Terms of Service

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between Apollo Alvarez, doing business as Cadence ("Cadence," "we," "us") and the business that signs up for the Cadence service ("Customer," "you"). They cover your use of cadencephone.com and the Cadence AI phone receptionist service (the "Service"). By creating an account, checking out, or using the Service, you agree to these Terms.

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1. The Service

Cadence is an AI phone receptionist for small businesses. When you forward your business phone number to a Cadence number, the Service can:

• answer your incoming calls at any hour, 24/7;
• answer common questions using the information you give us;
• take messages and inquiries from callers;
• book, reschedule, or cancel appointments, if you turn that feature on;
• record and transcribe calls; and
• email you call summaries. Text message features may be added later (see Section 10).

The Service uses voice AI and other third-party technology (see Section 13). We may change or improve features over time. If a change removes a core feature you are paying for, we will tell you in advance, and you may cancel.

2. Your Responsibilities

You agree to:

• give us accurate, up-to-date information about your business, including your hours, services, prices, policies, and the instructions the AI should follow;
• set up call forwarding correctly and keep it working, and turn it off when your Service ends;
• review every message, summary, transcript, and booking we send you and follow up with your callers yourself;
• follow all laws that apply to your business and your callers, including call-recording, privacy, consumer-protection, and telemarketing laws; and
• forward only phone numbers you have the right to use.

3. Eligibility: Age 18+ and Business Use Only

You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter a binding contract. The Service is for business use only, not personal or household use. If you sign up for a company, you confirm that you have the authority to bind that company to these Terms.

4. Accounts and Security

• You are responsible for your login details and for all activity under your account.
• Use a strong password and do not share it outside your business.
• If you think someone has used your account without permission, email [email protected] right away.
• We may suspend access to an account if we reasonably believe it has been compromised.

5. Plans, Fees, and Billing

Setup fee: $100 one-time per phone line, charged at your first checkout. The setup fee is non-refundable, except under our 5-business-day setup guarantee and as stated in Section 6.

• Included minutes reset each monthly billing cycle, including on yearly plans. Unused minutes do not roll over.
• How minutes are counted: we add up the length of your calls in each monthly billing cycle and round the total up to the next full minute.
• Extra minutes (overage): minutes beyond your monthly allowance are metered and billed monthly in arrears at your plan's rate. Yearly customers are billed for extra minutes monthly through a separate monthly charge.
• Payment: billing runs through Stripe. Plans are billed in advance: monthly plans at the start of each month, yearly plans at the start of each year. By checking out, you authorize us, through Stripe, to charge your payment method for the setup fee, each renewal, extra minutes, and taxes until you cancel.
• Confirmation: after checkout, we will email you a confirmation with your plan, price, billing frequency, renewal date, and how to cancel.
• Failed payments: if a payment fails, we will email you and Stripe may retry the charge. If the balance stays unpaid, we may suspend the Service until it is paid. You still owe amounts already due.
• Taxes: prices do not include taxes. New York and other jurisdictions may tax telephone answering services. We will add any applicable sales or similar taxes to your bill.
• Price changes: we will email you at least 30 days before any price increase takes effect. We will either ask you to agree to the new price before charging it, or, if you're charged the higher price and cancel within 14 days of that first charge, refund the unused part of that period on a pro-rata basis.

6. Term, Renewal, Cancellation, and Refunds

• Term: there is no minimum term. Your plan continues, and renews automatically, until you cancel.
• Renewal reminders for yearly plans: we will email you between 15 and 30 days before each yearly renewal. The email will state the renewal date, the amount, and how to cancel.
• How to cancel: you can cancel anytime, with no notice period.
  • Online: sign in at cadencephone.com, open Account → Manage billing, and choose Cancel subscription on the Stripe billing page.
  • By email: write to [email protected] from your account email. We will confirm your cancellation by email.
  • We will not make cancelling harder than signing up.
• When cancellation takes effect: your Service continues until the end of the monthly or yearly period you have already paid for, and then ends with no further renewal charges. Extra minutes used up to that date will still be billed.
• Refunds: the $100 setup fee and yearly plans are non-refundable, except under our 5-business-day setup guarantee. Monthly plans cancel anytime; monthly fees already paid are not refunded. Exceptions:
  • the price-increase refund in Section 5;
  • the termination refund in Section 7;
  • the setup guarantee below; and
  • any refund the law requires.
• Setup guarantee: Your Cadence line is working within 5 business days of receiving your payment and completed setup details (intake), or we refund you in full, setup fee included. The 5 business days start once we have both your payment and your completed intake (the setup details we need). If we miss it, you may cancel and get a full refund of everything you paid, including the setup fee, by emailing [email protected].
• Call forwarding: when your Service ends, turn off call forwarding to the Cadence number. Calls forwarded after that may go unanswered.

7. Suspension and Termination by Cadence

We may suspend or end your Service if:

• you do not pay amounts you owe;
• you break these Terms, especially Sections 8 to 11;
• your use creates legal, security, or technical risk to Cadence, our providers, or others; or
• a law, court, regulator, or one of our providers requires it.

Where the risk allows, we will tell you first and give you a chance to fix the problem. If we end the Service for any reason other than your breach or non-payment, we will refund prepaid fees for the unused part of your current period.

8. Acceptable Use

You may not use the Service, or let anyone else use it, to:

• make outbound robocalls, autodialed calls, or outbound calls using prerecorded or artificial (including AI-generated) voices;
• send spam or unsolicited messages;
• carry out outbound telemarketing or cold calling;
• do anything unlawful, fraudulent, deceptive, threatening, or harassing;
• impersonate any person, business, or government agency, or tell callers they are talking to a human;
• collect through the AI any information you're not allowed to collect, such as full payment card numbers, Social Security numbers, or health information you are not permitted to handle;
• interfere with, overload, reverse engineer, or get around the security of the Service; or
• resell the Service without our written permission.

