01The agreement
These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and GBC Ventures Limited, a company registered in New Zealand ("we", "us"). We operate the Speaking Journey service at speakingjourney.com and any related applications (together, the "service"). "Speaking Journey" is the trading name of this service; in these Terms it refers to GBC Ventures Limited unless the context indicates otherwise.
By creating an account or using the service, you accept these Terms. You also accept our Privacy Policy, which explains how we handle your personal information. If you don't agree with either, please don't use the service.
We may update these Terms from time to time. When we make material changes, we'll update the date at the top of this page and, where appropriate, notify you in the product or by email. Your continued use of the service after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms.
02Your account
To use the service, you need an account. By creating one, you confirm that:
- You are at least 16 years old;
- The information you give us (name, email, payment details) is accurate;
- You will keep your password secure and not share your account with anyone else;
- You are responsible for everything that happens under your account.
If you believe your account has been used without your permission, please contact us promptly at hello@speakingjourney.com.
03The service
Speaking Journey is a web-based speaking-practice product. You record short spoken responses to prompts; our systems generate transcripts, scores, and coach notes; and your progress is tracked in a personal library and dashboards.
The service is delivered through a modern web browser with microphone access. We may modify, add, or remove features at any time, and we may suspend or discontinue the service in whole or in part with reasonable notice where practicable.
We make reasonable efforts to keep the service available and working, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted, error-free, or fault-tolerant operation. From time to time the service may be unavailable for maintenance, updates, or reasons outside our control.
04Subscription & payment
4.1 What you pay
- Free trial. When you sign up, you start with a free trial. The length of the trial is shown to you at signup, and we do not charge you during it.
- Subscription. When your free trial ends, your account automatically continues as a recurring monthly subscription at the price shown to you at signup, charged each month thereafter, unless you cancel before the trial ends.
- Currency & taxes. Charges are made in the currency shown to you at checkout. Where applicable, taxes (such as VAT or GST) may be added at the rate required by your country.
We will always show you the current price and trial length before you pay. If we change our prices, section 4.4 applies.
4.2 How we charge
Payments are processed by our third-party payment provider (Stripe). By providing your payment details, you authorise us and our payment provider to charge the applicable fees to your method of payment when your free trial ends and on each monthly renewal thereafter, until you cancel.
4.3 Cancelling
You can cancel your subscription at any time from your account settings. If you cancel before your free trial ends, you will not be charged. If you cancel during a paid subscription period, your access continues until the end of the current billing period, and you will not be charged again.
We do not generally offer refunds for partial billing periods, except where required by applicable law (for example, statutory cancellation rights for consumers in the EU, UK, or Australia).
4.4 Failed payments & price changes
If a payment fails, we may suspend your access until it is resolved. We may change our prices from time to time; if we change the price for an existing recurring subscription, we will give you at least 30 days' notice and an opportunity to cancel before the new price takes effect.
4.5 Pre-renewal notice
We will send you an email before your first charge — when your free trial converts to a paid subscription — and at other points required by law, reminding you that your subscription will continue and how to cancel. This is in addition to any disclosures you saw at sign-up.
05Your content
Anything you record, write, or otherwise submit through the service — including voice recordings, transcripts of those recordings, and notes you write — is "your content." As between you and us, you own your content.
To deliver the service to you, we need permission to handle your content. By submitting content to the service, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, transmit, process, analyse, display, and create derived works (such as transcripts, scores, and coach notes) from that content. This licence exists only so we can provide the service to you and ends when you delete the relevant content from your library or close your account, except to the extent we need to retain copies briefly in routine back-ups or as required by law.
You confirm that you have the right to submit any content you provide to the service, and that doing so does not infringe anyone else's rights (for example, copyright in something you read aloud, or another person's privacy).
We do not use your content to train AI models for other users or for third parties. Our use of your content is described further in our Privacy Policy.
06AI-generated outputs
Scores, coach notes, transcripts, and other feedback the service produces are generated by automated systems and AI services. They are provided as a coaching and practice aid only.
AI-generated outputs are not professional advice. They are not a substitute for speech therapy, language tuition, interview coaching, medical, psychological, or any other professional services. You should not rely on them for any decision where the consequences of an error matter (for example, in clinical, educational, employment, or legal contexts).
