous record created under a verified sign-in email, typed as a Buyer account or a Provider account.
The prior version of these Terms defined a Sales Representative role paid by commission, and defined provider Subscriptions. Neither exists in the current product. The definitions have been removed rather than carried forward.
Accounts
Accounts are pseudonymous. You sign in with an email; you are responsible for what happens under your account.
Accounts are pseudonymous. You sign in with a verified email address, used for sign-in and notifications. A Buyer supplies the business attributes needed to scope work, not identity. A Provider supplies firm identity, credentials and insurance, because Providers are visible to Buyers and must be vetted.
You may browse the Marketplace and build a Request without an account. While you are signed out, a Request you are building is held in your own browser and is not written to our servers. An account is required to send a Request, and to submit a Proposal.
You are responsible for activity under your account and for keeping access to your sign-in email secure. Tell us immediately if you believe your account has been compromised.
You may close your account at any time from your account settings. Closure takes effect immediately, and the Privacy Policy describes exactly what is severed, cancelled, deleted and retained.
How anonymity works
Identity-minimising, not zero-knowledge. We do not hold a Buyer's identity, and no Provider sees it before selection.
Rbundle is identity-minimising rather than zero-knowledge, and we would rather state that precisely than overstate it. For Buyers we collect the least we can, and we do not store a Buyer's name, company name, address, phone number or EIN against an account. A sign-in email exists so that a person can sign in and be notified, and ordinary server logs exist here as they do on any service.
A Buyer's identity is entered only at the moment the Buyer selects a Proposal, is passed through to that single selected Provider, and is not written to our database, our logs or our analytics. Providers who were not selected are told that the Buyer chose elsewhere; they do not learn who the Buyer was or what any other Provider quoted.
There is one exception, which is opt-in and off by default. A Buyer sending a Direct Invitation may choose to identify itself to the named Providers up front. Where a Buyer does so, that contact information is stored, for that invitation only, in a single record dedicated to the purpose.
Anonymity has limits we will not paper over. A distinctive combination of business attributes can narrow a Buyer down; a distinctive description typed into a free-text field can identify it outright; a Bundle discloses more than any single Request; and a Provider invited by name may simply recognise the work. Free-text answers are shown to Providers. We band figures, constrain free text, and warn at the points where the risk rises — but we can promise only that we do not hand identity over, not that a determined reader could never infer it.
Requests, Proposals and selection
Sealed, one-shot proposals. Nothing here guarantees that a Request draws proposals, or that a Provider receives any.
A Buyer decides who receives a Request: the open Marketplace, named Providers by Direct Invitation, or both. On the Marketplace a Request is routed to Providers that offer the service, hold the credentials it requires, and can work where the work is needed. A Buyer's stated preferences affect the order in which matching Providers are ranked, not which are permitted to respond. Providers cannot browse for Requests that were not routed to them.
Proposals are sealed and one-shot. A Provider may submit once. Proposals are presented to the Buyer together, on scope, fee, timeline and credentials.
Rbundle does not guarantee that any Request will receive Proposals, and does not guarantee any Provider a volume of Requests. Where a Listed Service has thin coverage, we say so before a Request is sent.
When a Buyer selects a Proposal, the Buyer contracts directly with that Provider. Rbundle does not draft, review, countersign, escrow or enforce that contract, does not take or facilitate payment between a Buyer and a Provider, and is not liable for anything arising from the delivery of the work.
Provider terms
Providers warrant their own credentials, run their own conflict checks, and own their proposals.
A Provider represents and warrants that it is qualified and licensed as required for every Listed Service it offers, that it will maintain those credentials and the insurance we require, and that it will comply with all applicable laws and rules of professional conduct.
A Provider must complete Verification before its Proposals are delivered on the open Marketplace. A Provider invited by name may respond before Verification completes; that Proposal is labelled so the Buyer knows what it is looking at.
A Provider is solely responsible for its Proposals and pricing, for its conflict-of-interest and independence checks, for its conduct, and for the services it delivers. Rbundle does not clear conflicts and renders no independence opinion.
Rbundle may suspend or remove a Provider that breaches these Terms, loses a credential, misstates its qualifications, or attempts to identify a Buyer outside the selection flow.
Fees
Free for Buyers. Free for Providers to join, be verified and propose. The fee model is not final.
Rbundle is free for a Buyer: free to build a Request, to send it, to receive and compare Proposals, and to engage a Provider.
For a Provider, joining, Verification and submitting a Proposal are free. There are no lead fees. A Provider is not charged for receiving a Request and is not charged for a Request it does not win.
Rbundle intends to charge the Provider that wins the work. That fee is not yet set and no charge is being made today; Providers joining during validation do so at no cost. Where fees begin, the applicable terms will be stated in the Provider Service Agreement for each Listed Service before any charge is incurred.
For legal services, fee arrangements must comply with the applicable rules of professional conduct, including restrictions on sharing fees with non-lawyers. Legal services are therefore expected to run on a flat subscription rather than a percentage of the fee or a charge triggered by winning an engagement. The Legal Services Notice covers this.
CONFIRM with counsel before any fee is charged: the fee model per Listed Service, whether the Provider Service Agreement is the right instrument, tax treatment, and the legal-vertical subscription structure against the rules of each jurisdiction where legal services go live.
Acceptable use
The Acceptable Use Policy is part of this agreement.
