Terms and Conditions (draft)

1. About these terms

Astry is run by [Legal entity name], ABN [ABN], of [Registered address], Sydney, New South Wales (“Astry”, “we”, “us”). These terms are the agreement between you and us when you use astry.com.au and any other site or app we run under the Astry name.

By ticking the box when you create an account, or by using Astry without one, you agree to these terms. Ticking that box counts as your signature. If you don’t agree, please don’t use Astry.

These documents are part of the agreement too, and you agree to them along with these terms:

• our Community Guidelines, which say how everyone is expected to behave;
• our Child Safety Policy;
• our Refund Policy and Copyright Policy; and
• if you teach on Astry or sell a resource, our Tutor and Seller Agreement. If it and these terms disagree about teaching or selling, the Tutor and Seller Agreement wins.

Our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy say how we handle your information.

If you are under 18, please read these terms with a parent or guardian. By using Astry you confirm that a parent or guardian knows you are using it and is happy for you to. Where a parent links to your account (see Parents and guardians), they also agree to these terms for themselves and on your behalf.

2. Words we use

• Account: your Astry account, whether you are a student, parent or tutor.
• Tutor: anyone who offers lessons on Astry, including coaches and mentors.
• Student: the person a lesson is for. Parent includes a legal guardian.
• Seller and buyer: the people on each side of a resource listed on the marketplace.
• Lesson: a lesson, session or block of coaching arranged through Astry, online or in person.
• Resource: anything listed on the marketplace, such as a worksheet, notes, a past paper or a video.
• Your content: anything you put on Astry, such as your profile, messages, files, reviews and resources.
• Consumer: has the meaning it has in the Australian Consumer Law.

3. What Astry is, and what it isn’t

Astry is a marketplace. It does two things:

• helps students and families find tutors, coaches and mentors, message them, and arrange lessons in chat; and
• lets any account list, buy, sell or give away study resources such as worksheets, notes, past papers and video lessons.

Tutors on Astry are independent. They are not our employees, agents or contractors. Each tutor decides what they teach, their rates, their hours and how they teach. We don’t teach lessons ourselves, we don’t supervise lessons, and we don’t promise any result, such as a particular HSC mark, an ATAR or a place at an OC or Selective school.

A lesson is an agreement between the student (or the parent booking for them) and the tutor. A resource sale is an agreement between the buyer and the seller. We are not a party to those agreements. We provide the tools, set the rules in these terms, and step in when those rules are broken.

Once card payments are switched on, we collect payments for tutors and sellers as their limited payment collection agent. That means once you have paid Astry for a lesson or resource, you have paid the tutor or seller, and they can’t ask you to pay again.

Profiles, credentials, ratings and reviews are written by users. We check some things, such as Working With Children Checks and some credentials, and say on the profile what has been checked. We don’t check everything, and we don’t guarantee that what a user says about themselves is true.

4. Your account and your promises

Anyone can browse Astry without an account. To do more, you need one. When you sign up and while you use Astry, you promise that:

• you give your real name, your real date of birth and an email address you can read, and keep them up to date;
• you meet the age rules in Age rules, and you are allowed by law to use Astry;
• you haven’t been banned from Astry before, unless we have agreed in writing that you can come back;
• if you use Astry for a business, you have the authority to agree to these terms for it.

You also agree to:

• keep your password to yourself, and tell us straight away if you think someone else has used your account;
• use one account per person, and not share, sell or transfer it.

You are responsible for what happens on your account, unless it happens because of something we did wrong. An account is for a student, a parent or a tutor. Staff accounts are never created through the site.

Your date of birth can be set once. It decides which age rules apply to you, so it can’t be changed afterwards from your account. If it was entered wrongly, contact us and we can correct it. Giving a false date of birth is a serious breach of these terms and we will close the account.

