Welcome to Ask a Shop Owner (the "Service"). By accessing or using the Service, creating an account, or submitting any content, you agree to these Terms of Service ("Terms"), our Privacy Policy, Acceptable Use Policy, Cookie Policy, and Cancellation Policy, each of which is incorporated by reference. If you do not agree, do not access or use the Service. These Terms form a binding contract between you and us.
1. Who we are
The Service is operated by R2 Business Ventures LLC, doing business as Ask a Shop Owner ("we", "us"), based in North Carolina, United States. For any legal notice, contact us through the contact page.
2. Your account
You are responsible for keeping your sign-in credentials secure and for all activity under your account, whether or not authorized by you. You must provide accurate, current, and complete information and keep it up to date. You may not share your account, allow others to use it, or use someone else's account. We may refuse, suspend, or terminate any account at our sole discretion, with or without notice, and without liability to you. You waive any claim arising from such suspension or termination.
3. What the Service does
The Service is a grounded AI for business owners that answers questions using a curated library of business owner experience. It is provided for general informational purposes only. It is not legal, tax, accounting, medical, financial, or professional advice of any kind, and no advisor-client, fiduciary, or professional relationship is created by your use of it. You alone are responsible for any decision you make and any outcome that follows. You must use your own judgment and consult qualified professionals for any material decision.
4. Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- Use the Service to violate any law or third-party right.
- Reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, scrape, crawl, mirror, frame, or attempt to extract, derive, or recreate any portion of the Service, our models, prompts, embeddings, training data, or curated library.
- Use the Service, its outputs, or any underlying data to train, fine-tune, evaluate, benchmark, or otherwise develop any machine learning model or competing product.
- Resell, sublicense, or rebrand the Service without written permission.
- Submit harmful, deceptive, or abusive content.
- Bypass any rate limits, access controls, paywalls, or technical protections.
See the full Acceptable Use Policy.
5. Subscriptions and billing
Paid plans renew automatically at the then-current rate until canceled. By subscribing, you authorize us and our payment processor to charge your payment method on a recurring basis until you cancel. You can cancel anytime from your account; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period. All sales are final. We do not issue refunds, credits, or prorations for partial periods, unused time, downgrades, or prior charges, except where required by applicable law. We may change prices, plans, or features at any time; changes apply to the next billing cycle. Taxes, fees, and surcharges may apply and are your responsibility. Chargebacks made without first contacting us are a material breach of these Terms. See our Cancellation Policy.
5a. Payments processor
Payments are processed by Stripe. By making a purchase you also agree to Stripe's terms as they apply to payment processing.
6. Your content and our broad license
"Your Content" means any question, prompt, message, conversation, transcript, file, image, audio, profile information, feedback, or other material you submit to or generate through the Service. As between you and us, you retain whatever ownership rights you have in Your Content. You represent and warrant that you own or have all rights necessary to submit Your Content and to grant the license below.
You hereby grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, fully paid-up, sublicensable, and transferable license to access, host, store, copy, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, create derivative works from, publish, publicly display, publicly perform, distribute, anonymize, aggregate, and otherwise use Your Content for any purpose, including: (a) operating, maintaining, securing, and improving the Service; (b) training, fine-tuning, evaluating, and improving our own and our service providers' AI models, embeddings, classifiers, and curated library; (c) building, developing, and commercializing new products, features, datasets, research, benchmarks, and offerings; (d) marketing and promotion in de-identified or aggregated form; and (e) any other lawful business purpose. This license survives termination of your account and these Terms. You waive any moral rights or rights of attribution to the extent permitted by law.
Any output, insight, model, dataset, or derivative we create from Your Content (including aggregated, anonymized, fine-tuned, or transformed versions) is owned solely by us, free of any obligation to you, and is not "Your Content."
7. Our content and ownership
The Service, the curated library, our AI models, software, prompts, embeddings, training data, designs, brand, content, documentation, and all related intellectual property are owned by us or our licensors. We reserve all rights not expressly granted. You receive a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable license to use the Service solely for your internal business purposes during your subscription, subject to these Terms. If you give us feedback, ideas, or suggestions, you assign them to us with no obligation or compensation to you.
8. AI output
AI outputs are probabilistic and may be inaccurate, incomplete, biased, offensive, or inappropriate. Outputs are not facts, advice, or recommendations and may be similar or identical across users. You are solely responsible for evaluating outputs and any action you take based on them. We make no representation or warranty regarding accuracy, completeness, reliability, non-infringement, or fitness for any purpose. You will not present outputs as professional advice or as the views of any real person.
9. Suspension and termination
We may suspend, restrict, modify, or terminate your account or access to all or part of the Service at any time, for any reason or no reason, with or without notice, including for suspected violation of these Terms or risk to the Service or others. We may also discontinue the Service in whole or in part at any time. Upon termination, your license to the Service ends immediately and we may delete your account and any associated data without liability. Sections that by their nature should survive (including the license you grant us, ownership, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, arbitration, and governing law) survive termination.
10. Disclaimers
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICE AND ALL OUTPUTS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY, OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, OR QUIET ENJOYMENT, AND ANY WARRANTIES ARISING FROM COURSE OF DEALING OR USAGE OF TRADE. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE, OR THAT ANY OUTPUT WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS. YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK.
11. Limitation of liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL WE OR OUR AFFILIATES, OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, OR AGENTS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL, USE, OR BUSINESS, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY. OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE THREE MONTHS IMMEDIATELY BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS ($100). THESE LIMITATIONS ARE A FUNDAMENTAL BASIS OF THE BARGAIN.
12. Indemnification
You will indemnify, defend, and hold harmless us and our affiliates, officers, directors, employees, contractors, and agents from and against any claim, demand, loss, damage, liability, cost, and expense (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or relating to: (a) Your Content; (b) your use of the Service or any output; (c) your violation of these Terms or any law; or (d) your violation of any third-party right. We may assume exclusive control of any matter subject to indemnification, in which case you will cooperate with us.
13. Changes
We may update these Terms at any time. The "Updated" date above reflects the latest version. Material changes will be communicated through the Service or by email. Your continued use after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not agree, you must stop using the Service.
14. Governing law, venue, and dispute resolution
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, United States, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply. Except for claims for injunctive or equitable relief, any dispute arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms will be resolved exclusively in the state or federal courts located in North Carolina, and you consent to personal jurisdiction and venue there. YOU AND WE EACH WAIVE ANY RIGHT TO A JURY TRIAL AND TO PARTICIPATE IN A CLASS, COLLECTIVE, OR REPRESENTATIVE ACTION. Any claim must be brought within one (1) year after the cause of action accrues or it is permanently barred.
15. Miscellaneous
These Terms (together with the policies incorporated by reference) are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Service and supersede any prior or contemporaneous understandings. If any provision is held unenforceable, it will be modified to the minimum extent necessary and the rest will remain in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms without our prior written consent; we may assign them freely. There are no third-party beneficiaries.