Terms
I’m gonna be honest, an AI helped me write this because no one will read it anyway. Written to be read once and understood, tell us if something stands out.
What you’re buying
A subscription to a printed letter, posted once a month in an envelope. One issue contains a letter, something a person made, and a recipe card. On The Male Snail Mafia and The Snail Mail Don it also contains a second envelope, addressed to another member, a blank sheet, and an optional writing prompt.
The contents of an issue are decided by us and change month to month. You don’t get to pick the theme or contents.
Money and dates
This is a subscription you buy for yourself. A gift works differently and the gifts section below has its own money and dates.
- You’re charged on the day you join, for the first issue you’re entitled to. Nothing is held back and there is no trial.
- After that you’re charged on the same date every month, or every year if you picked annual, until you cancel.
- Join on or before the 15th and you’re in that month’s issue. Join after the 15th and your first issue is the next month’s, because that month’s is already at the printer. The 15th decides which issue you get. It has nothing to do with when you pay.
- So your last letter can arrive after your subscription has ended, and that is correct. If you joined on the 20th of September you bought the October issue, which posts at the end of October, and your billing month ran out on the 20th. You paid for that issue, so you get it. Cancelling never takes back an issue you have paid for.
- There is no proration. A part month is never charged and never billed at a reduced rate.
- Prices: The Male Snail $12.69 a month or $139.69 a year. The Male Snail Mafia $17.69 or $194.69. The Snail Mail Don $22.69 or $249.69. We only post inside the United States. If you’re somewhere else you can’t sign up yet, and the country page will take your details so we know where to open next.
- Sales tax is added where we’re required to collect it, and it’s shown before you pay.
- If a price changes, current members are told before the date it would take effect, and can cancel in the meantime.
Failed payments
If the card fails, it gets retried for about ten days. The print run happens in the last week of the month and the list is built from what has actually settled, so an unpaid issue doesn’t post. After roughly three weeks or four attempts the subscription stops on its own.
Cancelling
Ask at the post office. It stops the billing straight away and you are never charged again.
You keep every issue you have already paid for. Whatever you have been billed for still posts, even if it posts after your subscription has ended — which, if you joined after the 15th of a month, it usually will. The post office names the last issue you are owed before you press the button, so there is no guessing. Nothing is refunded, because nothing is unused.
Set-length gifts cannot be cancelled. Subscription gifts can be cancelled the normal way, by logging in to your account at the post office.
Delivery
Issues post between the 25th and the end of the month. Delivery takes up to three weeks. That’s the product working, not the product failing. If an issue hasn’t arrived by the end of the following month, tell us and we’ll send another one.
We post to the address you gave us. If it’s wrong or out of date, the letter goes wherever the postal service takes it. Change it before the 15th and the next issue follows you; change it after and this month is already on a label, so it goes to the old place and the one after follows you.
The pairing
On the Mafia and the Don, your envelope goes to another member and one goes to you. What we give him is set out on the address page. You can withdraw that at any time, which moves you to The Male Snail at the next issue rather than cancelling you.
We don’t vet members beyond taking a working card and a real address, and we can’t promise anything about what another member puts in an envelope. If somebody writes you something out of order, tell us.
Gifts
A gift is one payment unless you deliberately ask for it to keep going. Buy it and it’s one payment, taken on the day it’s bought, for a set number of issues starting in a month you pick. The whole term is paid up front at the same per-month price, and nothing is ever charged again.
The other kind of gift is a subscription: it bills every month or every year until you stop it, and you can stop it any time from the post office. What’s already been paid for still gets posted, nothing is charged after that, and nothing is refunded, because nothing is unused. We’ll always say which of the two you’re buying before you pay, and the receipt says it again.
The recipient is never billed for anything, either way. He never gave us a card and we never ask him for one. If he takes his address out of the pairing list, the buyer isn’t told, because that’s the recipient’s business.
Behaving
Don’t use another member’s address for anything other than posting him a letter. Don’t look him up, don’t turn up, and don’t hand what we gave you to anybody else. Doing any of that ends your membership on the spot, with no refund.
Who we are
Male Snail is run by one person, from St. Louis, MO. There’s an LLC behind it because that’s what a bank account needs, but it’s still one dude reading the post. Written questions get written answers.
The boring paragraph
These terms are governed by the laws of Illinois. We’ll fix mistakes rather than argue about them, and our liability is limited to what you paid us, which is not very much. Nothing here takes away a right you have under the consumer law where you live.