Terms of service

These terms are the agreement between [company name], a company registered in England and Wales with company number [number], whose registered office is at [address], trading as Tilly ("we", "us", "our") and the business that signs up for Tilly ("you", "your"). They include our data processing agreement and our acceptable use policy. Please read them before you order. If anything is unclear, email us at hello@tillyanswers.co.uk.

1. Who these terms are for

1.1 Tilly is for businesses. When you order, you confirm that you are acting for the purposes of your trade, business, craft or profession, and not as a consumer. Sole traders and partnerships are welcome, as businesses. Consumer protection laws that only apply to consumers, such as the right to cancel a distance contract within 14 days, do not apply to this agreement.

1.2 The person who places the order confirms they are allowed to agree to these terms for the business.

1.3 The service is designed for businesses based in the United Kingdom, answering calls to UK phone numbers.

2. How the agreement is made

2.1 The agreement starts when you tick the box at checkout to accept these terms, complete payment details, and we confirm your order by email. It is made up of: the details of your order (your plan, add-ons and prices), these terms, the data processing agreement and the acceptable use policy.

2.2 If these documents conflict, the data processing agreement takes priority for anything about personal data we handle for you, then these terms, then the acceptable use policy.

2.3 We keep a record of the version of each document you accepted, when, and from which internet address. You can print or save these terms from this page at any time.

2.4 Your own terms, for example on a purchase order, do not apply unless we agree to them in writing.

3. The service

3.1 Tilly is an AI receptionist. It answers calls to the phone number connected to your account, answers questions using the information you give it, takes messages, books appointments, transfers calls by your rules and sends you summaries, transcripts and alerts by email, text message and WhatsApp, with a dashboard for you and your team. Which features you get depends on your plan, as shown on our pricing page.

3.2 The receptionist is automated and uses artificial intelligence. It can mishear or misunderstand callers, give an answer that is incomplete or wrong, or take a message that is missing details. We work hard to keep it accurate, but we do not promise it will be free of errors. Check messages and bookings as they arrive, and do not rely on it alone where a mistake could cause harm or loss.

3.3 Tilly is not an emergency service and must not be relied on to handle emergencies or other safety-critical calls. If your business receives emergency calls (for example gas, water or electrical emergencies, or urgent health matters), you must keep your own arrangements for them and make sure the answers you give your receptionist tell callers what to do, including calling 999 when life or property is at risk.

3.4 We may change and improve the service, including its features, voices, AI models and suppliers. If a change significantly reduces what you have paid for, we will tell you in advance and you may cancel and receive a refund of any fees you have paid in advance for the period after the change.

3.5 We aim to keep the service running at all times, but it depends on telephone networks, the internet and our suppliers, so we cannot promise it will be uninterrupted or free of faults. We will try to do planned maintenance at quiet times and to fix problems quickly. We do not offer service credits unless we agree them with you in writing.

3.6 Features we describe as "beta" or provide free (such as the demonstrations on our website) are provided as they are, without any promise about how well they work.

4. Free trial

4.1 Each plan starts with a 14-day free trial, once per business. We take your card details at checkout. One-off services, such as done-for-you setup or a custom voice, are charged when you order.

4.2 If you do not cancel before the trial ends, your subscription continues and we charge your card for the first billing period on the day the trial ends.

4.3 You can cancel during the trial online, from the billing page in your dashboard, and you will not pay for the subscription. A one-off service you have bought is refunded only if we have not started it.

5. Prices, payment and VAT

5.1 You pay the prices shown on our website when you order: your plan and add-ons, monthly or yearly in advance; charges for calls above your plan's monthly allowance, in arrears with your next payment; and one-off services when you order. Prices do not include VAT, which we add where it applies.

5.2 A call counts towards your allowance if it lasts at least 10 seconds and is not a sales call the receptionist screened out or a call that failed. Test calls from your dashboard and calls made to the demonstrations on our website are free.

5.3 Payments are taken by card through our payment provider, Stripe. You authorise us to charge your card for each payment due under this agreement. Receipts and invoices are emailed to you and are available from the billing page in your dashboard.

