Terms of Service

What Fire-Bid Is

Fire-Bid is operated by James Bone. It is software for running fire department vacation bidding: maintaining seniority order, taking vacation selections in turn, checking them against available leave balances, enforcing daily staffing limits, and keeping an audit record of administrative changes.

Fire-Bid supports your department's process. It does not replace your department's policies, your collective bargaining agreement, or your employer's decisions. Where the software and your department's rules disagree, your department's rules govern the employment relationship.

Accounts and Access

• Accounts are created by your department, not by self-registration. Your department decides who has access and who is an administrator.
• The first time you sign in, Fire-Bid emails a one-time link to your work address and you set a password. That password is personal to you: do not share it, and do not share a sign-in link either, since anyone holding one can set the password on your account.
• Departments are responsible for keeping their roster accurate (including removing access for people who leave) and for the accuracy of the seniority and balance information they enter.

Acceptable Use

• Use Fire-Bid for its intended purpose: administering and participating in your department's vacation bid.
• Do not attempt to access another person's or another department's information, or to circumvent the access controls described on the Security page.
• Do not attempt to disrupt the service or probe it for vulnerabilities against live data. Security research is welcome through the reporting route on the Security page.

Availability

Fire-Bid aims to be available when your department needs it, particularly during an active bid, but no absolute uptime guarantee is offered. The service depends on third-party hosting and database providers, and maintenance or provider outages can cause interruptions.

Bidding is a time-sensitive process. If a problem affects a bid in progress, the bid is paused rather than restarted, which holds every bidder's place; administrators retain the ability to correct turn order and selections afterwards, and those corrections are logged.

Changes to the Service

Fire-Bid is actively developed, and features may be added, changed, or removed. Changes that materially affect how bidding works will be communicated to department administrators rather than shipped silently.

Suspension and Termination

A department's access is governed by its agreement with Fire-Bid. Individual access is controlled by the department. Access may be suspended where use threatens the security or integrity of the service or other departments' data.

If a department stops using Fire-Bid, its administrator can export all of its records for 30 days afterwards, and the data is then deleted on the schedule set out under Retention on the Privacy page.

Intellectual Property

Fire-Bid and its software remain the property of James Bone. Your department's own data (rosters, seniority, selections, audit history) remains your department's.

Privacy

Handling of personal information is described in the Privacy policy, which forms part of these terms.

Technical Notes

These terms are written to be read. They deliberately contain no limitation of liability, warranty disclaimer, indemnity, or governing-law clause: those belong in the written agreement between Fire-Bid and a department, not in boilerplate on a public page, and a department's own agreement governs where the two differ.

Contact

Questions about these terms: contact@fire-bid.com.