Terms of Service
The terms for using Morning Coffee, in plain words.
This page is a draft. It is being reviewed before the service opens, and the wording may change.
What the service is
Morning Coffee sends one text message each morning to a person living alone, asking how the morning is going, and a second message with a question about their life. It keeps their answers, sends the week's answers to the people in their circle, and tells those people when a morning goes unanswered or a reply needs attention. That is the whole of it.
What the service is not
Morning Coffee is not a medical service, an emergency service, or a substitute for either. We do not diagnose, advise, or call for help. We do not call emergency services and we do not send anyone to anyone's door. When a morning goes unanswered or a reply needs attention, we tell the people in the circle, and they decide what to do. A text message can be delayed or fail to arrive, and a person can choose not to reply; nothing here is a guarantee that a problem will be noticed. If someone is in immediate danger, call 911.
Your responsibilities
Because the service texts a person who is not the account holder, the account holder agrees to the following.
- You have talked to the person receiving check-ins, they understand what the messages are and who they are from, and they expect them.
- Every phone number you enter belongs to the person you say it belongs to, and each of those people agrees to receive messages from us.
- You will keep the numbers, the time, and the circle up to date, and you will not use the service to contact anyone who has asked not to be contacted.
- You are at least eighteen years old.
The fourteen-day trial and the price
The first fourteen days are free, with no card to start. On the last day of the trial you decide whether to continue; if you do, you add a card and pay the monthly price shown on the Pricing page. A card added during the trial is first charged on the day the trial ends, and on the same date each month after that; a card added after the trial has ended is charged at once. If a charge fails we email you and the card is tried again over the following days, with the messages continuing meanwhile; if it still fails, the messages pause until a card is on file. [Placeholder, legal review: the wording of the retry period.]
Cancelling
You may cancel at any time from the account page, or by phone at 1-800-555-0142. The subscription runs to the end of the month already paid for and the messages stop then; there is no charge after that and no refund of the month in progress. Nothing already written is erased; the archive stays as it was. [Placeholder, legal review: the no-refund line.]
Stopping from the phone
The person receiving check-ins, and anyone in the circle, can stop messages to their own phone at any moment by replying STOP, whatever the account holder has set up. We honor every such request and never work around it.
Their words
The answers a person writes belong to them and to the family. We keep them as written, we never edit them, and we use them only to run the service: to show them to the circle, to send the weekly summary, and to choose the next question. We do not sell them, share them for anyone else's purposes, or use them to build anything unrelated to this account.
Acceptable use
The service may not be used to harass anyone, to contact a person without their agreement, to enter numbers that are not yours to enter, or to interfere with the service or with other accounts. We may close an account used in any of these ways.
Limits on liability
[Placeholder, legal review: the limitation of liability and disclaimer of warranties, written in plain words and consistent with the section above on what the service is not.]
Governing law and disputes
[Placeholder, legal review: governing law, venue, and how disputes are handled.]
Changes
If these terms change in a way that matters, the account holder is told by email before the change takes effect. Continuing to use the service after that date means accepting the new terms.