5.4 If a payment fails, we will tell you and try again. If it is still unpaid 14 days after it was due, we may suspend the service until it is paid, and if it is unpaid after 30 days we may end the agreement.

5.5 We may change our prices by giving you at least 30 days' notice by email. The new price applies from the start of your next billing period after the notice ends. If you do not want to pay the new price, you can cancel before it applies. A yearly plan keeps its price until the year you have paid for ends.

5.6 Fees are not refundable except where these terms say so or the law requires it.

6. Changing plan and cancelling

6.1 You can change your plan or add-ons from your dashboard. Changes take effect as shown when you make them. Moving to a smaller plan may remove features, for example voices of your own beyond the new plan's limit.

6.2 You can cancel at any time from the billing page in your dashboard. Cancelling stops your subscription at the end of the billing period you have paid for, and the service carries on until then. We do not refund the rest of a period you have already started, including the rest of a yearly plan, unless these terms say otherwise.

6.3 When your subscription ends:

• your receptionist stops answering calls, so change any call forwarding and update anywhere you published your Tilly number before then;
• the phone number is detached from your account, held for 30 days and may then be given to another customer;
• we delete your account data, including calls, transcripts, messages, bookings, contacts and settings, 90 days after the subscription ends (voices you designed are deleted after 30 days). If you want a copy first, email us before then;
• we keep order and billing records for 6 years, because tax law requires it.

7. Phone numbers

7.1 We provide a UK local or 03 number from our telecoms supplier. You may use it while your subscription lasts. The number is not yours to keep: the rights to it stay with us and our supplier. If you want to keep the number when you leave, tell us before your subscription ends and we will try to help you move it to another provider, where our supplier allows this. We may charge a reasonable fee for the work involved.

7.2 You can keep your existing business number and forward calls from it to your Tilly number. Call forwarding is provided by your own phone provider, who may charge for forwarded calls. We are not responsible for their charges or for forwarding that does not work.

7.3 Our telecoms supplier and the regulator Ofcom may require information about you, for example the business address for a local number. You must give us accurate information when we ask for it, and we may withhold or withdraw a number if we cannot meet those rules.

7.4 Numbers are for receiving calls to your receptionist. You must not use them for marketing calls or messages, or in any way the acceptable use policy forbids.

8. Your responsibilities

8.1 You are responsible for the information you give your receptionist, such as your prices, opening hours, services, answers and policies, and for keeping it up to date. This includes anything our tools draft for you from your website or documents: check it before you save it. We are not responsible for answers that are wrong because the information given was wrong or out of date.

8.2 You are the business your callers are calling, so you are responsible for telling them how their information is used, for example in a privacy notice on your website. Your greeting tells callers that calls are recorded unless you turn that off; if you turn it off, you must tell callers another way. If a caller sincerely asks whether they are talking to a person, the receptionist will say it is an AI receptionist; you must not change it to say otherwise.

8.3 You must use the service lawfully and follow the acceptable use policy. In particular, the receptionist must not be used to take payment card details or for emergency calls.

8.4 You are responsible for your account and everyone you invite to it. Keep sign-in details secure, consider turning on two-step sign-in, remove people who should no longer have access and tell us straight away if you think someone has got in who should not have.

8.5 You must have the right to use everything you give us, such as your website content, documents, brand guidelines, logo and recordings. You give us permission to use it to provide the service to you.

8.6 You may only copy a real person's voice with their written permission. Keep that permission and give us a copy if we ask. We may remove a voice if we have reason to think permission was not given.

8.7 You are responsible for the systems you connect to Tilly, such as your calendar, CRM or automation tools, and for what they do with the information we send them.

9. Personal data

9.1 When we handle personal data for you, such as the details of people who call you, you are the controller and we are your processor. Our data processing agreement applies and forms part of this agreement.

9.2 For the personal data of you and your team that we need to run your account, bill you and keep the service secure, we are the controller. Our privacy policy explains how we use it.

