Terms of Service

1. Who these terms are between

These terms are an agreement between you — the trade business subscribing to Toby — and Ashton Sydney Gathercole, trading as Hello Toby, of Queensland, Australia. Written contact: hello@hellotoby.com.au ("we", "us", "our"). "Toby", or "the service", means the AI SMS receptionist described on this website.

By setting up Toby or letting us take your diverted calls, you accept these terms. Our Privacy Policy forms part of them.

These terms are for businesses. If you're one of your customers reading this after getting a text — you have no agreement with us; you're dealing with the trade business you rang. What we do with your information is set out in the Privacy Policy, and you can stop the messages any time by replying STOP.

2. What Toby does

In short: it answers the calls you miss, by text.

• You divert your unanswered calls to an Australian mobile number we provide. Nothing else about your phone changes.
• Toby texts the caller back and has an SMS conversation — what the job is, which suburb, their name, and when suits.
• It books a quote visit, or the job itself, depending on how your account is set up. A booking is only made when the customer explicitly confirms it.
• Bookings are saved and written into your calendar, and anything already in your calendar blocks Toby from offering that time.
• You get a text for every new booking, every cancellation and every reschedule.
• Your customer gets a reminder before the visit, inviting them to cancel or reschedule if their plans have changed.
• Anyone replying STOP is opted out permanently and is not contacted again.

3. What Toby does not do

This matters more than the list above, so read it properly.

• It never quotes a price. Not an estimate, not a range, not a "usually about". It books the visit so you can quote it yourself.
• It never does the work, and it isn't a tradesperson. We don't supply plumbing, electrical or any other trade service — you do.
• It doesn't answer voice calls. It doesn't speak, and it doesn't record calls. The call is declined and the conversation happens by text.
• It isn't an emergency service. See section 4.
• It doesn't give technical, safety or compliance advice, and it isn't a substitute for your own judgement about a job.
• It doesn't take payments or hold anyone's card details.
• It doesn't chase, follow up or market to your past customers.

Toby also isn't a person, and isn't presented as one. You must not configure or describe it in a way that tells your customers they're texting a human.

4. Emergencies

SMS is not a guaranteed or instant channel. Messages can be delayed or lost by the phone network, and a reply depends on the caller reading it. Treat it as what it is: a way to catch the jobs you'd otherwise lose, not a lifeline.

5. What you're responsible for

Toby only knows what you tell it. If what you tell it is wrong, it will confidently book jobs you can't do. So you are responsible for:

• Your setup being accurate and current — trading hours, breaks, days closed, public holidays, the suburbs you'll travel to, the jobs you take and the ones you don't, and how far ahead you'll book. Tell us when any of it changes.
• Your calendar being right, and staying connected. Toby avoids times it can see. It can't avoid a job that only exists in your head, and if the calendar connection lapses it can't see anything.
• Honouring the bookings Toby makes. They're made in your name, to your customers. Turning up, or telling the customer you can't, is your job.
• Checking the alerts. We text you every booking, cancellation and reschedule. If you don't read them, a cancelled job stays in your head as a real one.
• Your own licences, insurance, safety and consumer-law obligations for the work itself. Nothing about Toby changes any of them.
• Diverting your calls correctly, and whatever your own telco charges you for doing it.
• Keeping your account details secure, and telling us promptly if you think someone else has got in.

6. Bookings are your commitments, not ours

When Toby books a visit, it does so on your behalf. The agreement is between you and your customer. We're not a party to it, we don't guarantee that the customer will be home, and we don't guarantee that you'll get the job.

Toby is built to be careful about this — it won't tell a customer they're booked unless the booking has actually saved, it won't take a slot that clashes with your calendar or another booking, and a reschedule holds the old slot until the new one is confirmed. Those safeguards are real, but they are safeguards, not a guarantee. Your diary is still yours to check.

7. The mobile number

We supply an Australian mobile number for your business as part of the service. It's provided through our telecommunications provider and we make it available to you for as long as you're subscribed. Unless we've agreed otherwise in writing, the number is not yours to keep and may not be transferable if you leave — so ask us before you paint it on a van or print it on a thousand flyers.

8. Fees and billing

What Toby costs is set out on our pricing page, and that page is the authority — not this one. Depending on the plan you choose, the fees may include a monthly subscription fee for each business, and a fee for each booking Toby makes.

• Fees are in Australian dollars. If we are registered for GST at the time of your invoice, GST is added and shown separately on it; if we are not, no GST is charged. Your invoice is always the authority on what you pay.
• Subscription fees are billed monthly in advance. Any per-booking fees are billed for the period in which the bookings were made.
• We can change our fees. If we do, we'll give you at least 30 days' notice before the change applies to you, and you can cancel before it takes effect if you'd rather not pay it.
• If an invoice isn't paid, we'll chase it before we do anything else. If it stays unpaid we may suspend the service — which means your diverted calls stop being answered, so we'd much rather sort it out.
• Fees already paid for a period aren't refunded when you cancel part way through it, except where the law requires it (see section 14).