9. TCPA and Telemarketing Laws

The Service is built to answer incoming calls. It is not for outbound marketing. If you use any outbound call or text feature we offer now or later, you alone are responsible for:

• getting, and keeping records of, every consent required under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), the FCC's rules, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and state laws such as New York General Business Law § 399-z;
• honoring do-not-call and opt-out requests, including STOP replies; and
• following calling-time and caller-identification rules.

We may suspend or end your Service immediately if we believe these laws are being violated or if we receive complaints about your use.

10. Text Messages

Text features are not yet available. When they launch, they will require:

• carrier registration of your business;
• your agreement to send texts only to people who have given the required consent; and
• honoring of STOP and HELP replies.

We will add the specific terms before texting is turned on for your account.

11. Call Recording and AI Disclosure

• Every call handled by the Service opens with a notice that the call is recorded. Do not ask us to remove it.
• New York generally permits recording when one party to the call consents. Some states, including California, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Washington, Massachusetts, and Maryland, require the consent of all parties, and your callers may be in those states.
• You are responsible for making sure that recording, transcribing, and storing your callers' calls is lawful for your business and your callers. That includes adding any extra notices your industry or location requires. You can ask us to change the wording of your greeting.
• The receptionist says it is an AI when asked and never claims to be human. Some laws require businesses to disclose AI use up front. You may ask us to add an AI notice to your greeting, and we recommend it.

12. AI Limitations: Not for Emergencies

• The Service uses AI. It can mishear, misunderstand, or leave things out. We do not guarantee that any answer, message, summary, transcript, lookup, or booking is accurate or complete, or that every call will be answered.
• If you connect your website or other sources for the AI to look up, it may repeat information that is outdated or wrong. Keep those sources current.
• The Service depends on phone carriers, internet providers, call forwarding, and third-party providers, so it may sometimes be unavailable.
• The Service is not an emergency service and cannot connect callers to 911. Do not rely on it for emergencies, safety matters, or time-critical situations. Your greeting may tell callers to hang up and dial 911 in an emergency.
• The AI does not give legal, medical, financial, or other professional advice. Do not set it up to do so.
• You must review your messages and summaries. You are responsible for any decisions you make based on them.

13. Third-Party Providers

We use third-party providers to run the Service, including:

• Vapi (voice AI and call processing), and the AI model and telephone providers it uses;
• Stripe (payments);
• Cloudflare (hosting and database); and
• Resend and FormSubmit (email delivery).

Their services are subject to their own terms. We are not responsible for outages or errors caused by providers, carriers, or networks outside our reasonable control.

14. Customer Data

• Your data: "Customer Data" means information you give us and information collected from your callers through the Service, including recordings, transcripts, messages, bookings, and caller names and numbers. You own your Customer Data.
• License to us: you give us a limited, non-exclusive license to host, copy, process, transmit, and display Customer Data. We use it only to provide, maintain, secure, and support the Service, and as the law requires.
• Your obligations: you are responsible for having the rights, and giving the notices, needed for us to process Customer Data for you.
• Retention and deletion: we keep recordings and transcripts until you ask us to delete them or your Service ends. We delete them within 7 days after your Service ends, as explained in our Privacy Policy.
• Privacy: our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information. For caller data, we act on your behalf.
• Feedback: if you send us suggestions, we may use them without any obligation to you.

15. Our Intellectual Property

The Service, the website, and our software, branding, and materials belong to us or our licensors. You may use the Service while your account is active. These Terms do not transfer ownership of anything to you.

16. Warranty Disclaimer

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE." TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, CADENCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, AND UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE OPERATION.

17. Limitation of Liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS:

• NEITHER SIDE IS LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, REVENUE, BUSINESS, CALLS, APPOINTMENTS, OR DATA.
• CADENCE'S TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS IS LIMITED TO THE FEES YOU PAID CADENCE IN THE 3 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT THAT GAVE RISE TO THE CLAIM.
• These limits do not apply to your payment obligations or your obligations under Section 18.

18. Your Indemnity

You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Cadence and its owners, members, and contractors against claims, losses, fines, and costs (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from:

• your use of the Service;
• your Customer Data and instructions;
• your violation of these Terms or of any law, including recording, privacy, and telemarketing laws; and
• claims by your callers about how their calls were recorded, handled, or disclosed, where the claim relates to your compliance obligations.

19. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms.

• Material changes: we will email you at least 30 days before they take effect. If you don't agree, you may cancel before the change takes effect.
• Price increases: these follow the rules in Section 5.
• Changes to auto-renewal or cancellation terms: we will ask for your agreement.

20. Governing Law and Venue

New York law governs these Terms, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute will be brought only in the state or federal courts located in Westchester County, New York, and both sides agree to those courts' jurisdiction.

21. General

• Entire agreement: these Terms, the Privacy Policy, and the plan you choose at checkout are the entire agreement between you and Cadence about the Service. They replace any earlier pricing sheet, proposal, or service agreement on the same subject.
• Severability: if any part of these Terms is unenforceable, the rest stays in effect, and that part is enforced as far as the law allows.
• No waiver: not enforcing a right does not mean we have given it up.
• Assignment: you may not transfer these Terms without our written consent. We may transfer them to a successor, including a company Cadence forms in the future, or as part of a merger or sale of the business.
• Events outside our control: we are not responsible for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control.
• Notices: we send notices to your account email. You can send notices to us at the email address below.

22. Contact

Apollo Alvarez, doing business as Cadence Email: [email protected] Website: cadencephone.com