Terms & Conditions

These terms are an agreement between Answer AI Pty Ltd, a company incorporated in Australia (AnswerAI, we or us), and the business that holds an AnswerAI account (you). They cover the AnswerAI service and our website at answerai.co.nz, including the live demo.

You accept these terms, on behalf of your business, when you create an account or subscribe to a plan. By accepting them you confirm that you have authority to bind the business, and that the business is acquiring AnswerAI in trade, for the purposes of its business, and not for personal, domestic or household use. These terms are made and kept in electronic form.

The Service

AnswerAI is an AI receptionist for businesses. Depending on your plan and the features you turn on, it can:

• answer your calls around the clock with an AI voice agent that uses the information you give it;

• make calls for you: one-off calls, callbacks at an agreed time, and campaigns that work through a call list;

• transfer calls to you or your team, either straight away or after first checking that someone will take the call;

• record and transcribe calls, and write summaries, messages and records such as leads, quote requests, jobs and appointments;

• book appointments in a connected Microsoft 365 (Outlook) calendar; and

• notify your team by email and browser notification.

Plan inclusions, usage limits and prices are shown when you choose a plan. Features vary by plan.

Phone Numbers

• We supply New Zealand local (geographic) numbers through our telephony carrier, Twilio. You have the right to use a number while you have an AnswerAI subscription; you do not own it. You can also connect your own phone system to AnswerAI (SIP) and use numbers you already have.

• Moving (porting) a number to or from another provider depends on the carriers involved and is not guaranteed.

• AnswerAI is not a phone line. It cannot be used to call 111 or any other emergency service, so you and your staff must have another way to reach emergency services.

• If your account is suspended for non-payment, we release its numbers 30 days after the suspension, and we email you 5 days before we do. If your subscription ends for another reason, we may release your numbers once it has ended, so ask us before then if you want to keep a number. A released number may not be recoverable.

Your Account

You must give accurate information when you create your account and keep it up to date. You are responsible for keeping sign-in details secure, for the people you invite to your account, and for everything done under it. Tell us promptly at support@answerai.co.nz if you suspect unauthorised access.

Acceptable Use

You must use AnswerAI lawfully and comply with the New Zealand laws that apply to your calls and your customers, including:

• the Privacy Act 2020: tell callers, and the people on any list you add or upload, about the information you collect and how you use it, including information you collect from someone other than the person it is about (information privacy principles 3 and 3A);

• the Fair Trading Act 1986: do not mislead callers, and if you sell to consumers in calls they did not ask for, follow the rules on uninvited direct sales, including telling them about their right to cancel and giving them a copy of the agreement within 5 working days;

• the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007, for any commercial electronic messages you send, including through AnswerAI; and

• the Crimes Act 1961 and other laws about recording and intercepting communications.

You must not:

• tell callers, or set up your AI receptionist to tell them, that they are speaking with a person, or otherwise mislead them about who or what they are speaking with;

• disguise or falsify the number your calls come from;

• call people you have no right to call, or keep calling people who have asked you to stop (add them to your do-not-call list);

• use AnswerAI to harass, threaten or deceive anyone, or for any unlawful purpose;

• collect health information through AnswerAI unless you comply with the Health Information Privacy Code 2020; or

• interfere with the service, get around its limits, or use it in a way that puts our service, our providers or other customers at risk.

If you breach this clause, we may suspend or restrict your account (see Suspension).

Call Recording and AI Disclosure

AnswerAI records and transcribes every call it handles, including transferred calls. It plays the greeting you set and does not add a recording announcement of its own, so telling people is your responsibility. You must:

• make sure your AI receptionist's greeting tells callers, at the start of each call, that the call is recorded and that they are speaking with an AI assistant for your business;

• have a privacy statement that covers the information you collect about callers and contacts through AnswerAI; and

• tell anyone outside your business to whom you transfer calls that the calls are recorded.