9. Cancelling

There's no lock-in contract. You can cancel at any time by emailing hello@hellotoby.com.au. Your service runs to the end of the month you've paid for, and then stops.

When it stops, remember to turn off your call diversion — otherwise your missed calls go to a number that no longer answers. That one is on you, and it's the sort of thing that costs real jobs.

We can end or suspend the service too: with 30 days' notice for any reason, or immediately if you breach these terms in a way that's serious or unresolved — particularly using Toby for marketing, ignoring opt-outs, or anything unlawful.

After cancellation we'll give you a copy of your booking and customer records if you ask for one within a reasonable time, and we'll then handle what remains as set out in the Privacy Policy. Opt-out records are kept regardless, because deleting them would mean re-contacting people who asked not to be.

10. Acceptable use

You must not:

• use Toby for anything unlawful, deceptive, harassing or abusive;
• upload or feed in other people's contact details without a proper basis for doing so;
• use Toby to send messages the recipient hasn't got a reason to expect (see section 11);
• resell, sublicense or white-label the service, or run more than one business through a single subscription, unless we've agreed in writing;
• attempt to break, overload, reverse-engineer or extract the underlying model or system, or use it to build a competing product;
• misrepresent Toby as a human being, or as a licensed tradesperson;
• configure it to make claims about price, availability or qualifications that aren't true.

We own Toby and everything in it. You keep your own business information and your customer records. You give us permission to use them only to run the service for you.

11. No marketing through Toby

This one is not negotiable. Toby must not be used to send marketing or promotional messages. Its messages exist to answer a missed call and arrange a visit — that's the basis on which those texts are sent.

Sending unsolicited commercial messages breaches the Spam Act 2003 (Cth), and the penalties fall on the business the messages promote — yours. If you want to run a campaign, use a proper marketing platform with its own consent records. Using Toby for it is a serious breach of these terms and we'll shut the account down.

Opt-outs are absolute. When someone replies STOP, they are opted out permanently and neither you nor we can text them through Toby again.

12. Your customers' information

Your customers' names, numbers, addresses and job details flow through Toby so it can book the visit. How we handle that is set out in the Privacy Policy, which you should read before you sign up.

You have your own obligations to those people under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), and you're responsible for meeting them — including being upfront that an automated assistant handles your missed calls, and dealing fairly with anyone who asks about their information.

13. No warranty that it converts

We provide Toby with reasonable care and skill, and we work hard on the parts that can hurt you. But we do not warrant, and you should not assume, that:

• every missed call turns into a booking, or into a job — some callers are browsing, some are telemarketers, and some don't reply;
• the service will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that maintenance and outages will never happen;
• every message is delivered — that part belongs to the phone networks;
• the AI will always understand a message correctly. It's a language model. It misreads things. That's precisely why the important decisions — the date, whether a booking exists, whether a slot is free, whether someone opted out — are made by fixed code rather than by the AI's judgement, and why we tell you about every booking as it happens.

Toby is new. There are no long-run case studies, and you should be wary of anyone in this business who tells you otherwise.

14. Australian Consumer Law

Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any guarantee, right or remedy you have under the Australian Consumer Law (Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth)) that cannot lawfully be excluded. Where those guarantees apply and we're allowed to limit our liability, we limit it to resupplying the service or paying the cost of having it resupplied.

15. Limitation of liability

Subject to section 14, and to the extent the law allows:

• we aren't liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profits, loss of business or loss of goodwill;
• we aren't liable for a job you didn't win, a customer who didn't turn up, a booking you didn't attend, or a message a network failed to deliver;
• we aren't liable for failures of the telecommunications provider, the AI model provider, your calendar provider or your own phone service;
• our total liability for all claims in any twelve-month period is limited to the fees you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose.

You agree to cover us for claims arising from your own use of the service in breach of these terms — in particular, marketing sent through Toby and work you did or didn't do.

16. Changes

We'll keep improving Toby, and we may change how it works. If we make a change that materially reduces what you get, we'll tell you first. If we change these terms we'll update this page and the "last updated" date, and we'll notify subscribers of anything significant. Continuing to use Toby after that means you accept the change.

17. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Queensland, Australia. You and we submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Queensland and the courts able to hear appeals from them.

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, it's severed and the rest keeps working.

18. Contact

Everything goes to one place: hello@hellotoby.com.au. A real person reads it.

Operated by Ashton Sydney Gathercole, trading as Hello Toby, Queensland, Australia. Written contact: hello@hellotoby.com.au.