Terms of Service

1. Who we are and what these terms cover

NuanceDeck is operated by CARACARA LABS, a French simplified joint-stock company (SAS) with a share capital of 1,000 euros, registered with the Paris Trade and Companies Register under number 107 841 272, whose registered office is at 173 rue de Courcelles, 75017 Paris, France, intra-EU VAT number FR19107841272 ("NuanceDeck", "we", "us"). Contact: support@nuancedeck.com.

These terms govern your access to and use of the NuanceDeck websites (nuancedeck.com and its subdomains), the NuanceDeck web application, the NuanceDeck mobile applications, and the related services (together, the "Service"). They form a contract between you and CARACARA LABS. By creating an account or using the Service, you accept them. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

You must be at least 16 years old to create an account. If you are under 16, you may not use the Service.

Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle your personal data and forms part of these terms.

2. Definitions

• Course: a language course offered in the Service (for example, the Russian course). Each Course is a separate product.
• Content: everything we make available through the Service: dictionary entries, senses, glosses, example sentences and their translations, grammatical annotations, inflection tables, audio recordings, decks, drills, explanations, texts, designs, software and data, whether or not protected by intellectual property rights.
• Account: your personal NuanceDeck account, used on every platform.
• Free tier: the part of the Service available without payment, as described on the pricing page.
• Premium: the paid tier of a Course, obtained by a subscription or a lifetime purchase.
• Lifetime access: a one-time purchase granting Premium for one Course for as long as that Course is offered (see section 7).
• Credits: the monthly allowance of Ask AI questions attached to your tier (see section 8).
• Store: Apple's App Store or Google Play, when you purchase through a mobile application.

3. Your account

You need an account to learn with the Service. You agree to provide accurate information, to keep your credentials confidential, and to notify us at support@nuancedeck.com of any unauthorized use. An account is personal: one person per account, no sharing, no transfer.

You can sign up with an email address or with a Google account. A username, a country flag and a profile picture are optional and public if you set them (see the Privacy Policy). A profile picture must be an image you have the right to use and must not be unlawful, offensive or misleading (for example impersonating someone else); we may remove one that is. You can delete your account at any time from the application settings or by writing to us; section 16 describes the consequences.

4. The Service

What you get for free. The core review loop is free and stays free: learned words keep their review schedule with no cap on reviews, no advertising and no lockout timers. The free tier limits how many words can be in active learning at once (300 at the date of these terms) and grants a monthly Ask AI allowance. The exact limits are published on the pricing page and may evolve as described in section 9.

What Premium adds. Premium removes the active-learning cap, unlocks the retention presets, the production drills and a larger Ask AI allowance, as described on the pricing page at the time of purchase. Premium is per Course: Premium for the Russian course gives no rights in any other Course.

Evolution and beta status. The Service is young and evolves continuously. We may add, modify or remove features, decks, drills and Content, and we will keep the Service in conformity with the description that applied when you purchased. Some features are labeled as beta or experimental; they may change or be withdrawn at any time.

Availability. We aim for continuous availability but do not guarantee it. Maintenance, updates, failures of third-party providers and events beyond our control can interrupt the Service. Where an interruption is prolonged and attributable to us, section 17 applies.

5. Plans, prices and payment

Prices are displayed in euros, inclusive of VAT where applicable, on the pricing page and at checkout. The price that binds us is the one displayed at the moment you confirm your purchase.

Web purchases are processed by our billing provider RevenueCat and our payment provider Stripe. We never receive your full card number. You receive an invoice by email; invoices and payment methods are managed from the customer portal linked in the application.

Purchases through a Store are processed by Apple or Google under their own terms and payment methods; see section 10.

Purchases are made in your own name, for your personal, non-commercial use.

6. Subscriptions: renewal, cancellation, changes

Automatic renewal. A subscription (monthly or yearly) renews automatically at the end of each period, at the price then in force, until you cancel. The period, the price and the renewal date are shown before you confirm.

