Terms of Service

Last updated September 21, 2026

These terms govern your use of CHB Mate (the “Service”), operated at chbmate.com (“we”, “us”), as they are updated from time to time under section 18. By signing in or using the Service you agree to them as published on this page. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1. What the Service is

The Service is a research tool. You give it Harmonized Tariff Schedule (“HTS”) numbers and a country of origin, and it reports the Chapter 99 headings, exemptions, forced labor provisions, additional-duty rates and participating-government-agency requirements that published United States government sources associate with those numbers.

It is a reference product, in the way that a commercial edition of the tariff schedule is a reference product. It reads public material and shows you what it says.

2. The Service is not customs business

Federal law reserves “customs business” to licensed customs brokers. Under 19 U.S.C. § 1641(b)(1), “no person may conduct customs business (other than solely on behalf of that person) unless that person holds a valid customs broker's license”. 19 C.F.R. § 111.1 defines customs business as activities involving transactions with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) concerning the entry and admissibility of merchandise, its classification and valuation, the payment of duties, taxes or other charges assessed on merchandise by reason of its importation, and the refund, rebate or drawback of those charges — and also the preparation, and activities relating to the preparation, of documents intended to be filed with CBP.

We do not conduct customs business, we do not conduct it on your behalf, and nothing you do with the Service is customs business conducted by us.

That is a statement about how the Service is built, not only about how we describe it:

We do not provide the Service as a customs broker. Whether or not any person associated with us holds a customs broker's license, the Service is not offered as brokerage, no brokerage engagement arises from your use of it, and no broker–client relationship is created between us. If your work requires customs business to be conducted on behalf of another person, it must be conducted by a licensed customs broker; the Service is not a substitute for engaging one.

Your obligations are unchanged by using the Service. If you are a licensed customs broker, nothing here transfers, shares or discharges any duty you owe your client, CBP or your license, including responsible supervision and control under 19 C.F.R. § 111.28 and the confidentiality of client records under 19 C.F.R. § 111.24. If you are an importer, you remain solely responsible for exercising reasonable care under 19 U.S.C. § 1484 and for the accuracy of every declaration you make. A classification you reach with the help of the Service is your classification.

You agree not to use the Service in a way that would make it customs business. In particular you will not represent to CBP, to a client or to anyone else that we classified your goods, prepared your entry, advised on your importation or acted for you in any transaction with CBP.

3. Not legal, customs or other professional advice

Nothing in the Service is legal advice, customs advice, tax advice, an opinion, or a CBP ruling, and nothing in it may be relied on as any of those. We do not practice law and do not provide professional services of any kind through the Service.

Using the Service does not create an attorney–client relationship, a broker–client relationship, or any agency, professional, confidential or fiduciary duty between us. No communication with us — including support correspondence — creates one. If you need advice about a particular importation, obtain it from a licensed customs broker or a qualified attorney.

4. Who may use the Service

The Service is offered for use by customs brokers, importers and trade professionals in the course of business. You must be at least 18 years old, and if you accept these terms for an organization you represent that you are authorized to bind it, in which case “you” means that organization.

You represent that you are not located in, and are not a national or resident of, any country or territory subject to comprehensive United States sanctions, and that you are not a person with whom United States persons are prohibited from dealing — including any party on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List, the Denied Persons List or the Entity List. You will not use the Service in violation of United States export control or sanctions laws.

5. Accounts

Access requires an account, created with an email address and a password. A new account must confirm its address by clicking the verification link emailed to it before the Service can be used. We store only a one-way cryptographic hash of your password — we cannot read the password back, and neither can anyone who obtains our data. Keeping the password secret, and keeping control of the email mailbox it belongs to (which is where verification links and password-reset codes are sent), is your responsibility. Anything done through your account is treated as done by you.

One subscription is one seat. An account is for a single named person. You may not share your account, sign in on behalf of others, or use one subscription to serve several people. The Service enforces a single active session per account: signing in somewhere new ends the previous session.