5. Age rules and who can deal with whom

Child safety is the main reason Astry has rules about accounts. Browsing is open to everyone. To message someone, book or pay for a lesson, leave a review, or buy or sell a resource, your account has to be vouched for:

• if you are 18 or over, by passing an ID check;
• if you are under 13, by a linked parent who has passed an ID check and confirmed they are your legal guardian. Until then the account can’t be used;
• if you are aged 13 to 17, student or tutor, by a linked parent as above, and also by a verified school email address or a selfie age check that confirms you are under 18. Both are needed: the parent always, plus one of the other two. Until then the account can’t be used.

Tutors must be at least 13. A student account can be made for a child aged 5 or over.

A parent link only counts if the date of birth on the parent’s ID makes them at least 16 years older than the child. Giving a false date of birth, or posing as someone’s parent, is a serious breach of these terms.

Who may deal with whom

• Two people under 18 may deal with each other. Two adults may deal with each other.
• An adult may deal directly with someone under 18 only as a tutor who holds a verified, in-date Working With Children Check.
• A parent can book and pay for their child’s lessons with any tutor the child may learn from, including a tutor under 18, but a parent can’t message a tutor who is under 18.

These rules are checked on messages, group chats, booking, rescheduling, paying and the lesson room. The tutor directory only shows you tutors you are allowed to deal with. Don’t try to get around them, for example by asking someone to deal with you from a different account.

What is and isn’t checked yet

ID checks and selfie age checks are run by our provider, Persona, and are not switched on yet. Until they are, every account is treated as having passed them so that the site can work (a 13 to 17-year-old still needs a linked parent), and we cannot confirm who anyone is or how old they are. Dates of birth are self-declared, and we don’t check that a parent is really related to the child they link to. Please keep this in mind when deciding who to deal with. We will update these terms when ID checks are switched on.

6. Working With Children Checks

An adult tutor who wants to teach students under 18 must hold a valid NSW Working With Children Check (WWCC) and submit it on Astry. An adult tutor without a verified check is shown only to, and can only be booked by, students who are 18 or over. Tutors under 18 can’t hold a check, and teach other under-18s only.

You submit your check number, the name on it, its expiry date and, if you like, a photo of the card. Our staff check it by hand against the NSW Office of the Children’s Guardian register, and tell you the outcome by email.

When a check expires, the tutor stops being able to teach under-18s on Astry from that day, including lessons already booked. It is the tutor’s responsibility to keep their check current, to tell us straight away if it is barred, suspended or made subject to an interim bar, and to meet their own obligations under the Child Protection (Working with Children) Act 2012 (NSW). A check verified on Astry doesn’t replace those obligations.

7. Parents and guardians

A parent can link to their child’s student account, either from a link or QR code the child sends, or with a code the parent makes on the Family page. To link, the parent must pass the ID check and confirm that they are the child’s legal guardian, and that with any other under-18 their child deals with, they will only observe.

A linked parent can:

• book and pay for lessons for their child, and cancel them (a parent’s cancellation counts as the student’s);
• see their child’s lessons and every lesson report;
• read, but not write in, their child’s conversations with tutors. Both people in a conversation a parent can read are told so. Parents can’t read their child’s conversations with Astry support.

By linking, a parent agrees to these terms on the child’s behalf and is responsible for the lessons and purchases they make for the child. A parent who is only a parent on Astry can message or book tutors and Astry support, never other students. Either side can remove a link at any time, and the other is told. Pretending to be someone’s parent or guardian is a serious breach of these terms.

8. Booking lessons

Lessons are arranged in chat. Either side can send a booking card with the subject, date and time, length, place and price. A lesson is only booked once the other side accepts the card. A card can repeat weekly, and accepting it books each week at the same time.

Lessons can be online or in person, at a place you both agree. To move a booked lesson, one side proposes a new time and the other accepts it. After a lesson, the tutor can write a lesson report, which the student and any linked parent can read.

Video calls in the lesson room are not switched on yet. A lesson booked as a video call currently has a shared whiteboard but no call, so please arrange another way to talk until we tell you video is on.

Don’t record a lesson, by video, audio or screenshot of a call, without the agreement of everyone in it (and, for a student under 18, their parent). Recording a private conversation without consent can also be an offence under the Surveillance Devices Act 2007 (NSW).

