Terms, refunds & privacy

Last updated September 9, 2026. If you want the version that was live on the day you contributed, write to us and we’ll send it.

Who we are

The Buck Fifty Project is published by Million Hot Dogs LLC, a Connecticut limited liability company. When this page says “we” or “us,” it means that company. You can reach Rich or Jes at hello@buckfiftyproject.com.

Refund policy

Any contribution is fully refundable on request, for any reason or no reason and with no questions asked, for one year from the day you made it. Email billing@buckfiftyproject.com with the name on the card and the approximate date, and we’ll refund it. If you contributed by mistake, if someone else used your card, or if you simply changed your mind, that’s all a good enough reason.

A year, and not forever, because the money doesn’t sit still: it gets spent on the road and reported on a tax return in the year it arrives. We’d rather hold to a limit we can still honor in year four than a promise that quietly stops being true. If you’re outside the year and something has genuinely gone wrong, write to us anyway.

What you’re paying for

What you already have. Contributions are voluntary support for a publication that’s free to everyone. They aren’t payment for goods or services, they don’t buy membership or access, and they aren’t tax-deductible.

One exception: Name Your Warehouse. If you contribute toward a specific warehouse, we read the request and it changes our route. Larger contributions carry more weight, and one big enough to cover a trip gets scheduled soon. We don’t promise dates. Weather, closures, and life move things around. If we haven’t reached your warehouse within two years of your contribution, tell us and we’ll refund you, that two-year window is only about warehouses we’ve not reached, and it sits on top of the one-year refund above, which applies to any contribution for any reason.

Payments

Payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your full card details. Charges appear on your statement under our name. Look for BUYUSAHOTDOG.COM or MILLION HOT DOGS. If a charge you don’t recognize turns out to be ours, write to billing@buckfiftyproject.com and we’ll refund it and tell you exactly what it was.

Recurring orders, renewals and cancellation

A recurring order renews automatically. When you set one up you’re agreeing to a recurring charge at the price and interval shown on the tier you picked, repeating until you cancel. The amount, the interval and the fact that it renews are all stated on the checkout page, immediately above the button that takes your card details.

We email you before every renewal: what’s about to be charged, when, how much, and how to stop it. Thirty days ahead on a yearly order, seven on a monthly one, two on a weekly one. The daily order is the exception: a day’s notice would reach you after the charge had already gone through, so instead we send a note once a week: what the rate is, what a week of it comes to, and the same one-click link that stops it.

Canceling is one click and takes no longer than signing up did. Every email we send you carries a link to a page where you can cancel or change your recurring order yourself, the welcome, every renewal reminder, and the weekly note on a daily order, and you can always reach the same place from buckfiftyproject.com/manage with the email address you used. The payment receipt itself comes from Stripe and doesn’t carry that link. No phone call, no email, no retention offer, no asking why. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you’ve already paid for, and you keep nothing and lose nothing either way, because a recurring order doesn’t buy access to anything.

If a link ever fails you, email billing@buckfiftyproject.com and we’ll cancel it and refund the most recent charge without discussion.

Privacy

The short version. We don’t sell or share your information, ever. Stripe handles the payments and holds the card details, so we never see them. Resend sends the email. Printful prints and ships anything you buy from the shop. Everything else we keep is in the paragraph below, and you can have any of it deleted by asking.

We collect only what we need: your email address if you subscribe to The Signature, our newsletter, and which page you signed up from, the name and email associated with a contribution so we can thank you and handle refunds, the name and shipping address you give Stripe when you buy something from the shop so it can be printed and posted to you, and whatever you type into the contact form, which is emailed to us and not stored on this site. We use two analytics tools. Cloudflare Web Analytics counts which posts people read; it sets no cookies and can’t follow you anywhere else. Microsoft Clarity is the other, and it is more invasive: it sets cookies, records how you move around a page: what you scroll past, what you click, and sends that recording to Microsoft. We turned it on to find out which parts of this site confuse people, and it does run on the pages where you choose what to buy. Three pages it never touches: the one where you manage a recurring order, whose link is a working key to your own billing; the one you land on after paying, which shows your name and supporter number; and the contact page, so nothing you type to us is ever recorded. The payment itself happens on Stripe’s own site, which Clarity cannot see at all, and the one field you can type into on the buying pages, your email for the newsletter, is blanked before anything leaves your browser. It also only runs for readers in the United States. If you are reading this anywhere else, none of that is happening to you and there is nothing to consent to. If you would rather not be recorded at all, any browser setting that blocks third-party scripts stops it, and we won’t know the difference. We never sell or rent personal information, to anyone, for any reason. We share it only with the companies that make this work at all: Stripe takes the payments, Resend sends the email and holds the newsletter list, Printful prints and ships anything you buy from the shop and is given your name and shipping address to do it, and Microsoft receives the Clarity recordings described above. Nobody else, and none of them get it for their own purposes. Your first name appears on the front page only if you typed it into the optional name field at checkout. To have your data removed, email us and we’ll do it.

Photographs readers send us. The bit invites you to send a picture of your own children doing what Carter and Mathew do. Send one only if you’re their parent or guardian. We write back and ask again before anything goes on the site, and if you don’t answer we don’t publish it; tell us to take it down later and it comes down. Anything we don’t publish is deleted, and we never sell or share any of it.

Our promises about content

Sponsored content is disclosed clearly and at the top of the post. We don’t accept payment for positive coverage of anything. Our ledger is public.

Contributions aren’t our only money. We sell sponsorships to businesses that want a region or a stop covered, and we may use affiliate links where they fit. Both are marked as such where they appear, and neither buys a good review: money can change where we go, never what we say about it once we get there.

Which law, and changes to this page

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Connecticut, where the company is registered, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Anything that can’t be settled by writing to us belongs in the state or federal courts sitting in Connecticut.

We can change this page, and when we do we’ll change the date at the top of it. A change never applies backward: whatever was published on the day you contributed is what governs that contribution. If a change would affect a recurring order you already have running, we’ll email you before it takes effect.

Trademarks

“Costco” and “Kirkland Signature” are registered trademarks of Costco Wholesale Corporation, referenced here only to describe the actual places we visit. We’ve no relationship with Costco of any kind and aren’t seeking one.