Tell us promptly at [email protected] if you believe your account has been used without your permission.

6. Subscription, billing and cancellation

The free allowance is not a subscription. Each account may look up 10 codes per calendar day (Pacific time) without paying. The allowance resets at midnight Pacific time; unused lookups do not carry over. It has no cash value and is not refundable or transferable. Creating further accounts to obtain more of it is a breach of section 7. We may change or withdraw the free allowance at any time; doing so does not affect any period you have already paid for.

The subscription costs $59.00 to $99.00 per month, depending on the plan you choose, exclusive of any sales, use, VAT, GST or similar taxes, which are your responsibility except for taxes on our net income. You authorize us to charge your PayPal account for it. When you subscribe you approve a saved payment agreement at PayPal, and we then take each payment ourselves on the schedule below, without asking you again. We never see or store your card or bank details; PayPal holds those, and we hold only your permission to charge the account.

When we charge you. The first payment is taken immediately when you subscribe. Each following payment is taken on the day your current paid period ends, for the same amount and the same length of period, and continues until you stop it. The date of your next payment is always shown on your subscription page.

If a payment fails. We will try again up to 3 further times over the following 5 days and will attempt to notify the email address on your account. Your access continues during that period. If the final attempt also fails, access stops and no further payments are attempted until you link a payment method again. Email is a courtesy, not a condition of the charge. Delivery is not guaranteed, and your subscription page is the authoritative record of what has been charged and what is due next.

Stopping payments. You may withdraw your authorization at any time by removing the saved PayPal account from your subscription page. Doing so revokes it at PayPal as well as here, so no further payment can be taken. You keep access until the end of the period you have already paid for; access then ends, subject only to a short technical grace period we apply while a payment settles. You may also withdraw the authorization from within your PayPal account directly, with the same effect.

Payments are not refundable and we do not pro-rate part-used periods, except where a refund is required by law. We may change prices on notice to the email address associated with your account or in the Service; a price change takes effect at your next payment, and stopping payments before then avoids it.

Moving to a larger plan. You may move up to a larger plan at any time from your subscription page. Doing so charges the new plan's full price immediately and starts a new billing period from that moment; any remaining days on your previous plan are not carried over, credited or refunded, and the amount you have already paid is not deducted. Your larger daily allowance is available straight away. Plans cannot be moved down while a subscription is running — to move to a smaller plan, remove your saved PayPal account, keep the access you have paid for until it ends, and subscribe again on the plan you want.

Talk to us before you dispute a charge. If you think a payment is wrong, contact [email protected] first. Initiating a chargeback or payment dispute without doing so is a breach of these terms, and we may suspend or close the account, decline to serve you again, and recover the resulting fees and costs from you.

7. Acceptable use and usage limits

The Service is licensed for interactive use in the ordinary course of your work. It is not a data feed, and you may not:

Usage limits. Rate limits and usage limits are part of the Service, not a malfunction of it. Each subscribed account is limited to the number of code lookups included in its plan, per day — the allowance resets at midnight Pacific time, and to a short-term rate limit on how quickly codes may be submitted. The plans currently offered include 50 (Starter), 100 (Advanced) and 300 (Professional). Reaching that limit may result in your account being suspended pending review. An account using the free allowance is limited to the 10 codes per day described in section 6, resetting at the same midnight-Pacific instant, and is subject to the same rate limits and the same rules in this section.

Suspension for suspected abuse. We monitor usage. If we suspect scraping, bulk extraction, automated access, credential sharing or any other unfair use, we may suspend or terminate your account immediately, with or without notice and without a refund. We do not have to prove misuse before acting, and our judgment about what constitutes unfair use is final.

8. Our intellectual property, and what you may do with results

The underlying government material is public. Our compilation of it is not. The selection, arrangement, normalization, cross-referencing and annotation of that material, together with the software, interface, database structure and documentation of the Service, are ours and are protected by copyright and other laws. Nothing in these terms transfers any of it to you.