You may not use the Marketplace for any unlawful, fraudulent, harmful or malicious purpose. Your use must comply with the Acceptable Use Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms.
In addition, you may not scrape the Marketplace, circumvent its routing or its anonymity, misrepresent your identity, credentials or qualifications, or attempt to identify another user outside the flows the Marketplace provides.
Information, not advice
Nothing on Rbundle is professional advice, and no fit indication is a determination.
All content on Rbundle, including service education pages and any explanation of what a service involves, is general information for educational purposes. It is not legal, tax, accounting, financial or other professional advice, and reading it creates no professional relationship with Rbundle.
Any eligibility or fit indication the Marketplace returns is preliminary and is based only on the answers given. It is not a determination. The determination is a professional judgement and it belongs to a qualified Provider. Rules, rates and outcomes vary by situation and change over time, and any figures shown are illustrative rather than promises.
Your content and ours
You keep your content. We keep the Marketplace. Feedback you send us, we may use.
The Marketplace, its content, its software and its trade marks are owned by Rbundle or its licensors and are protected by law. You may not copy, sell, sublicense, reverse-engineer, or create derivative works of the Marketplace, remove its notices, probe or disrupt it, or attempt to access it other than through the interfaces we provide.
We claim no ownership of the content you submit. You grant Rbundle a licence to host, store, process and transmit that content as needed to operate the Marketplace — which, for a Request, includes rendering it in anonymised form to the Providers it is routed to.
If you send us feedback about Rbundle, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free licence to use it without restriction and without obligation to you. Feedback is not Request content, Proposal content or account information.
Review and enforcement
We may look at Requests and Proposals to run the marketplace, support users, and stop abuse.
We may view and internally process Request and Proposal content in order to operate and improve the Marketplace, to provide support, to route work correctly, and to detect fraud, abuse and violations of these Terms. We are not obliged to review anything.
Where we find a violation, we may suspend or terminate access, with or without notice. We may also take any other lawful step we consider appropriate.
Disclaimers
The Marketplace is provided as is. We do not warrant Providers, Proposals, or results.
The Marketplace and everything on it are provided “as is” and “as available,” with all faults and without warranty of any kind. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Rbundle disclaims all warranties, express, implied or statutory, including the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement.
We make no representation that the Marketplace will meet your requirements, achieve any intended result, operate without interruption or error, or that defects will be corrected. Service descriptions are prepared with the help of Providers and may contain errors. Information communicated by a Provider, or by a Buyer, is that party's own and is provided without warranty by Rbundle.
Some jurisdictions do not permit the exclusion of certain warranties. Where that is so, the exclusions above apply to the greatest extent enforceable.
CONFIRM with counsel: warranty disclaimers, the liability cap, indemnity scope and dispute resolution (including whether to include an arbitration clause and class-action waiver) are jurisdiction-sensitive and are not settled in this draft.
Limitation of liability and indemnity
We are not liable for what a Provider does, or for indirect losses.
To the maximum extent permitted by law, Rbundle is not liable for the acts, omissions, advice, work product or services of any Provider, or for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, punitive or exemplary damages, including lost profits or lost business, arising from or relating to the Marketplace.
You will indemnify and hold harmless Rbundle and its officers, employees and agents from any claim, proceeding, damage, loss or expense, including reasonable legal fees, arising out of your use of the Marketplace, your content, or your breach of these Terms.
CONFIRM with counsel: whether an aggregate liability cap is stated, and at what amount, given that the Marketplace is currently free to both sides.
Compliance with law
You are responsible for the data you put into a Request, and for the law that applies to you.
You are responsible for complying with the data-protection, privacy and confidentiality laws that apply to you, and for determining whether the Marketplace is suitable for your use in light of any regime that governs your information — for example HIPAA, GLBA, FERPA, CMMC, GDPR, or state privacy law.
Do not put information into a Request that you are not permitted to disclose. A Request is shown to the Providers it is routed to, and free-text answers are shown as written.
Governing law and venue
North Carolina law. Wake County courts.
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute relating to these Terms will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Wake County, North Carolina, and you consent to the jurisdiction of those courts.
Before filing anything, please try to resolve the dispute informally by writing to info@rbundle.com.
Changes, notices and the rest
We can change these Terms by posting them. Formal notice goes to the address below.
We may change these Terms and the incorporated policies at any time. Changes take effect when posted, and continued use after that is acceptance. Because there are many users, we cannot vary these Terms for any one of them.
Notice to you is effective when sent to the email on your account or posted on the Marketplace. Notice to us is effective on delivery to Rbundle, LLC, P.O. Box 1971, Apex, North Carolina 27502, or to any later address posted on the Marketplace.
If a provision is held unenforceable, the rest survives. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign your rights under these Terms; we may assign ours. These Terms, together with the policies incorporated into them, are the entire agreement between us and supersede anything earlier.
The following survive termination: Your content and ours, Compliance with law, Disclaimers, Limitation of liability and indemnity, Governing law and venue, and this section.
Headings and the short plain-language lines under them are there to make this readable. They do not change the meaning of the terms they sit above.
CONFIRM with counsel: the notice address (the prior Terms gave a street address in Apex and the prior Privacy Policy gave this P.O. Box — they disagree), the force-majeure clause dropped from the prior version, and whether a fee-shifting or subpoena-cost provision should be carried forward.