Terms and conditions

1. Scope and contracting party

These General Terms and Conditions apply to all contracts between Veradicta (Owner: Maximilian Bertsch; ‘Veradicta’) and its customers for the provision of the chatbot.

The offer is intended solely for businesses as defined in § 14 BGB, that is, persons who, when concluding the contract, act in the course of their trade, business or self-employed profession. Contracts with consumers are not intended. The customer shall confirm its status as a business during the ordering process or, on request, in text form (for example by email).

Any terms of the customer that differ from these terms do not form part of the contract unless Veradicta expressly agrees to them in text form.

2. Subject matter of the contract

Veradicta provides the customer with a chatbot, which is embedded in the customer’s website using a code snippet supplied for this purpose. The chatbot answers visitors’ questions based on the information the customer stores.

The services include access to the customer portal, where the customer maintains the information, views past conversations and retrieves the contact enquiries captured.

The chatbot runs on Veradicta’s servers. The customer receives no copy of the software and no right to use it outside its own website.

The customer, or a third party engaged by the customer, installs the code snippet. If installation does not work at the first attempt, Veradicta shall assist the customer by screen sharing until the chatbot is running on the customer’s website.

In every plan, Veradicta shall itself set up the chatbot once at the start: it enters the customer’s information and configures the chatbot’s basic settings, working from the customer’s website and from documents the customer provides for this purpose. The customer shall check what has been entered and add to it; the customer remains responsible for the accuracy of the stored information.

Veradicta does not build websites and does not itself make any changes to the customer’s website. Its assistance with installation is advisory; the customer inserts the code snippet.

3. Conclusion of the contract

The presentation of the services on the website is not a binding offer but an invitation to place an order.

By completing the ordering process, the customer makes a binding offer. The contract is concluded as soon as Veradicta confirms the order in text form or activates portal access for a booked plan. Activating a free trial under section 4 does not constitute acceptance of this offer.

4. Free trial

Veradicta may grant the customer a free trial before the contract is concluded. The free trial lasts fourteen days, counted from the day of activation and including the last day.

During the free trial, the chatbot is available in the plan chosen. Because the free trial lasts fourteen days, the included message volume is half the monthly volume stated for that plan. In the Ultimate plan, which states no monthly volume, the message volume during the free trial is limited to 1,000 messages. Once a paid subscription is concluded, the full monthly volume of the booked plan applies. No fee is payable for the free trial, and no payment details are collected for it.

The free trial does not turn into a paid subscription automatically. It ends when its last day expires, without any need for notice of termination. Veradicta then switches off the bot unless the customer has booked a plan before then.

The response and resolution times set out in the section ‘Availability and faults’ do not apply during the free trial.

5. Prices and payment

For the purposes of these terms, the billing period is the month beginning on the day of activation.

The fee depends on the plan booked: Small €29 per month, Medium €69 per month, Big €109 per month, each plus statutory value added tax (VAT) where applicable. All prices stated on the website are net prices, as the offer is intended solely for businesses. For plans without a published price, the individually agreed amount applies.

The price includes the following message volume per billing period: Small 250 messages, Medium 750 messages, Big 1,500 messages, Ultimate by individual agreement. Each reply by the chatbot to a visitor’s input counts as one message. Replies that the customer’s staff write themselves in the live chat do not count. Once the included volume has been used up, the chatbot answers no further requests until the start of the next billing period; no additional charge is made automatically. The customer may move to a higher plan at any time; the change takes effect on activation, and the higher volume is available from then on. The difference from the previous fee is charged pro rata for the current billing period.

The services in each plan also include the following amount of stored knowledge, calculated across all stored content combined: Small: up to 25,000 characters of knowledge, Medium: up to 100,000 characters of knowledge, Big: up to 250,000 characters of knowledge, Ultimate: up to 1,000,000 characters of knowledge. In the Small plan, the chatbot answers questions using the questions and answers stored by the customer and the imported pages of the customer’s website; it uses files and free text from the Medium plan upwards. The customer may create one portal login in the Small plan, five in Medium, ten in Big and twenty in Ultimate. From the Medium plan upwards, the customer may connect the chatbot to a WhatsApp account and link a product catalogue; from the Big plan upwards, it may also set up an interface through which the chatbot reports events to a system named by the customer.

In addition to the booked plan, the customer may add add-ons that can be booked individually, where its plan permits them. The amount shown to the customer before booking applies, plus statutory VAT. It is billed monthly together with the plan, and pro rata for a month already begun.

The customer may cancel an add-on in the portal at any time. It remains available until the end of the period already paid for and is not charged after that.

No setup fee is charged.

The fee is payable monthly in advance. Payment is made by the method chosen in the ordering process. Veradicta shall provide an electronic invoice for each billing period; the customer agrees to receive invoices electronically.

If the customer is in default for more than fourteen days with an amount equal to at least one monthly fee, Veradicta may temporarily suspend access after giving seven days’ prior notice in text form. Veradicta’s claim to the fee remains unaffected. Once the arrears have been paid, Veradicta shall restore access without undue delay.

If the customer or its payment service provider reclaims a payment already made although the customer is not entitled to it, Veradicta may suspend access after giving three days’ notice in text form. Veradicta shall give this notice without undue delay after becoming aware of the reclaim. Once the amount has been paid, Veradicta shall restore access without undue delay.

6. Term and termination

The contract runs for an indefinite period; there is no minimum term.

