Terms of service

1. Who you are contracting with

DeskCaller Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15482207 (“DeskCaller”, “we”). Write to us at contact@deskcaller.com.

These terms apply when you create an account and every time you use DeskCaller. With them come our data processing terms, which cover your callers’ personal data, and our privacy notice. DeskCaller is for businesses: by creating an account you confirm you are acting for a business, not as a consumer, and that you may agree to these terms for it.

2. What the service is

DeskCaller answers your business’s phone with an AI receptionist. It answers in your business’s name, asks the questions you set, books into your connected calendar where you switch that on, and writes each call up. What it does today is on what it does; anything marked “not yet” or “coming soon” is not part of the service you are paying for.

• It is an AI. It can mishear a caller, misread what they want, or get a detail wrong. Check what matters before you act on it, and keep the facts you give it up to date.
• One call at a time. A number carries one call at a time. A second caller ringing while a call is live does not get through. This is a limit of the phone network on every plan.
• Not for emergencies. It cannot put a caller through to anyone, take a message or reach the emergency services. Do not use it where a caller may need urgent help.

3. Your account and your team

Keep your details accurate and your sign-in secure. You are responsible for what is done in your account, including by the people you invite and the roles you give them, and for the rules and words you give your receptionist. Tell us at once if you think someone has got into your account.

4. Your number

Before a number is given, the business tells us who it is and agrees how the number may be used: only for its own calls, never for scams, nuisance or unsolicited calls, or to pretend to be anyone else. We may suspend a number or take it back if it is misused, and share those details with the telecoms regulator or the police where the law requires it.

To move a number to another provider, write to us. How a number reaches us is on your number. On the Free plan, a number is kept 14 days after the free month ends, then released. When a paid plan ends, it is kept until it next renews with our carrier, then released. A released number cannot be got back. A business that closes gives its number back to us unreleased: if it comes back while the number is still free, it is given it again.

5. Telling your callers

Your receptionist tells every caller it is an AI, and that the call is recorded when you switch recording on; it will not publish a greeting that leaves either out. For your callers you are the controller of their personal data and we process it for you, as set out in our data processing terms. It is for you to have a lawful basis for the calls you have answered and recorded, and to answer your callers’ requests about their data, which the product helps you do.

6. Using it fairly

You must not use DeskCaller, or let anyone else use it, to:

• break the law, or help anyone else to;
• make or arrange nuisance, unsolicited or fraudulent calls, or impersonate anyone;
• tell callers anything untrue about who or what they are speaking to;
• handle calls where a caller may need emergency help;
• get round our limits or security, or into anyone else’s account;
• copy, resell or build a competing service from it, or reverse engineer it, except as the law allows.

7. Charges

Plans are charged monthly or annually in advance. All prices exclude VAT. Calls are charged per call rather than per minute, at the rate published for your plan on the pricing page. Calls beyond your monthly allowance are charged at that plan’s rate for them. It is always above the plan rate and never above the Free plan’s rate past its allowance. Up to 10% of a month’s calls can be taken off the bill (spam, a wrong number): they stop counting, and anything they cost past the allowance is given back.

Annual is ten months’ fee for twelve months’ service. The monthly allowance still resets every month and is not pooled across the year. A price change reaches new customers only: you keep the price you bought while your plan runs.

The Free plan includes 25 calls in your first month. After that a plan is needed and calls stop until one is chosen. Prepaid credit, for calls past an allowance on Free, does not expire while your account is open.

8. Going past the allowance

You choose in advance what happens when an allowance runs out: your receptionist keeps answering, or tells callers the business cannot take their call just now and nothing is charged. On Free the default is to tell callers, and calls you choose to keep are paid from prepaid credit (top-ups of £25, £50 or £100; automatic top-up is off unless you switch it on). On a paid plan the default is to keep answering, and those calls go on your next monthly invoice. How much of the month’s allowance is used is on your billing page.

9. Paying, and when a payment fails

Card payments are taken by our payment provider. If a payment fails we try again and email you. If it is still unpaid we send a reminder on day 10, suspend the account on day 14 (callers hear that the business cannot take their call), send a final notice on day 21 and end the paid plan on day 30. Seven days into a suspension the number stops being answered at all. Paying what is owed before the plan ends puts everything back as it was.

10. Cancelling and changing plan

Cancelling a paid plan needs 30 days’ notice. It ends at the first renewal at least 30 days after you cancel, so cancelling within 30 days of a renewal means one more payment; on an annual plan that is one more month at the monthly price, never another year. There is no refund for the time left. You can withdraw the cancellation until the plan ends. Enterprise terms are as agreed with you in writing.

You can change plan at any time from the billing page. The new plan starts on your next payment date and nothing is prorated, whether it is larger or smaller. An annual plan moving to a larger annual plan starts at the next monthly date, with the unused part of the year credited against the new price and the renewal date unchanged; any other change to an annual plan starts when the year ends. A change can be withdrawn until it starts.

11. Your data and your content

What you and your callers put into DeskCaller stays yours. You give us the right to use it only to run the service for you, as our data processing terms set out. We never sell it. You can export everything at any time from your account.

12. Closing your account

You can close your business from your account. It closes at the end of what you have paid for, and never sooner than 14 days, so you can change your mind and take an export. Then its data is erased, except what the law makes us keep: invoices and payments for as long as UK tax law requires, the record of who did what in the account, and the agreement accepted for the number.

13. When we suspend or end the service

We may suspend or end your use of DeskCaller if you break these terms in a serious way, misuse your number, do not pay as set out above, or if the law or a regulator requires it.

14. Keeping it running, and changing it

We work to keep DeskCaller answering, but we cannot promise it will never stop: it relies on phone networks and on suppliers we do not control. Status shows how it is working now. We may change the service over time.

15. What belongs to whom

DeskCaller, the software and everything we provide to run it belong to us and our licensors; you have the right to use it while your account is open. Your business’s name, content and callers’ data belong to you. If you send us suggestions we may use them without owing you anything for them.

16. Liability

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow to be limited.

Otherwise, we are not liable for loss of profit, revenue, business or goodwill, for work not won, or for any indirect or consequential loss, including from a call that was not answered, answered wrongly or not written up. Our total liability to you in any 12 months is limited to the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim.

17. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top says when they last changed, and using DeskCaller after a change means you accept it.

18. The rest

These terms, our data processing terms and any order or agreement we sign with you are the whole agreement between us. If one part cannot be enforced, the rest still applies. Not enforcing a term at once does not waive it. Neither of us is responsible for delays caused by events outside our reasonable control. You may not transfer this agreement without our agreement; we may transfer it to a business that takes over DeskCaller. Nobody else has rights under it. We send notices by email to the account’s owner.

19. Law and courts

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales decide any dispute about them.