Plans, Billing and Payment

• Prices are in New Zealand dollars. Where we are required to charge a tax such as GST, we show it as a separate amount before you pay and on your receipt.

• Your first payment covers a one-off setup and onboarding fee, charged the first time your business subscribes, and your first plan period (monthly or annual) in advance.

• Use beyond your plan's inclusions, such as extra inbound minutes, outbound call minutes, extra transfer minutes and additional phone numbers, is charged monthly in arrears, at the end of each monthly usage period.

• We charge your saved card automatically through our payment processor, Stripe. We accept cards only, and we do not add a card surcharge. We email you a receipt for each payment.

• If a payment fails, we email you and try again 1, 3 and 5 days after the first attempt. If you update your card in the portal, we try again straight away.

• If a payment is still unpaid 7 days after it first failed, we suspend your account (see Suspension).

• If you dispute a payment with your bank (a chargeback), your account becomes overdue straight away and may be suspended straight away, and we do not charge that card again automatically. Update your card to put things right.

• Upgrades, meaning plan changes that raise your effective monthly price, start straight away: we charge your usage to date and the new plan fee, less a credit for the unused part of your current plan fee. Any credit left over stays on your account for future charges; it is not paid out. Other plan changes take effect at the end of your current monthly usage period.

• We will give you at least 30 days' notice by email before a price increase applies to you, and you can cancel before it takes effect without paying the increase.

• Fees you have paid are not refunded, except where these terms say otherwise or the law requires.

Cancelling

You can cancel at any time in the portal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current monthly usage period (every subscription, including an annual one, runs in monthly usage periods), and the service continues until then. You can undo a cancellation before it takes effect. Usage up to the end date is charged as usual. Plan fees already paid, including any unused part of an annual plan fee, are not refunded unless the law requires it.

Suspension

We may suspend your account:

• automatically, if a payment is still unpaid 7 days after it first failed, or straight away if a payment is reversed by a chargeback;

• if you seriously or repeatedly breach these terms, or use AnswerAI unlawfully;

• if your use puts our service, our providers or other customers at risk; or

• if a carrier, regulator or court requires it.

Except for non-payment, we will give you notice and a reasonable chance to fix the problem first, unless the risk or the law requires us to act straight away. While your account is suspended, callers to your numbers hear a message that the service is temporarily unavailable, AnswerAI makes no outbound calls, and the portal is locked apart from the billing pages, where you can update your card and pay. When the overdue amount is paid, the suspension ends straight away. If an account stays suspended for 30 days, we release its phone numbers (see Phone Numbers).

Service Availability

We work to keep AnswerAI running around the clock, but we do not promise that it will be uninterrupted or error-free. It depends on telephone carriers, phone numbers, AI providers and hosting, and can be affected by maintenance, outages and events outside our control. When we plan maintenance that is likely to interrupt calls, we will try to tell you in advance.

AI Output

AnswerAI's receptionist, summaries and records are produced by AI and can be wrong. It can mishear details, give incomplete or incorrect answers, or record bookings and messages incorrectly. Check bookings, messages and other output before relying on them, and keep the information you give the AI accurate and up to date. You are responsible for how you set up your AI receptionist and what it is instructed to say.

Your Content and Data

You keep ownership of the information you give us and of your call data. You give us the rights we need to provide the service to you, including to process your recordings, transcripts and contact lists.

For information about your callers and contacts, we act on your behalf. We:

• process it only to provide the service to you and on your instructions, and do not use it for our own purposes, apart from keeping records of calls and usage for billing, support and security;

• use the service providers listed in our privacy policy, which process it for us in the countries listed there;

• keep reasonable security safeguards;

• tell you without undue delay if we become aware of a privacy breach affecting it, and give you the information we have so you can decide whether you must notify the Privacy Commissioner or the people affected;

• help you respond to people who ask to access or correct their information; and

• delete it when you ask us to delete your account, except where the law requires us to keep it.

