Terms of Service

1.About these terms#

Tooition is operated by Vox Samples Pty Ltd (ABN 23 681 928 889 · ACN 681 928 889), a family-owned company based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. In these terms, “Tooition”, “we”, “us” and “our” mean Vox Samples Pty Ltd.

These terms apply to everyone who uses Tooition:

• Teachers: independent teachers, studios and schools who sign up for a Tooition account to run their teaching business. If you sign up on behalf of a business or school, you agree to these terms for that organisation and confirm you are authorised to do so.
• Families: parents, guardians and students who use a teacher’s Tooition-powered website or family portal to book, pay, practice and communicate.
• Visitors to tooition.com and to teacher websites.

These documents also form part of our agreement with you:

• the Teacher Agreement (teachers only), which covers your obligations to the families you teach and how we handle their data on your behalf;
• the Acceptable Use Policy;
• the Refund & Cancellation Policy for the Tooition subscription.

Our Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy and Sub-processors list explain how we handle personal information. By creating an account, booking through a teacher’s site, or otherwise using Tooition, you agree to these terms. If you don’t agree, please don’t use Tooition.

2.What Tooition is, and what it isn’t#

Tooition is software for independent tutors, teachers and schools of every subject, from maths and languages to music and art. Each teacher gets tools to run their business: a website, bookings, online payments, student and parent records, homework, practice recordings, a printable family guide and an AI assistant.

Tooition is not a marketplace, agency or employer. Teachers are independent businesses. When a family books or pays for a lesson, the contract for that lesson is between the family and the teacher, and the teacher is the merchant and seller of record. We don’t employ teachers, set their prices, supervise their lessons, or choose which families they teach.

We don’t check teachers’ qualifications, identity, background or suitability to teach children, apart from the payment-account checks Stripe performs and the site reviews described in the Acceptable Use Policy. Families should make their own decisions about which teacher to use. Teachers are responsible for their own taxes, policies, qualifications and child-safety obligations, such as background checks where the law requires them.

3.Accounts and eligibility#

Teacher accounts

• You must be at least 18 and able to enter into a legally binding contract.
• Give us accurate information and keep it up to date, including your contact email.
• Keep your password secure and don’t share your login. You are responsible for activity on your account, including by staff you give access to.
• Tell us promptly at [email protected] if you think your account has been accessed without permission.

Family accounts

• Family members sign in to a teacher’s family portal with a one-time link sent to their email address. Keep access to that email account secure.
• A parent or guardian must set up and manage access for students under 18. Children under 13 can only use Tooition through a parent or guardian’s account, and some features (such as the AI assistant) stay off for them unless a parent turns them on.
• Parents and guardians are responsible for supervising their children’s use of Tooition.

4.Teacher websites and publishing#

Before a teacher’s website can be published, the teacher must verify their email address and either connect Stripe payouts or verify a card with a $0 check. On the Free plan the card is not charged; the check helps us reduce fraud and spam sites.

Sites on the Free plan show a “Powered by tooition.com” badge, and Free-plan family guides carry the same note. Paid plans can remove the badge.

We review sites and may decline to publish, or take down, a site that breaks the Acceptable Use Policy or these terms. Teachers are responsible for everything they publish, including prices, policies, qualifications and claims about their services.

5.Plans, subscription fees and billing#

Teachers choose a plan. Current plans are:

• Paid plans are billed monthly in advance, in US dollars, through Stripe Billing, and renew automatically until cancelled.
• Prices don’t include taxes unless we say so. If we are required to charge GST or another tax, we will show it before you pay. Your bank may charge currency-conversion fees.
• You can cancel at any time. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period and you keep your paid features until then. Details, including when refunds apply, are in the Refund & Cancellation Policy.
• If a subscription payment fails, we may retry it and may move your account to the Free plan if it remains unpaid.
• We may change plan prices or limits. We’ll give you at least 30 days’ notice by email before a price increase affects you, and you can cancel before it takes effect.

The pricing page shows the current features of each plan.