It may be terminated by either party at any time with effect from the end of the current billing month. Notice of termination must be given in text form; an email is sufficient. Where the customer portal offers a termination button, pressing it is also sufficient.

The right of both parties to extraordinary termination for good cause remains unaffected.

When the contract ends, the bot is switched off. The content stored by the customer and the conversation histories are deleted once thirty days have passed since the end of the contract, at the latest in the first daily deletion run after that. Until then, the customer keeps access to the customer portal so that it can take its data with it: under ‘Settings’, it can download the data at any time as a file in a common, machine-readable format. Regardless of this, the customer may also require Veradicta to hand the data over within this period.

7. Obligations of the customer

The customer is responsible for ensuring that the information it stores is accurate and does not infringe the rights of third parties. Veradicta does not check the content.

The customer shall embed the code snippet in its website itself or have it embedded by a third party. The customer shall ensure that its own privacy policy covers the use of the chatbot.

Login details for the portal must be kept confidential and must not be passed on to third parties outside the customer’s business.

The customer shall not use the bot for unlawful purposes and shall not do anything that places an excessive load on its operation or disrupts it.

The customer grants Veradicta the non-exclusive right, limited to the term of the contract, to store and process the content stored by the customer and to use it for answering visitors’ questions. Veradicta does not acquire any further rights.

8. Availability and faults

Veradicta provides the service in line with the state of the art. Veradicta does not commit to any particular percentage of availability.

Where possible, Veradicta shall announce planned maintenance in advance and schedule it at times of low usage.

The customer shall report faults in text form. Veradicta shall respond to them within 24 hours and shall resolve faults within its area of responsibility within 48 hours at the latest after the report.

Periods in which the service is unavailable for reasons for which Veradicta is not responsible, in particular faults affecting the customer’s website or its internet connection, or events of force majeure, do not give rise to any claims against Veradicta. The section on liability applies to service providers that Veradicta uses to provide the service.

The customer may exercise its right to reduce the fee only after it has notified Veradicta of the defect in text form and given Veradicta a reasonable opportunity to remedy it. Periods of announced maintenance do not count as a defect.

9. Limits of automatically generated answers

The chatbot generates answers with the help of artificial intelligence. Even with careful setup, such answers may be incomplete or factually wrong. This is inherent in the technology and cannot be ruled out entirely.

The chatbot does not provide legal, tax or health advice and does not make binding commitments on behalf of the customer. The customer shall inform visitors in a suitable manner that they are talking to an automated system.

Veradicta does not owe the factual accuracy of individual answers given by the bot; what it owes is the operation of the system in accordance with section 8. The customer is responsible for statements made to visitors to its website. Veradicta is liable for damage in accordance with section 11.

10. Data protection

Where Veradicta processes personal data on behalf of the customer when providing the service, the customer is the controller and Veradicta is the processor within the meaning of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The details are set out in a separate data processing agreement under Article 28 GDPR, which is concluded before processing begins and takes precedence over these terms. Its full, legally binding text is available in German at veradicta.com/auftragsverarbeitung; an English translation is available at veradicta.com/en/data-processing-agreement.

How Veradicta handles the data of visitors to its own website is set out in the privacy policy.

11. Liability

Veradicta is liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence and for damage resulting from injury to life, body or health. This also applies to fault on the part of its legal representatives and vicarious agents.

In cases of simple negligence, Veradicta is liable, including for its legal representatives and vicarious agents, only for breach of an obligation whose fulfilment makes the proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on whose observance the customer may regularly rely. In this case, liability is limited to the damage typical for the contract and foreseeable at the time the contract was concluded.

Otherwise, liability is excluded. Liability under the German Product Liability Act (Produkthaftungsgesetz) and liability under an expressly assumed guarantee remain unaffected.

Liability irrespective of fault for defects that already existed when the contract was concluded (§ 536a(1), first alternative, BGB) is excluded. This does not apply to damage resulting from injury to life, body or health.

Veradicta is liable for loss of data within the limits of the preceding paragraphs, and only to the extent that would have been needed to restore the data had the customer backed it up properly and regularly, where such backups were possible for the customer.

12. Changes to these terms

Veradicta may amend these terms if this is necessary to adapt them to a change in the law or to changes in the service and the customer is not unreasonably disadvantaged as a result.

Veradicta shall notify the customer of amendments in text form at least six weeks before they take effect. If the customer does not object within six weeks of receiving the notice, the amendments are deemed accepted. Veradicta shall specifically point out this consequence in the notice. If the customer objects, either party may terminate the contract with effect from the date on which the amendments take effect.

This provision does not cover changes to the fee, to the included message volume or to any other part of the services. Such changes require an agreement with the customer. Instead, Veradicta may offer a change and, if the offer is rejected, terminate the contract with effect from the end of the agreed term.

13. Final provisions

The law of the Federal Republic of Germany applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG).

If the customer is a merchant (Kaufmann within the meaning of the German Commercial Code, HGB), a legal entity under public law or a special fund under public law, the place of jurisdiction for all disputes arising from this contract is Augsburg. Veradicta may also bring proceedings at the customer’s general place of jurisdiction.

The customer may set off only claims that are undisputed or have been finally established by a court. The customer has a right of retention only in respect of claims arising under this contract.

The customer may transfer its rights and obligations under this contract to a third party only with Veradicta’s consent. Consent may not be refused without good cause.

Amendments and additions to this contract must be made in text form.

If any provision of these terms is invalid, the rest of the contract remains valid.