While your subscription is active, you can download call recordings and export your contacts and do-not-call list from the portal. Call recordings are deleted automatically after your plan's recording period, so download any you want to keep. After your subscription ends, the portal is unavailable unless you subscribe again.

Our privacy policy explains how we handle personal information.

Your Rights Under Consumer Law

Nothing in these terms limits any right you have that the law does not allow to be excluded, including under the Fair Trading Act 1986, the Disputes Tribunal Act 1988 and, where it applies, the Australian Consumer Law.

Because your business is acquiring AnswerAI in trade, you and we agree that:

• the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 does not apply to the service;

• to the extent section 5D of the Fair Trading Act 1986 allows, sections 9, 12A, 13 and 14(1) of that Act do not apply; and

• it is fair and reasonable for both of us to be bound by these agreements.

Where the Australian Consumer Law applies to the service and a consumer guarantee cannot be excluded, our liability for failing to meet that guarantee is limited, where the law allows, to supplying the services again or paying the cost of having them supplied again.

Limitation of Liability

To the extent the law allows:

• neither of us is liable to the other for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, business or opportunity, including from missed calls or missed bookings; and

• our total liability to you under or in connection with these terms is limited to the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim.

These limits do not apply to liability for fraud or wilful misconduct, to your obligation to pay our fees, or to our breach of the commitments in Your Content and Data.

Ending the Agreement

You can end this agreement by cancelling your subscription (see Cancelling) and, if you wish, asking us to delete your account.

We can end this agreement:

• if you materially breach these terms and do not fix the breach within 14 days after we ask you to, or straight away if the breach cannot be fixed;

• if your account has been suspended for non-payment for more than 30 days; or

• if we stop offering AnswerAI in New Zealand, by giving you at least 30 days' notice, in which case we will refund any plan fee you paid for the time after the end date.

When the agreement ends, you can no longer use the portal, your phone numbers may be released (see Phone Numbers), and we delete your data when you ask us to, except where the law requires us to keep it. Amounts you owe remain payable, and the clauses that are meant to continue, including Your Rights Under Consumer Law, Limitation of Liability and Governing Law and Disputes, continue to apply.

Changes to the Service and These Terms

We may change the service or these terms for good reasons, such as a change in the law, security needs, changes by our providers, or new features. When we do:

• we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email of any change that is materially adverse to you, including a price increase or the removal of a feature you use;

• you can cancel before the change takes effect, without paying any increase or other penalty; and

• changes that are not adverse to you, such as new features or clearer wording, can take effect when we publish them.

A materially adverse change applies to you only from the date given in our notice.

Governing Law and Disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of New Zealand. Each of us submits to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New Zealand. Nothing in these terms limits the jurisdiction of the Disputes Tribunal of New Zealand, or any right you have under laws that cannot be excluded, including the Australian Consumer Law where it applies.

Website and Live Demo

Anyone using our website or live demo must use it lawfully, and may request a demo call only to their own mobile number. The demo is there so you can try AnswerAI, and we may change or withdraw it at any time. Our privacy policy explains how we handle demo information.

General

• Entire agreement: these terms, our privacy policy and the plan details shown when you subscribe are the whole agreement between us about AnswerAI. You confirm that you have not relied on any statement that is not set out in them.

• Order of precedence: if these terms and our privacy policy conflict, these terms apply.

• Transfer: you may not transfer this agreement without our written consent. We may transfer it to anyone who takes over our business or the AnswerAI service, and we will tell you if we do.

• Events outside our control: neither of us is liable for a delay or failure caused by events outside our reasonable control, such as carrier or provider outages, natural disasters or government action. This does not excuse payment of amounts owed.

• Severability: if any part of these terms is invalid or unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.

• Notices: we may give you notices by email to the email address of your account's owner. You can give us notices by email to info@answerai.co.nz. An email notice is treated as received when it reaches the recipient's email system.

Contact

Answer AI Pty Ltd, a company incorporated in Australia. Help with the service: support@answerai.co.nz. General enquiries and legal notices: info@answerai.co.nz.