6.Payments to teachers and the platform fee#

Online payments from families to teachers are processed by Stripe through Stripe Connect. Each teacher has their own Stripe Express account. To take online payments, a teacher must accept the Stripe Connected Account Agreement, which includes the Stripe Services Agreement. Stripe, not Tooition, decides whether to approve and keep a Stripe account open.

• Stripe’s processing fees are charged to the teacher directly by Stripe, at Stripe’s prices.
• Tooition’s platform fee is a percentage of each online payment processed through Tooition, set by the teacher’s plan (see the table above). It is collected through Stripe when the payment is made.
• When a teacher refunds a family in full or in part, we refund the platform fee in proportion to the amount refunded. Whether Stripe returns its own processing fee is governed by Stripe’s terms.
• Payments a family makes to a teacher outside Tooition (for example, cash or bank transfer) don’t carry a platform fee.
• Payouts to teachers are made by Stripe to the teacher’s bank account on Stripe’s schedule.

Teachers are responsible for refunds, disputes and chargebacks on their own sales. See the Teacher Agreement.

7.For families#

If you book, pay or practice through a teacher’s Tooition-powered site:

• Your agreement for lessons is with the teacher. The teacher sets lesson prices, schedules, cancellation, make-up and refund policies, and is responsible for the lessons themselves.
• For questions about a lesson, a booking or a refund, contact your teacher first. Tooition can’t issue refunds on a teacher’s behalf. If you can’t resolve a problem with your teacher, or you think a teacher is misusing Tooition, tell us at [email protected].
• Card payments are processed by Stripe. Your teacher, not Tooition, appears as the business you are paying.
• Your teacher collects and controls the information about your family in Tooition. We store and process it for them as described in our Privacy Policy.
• Practice recordings and files you upload are private to your teacher and the linked parents or guardians. They are never made public.

Nothing in these terms limits rights you have under consumer protection laws where you live, including against your teacher.

8.Your content#

“Content” means anything you add to Tooition, such as website text and images, lesson notes, homework, files, practice recordings and messages. You keep ownership of your content.

You give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, process, display and transmit your content only as needed to run, secure and support Tooition for you and the people you choose to share it with (for example, showing a teacher’s website to visitors, or a recording to the teacher and linked guardians). This licence ends when the content is deleted from our systems, as described in the retention section of our Privacy Policy.

You must have the rights and permissions needed for the content you upload, including consent from a parent or guardian for any recording of a child. We don’t use student recordings, notes or files to train AI models, and recordings of minors are never used for AI training.

If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them without any obligation to you.

9.The AI assistant#

Tooition includes an AI assistant that runs on Cloudflare Workers AI.

• AI output can be wrong, incomplete or out of date. Check anything important before you rely on it. Don’t rely on it for medical, legal, financial or safety advice.
• Teachers can turn the assistant off for their studio.
• For students under 13, the assistant is off unless a parent or guardian turns it on.
• Messages from families are screened by a safety model, which may block some requests.
• We don’t store the content of assistant conversations. Your conversation history stays in your browser tab; we keep only usage counts. See the Privacy Policy.
• Please don’t enter sensitive information you don’t need to, such as health details or passwords.

10.Acceptable use#

Everyone using Tooition must follow the Acceptable Use Policy. In short: nothing illegal, no harassment or adult content, no impersonation, phishing or spam, keep children safe, and only upload content you have the rights to.

11.Tooition’s software and brand#

We (and our licensors) own Tooition’s software, design and brand. We give you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use Tooition in line with these terms while your account is active. Please don’t copy, resell, reverse-engineer or create competing services from Tooition, except where the law allows it regardless of these terms.

12.Availability and changes to Tooition#

We work hard to keep Tooition running and secure, but we can’t promise it will always be available or error-free. We may need to pause it for maintenance, upgrades or problems outside our control, such as outages at our providers.

We improve Tooition regularly and may add, change or remove features. If we make a change that significantly reduces what a paid plan includes, we’ll tell affected teachers in advance where we reasonably can, and you can cancel.

Please keep your own copies of anything important, such as your business records and policies.

13.Third-party services#

Tooition relies on other providers, including Stripe for payments and the providers on our Sub-processors list. Your use of Stripe is also governed by Stripe’s own terms. Teacher websites may link to other websites; we aren’t responsible for third-party sites or services we don’t control.