If you meet in person, you are responsible for your own safety. Meet somewhere open or public where you can. For a student under 18, a parent or guardian should know where and when the lesson is, and we recommend one is nearby.

9. Paying for lessons and resources

Today: card payments are off

Card payments are built but not switched on. Until they are, you pay a tutor or seller directly, in the way you agree with them. Astry doesn’t take, hold or pass on that money, charges no fees on it, and isn’t a party to that payment. When you get a paid resource, the download unlocks and you are asked to pay the seller directly. Any problem with a payment made this way is between you and the other person, although we will still act on a report that someone broke these terms.

When card payments are switched on

We will tell you before this happens. From then:

• payments are processed by Stripe. Card details are entered on Stripe’s own payment page, and we never see your full card number;
• a paid lesson waits as “awaiting payment” until it is paid. The payment is held in Astry’s Stripe account until both the student and the tutor mark the lesson complete, and then the tutor’s share is paid to them. You don’t earn interest on money held before a payout;
• a resource sale is paid out to the seller straight away;
• tutors and sellers must connect a Stripe account before taking paid bookings or listing paid resources, and agree to Stripe’s own terms;
• lessons and resources you arrange through Astry must be paid for through Astry (see Keeping lessons and payments on Astry);
• all amounts are in Australian dollars.

If a payment is reversed, for example because of a chargeback, we may cancel the lesson or remove access to the resource. Please talk to us before asking your bank for a chargeback: our Refund Policy explains how to ask for a refund.

[GST treatment of fees to be confirmed]

10. Fees

Astry only charges fees once card payments are switched on. Until then, nothing is charged. When they are on, Astry keeps a share of each lesson and resource sale:

A tutor’s rate is worked out when each lesson is paid out. We count the lessons they finished in the 7 days before that, including the one being paid. A lesson is finished once both sides have marked it complete. The rate moves up and down as that count changes.

The student or buyer pays two small fees on top of the price. They are never taken from the tutor or seller:

• a service fee of $0.50 on any lesson or resource under $10; and
• a video-call fee of $0.50 on a lesson held as a video call.

Stripe’s processing fees come out of Astry’s share. We may change our fees. We will give at least 14 days’ notice of a change, and a change never affects a payment already made. If you don’t accept a change, you can close your account before it takes effect.

11. Cancellations and no-shows

• Either side can cancel a booked lesson for free until the day before the lesson. For a lesson on a Friday, that means by the end of Wednesday.
• If the student (or their parent) cancels on the day of the lesson or the day before, 50% of the lesson price is paid to the tutor for the time they kept free, and the rest of what was paid is refunded.
• If the tutor cancels, the student gets a full refund, however late it is.
• Once the lesson’s date has arrived, either side can report the other as a no-show. If the student didn’t turn up, the tutor keeps the full lesson price. If the tutor didn’t turn up, they get nothing and the student is refunded.

While card payments are off, cancellations and no-shows are recorded but no money moves. If you think a cancellation or no-show was reported unfairly, open a ticket from Support and we will look at it. Reporting a no-show that didn’t happen is a breach of these terms. Our Refund Policy puts every refund rule in one place. Your rights under the Australian Consumer Law are not affected (see Your rights under the Australian Consumer Law).

12. Keeping lessons and payments on Astry

Astry is free to browse and to message on, and we are paid only through our share of lessons and sales. Keeping lessons on Astry also keeps the safety rules, reviews and records that protect everyone, especially children. So, once card payments are switched on:

• for 24 months after you first find or contact someone through Astry, you agree to book and pay for lessons with them through Astry, and not to arrange to pay them, or be paid by them, some other way to avoid Astry’s fees;
• this doesn’t apply to someone you already taught or learned from before either of you joined Astry;
• you agree not to ask or encourage anyone else to break this rule.

If someone asks you to pay or be paid outside Astry, please tell us. If we reasonably believe you have broken this rule, we may warn you, limit or close your account, and withhold referral rewards. The Tutor and Seller Agreement sets out what applies to a tutor or seller.

