The deal, in plain English

Who this is with

These terms are between you and Michael Kuhlman, trading as Kuhlman Pickleball, of Santa Rosa, CA. Using this site, booking a lesson or sending in video means you accept them.

They are written the way I would explain them standing on a court, because that is where almost all of this actually gets sorted out. If something here does not match what I have told you in person, ring me on 707-540-1336 and we will square it.

A booking is a request

This matters more than anything else on the page, so it goes first. When you pick a day and a time on this site, you are asking for that slot, not taking it. It reaches me as a request marked "awaiting confirmation", and it becomes a lesson when I confirm it - by text or email, usually within a few hours and always by the end of the day.

I run this on my own and I can take almost any hour I am asked for, so nearly every request works out. When one does not, and you have left the "I can be flexible" box ticked, I will offer you the nearest hour I have rather than coming back with nothing.

The site will only let you ask for a time that is at least 12 hours away and no more than 60 days ahead, and the lesson has to finish inside the coaching day. If you need something outside that, call me. The website is not the only way to book a lesson.

Worth knowing, because the two numbers do not line up: you can book as little as 12 hours ahead, but free cancellation needs 24 hours. A lesson booked inside 24 hours is therefore already inside the charging window the moment you book it. I am not going to charge you for changing your mind ten minutes later - but if you book something tomorrow morning and then cannot make it, tell me early rather than late.

Prices and what is included

The price you are shown when you book is the price you pay, with one exception, and it is the travel surcharge in the list below - the booking screen cannot know how far away you are, so if it applies I tell you before you commit and never afterwards. The current list of formats, durations and prices is on the Lessons page, and that page is the live one: it is not repeated here, because a price typed into a terms page goes stale and then argues with the booking screen.

Group formats are priced per player and the rest are priced per booking; the booking screen does that arithmetic in front of you before you send anything. Group formats also have a minimum number of players as well as a maximum, because a clinic with two people in it is a private lesson at a clinic price.

Included in every price:

• Court booking, and any court or reservation fee at venues that charge one. You do not need to reserve anything or pay a gate fee separately.
• Paddles and balls if you need them. I bring spares to every lesson.
• Travel to you, anywhere within about 25 miles of Santa Rosa, CA. Beyond that there may be a small travel surcharge on a single lesson, which I will tell you about before you commit, and which is waived for group clinics and for packages.

Paying

Nothing on this site can charge a card, and no card details are ever asked for or stored. Booking takes no payment at all.

You pay me at the lesson, by card, Venmo or cash, whichever suits you. Packages are paid up front and then drawn down lesson by lesson, so a lesson on a package costs nothing at the court. Video reviews are invoiced once the review is with you.

Payment is due at the lesson. If something has gone wrong with your card or your phone at the court, tell me and we will settle it afterwards; I have never yet needed a rule for this.

Packages

Packages are blocks of lessons bought up front at a lower rate per lesson. They cannot be bought through this site: message me or call and I will set the credits up on your account, after which you book as normal and I take each lesson off your balance.

Worth being clear that the balance on your account is one I keep by hand rather than something the booking screen adjusts by itself. It is right because I keep it right. If it looks wrong after a lesson, tell me and I will correct it - and the count I hold you to is the one we both agree on, not whatever the page happens to say that day.

Each package runs for a fixed number of days from the day it is bought, and the exact term is printed against each one in the packages section of the Lessons page - same reason the prices are not repeated here.

If something gets in the way of using it - an injury, a spell of travel, a move - tell me and I will extend it, and I would rather do that than take money for lessons nobody had. To be exact, since the two sentences could be read as contradicting each other: the term is a real date and credits do lapse at the end of it. What I am promising is that I will extend it if you ask, not that it never runs out. Unused credits are not refunded in cash.

Changing or cancelling

Cancelling a lesson

Cancel more than 24 hours before the start time and it costs you nothing, and you can do it yourself from your account. If the lesson was coming off a package, the credit is still yours and I put it back. Inside 24 hours the lesson is charged, because that hour is usually no longer fillable. Genuine emergencies are always handled sensibly - tell me what has happened rather than saying nothing.

Not turning up

If you do not arrive and I have not heard from you, it counts as a cancellation inside the 24-hour window and the lesson is charged. A text saying you are stuck in traffic is all it takes to avoid that.

Running late

Text me and I will wait. We will use whatever time is left, and the lesson still finishes at its scheduled time, because there is often another student after you. The full price still applies.

Rescheduling

There is no reschedule button on the site. Cancel and rebook if you are outside the 24-hour window, or just call me and I will move it.

Weather

Northern California rain calls off a lot of winter lessons. If the courts are unplayable we reschedule at no cost, and you will hear from me by 7am on the day - from me personally, by text, because the site sends nothing automatically. In winter I also keep indoor time at Callinan in Rohnert Park as a backup.

If I have to cancel

If I cancel for any reason, you are charged nothing, any package credit stays yours, and I will offer you the next slot I have.

Where lessons happen

Lessons take place at public parks and community courts around Sonoma, Napa, Marin, Solano, Mendocino and Lake counties. I do not own, run or control any of them. Their opening hours, their condition, their parking and their rules belong to the city, county or club that runs them, and those can change without telling either of us.