9.3 We do not sell your data or your callers' data, and we do not use your call recordings or transcripts to train our own AI models. We may use statistics that do not identify you or any person to run and improve the service.

10. Intellectual property

10.1 We, or the companies we license from, own the service, its software, its voices, the Tilly name and our website content. While your subscription lasts we give you a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the service for your business.

10.2 You own your information and your data, including your calls, messages and contacts. You give us the right to use them to provide the service.

10.3 The voices in our catalogue, and voices you design with us, may only be used through Tilly. You may not copy, extract or reuse them elsewhere.

10.4 You must not copy, resell, reverse engineer or try to get at the source of the service, or use it to build a competing product.

10.5 If you send us suggestions, we may use them freely.

11. Confidentiality

Each of us will keep confidential the other's business information that is marked confidential or that a reasonable person would treat as confidential, and use it only for this agreement. This does not apply to information that is public through no fault of the person who received it, that the person already had or developed independently, or that must be disclosed by law or a regulator.

12. Suspending the service

We may suspend all or part of the service if you do not pay, if you break the acceptable use policy or the law, if it is needed to protect the service, callers or others, or if our supplier or a regulator requires it. We will tell you first where we reasonably can, and restore the service as soon as the reason has been dealt with.

13. Our liability

13.1 Nothing in this agreement limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that the law does not allow to be limited.

13.2 Subject to 13.1, we are not liable for: loss of profits, revenue, business, contracts, goodwill or anticipated savings; loss or corruption of data; or any indirect or consequential loss. We are also not liable for calls, messages or bookings that are missed, delayed or wrong because of telephone networks, call forwarding, your equipment or settings, information you gave the receptionist, or suppliers outside our control.

13.3 Subject to 13.1, our total liability arising from or in connection with this agreement, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty or otherwise, is limited in each period of 12 months to £100 or, if more, the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim.

13.4 You agree to cover our reasonable costs and losses from any claim by someone else that arises because you broke the law, the acceptable use policy or section 8, or because of information you gave us that you did not have the right to use.

13.5 These limits reflect the prices we charge and are part of what you agreed to when you ordered.

14. Ending the agreement

14.1 The agreement continues until it is ended under this section or section 6.

14.2 We may end the agreement by giving you 30 days' notice by email, and refund any fees you have paid in advance for the period after it ends.

14.3 We may end the agreement straight away by telling you if you seriously break it and do not put it right within 14 days of us asking, if you seriously break the acceptable use policy, if you do not pay within 30 days of the due date, or if you become insolvent or stop trading.

14.4 When the agreement ends, the steps in 6.3 apply. Anything that is meant to continue after the end, such as sections 9, 11, 13 and 17, does.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms, for example when the law or our service changes. If a change is significant, we will email the account owner at least 30 days before it takes effect, unless it has to happen sooner for legal or security reasons. If you do not agree to the change, you can cancel before it takes effect. The date this page was last updated is shown at the top.

16. Notices

We will send notices to the email address of your account owner. Send notices to us at hello@tillyanswers.co.uk. Formal legal notices may also be sent by post to our registered office: [registered office address].

17. General

17.1 You may not transfer this agreement without our written consent. We may transfer it to a company that takes over our business, and we may use subcontractors and suppliers, including those listed in the data processing agreement, while remaining responsible for them.

17.2 Neither of us is liable for delays or failures caused by events outside our reasonable control, such as a failure of a telephone network or the internet, a supplier outage, extreme weather, war or industrial action.

17.3 This agreement is the whole agreement between us about the service. Neither of us has relied on anything not set out in it, but this does not limit liability for fraud.

17.4 If a court finds part of this agreement unenforceable, the rest still applies. If either of us delays in enforcing a right, that does not mean it has been given up.

17.5 Nobody other than you and us has any right to enforce this agreement under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.

17.6 This agreement and any dispute about it, including non-contractual disputes, are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.

18. About us

Tilly is provided by [company name], a company registered in England and Wales with company number [number], whose registered office is at [address], trading as Tilly. Company number [company number]. Email hello@tillyanswers.co.uk. We aim to reply within two working days.