13. Referrals

Every account has a referral code and link. A new account can add someone else’s code within its first 30 days and before its first finished lesson, once only. You can’t use your own code, a linked parent’s or child’s code, or the code of someone you referred.

A referral counts once the person you referred finishes their first lesson with someone other than you. Each referral that counts earns you 2 lessons of reward:

• a student or parent gets 5% off the lesson price at checkout, paid for by Astry;
• a tutor has Astry’s share of the lesson cut by 5 percentage points (never below zero).

Rewards add up as more lessons, not a bigger discount. They have no cash value and can’t be transferred. They are only used once card payments are switched on, and rewards earned before then are kept until they are. A reward used on a lesson that is later refunded is given back. We may withdraw rewards gained by fake accounts, self-referral or other abuse. We may change or end the referral programme with 14 days’ notice, and rewards already earned are kept.

14. The resource marketplace

Any account that has been vouched for can list study resources, for a price or for free, once it has agreed to the Tutor and Seller Agreement. When you list a resource, you promise that you own it or have the right to sell it, that it doesn’t copy anyone else’s work without permission (for example a textbook, a commercial worksheet or a school’s exam paper you have no rights to), and that the description is accurate.

Unless the seller says otherwise in the listing, a buyer gets a personal, non-transferable licence to use the resource for their own study or, for a tutor, in their own teaching. Buyers must not resell, share publicly or re-upload a resource.

Images on listings and files are screened automatically for explicit content, and a resource can be taken down if it is flagged or reported. Buyers can rate and review resources they own. If something you bought isn’t what was described, report it. We can refund a purchase, reverse the seller’s payout and remove the buyer’s access. If you think a resource copies your work, our Copyright Policy explains how to tell us.

15. Messages and keeping contact on Astry

Keeping conversations on Astry is part of how we keep people, and especially children, safe. So in messages, file names, booking cards and lesson details:

• phone numbers and email addresses are refused;
• social media and messaging handles are hidden, before and after a lesson is booked;
• swearing is refused.

Don’t try to get around these rules, for example by writing a number in words or splitting it across messages, and don’t move a conversation, a lesson or a payment to another app or platform. Your conversations with Astry support are not affected.

You can edit or delete your own messages. Astry keeps a record of the earlier wording and of deleted messages, and our staff can see them. Staff can only open a private conversation they are not part of after recording a reason, such as a report, a payment dispute, a safety investigation or a support request, and every time they do it is logged.

Quick Help lets you send one question to the tutors who teach a subject. Answers come as a private message to you. The same rules on contact details and language apply.

16. Acceptable use

Our Community Guidelines explain in more detail how we expect everyone to behave. In short, you must not:

• harass, threaten, bully, discriminate against or exploit anyone;
• contact a child in a way these terms don’t allow, try to move a conversation with a child off Astry, or do anything that puts a child at risk;
• send or upload sexual, violent, hateful or illegal material;
• pretend to be someone else, or give false information about your age, identity, qualifications or checks;
• upload fake credentials, or post fake, paid-for or swapped reviews;
• break the contact-detail rules above, or avoid paying through Astry once card payments are on;
• upload material you don’t have the right to share, or malware;
• send spam or advertise other services;
• help someone cheat, for example by doing assessed work for them that they will hand in as their own;
• scrape, copy or harvest data from Astry, use bots or automated tools, try to get around our bot checks, rate limits or security, or try to get into an account or part of Astry that isn’t yours;
• use Astry for anything unlawful.

If you see something that breaks these rules, report it with the report button or open a ticket from Support.

17. Reviews and ratings

A student can rate a tutor from 1 to 5 stars for a subject, with an optional written review, once they have marked a lesson in that subject complete. A buyer can review a resource they own. Tutors can reply to reviews.

Reviews must be honest and about your own experience. We may remove a review that breaks these terms, for example one that is abusive, contains contact details, or wasn’t written by a real student or buyer. We don’t remove reviews just because they are negative, and we don’t accept payment to remove or change one. Offering anything in return for a review, or for changing or removing one, is not allowed.

