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Registered users:
Do you have a question for us?
General Policies
Contact Information
EMAIL:
Product Questions: info@blackbeltsystems.com
Technical Support: See Support Web Page
Marketing: market@blackbeltsystems.com
Orders: sales@blackbeltsystems.com
Hours
9am to 5pm, MST (This is -7 hours from GMT) Monday through Friday.
Telephone
(406) 228-8945 - Sales lines
(406) 228-8152 - G3 (office) FAX
Mail
Black Belt Systems
13 Turning Wheel
Glasgow, MT
59230
Doorstep
Latitude 48 degrees, 15 minutes, 45 seconds North
Longitude 106 degrees, 36 minutes, 23.7 seconds West
Company Policies
Copy Protection
Black Belt Systems does not support copy protection in any form.
There can be no question that software which is copy protected inconveniences the legitimate customer. This is not something we wish to do. Further, it is our belief that non-customers will eventually defeat any copy protection we put in place.
This leads to a situation where non-customers have in their possession a copy of the software which is actually more convenient to use than that which the legitimate customer possesses. This situation is 100% inappropriate, and forms the basis for our no copy protection policy.
Registration
Black Belt Systems products must be registered using a code we provide in order to become operational. We provide the registration code at the time of purchase, and we keep those codes permanently on file here.
That registration code uniquely identifies the customer as the purchaser of the software. We can use the code here to match your personal information with your purchase, which protects us from providing technical support to non-customers.
Upgrades
We recognize that software upgrades can be a significant part of our business;
accordingly, we make the commitment to our customers that upgrades will be
significant as well.
Upgrade prices will be held to as low a point as is feasible, and will always
provide good value.
Our customers are important to us - and a solid, customer oriented upgrade policy
ensures that our customers remain our customers.
Registered customers will receive e-mail and or postal mailings from us regarding upgrade
opportunities as those upgrades become available.
Bug Fixes
Bugs are an unfortunate reality in very complex software products such as WinImages. Black Belt Systems puts considerable effort and care into attempting to deliver products which are as bug free as possible.
Bugs are also a "hot spot" in customer relations. Our policies are meant to reflect an awareness of this, and to cause as little additional strife as is humanly possible under trying circumstances.
When problems are found in current releases, they are fixed as quickly as possible, within a few working days if we can manage it. In this case, customers with the current version who are being inconvenienced by the bug are able to receive a "bug fix upgrade" for free over the Internet, or for a shipping and handling fee by mail. In this way we both address the problem in the software and solve the customer's grievance.
When problems are found in older releases which are no longer relevant because the newer release of the product does not have the problem, they are solved by a "normal upgrade"; this provides both the fix the customer needs and a number of new features and capabilities. It is, of course, not possible for us to maintain previous releases with regard to bugs - when a new release is shipped, work on the previous release is halted in order that we can devote all of our efforts to making the newest release the best it can be.
Payment
Black Belt Systems accepts payment in US funds for its products in a number of ways.
First, we accept the following credit cards:
- Visa
- Master Card
- Eurocard
- Discover
- American Express
When you submit an order via credit card, we take the time to manually verify that the billing address of the card is identical to the address that the product is to ship to. This protects you from unauthorized persons using your credit card without your permission, as they would have to come to your billing address to intercept our delivery to you.
We accept checks and money orders if drawn on a US bank in US funds.
US Educational and Government Agencies may make arrangements to pay by standard purchase orders.
Of course, we accept cash, although we don't recommend sending it through the mails - we cannot be responsible for loss of funds sent through the mails. Remember that the postal services of all countries are made up of people, and some people have weaknesses!
Shipment
We ship backups of our high-end products on CD using the postal system, via air mail. We try to ship bulk groups of CD's about once a week under normal conditions. This means that if you have a deadline looming or are in a hurry and cannot download for some reason, you need to tell us as soon as possible, or your CD will be considered a backup product as per usual and it will take quite some time to get to you! Remember, we can't be responsible for your deadlines, or for the vagaries of the postal system. All products except "Opal" are downloadable products and come with electronic documentation. We do not provide printed documentation as it is environmentally unfriendly, impossible to keep up to date, bulky, wasteful, and technologically inferior.
Due to the remote location of our company (300 miles from the nearest medium size city!), many other shipping companies do not offer adequate service to or from the area. The postal system is the only shipping option available.
E-Mailing Keys for Key-Enabled Products
Once you submit your order via our secure server or by other means, we will charge your
credit card and e-mail you your product key within one business day. Often, we can respond
very quickly indeed - we certainly do try - but you should allow one full business day.
Of course, we cannot be responsible for delays in the Internet e-mail system - once we send the e-mail, it is truly out of our hands. If you have not received information you were expecting from us, please let us know and we'll re-send it.
Hours of Operation
Black Belt Systems business hours are from 9am to 5pm Mountain Standard Time,
which is minus seven hours from GMT.
The company does take major holidays off, a good rule of thumb is that if the banks and postal offices are closed, there is a good chance that we will be closed, also. However, there are some exceptions... some holidays we do work. When in doubt, call - just please don't be angry if we're not here. For our foreign customers we realize that it is often difficult to tell just when the US is having a holiday, or not. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes.
One particular holiday to note is Christmas; we take a week off for this holiday
in order to provide time for our employees to spend with their families. In the US,
it is customary for families to gather during this holiday from whatever corners of
the world they have scattered to.