14.Suspension, cancellation and closing your account#

You can stop using Tooition at any time. Teachers can cancel a paid plan at any time, and can close their account by emailing [email protected]. Before you close your account, you can ask us for a copy of your data.

We may suspend or close an account, or remove content, if we reasonably believe that:

• these terms or the Acceptable Use Policy have been seriously or repeatedly broken;
• there is a risk to children, families, other users, Tooition or the public;
• there is fraud or suspected fraud, or Stripe has closed or restricted the related payment account; or
• we are required to by law or by a court, regulator or law enforcement body.

Where it’s appropriate and lawful, we’ll tell you why and give you a chance to fix the problem first. If we close a paid account without a good reason related to your conduct, we’ll refund any prepaid fees for the unused period.

When an account is closed, we delete its data as described in the Privacy Policy. Teachers should let their families know before closing an account.

15.Consumer law and limits on liability#

Your rights under consumer law

Our services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. Consumers in other countries may have similar rights under their own laws. Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or changes any right or remedy that cannot lawfully be excluded, restricted or changed.

Where the law allows us to limit our liability for failing to meet a consumer guarantee for services that are not of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household use, our liability is limited, at our option, to supplying the services again or paying the cost of having them supplied again.

Limits, to the extent the law allows

• Tooition is provided “as is” and “as available”, and we don’t give promises beyond those in these terms and those the law requires.
• We are not liable for lessons or other services that teachers provide, for teachers’ acts or omissions, or for disputes between teachers and families.
• We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profits, revenue, data or goodwill.
• Our total liability to a teacher arising out of or in connection with Tooition in any 12-month period is limited to the greater of the subscription and platform fees that teacher paid us in that period, or US$100.
• Our total liability to a family member who has not paid us any fees is limited to US$100.

These limits don’t apply to liability that cannot be limited by law, including for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by our negligence.

16.Teachers’ responsibility for claims#

Teachers agree to compensate us for loss, costs (including reasonable legal costs) and liability we incur because of a claim by a family, a student, a regulator or another third party arising from the teacher’s lessons or services, the teacher’s content, or the teacher’s breach of these terms, the Teacher Agreement or the law, except to the extent the loss was caused by our own breach or negligence.

17.Disputes and governing law#

If something goes wrong, please email us first at [email protected]. Most problems can be fixed quickly that way.

Informal resolution for US users. If you live in the United States, before starting any court proceeding against us, please send a written notice to [email protected] describing the problem and what you’re asking for. We’ll do the same before starting proceedings against you. Both of us agree to try in good faith to resolve the dispute informally for at least 30 days after the notice is received. This step doesn’t stop either of us from seeking urgent relief from a court, or from contacting a consumer protection agency.

Governing law. These terms are governed by the laws of Victoria, Australia, and you and we submit to the courts of Victoria and courts able to hear appeals from them. If you are a consumer, you also keep the protection of the mandatory consumer laws of the place where you live, and you may be able to bring a claim in your local courts.

There is no arbitration clause or class-action waiver in these terms.

18.Changes to these terms#

We may update these terms as Tooition and the law change. We’ll update the date at the top of this page. If a change materially affects teachers, we’ll email them at least 30 days before it takes effect, unless the change is needed sooner for legal or security reasons. If you keep using Tooition after a change takes effect, the updated terms apply. If you don’t agree with a change, you can cancel and stop using Tooition.

19.General#

• These terms, and the documents they refer to, are the whole agreement between you and us about Tooition.
• If part of these terms can’t be enforced, the rest still applies.
• If we don’t enforce a right straight away, we haven’t given it up.
• You can’t transfer your account or these terms without our written consent. We may transfer them as part of a sale or restructure of our business, and we’ll tell you if we do.
• We may send notices to the email address on your account. You can send notices to us at [email protected].
• Neither of us is responsible for delays or failures caused by events outside our reasonable control.

20.Contact#

Vox Samples Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. ABN 23 681 928 889 · ACN 681 928 889. Email: [email protected].