Cancelling. You can cancel at any time, online, in the same place you subscribed (the customer portal for web subscriptions, the Store's subscription settings for Store purchases). Cancelling stops the next renewal; you keep Premium until the end of the current paid period. Amounts already paid for the current period are not refunded, except as provided in section 9.

Yearly plans. For yearly subscriptions, we send you a reminder by email between three months and one month before each renewal, telling you how to cancel.

Price changes. We may change subscription prices. We will inform you by email at least 30 days before a new price applies to your subscription; if you do not agree, you can cancel before the change takes effect. A price change never applies retroactively.

7. Lifetime access

Lifetime access is a one-time purchase that grants Premium for one Course, on every platform, for as long as NuanceDeck offers that Course. "Lifetime" refers to the life of the Course, not to yours, and gives no rights in other Courses.

If we discontinue a Course, holders of Lifetime access for that Course are refunded on a pro-rata basis: the purchase price, multiplied by the number of full months remaining in a 24-month period starting on the purchase date, divided by 24. No refund is due if the Course is discontinued more than 24 months after your purchase, or if your access was terminated under section 13 or 16.

Lifetime access includes the same monthly Ask AI allowance as a Premium subscription.

8. Ask AI credits

Ask AI lets you ask questions about the word or sentence in front of you. Each question costs a number of Credits depending on the model you choose (1 with the fast model, 5 with the deeper one, at the date of these terms). Your tier grants a monthly allowance of Credits (10 free, 200 Premium, at the date of these terms). Failed answers are credited back automatically. Reading answers that already exist is free for everyone.

Credits renew each calendar month, do not carry over, have no cash value, cannot be transferred, refunded or exchanged, and expire with the tier that granted them. We may adjust the cost of a question and the allowances as described in section 9.

9. Right of withdrawal and refunds

14-day refund on your first web purchase. If you buy Premium on the web (subscription or Lifetime access) for the first time, you may ask for a full refund within 14 days of the purchase, for any reason, by writing to support@nuancedeck.com from the email address of your account. This is our commitment; it applies whether or not you have used Premium in the meantime. It applies once per account and per Course.

Statutory right of withdrawal. As a consumer in the European Union, you have a legal right to withdraw from a distance contract within 14 days without giving reasons. Our 14-day refund above applies this right without requiring you to waive it. You may also use the model withdrawal form annexed to these terms.

Renewals and later purchases. Renewals and purchases after the first are not refundable, except where the law requires it (in particular in case of a lack of conformity of the Service that we fail to remedy) or at our discretion.

Store purchases are refunded by the Store under its own rules; we cannot refund them ourselves (section 10).

Changes to the free tier. We may change the free tier's limits and the Credit costs and allowances with at least 30 days' notice in the application or by email. A change that reduces what you paid for during a period you have already paid gives you the right to cancel and be refunded pro-rata for that period.

10. Purchases through Apple or Google

When you purchase Premium through a mobile application, the purchase is made with Apple or Google, under the Store's terms, at the price shown in the Store, and Apple or Google is your seller of record for that purchase. Refunds, invoices, payment methods and cancellation of Store subscriptions are handled in the Store, according to its rules; we cannot process them ourselves.

Your Premium is attached to your NuanceDeck account, whichever platform you bought it on, and works on every platform. Do not subscribe to the same Course on two platforms: we will not be able to refund a duplicate purchase made through a Store.

For applications distributed through Apple's App Store, Apple's standard Licensed Application End User License Agreement also applies; these terms are between you and CARACARA LABS only, Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support, and Apple is a third-party beneficiary of these terms with the right to enforce them against you.

11. License and intellectual property

The Content and the Service are protected by copyright, by the European Union's sui generis database right (articles L341-1 and following of the French Intellectual Property Code) and by trademark law. They belong to CARACARA LABS or to its licensors. The "NuanceDeck" and "Nuance" names and logos are protected trademarks; you may not use them without prior written consent.