18. Your content and ours

You keep ownership of your content: your profile, messages, credentials, lesson reports, homework, resources and reviews. You give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, display and adapt it (for example making a preview image from page 1 of a document or a frame of a video) as needed to run, improve and promote Astry and to show it to the people the feature is meant for. We will only use your content to promote Astry in a way that matches how it already appears on the site, such as showing a public tutor profile or review. That licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies other people already have (such as a message you sent them or a resource they bought), material already in promotional material we have published, and records we keep under our Privacy Policy.

You promise that you have the right to give us that licence, and that your content doesn’t break the law or anyone else’s rights. We don’t check content before it goes up and aren’t responsible for it, but we may remove it.

If you send us ideas or feedback, we may use them freely, without paying you or owing you anything.

The Astry name, logo and site, including its design, text and code, belong to us or the people who licensed them to us. You may not copy or reuse them without our permission.

19. Safety, moderation and investigations

We use automatic checks (contact details, swearing, and explicit-image screening) and human review of reports, Working With Children Checks and credentials. We don’t watch every conversation, we aren’t obliged to, and we can’t catch everything.

If we reasonably believe someone has broken these terms, put someone at risk, or broken the law, we may investigate. While we do, we may limit what an account can do. You agree to help with an investigation, for example by answering our questions honestly. Where we believe a child may be at risk, or the law requires or allows it, we may share information with the police, child protection authorities, the eSafety Commissioner or other regulators, without telling you first.

If someone is in immediate danger, call 000. If you are worried about a child’s safety in New South Wales, you can call the Child Protection Helpline on 132 111. Our Child Safety Policy explains what we do with a concern.

20. Suspending and closing accounts

You can delete your account at any time from Settings, under Delete account. This can’t be undone. Lessons already booked are cancelled under the usual cancellation rules, and anything you owe or are owed for lessons already taught still has to be paid. Our Privacy Policy explains what is deleted and the few records we keep.

We may remove content, hide a listing, limit, suspend or close an account, or refuse a new one, if we reasonably believe:

• it has broken these terms or any document that forms part of them;
• it puts someone, especially a child, at risk;
• it is fake, or was made to get around an earlier ban; or
• we have to, to comply with the law, a court or a regulator.

How far we go depends on how serious it is: usually a warning first, but straight to a ban for anything that puts a child at risk or is clearly unlawful. A ban takes effect straight away, and we tell the account holder the reason by email, unless telling them would put someone at risk or hinder an investigation. If you think we got it wrong, email hello@astry.com.au and we will look at it again.

We may also close an account for any other reason, or stop offering Astry, by giving at least 30 days’ notice. In that case we will refund anything you paid Astry for a lesson or resource you can no longer get.

21. Your rights under the Australian Consumer Law

Our services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or changes those guarantees, or any other right you have that the law says can’t be taken away. If a service fails to meet a guarantee, you may be entitled to a remedy, such as the service being supplied again, a refund or compensation.

Tutors and sellers also give consumer guarantees for the lessons and resources they supply. Those guarantees are theirs, because the lesson or resource is theirs.

Every limit in these terms applies only as far as the law allows, and is to be read so that it stays within the law.

22. Limits on our responsibility

Subject to your rights under the Australian Consumer Law, and as far as the law allows:

• we are not responsible for what a tutor, student, parent, buyer or seller says or does, on Astry or off it, for the quality, safety or legality of a lesson or resource, or for results;
• Astry is provided as it is and as available. We don’t promise it will always be available, secure or free of errors, and features that aren’t switched on yet may change;
• we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, such as lost income, profit, data or opportunity;
• where a guarantee applies to a service that is not of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household use (for example, a tutor’s use of Astry for their business), our liability is limited to supplying the service again or paying the cost of having it supplied again;
• our total liability to you for everything to do with Astry is limited to the greater of the fees you paid Astry in the 12 months before the claim arose and $300.