Subject to your compliance with these terms, we grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable license to use the Service and to use its results internally, in your own business, for the importations you are working on — including in advice you give your own clients and in filings you make. That license does not permit any of the activities listed in section 7.

If you send us feedback, suggestions or bug reports, we may use them for any purpose without obligation or compensation to you.

9. Accuracy of the data — no warranty

Tariff data is compiled from published United States government material. That material changes frequently, sometimes takes effect retroactively, is sometimes ambiguous, and is sometimes wrong or later corrected. There is always a period between a change being published and the Service reflecting it.

THE SERVICE AND ALL DATA IN IT ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY. WE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING ANY WARRANTY OF ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, CURRENCY, MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

We do not warrant that the data is correct, complete or up to date, that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure or error-free, that defects will be corrected, or that the Service identifies every provision that applies to your goods. No advice or information you obtain from us, whether spoken or written, creates any warranty not expressly stated here.

You must independently verify every classification and every rate against the official HTSUS and current CBP guidance before you file. Duty figures shown by the Service are estimates. The Service supports your professional judgment; it does not replace it.

10. Your responsibilities

You are responsible for: verifying results against official sources before relying on them; every classification, declaration, entry and filing you make; exercising reasonable care where the law requires it of you; keeping your own records; and the consequences of any decision you take with the help of the Service. You are also responsible for satisfying yourself that your use of the Service is compatible with your obligations to your own clients and to any regulator that licenses you.

11. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your access immediately if you breach these terms, if we suspect abuse as described in section 7, if you initiate a chargeback or payment dispute, or if required by law. Terminating for any of these reasons does not entitle you to a refund.

We may also discontinue the Service entirely on reasonable notice, in which case we will refund the unused portion of any period you have paid for.

You may stop using the Service at any time by canceling your subscription. Sections 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17 and 20 survive termination, along with any other provision that by its nature should.

12. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total aggregate liability to you for all claims arising out of or relating to the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the total amount you actually paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) US$100.

We are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any duties, tariffs, penalties, interest, fines, seizures, detentions, redeliveries, liquidated-damages claims, post-summary corrections, prior disclosures, delays, storage or demurrage charges, lost profits, lost revenue, lost business, loss of goodwill or loss of data, however caused and on any theory of liability, even if we have been advised of the possibility.

These limits apply to the maximum extent permitted by law and are a fundamental basis of the bargain between us: the price of the Service reflects them. They do not apply to liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including — under California Civil Code § 1668 — liability for fraud, willful injury or violation of law. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, in which case those limitations apply to the maximum extent permitted and the rest of this section remains in force.

Time limit. To the extent permitted by law, any claim arising out of or relating to the Service must be brought within one year after it arises, or it is permanently barred.

13. Indemnity

You will defend, indemnify and hold us harmless from any claim, loss, liability, penalty, fine or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your use of the Service, your reliance on its output, any classification, declaration, entry or filing you make, any claim by your own client, any assertion that we conducted customs business on your behalf, or your breach of these terms. We may assume the defense of any matter you are required to indemnify, at your expense, and you will not settle it in a way that admits liability on our part without our written consent.

14. Availability and changes

We do not guarantee any level of uptime. We may change, suspend or discontinue any part of the Service, and may perform maintenance without notice. We may add, remove or alter data, features and limits at any time.

Neither of us is liable for a failure to perform caused by something outside our reasonable control, including outages at a hosting, payment, authentication or data provider, network failures, acts of government, or a source we depend on ceasing to publish.

15. Privacy and data

Our Privacy Policy sets all of this out in full, including retention periods, who else receives your information, and how to ask for a copy of it or have it erased.

We keep only what the Service needs to work:

The activity log exists to operate the Service, enforce these terms and investigate abuse, and is visible to us. We keep a record of your use of the Service, including the codes you look up, for as long as we need it for those purposes.

