This summary is for orientation only. The numbered sections below are the binding text.
These terms are an agreement between you and The Fifth Wind, LLC, a California limited liability company, with offices at 10866 Washington Blvd. #309, Culver City, CA 90232, United States ("The Fifth Wind", "we", "us").
They cover everything we operate: the Society mobile app, the web experience, the organizer portal, club and tournament tools, paid memberships, and orders for our physical mahjong sets. Where a separate written agreement covers an organization, that agreement controls for that organization.
You must be at least 18 to hold an account. One person, one account. Keep your details accurate and your sign-in credentials to yourself; you are responsible for activity under your account until you tell us it has been compromised.
A free account lets you find and join tables. Paid plans add hosting tools, club features, and priority placement, and are described at the point of purchase.
Paid plans renew automatically at the end of each term at the then-current price until cancelled. Cancel any time before the renewal date; access continues to the end of the period already paid for, and part-periods are not refunded except where the law requires it.
When you take a seat, you are making an arrangement with the host, not with us. Hosts set the fee, the number of seats, the skill expectation, and any house rules, and are responsible for the venue and for accurate listing information.
Hosts must publish their cancellation window before taking payment. If a host cancels, guests are refunded in full. If you cancel inside the published window, the host may keep the fee.
Payments are processed by our payment provider. We do not store full card numbers. Our service fee is 5% of the price of each ticketed seat, with no upper limit, and it is shown before you pay.
Hosts and organizers are paid out to a verified account on a rolling schedule after the gathering ends, less fees and any refunds. You are responsible for your own taxes; we issue the tax forms the law requires when thresholds are met.
Orders for tile sets and accessories are subject to the price, shipping, and availability shown at checkout. Title and risk pass on delivery.
Unused sets may be returned within 30 days in their original packaging for a refund less return shipping. Engraved or personalized sets are final sale. Damage in transit should be reported within 7 days with photographs.
Organizers get tools to run recurring gatherings, collect dues, and manage members. Organizers decide their own membership terms and chapter rules, which may be stricter than ours but never looser.
If you handle another member’s personal information through the portal, you must use it only to run your club, keep it secure, and delete it when it is no longer needed. Serious misuse ends portal access.
You keep ownership of what you post — profile text, photographs, posts, scores, and messages. You give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, display, and adapt it for the purpose of running and promoting the service, ending when you delete it, apart from copies kept in backups or required for safety and legal records.
Do not post anything you do not have the right to post. We may remove content that breaks these terms or the Community Standards.
The Fifth Wind name, crest, wordmark, tile artwork, collection names, photography, and the software are ours or our licensors’. Nothing here transfers any of it to you.
Game rules and scoring cards published by third parties are theirs. Where we display them, we do so under the licence granted by their publisher, and your use is subject to that publisher’s terms.
The Community Standards form part of these terms and describe expected behaviour in detail. In addition, the following are never permitted.
The Fifth Wind is for social and competitive play, not for gambling. Seat fees cover the cost of hosting. Entry fees and prizes for tournaments must comply with the law where the tournament is held, and the organizer is responsible for that compliance.
We do not process wagers, hold stakes, or pay prize money on an organizer’s behalf.
Email, phone, and identity verification confirm contact details or a government ID. They are not background checks and they are not a safety guarantee.
Background checks are optional, member-initiated, and prepared by a consumer reporting agency. Ordering one requires your written authorization. If a report would affect the mark on your profile, you will be told, given a copy of the report and a summary of your rights, and given time to dispute it before anything changes. A clear result means the searches in that package returned nothing to report on that date. It is not a prediction and not an endorsement.
Anyone can report a concern. We review reports and may remove content, limit discovery, restrict hosting, suspend, or close an account. We aim to act proportionately and to tell you what rule was applied.
We do not have to monitor everything posted, and reviewing one report does not oblige us to review all of them. We will not share the other person’s response or the specific action taken against them.
You can close your account at any time. We may suspend or close an account for a breach of these terms, for a legal requirement, or if keeping it open would put members at risk. Where it is reasonable to do so we give notice and an opportunity to respond.
If we close a paid account for reasons other than a breach, we refund the unused part of the current term. Money already owed to a host or organizer is still paid out.
We rely on other companies for payments, mapping, identity and background screening, email and push delivery, and calendar links. Their own terms apply to their part of the service, and we are not responsible for services we do not control.
Our privacy notice explains what we hold about you, including when you have an account. It does not yet cover services that are not live, such as payments and background screening. Before each of those opens we will update the notice to name the companies that handle your information for it and what each of them does with it.
The service is provided "as is". We do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free.
We do not vet members beyond the checks described above, we do not control what happens at a gathering, and we do not guarantee any member’s conduct, skill, or honesty. Meeting people in person carries risk; use your judgement, and read the safety guidance in the Community Standards.
To the extent the law allows, neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential losses, or for lost profits or lost data.
Our total liability for any claim relating to the service is limited to the greater of $100 or the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for fraud or personal injury caused by negligence.
If a third party brings a claim against us because of what you posted, how you used the service, a gathering you hosted, or your breach of these terms, you agree to cover our reasonable costs and damages. We will tell you promptly and let you take conduct of the defence where the law allows.
Talk to us first. Send a description of the problem and what you want to privacy@fifthwindmahj.com, and we will try to resolve it within 60 days.
If that fails, disputes are resolved by binding individual arbitration before the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Rules, seated in Los Angeles County, California. Claims are brought individually — no class actions, no consolidated proceedings, no jury.
We may update these terms. Each update is a new version with its own number, listed in the change history below. For material changes we give at least 30 days’ notice by email and in the app, and the notice says plainly what changed. Continuing to use the service after the effective date means you accept the new version. If you do not, close your account before then and we will refund the unused part of any paid term.
These terms and the documents they reference are the whole agreement between us. California law governs, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest stands. Our not enforcing something once does not waive it later.
You may not transfer your rights under these terms. We may transfer ours in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, on notice to you. Notices go to the email on your account, or to us at privacy@fifthwindmahj.com, or by post to The Fifth Wind, LLC, 10866 Washington Blvd. #309, Culver City, CA 90232, United States.
Each version keeps its number for good, so an agreement to one version always means that text. For earlier versions, write to privacy@fifthwindmahj.com.