None of these limits applies to your rights under a consumer guarantee, to our fraud or wilful misconduct, to death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or to anything else the law doesn’t let us limit.

23. Your responsibility for loss you cause

You agree to make good any loss, damage, cost (including reasonable legal costs) or claim that we, our staff or other users suffer because of:

• your breach of these terms or of a document that forms part of them;
• your fraud, or your unlawful or wilful misconduct; or
• your content breaking the law or someone else’s rights, such as their copyright or privacy.

What you owe is reduced to the extent that we, or the person making the claim, caused or contributed to the loss. This doesn’t make you responsible for something you couldn’t reasonably have prevented.

24. Disagreements between users

If you have a problem with another user, try to sort it out with them first. If you can’t, open a ticket from Support. We will try to help and may decide how money held by Astry is dealt with under these terms and our Refund Policy, but we don’t have to decide disputes between users, and our decision doesn’t affect your legal rights against the other person.

Because a lesson or resource sale is between users, any claim about it is against the other user, not against Astry, as far as the law allows. This doesn’t affect a claim against us for something we did wrong ourselves.

25. Disagreements with us

If you have a problem with Astry, we would like the chance to fix it. Before going to court, you and we agree to:

1. tell the other side what the problem is in writing, by a ticket from Support or by email to hello@astry.com.au;
2. try in good faith to sort it out for 20 business days after that; and
3. if it isn’t sorted out, try mediation in Sydney with a mediator from the Resolution Institute, or another mediator we both agree to. Each side pays its own costs. If you are a consumer, we pay the mediator’s fees.

This doesn’t stop either side asking a court for urgent orders, and it doesn’t stop you going to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal or a small claims court, or complaining to a regulator such as the ACCC, NSW Fair Trading, the OAIC or the eSafety Commissioner.

26. Services and sites we rely on

Parts of Astry are provided by other companies: Clerk for sign-in, Stripe for payments, Persona for ID checks and Daily.co for video calls, among others listed in our Privacy Policy. When you use their part of the service, such as Stripe’s payment page or Persona’s ID check, their terms also apply.

Astry may link to other sites, and users may share links. We don’t control those sites and aren’t responsible for them.

27. Changes to Astry and to these terms

Astry is still being built. Some features described here are not switched on yet, including card payments, ID checks, video calls, push notifications and text messages. We will tell you when that changes. We may also add, change or remove features, and some may be marked as being tested, which means they may not work perfectly.

We may update these terms. If a change matters to you, we will tell you by email or on the site at least 14 days before it takes effect, unless it is needed sooner for safety or by law. We may ask you to agree to the new version before you keep using Astry. If you don’t agree with a change, you can delete your account before it takes effect, and the change won’t apply to you. The date at the top of this page shows when these terms were last changed.

28. General

• Notices. We may send you notices by email to the address on your account or by a message on Astry. You can send notices to hello@astry.com.au. An email is treated as received when it is sent, unless the sender is told it wasn’t delivered.
• Events outside our control. We aren’t responsible for a delay or failure caused by something we can’t reasonably control, such as an outage at one of our providers, a natural disaster or an attack on our systems.
• Transfer. You can’t transfer your rights under these terms. We may transfer ours to a company that takes over Astry, if it agrees to keep to these terms and your rights aren’t reduced.
• Whole agreement. These terms and the documents they name are the whole agreement between you and us about Astry. They replace anything said before.
• No waiver. If we don’t enforce a right straight away, we can still enforce it later.
• Severability. If any part of these terms can’t be enforced, it is read down or left out as far as needed, and the rest still applies.
• What lasts after your account closes. The parts about payments owed, your content licence for copies already shared, limits on our responsibility, your responsibility for loss you cause, and disagreements.
• No partnership. Nothing in these terms makes you and us partners, or makes you our employee or agent.

29. Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of New South Wales, Australia. You and we agree to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New South Wales and the courts that hear appeals from them. If you are a consumer living elsewhere, you keep any protection the law where you live gives you.

30. Contact us

[Legal entity name], ABN [ABN], [Registered address]. Email hello@astry.com.au.