Demos
At this time executable demos are not available due to lack of available bandwidth.
On-Line Communication
Black Belt Systems maintains a number of online support vectors. We answer light technical questions in newsgroups, e-mail and support forums, maintain examples of the output of the products, and accept both suggestions and bug reports online.
Internet users can e-mail us at info@blackbeltsystems.com for answers to questions
about the product from potential customers, and via this web page for registered user product assistance. We also visit the various Windows and Windows NT newsgroups from time to time, and questions addressed to us there are sometimes answered right in the newsgroup. When in doubt, send along an e-mail message to support@blackbeltsystems.com to let us know about the newsgroup thread of interest.
The web pages are accessed via this top level URL:
http://www.blackbeltsystems.com/
Marketing
If you wish to contact Black Belt Systems with regard to issues that relate to the marketing of our products, or cooperative marketing of your products with ours, please either contact our marketing people at (406) 228-8945 or e-mail them at marketing@blackbeltsystems.com.
Sales
If you wish to purchase one of our products, contact us with regard to dealer or distributor arrangements, or discuss educational discounts, please call us at:
(406) 228-8945
Charity
Black Belt Systems actively makes contributions to worthwhile charity causes in the form of product. We do not make contributions in the form of funds at this time.
Issues and causes that we have already supported and will continue to support
include:
- Disabled Veterans
- Animal rights and sheltering
- Prison rehabilitation
- Anti-censorship efforts
If you belong to an organization that works to reduce the problems in any of these areas and you think we can contribute by providing you with any software item in our catalog, please contact the international sales group at (406) 228-8945.
Deep Linking
Deep linking is an HTML coding technique where images and/or animations from the original web site (in this case, blackbeltsystems.com) are displayed on a deep linking web site by pointing the HTML IMG tag to the image or animation location on the original web site. This causes the image or animation to show up on the deep linked web site, but the image or animation is actually provided by the web servers at the original web site.
The problem here is that when an image or animation is supplied by a web site, the bandwidth that it takes to do so is a cost that the original web site pays, while the deep linked web site displays the image or animation on its pages for free.
Black Belt Systems does not allow deep linking to images or animations on our web site. If you try it, although it may work for a few hours, you will soon find that instead of a picture, you will be receiving an error, and a broken image symbol will be displayed. Our web services division checks for this kind of abuse daily. Please don't waste your time trying.
So -- can you display our images and animations? Yes, you can. We extend our permission given a specific set of circumstances, as follows: We require two things. First, you need to copy that image or animation to your own web space so that you bear the cost of providing the bandwidth of displaying it on your web site. Second, we require that you clearly attribute the image or animation, that is, you must say right next to the image or animation exactly where you got it from - specifically, http://www.blackbeltsystems.com/ Put a link with this information that points our web site, and we'll be happy.
History
Black Belt Systems has been producing graphics software for desktop personal computers since 1990. Prior to 1990, we were known as SoftCircuits, and made graphics hardware and CAD software, as well as various utilities and games. We have received awards and nominations for our commercial hardware and software designs, as well as a Technical Achievement of the Year award for a FSK-encoded graphics technology known as AVT.
We are an agressively "green" operation, even to the point of having created a powerful hypertext document browser techology ("ApAssist") prior to HTML in order to support 100% online documentation. You can visit some of our current online documentation here, and you can check out our custom documentation generation software here.
We produced the very first morphing and warping software for any desktop PC (in 1992), and continue to lead the graphics community in making affordable and powerful morphing and warping technology available to everyone.
We consistantly innovate; we've produced fascinating and useful new tools in the areas of morphing, warp layer technology, lossless compression, layer blend modes, multiple plug-in technologies, documentation generation, file formats, effect animation, user interface paradigms and more. Above all, we love graphics, and it shows in the products we create.
Black Belt Systems is 100 percent owned by the people who work here. If you're interested in us, we'd enjoy hearing from you. Please write to us at:
sales@blackbeltsystems.com
Questions or Comments? E mail us! sales@blackbeltsystems.com
blackbeltsystems.com's security policy
Privacy: We do not, and will not, sell or share any information about our customers with anyone, under any circumstances, unless we are in receipt of a court order to do so.
Security Problems: Flash, Active-X, Java and some "Cookies" all pose a security threat to your computer in that they can expose information in your computer to people and companies you did not explicitly give permission to.
Stability Problems: Flash, Java and Active-X can crash operating systems, corrupt data, and otherwise disturb otherwise stable systems.
Compatibility Problems: Web page features created with Flash, Java and Active-X are not available to all users, due to the fact that many web browsers do not support one or more of these technologies.
blackbeltsystems.com is safe! For these reasons, this web site has adopted a security policy that excludes these technologies. Animation on this site is almost universally implemented with GIF image files. The only technology beyond standard HTML commonly used on the site is standard CGI for forms.
Exceptions: From time to time, this web site may participate in banner exchange programs and/or web ring programs. These programs may use cookies and other technologies. This may not be under our control, although we use straight GIF banner display and HTML links when the option is available to us. Our sales processing does send a cookie to your browser, however, that cookie is merely an integer number and in no way reflects any information about you, your purchases, or your activities. It simply lets us know which of our shopping carts is "yours" when you are actively using our shopping cart system. When you leave the site or close your browser, even this simple integer cookie expires (goes away.)
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No Flash
No Java
No Active-X
No Cookies
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