Terms of Service

These terms cover IT work carried out by Lit Little Laboratories LLC ("I", "me"), a Missouri limited liability company based in St. Charles, Missouri, for you, the customer. Plain English on purpose. If something here does not match what we agreed in writing for your specific job, the written agreement for that job wins.

1. What I do, and when

I provide IT services: networks, backups, servers, computers, automation, websites, and setting up AI assistants against your own systems. The specific work is whatever is described in your quote or in the flat-rate package you booked.

This is evenings and weekends work, scheduled in advance. I have a full-time job. I do not offer 24/7 support, same-day business-hours response, or guaranteed response times, and I will not agree to them informally either. If your business needs that, you need a managed service provider, and I will happily say so.

2. Prices, quotes and flat rates

Flat-rate packages are published on this site as ranges, because the honest figure depends on how many machines, how many users, and what I find when I look. You get the exact number in writing before I start, and it does not change afterwards unless you ask for something different.

Estimates for quoted work are given in writing and are valid for 30 days. If the job turns out to be materially different from what was described, I will stop and give you a revised number rather than run up the bill.

Flat-rate bookings are paid up front. Quoted work may require a deposit. Anything left owing is due on completion.

3. Hardware and parts

For builds and installs, you buy the hardware. I specify what to buy, you purchase it, and the receipt and manufacturer warranty are in your name. I charge for labour: specifying, building, configuring and handing it over working.

This is deliberate. It means you own your equipment outright, you deal with the manufacturer directly on a warranty claim, and you are not dependent on me to replace a failed drive three years from now.

My labour is warranted for 30 days: if something I configured stops working the way I set it up, and nothing else changed, I fix it at no charge. I am not the returns department for parts.

4. Back up your data before I touch anything

You are responsible for having a current backup of your data before I begin work on any machine, server or system. I will remind you, and where backups are part of the job I will help you make one, but the responsibility is yours.

Storage devices fail, sometimes during perfectly ordinary work, and sometimes the act of diagnosing a failing drive is what finishes it off. I take reasonable care, but I cannot be responsible for data loss, and I do not accept liability for lost data, lost files, or the cost of recovering them.

5. AI assistants and write access

If your service includes connecting an AI assistant to your systems, it is read only by default. It can look at your data and answer questions about it. It cannot change anything.

Write access, where an assistant can change live business data, is a separate service with its own signed scope document naming exactly which data and which operations are in scope. It is only enabled after a working backup exists and a restore has been tested. You will be asked to acknowledge in writing that an automated system will be making changes to your live data before any of it is switched on.

6. Access and your responsibilities

• Give me the access I need to do the job, and tell me about anything unusual on your systems before I start.
• Make sure you have the right to authorise work on the equipment and accounts involved. If it is not yours, get permission from whoever owns it.
• Tell me promptly if something looks wrong after I have worked on it. A problem reported the same week is much easier to fix than one reported in three months.
• Keep your own copies of passwords and licence keys I set up for you.

7. Credentials I hold

Where I need credentials to your systems, I store them in an encrypted password manager, use them only for the work you have asked for, and remove my access when our work together ends. You can ask me to hand over and revoke everything at any time, and I will do it without argument.

8. Hosted services

Some services, including hosted AI assistants and monitoring, run on infrastructure I operate. I will make reasonable efforts to keep them available but I do not offer an uptime guarantee or service credits. Either of us can end a monthly service with 30 days notice. On termination I will give you your data in a usable form and delete my copies on request.

9. Limitation of liability

My total liability to you for any claim arising out of the work is limited to the amount you paid me for that work in the twelve months before the claim. I am not liable for indirect or consequential losses, including lost profit, lost business, lost data, or downtime.

This is not me trying to escape responsibility for doing a bad job. It is the proportion any one-person business has to draw: I cannot take on unlimited exposure to a business's losses on the back of a few hundred dollars of work. If your situation genuinely needs a provider carrying more risk than that, you need a bigger company, and I would rather tell you now.

Nothing here limits liability for anything that cannot lawfully be limited.

10. Intellectual property

Configuration, documentation and scripts I write specifically for you as part of a paid job are yours to keep and use. Reusable tooling, templates and starter code I bring to the job stay mine, and you get a licence to use them as part of what I built for you.

11. Cancellations and refunds

Covered separately in the cancellation and refund policy, which forms part of these terms.

12. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Missouri, and any dispute will be handled in the courts of St. Charles County, Missouri.

13. Changes

I may update these terms. The version in force for your job is the one published when you booked or accepted the quote. Material changes will be dated at the top of this page.

14. Getting hold of me

General and support: 636-336-2985
Legal notices: [email protected]
Lit Little Laboratories LLC, St. Charles, Missouri, United States.