Billing records are kept indefinitely. They are the evidence of what was charged, when, and why, and payment disputes and chargebacks can be raised long after the payment itself — a record that had been deleted or edited would be no use to either of us at that point. These records may contain the name and contact details PayPal associates with your payment account.

Payment processing is handled by PayPal, under its own terms and privacy policy; we never receive your payment card details, and we never hold your password in a form anyone could read back. We do not sell your personal information for money, and we never share your account, your billing history or the codes you look up with an advertiser. We measure how the site is used and we may advertise the Service; what those tags see is the pages visited on this website, which California law calls sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising, and the Privacy Policy says what they do and how to switch them off — a Global Privacy Control signal from your browser stops them before they load. We may disclose information where required by law or to protect our rights, and may transfer it as part of a merger, acquisition or sale of assets.

Service and billing emails — the verification link that activates a new account, a welcome message once it is verified, password-reset codes, payment receipts, payment-failure and access-ended notices, cancellation confirmations, and notice that a saved PayPal account was removed — are delivered for us by Mailgun, which receives your email address and the contents of those messages for that purpose and no other. These messages never include your lookup activity, and we do not use open or click tracking in them.

If your lookups involve information your own clients treat as confidential, be aware that it is recorded as described above, and satisfy yourself that this is compatible with your obligations to them — including, if you are a licensed broker, your obligations under 19 C.F.R. § 111.24.

16. Disputes: informal resolution, then arbitration in Los Angeles County

PLEASE READ THIS SECTION CAREFULLY. IT AFFECTS YOUR RIGHTS. IT REQUIRES MOST DISPUTES TO BE RESOLVED BY INDIVIDUAL BINDING ARBITRATION IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, AND WAIVES YOUR RIGHT TO A JURY TRIAL AND TO PARTICIPATE IN A CLASS ACTION.

16.1 Talk to us first. Before starting an arbitration or a lawsuit, you agree to send a written notice of dispute to [email protected] describing the problem and the relief you want, and to give us 60 days to resolve it. We will do the same before bringing a claim against you. This step is a condition of starting proceedings, and the time limit in section 12 pauses while it runs.

16.2 Agreement to arbitrate. If we cannot resolve the dispute informally, you and we agree that any dispute, claim or controversy arising out of or relating to the Service or these terms — whether based in contract, tort, statute, fraud, misrepresentation or any other legal theory, and whether arising before, during or after termination — will be resolved by final and binding arbitration, and not in court, except as stated in 16.6 and 16.7.

16.3 Rules, arbitrator and seat. The arbitration will be administered by JAMS under its Streamlined Arbitration Rules where the amount in controversy is under US$250,000 and its Comprehensive Arbitration Rules otherwise, before a single arbitrator. If JAMS is unavailable or declines to administer the case, the arbitration will be administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Commercial Arbitration Rules; if neither will administer it, a court of competent jurisdiction in Los Angeles County will appoint the arbitrator.

The seat and venue of the arbitration is Los Angeles County, California, and any hearing will take place there unless you and we agree otherwise or the arbitrator directs that it be held remotely. The arbitrator may award any relief a court could award to the individual claimant, and judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction. The arbitrator's decision is final and binding, with only the limited review the law allows. If applicable law entitles a particular claimant to a hearing location elsewhere, only the physical hearing location changes; the rest of this section, including the seat, continues to apply.

16.4 The Federal Arbitration Act governs. This section evidences a transaction involving interstate commerce, and the Federal Arbitration Act governs the interpretation and enforcement of this arbitration agreement.

16.5 Who decides what. The arbitrator, and not any court, has exclusive authority to resolve disputes about the interpretation, applicability, enforceability or formation of this arbitration agreement, including whether a claim is arbitrable. Except that a court, and not an arbitrator, decides any dispute about the enforceability of the class-action waiver in 16.6.