We do our best to make outputs accurate and useful, but we make no warranty that they will be correct, complete, or suitable for any specific purpose. Speaking improvement depends on many factors outside our control, and we make no promise about how much you will improve.
07Acceptable use
When you use the service, you agree not to:
- Use the service for unlawful purposes, or to record or transmit content that is unlawful, harassing, defamatory, hateful, or that infringes anyone's rights;
- Submit content that contains personal information about another person without their permission;
- Attempt to interfere with, disrupt, or compromise the service or any other user's access to it;
- Use automated tools (such as scrapers or bots) to access, copy, or extract material from the service, including our prompts, scoring outputs, or other content;
- Reverse-engineer the service, or attempt to derive our source code, scoring models, or prompts;
- Resell, sublicense, or commercially exploit the service or any output from it without our written permission;
- Create more than one account per person, or use the service to evade restrictions or recover access after a suspension;
- Use the service to develop, train, or improve a competing product.
If you breach this section, we may suspend or terminate your account in line with §9.
08Our intellectual property
The service — including the software, prompt library, scoring rubric, coach-note style, dashboards, designs, brand, and content — is owned by Speaking Journey or our licensors and is protected by intellectual property laws. "Speaking Journey," our logos, and any related names and marks are our trademarks.
Subject to these Terms and your payment of the applicable fees, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access and use the service for your personal, non-commercial use during your subscription. This licence ends when your access ends.
Nothing in these Terms transfers any ownership in our intellectual property to you. We reserve all rights not expressly granted.
09Suspension & termination
You can stop using the service at any time by cancelling your subscription in settings, as described in §4.3.
We may suspend or terminate your account, with or without notice, if we reasonably believe that you have breached these Terms, that your continued use poses a risk to us or to other users, that we are required to do so by law, or if your payment fails and is not resolved.
On termination, your right to access the service ends. We will handle your personal information in line with our Privacy Policy. Any provisions of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination (including §5, §6, §8, §10, §11, and §12) will continue to apply.
10Disclaimers & limitation of liability
10.1 As-is
To the maximum extent permitted by law, the service is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory — including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, or that the service will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free.
10.2 Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, neither party will be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, or business opportunities, arising out of or relating to these Terms or the service, even if advised of the possibility.
Our total aggregate liability to you under or in connection with these Terms or the service, regardless of the cause of action, will not exceed the greater of (a) the total amounts you have paid us in the twelve (12) months immediately before the claim arose, or (b) one hundred US dollars ($100).
10.3 Where these limits don't apply
Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain warranties or liability. Nothing in these Terms limits any rights you have as a consumer under applicable law that cannot be limited or excluded by agreement. The limits above apply only to the maximum extent permitted by law.
11Disputes & governing law
We'd rather solve any problem with you than against you. If you have a concern, please contact us first at hello@speakingjourney.com. Most issues can be resolved informally and quickly.
These Terms are governed by the laws of New Zealand, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute that cannot be resolved informally will be brought in the competent courts of New Zealand, unless applicable consumer-protection law in your country of residence requires otherwise.
Nothing in these Terms takes away mandatory rights you have under the consumer-protection laws of your country of residence — including, where applicable, the New Zealand Consumer Guarantees Act, the Australian Consumer Law, the UK Consumer Rights Act, and equivalent consumer-protection regimes in the European Union and other jurisdictions.
12General & contact
12.1 Entire agreement
These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any other documents we link to here, are the entire agreement between you and us about the service, and replace any prior agreements on the same subject.
12.2 Severability
If any part of these Terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest will remain in effect.
12.3 No waiver
If we don't enforce a right under these Terms straight away, that doesn't mean we've waived it. We may still enforce it later.
12.4 Assignment
You may not assign or transfer these Terms or any of your rights or obligations under them without our prior written consent. We may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, restructuring, or sale of assets, or to a successor in interest.
12.5 No third-party beneficiaries
These Terms are for the benefit of you and us only. No other person has the right to enforce them.
12.6 Contact
For any questions about these Terms:
- General inquiries: hello@speakingjourney.com
- Privacy questions: hello@speakingjourney.com
- Legal entity: GBC Ventures Limited (NZBN 9429053204813), Auckland, New Zealand. Our full registered-office address is publicly available via the New Zealand Business Number register.