What I take on is the arranging: booking the court where a booking is possible and paying any fee. What I cannot promise is that a public court will be free, dry and open on the day. If we turn up and it is not - a city programme has taken it, it is being resurfaced, it is under water - I will move us to the nearest court that works, or reschedule at no cost, exactly as with rain.

While you are at a venue you are subject to that venue's rules, and any dispute with it is between you and them.

Video reviews

You send footage, I watch it and send back a talk-over video with timestamped written notes and drills. What each plan includes, what it costs, how much footage it takes and the turnaround in days is set out on the video analysis page.

• The turnaround is fixed when you submit. The due date is stamped on your review at that moment and it does not move afterwards, even if I change the advertised turnaround later.
• The site will not tell you when it is ready. It sends no email and no text of its own. A finished review appears in your account with a badge on it, and I will usually text you myself - but the account is the thing to check.
• Your footage stays yours. I do not publish it, share it or use it as an example without asking you first, and no one but you and I can open it. While a review is still a draft you can remove clips yourself, and deleting the draft deletes the footage with it. Once you have sent it, removing it is a matter of asking me - say the word and it goes.
• Send footage you have the right to send. If other players are recognisable in it, that is on you rather than on me. Do not send anything recorded somewhere that forbids it.
• Reviews are invoiced after delivery. If a review has not been started and you want to cancel, tell me and there is nothing to pay. Once I have watched the footage and recorded the reply, the work is done and it is payable.
• There are limits on file size, how many clips a plan takes and how much you can store, all shown as you upload. They exist to stop one account filling the server.

Your account

Booking a lesson creates an account for you automatically, without a password, so that you can get in and out of the booking flow in a minute. You are offered a password afterwards, on the confirmation page, and you do not have to take it.

• Give me details that are real and keep them current. I confirm lessons by text and email, so a wrong number is a missed lesson.
• Passwords need to be at least 8 characters. Keep yours to yourself; anything done from your account is treated as done by you.
• Repeated wrong passwords lock sign-in for 15 minutes. That is deliberate, and the lock clears by itself once the 15 minutes are up - there is no button I can press to shorten it. If you have forgotten the password rather than mistyped it, call me and I will set a new one on your account.
• There is no password reset on this site. If you are locked out, call 707-540-1336.
• Do not book under somebody else's name or email address. If a lesson is for someone else, book it in your own name and tell me who is playing.
• Ask me and I will close your account and delete what is on it. See the Privacy Policy.

I can suspend or close an account that is being used to abuse the booking system, to send spam, or to treat me or another student badly. It has never happened and I do not expect it to.

Pickleball carries risk

This is a sport played on a hard court, at speed, with a ball that comes at you. People roll ankles, pull calves, get hit and fall over. Coaching reduces the odds of it; it cannot remove them. You take part at your own risk, and by booking a lesson you accept that.

What I ask of you in return:

• Be honest about your health. Tell me about injuries, surgery, heart or breathing trouble, anything you are recovering from, and anything a fall would make worse. There is a box for it on the booking form and thirty seconds at the start of the lesson. I will coach around almost anything if I know about it, and I cannot if I do not.
• See a doctor first if you are not sure you are fit for exercise. I am a pickleball coach, not a medical professional, and nothing I say is medical advice.
• Stop when something hurts. Tell me. Playing through it is how a twinge becomes a season.
• Wear court shoes with a non-marking sole, bring water, and dress for the weather. Running shoes on a court are how ankles go.
• Borrowed paddles are lent as they are. Check one before you use it and hand it back if it does not feel right.

If the student is under 18, a parent or guardian must make the booking, agree to these terms on their behalf, and be reachable for the whole lesson.

What I am responsible for

I am responsible for coaching you competently and safely, for turning up, and for behaving properly towards you. I take that seriously and it is not something I am trying to sign away here.

What I am not responsible for, so far as the law lets me say so: injury, illness or loss that comes from the ordinary risks of playing a sport; the condition, availability or rules of a public court I do not own; your belongings at a venue; or anything that happens because I was not told about a health condition I should have known about.

Where I am liable to you for something that has gone wrong with a lesson or a review, that liability is limited to what you paid for it. I am not liable for indirect or knock-on losses - a missed tournament, time off work, a holiday that did not happen.

Some things cannot be signed away, and I am not trying to. If I hurt you through my own carelessness, that is on me. The same goes for anything dishonest on my part, and for anything else California law does not allow a business to exclude.

What is on this site

The words, the lesson material, the drills and the coaching notes I write for you are mine. You are welcome to use everything I give you for your own game - that is the whole point - but please do not republish it or teach from it commercially without asking.

The venue photographs are not mine. They come from city and county parks departments, from local news, and from individual photographers, and each one is credited on the venue page beneath the image. They belong to whoever took them, they are used here to help you find the court, and the copyright line at the foot of this site does not claim them. If one of them is yours and you would rather it was not here, email me and it comes down the same day.

Your footage and the notes you write stay yours. Sending them to me for a review gives me permission to watch them, mark them up and talk about them back to you, and nothing else.

Which law applies

These terms are governed by the law of the State of California, and any dispute belongs to the courts of Sonoma County. If any part of this page turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands.

I may update these terms - a price structure changes, a format is added, something here turns out to be unclear. The date at the top moves when they do, and the version on this page at the time you book is the one that applies to that booking.

Before any of that: if you are unhappy about something, call me. In a business this size that fixes it far faster than anything written on this page.