16.6 No class actions; no consolidation. You and we may bring claims only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, consolidated or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person's claims and may not preside over any form of class or representative proceeding. If this paragraph is found unenforceable as to a particular claim or a particular request for relief, then that claim or request — and only that one — is severed from the arbitration and must be brought in the courts identified in section 17; the rest of the dispute stays in arbitration. Class arbitration is not agreed to under any circumstances.

16.7 What is not covered. Either of us may (a) bring an individual claim in a small claims court with jurisdiction, and (b) seek injunctive or other equitable relief in a court in Los Angeles County to stop infringement or misuse of intellectual property, unauthorized access, scraping or breach of section 7 — without first following 16.1 and without waiving anything in this section.

16.8 Coordinated filings. If 25 or more similar claims are asserted against us by or with the assistance of the same or coordinated counsel, you and we agree that JAMS will administer them in batches of up to 50, each batch before a single arbitrator, with one set of filing fees per batch, and that the limitation periods for claims in later batches are tolled while earlier batches proceed.

16.9 Fees. Filing, administration and arbitrator fees are governed by the administrator's rules, including any rule requiring us to bear the greater share for consumer claims. Each party otherwise bears its own attorneys' fees and costs, unless a statute or the arbitrator's award provides otherwise. The arbitrator may award fees and costs against a party that brings a claim found to be frivolous or brought for an improper purpose.

16.10 Confidentiality. The existence and content of the arbitration, including the award, are confidential, except as needed to enforce the award, to comply with the law, or for insurance or professional-advice purposes.

16.11 Your right to opt out. You may reject this arbitration agreement by emailing [email protected] with the subject line “Arbitration Opt-Out”, from the address on your account, within 30 days of the date you first accepted these terms. Say that you are opting out and give your account email. Opting out costs you nothing, changes nothing else about your account, and is not a reason for us to treat you differently. If you opt out, section 17 governs your disputes instead. If you do not opt out within 30 days, this section binds you.

16.12 Survival and severability. This section survives termination of your account and of these terms. If any part of it other than 16.6 is found unenforceable, that part is severed and the rest continues to apply.

17. Governing law and courts

These terms, and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or the Service, are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and by applicable federal law. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

For any dispute that is not subject to arbitration — because you opted out under 16.11, because it falls within 16.7, or because a court finds it non-arbitrable — you and we submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Los Angeles County, California, and each waive any objection to that venue and any argument of inconvenient forum.

Jury trial waiver. To the fullest extent permitted by law, you and we each waive the right to a trial by jury in any proceeding arising out of or relating to these terms or the Service.

18. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The “last updated” date at the top of this page changes when we do, and the updated terms apply from that date. Continuing to use the Service after that date means you agree to them. For a material change we may also email the address on your account, but that notice is a courtesy and is not a condition of the change taking effect — this page is where you check what is in force. If you do not agree, stop using the Service and cancel your subscription.

A change to section 16 does not apply to a dispute of which either of us has already given notice under 16.1. If an update changes section 16 itself, it opens a fresh 30-day opt-out window under 16.11, running from the “last updated” date of that update.

19. Contact

Questions about these terms, notices under them, and opt-outs under 16.11: [email protected].

20. General

These terms are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service and replace any earlier understanding, including any purchase order or vendor form you send us, whose terms have no effect. If any provision is held unenforceable, it is limited or severed to the minimum extent necessary and the rest remains in effect. Our not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it.

You may not assign or transfer these terms or your account without our written consent; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets. Nothing here creates a partnership, joint venture, employment or franchise relationship, and there are no third-party beneficiaries: your clients and customers have no rights under these terms.

Notices and electronic agreement. We may give you notice by email to the address on your account or by posting in the Service, and either is effective when sent or posted; keeping that address current is your responsibility. You consent to contract electronically and agree that your acceptance recorded by the Service — with its date, time and IP address — has the same effect as a signature, given once to these terms as they are updated from time to time under section 18.