We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the Service and its Content, for your own language learning, on your own devices, for the duration of your account. Any other use is prohibited without our prior written consent, including reproducing, extracting, publishing, distributing, selling, renting, translating, adapting or creating derivative works from the Content, in whole or in substantial part, by any means.

Content cached on your device (for offline use or performance) remains covered by this license and may not be extracted from the application.

Some morphological data derives from open sources credited in the legal notice; that credit does not extend to our senses, example sentences, translations, annotations, audio, or the database as a whole.

12. Acceptable use

You agree not to: use the Service for any unlawful purpose; interfere with its operation or security; attempt to access other users' accounts or data; circumvent any technical limitation (tier caps, Credits, rate limits); reverse-engineer the applications except where the law allows it; post, in Ask AI questions or reports, content that is unlawful, abusive, or that infringes third-party rights; use the Service to build or train a competing product or dataset; or resell or commercially exploit the Service.

13. Automated access and scraping

The Content is the result of substantial editorial and financial investment and constitutes our essential asset. Consequently:

Prohibition. You may not access the Service or the Content by automated means (robots, scrapers, crawlers, scripts, replayed or forged application traffic, or any tool other than the official applications used by a human), nor extract, copy, download, harvest or export the Content in bulk or systematically, nor collect it for redistribution, in any form and by any means, whether or not you hold a paid plan. This prohibition covers the whole of the Content and every substantial part of it, evaluated quantitatively or qualitatively, and applies to repeated extractions of insubstantial parts that together amount to a substantial part.

Detection. We monitor usage patterns to protect the Content. The following, among others, constitute reasonable grounds to believe an account is engaged in automated access or extraction: sequential or exhaustive walks through dictionary entries or decks; volumes of requests that no human reader reaches; requests without the normal companion traffic of the applications; access to entries that no legitimate navigation references; requests from tools presenting themselves as the applications without being them; and the appearance of our Content elsewhere bearing the watermark of an account (see below).

Suspension. Where we have reasonable grounds to believe that your account is engaged in automated access or extraction, we may immediately suspend the account, whether it is free, subscribed or holds Lifetime access. We will notify you at your account's email address, describing the observed behavior, and you will have seven days to give a satisfactory explanation.

Termination without refund. If no satisfactory explanation is received within that period, or if the behavior resumes, we will terminate the account for serious breach. In that case, amounts paid for the current subscription period and for Lifetime access are not refunded, except where mandatory law requires a refund, and no Credit is compensated. The termination is without prejudice to our other remedies.

Watermarking and traceability. The Content delivered to each account may carry invisible, account-specific variations. A copy of the Content found outside the Service that carries the variations of your account is deemed to have been extracted through your account, unless you demonstrate otherwise.

Remedies. Automated extraction and redistribution of the Content infringe our copyright and our database right and may constitute the offense of fraudulent access to an information system. We reserve the right to claim damages for the loss suffered and to bring civil and criminal proceedings, in addition to the measures above.

14. Your contributions

Ask AI questions are, by design, public: your question, the answer, and the sentence it was asked about are shown to other learners on the relevant card and in the community feed, together with your username (or a neutral label if you have not chosen one). Do not include personal data or confidential information in a question.

Reports (something is off on a card, a bug) and their attachments (screenshots, screen recordings) are private to our team. Votes on answers are aggregated.

You retain your rights in your contributions. You grant CARACARA LABS a worldwide, free, non-exclusive license to host, display, reproduce, adapt and use your contributions to operate, moderate and improve the Service and its Content, including after you delete your account for public questions in anonymized form (see the Privacy Policy). You are responsible for what you post. We may moderate, hide or remove any contribution that breaches these terms, and we act on reports of unlawful content sent to support@nuancedeck.com.

15. AI-generated answers and accuracy of Content

Ask AI answers are generated by an artificial-intelligence model, are identified as such in the Service, and are not reviewed by a human before being shown to you. They can be incomplete or wrong. They are learning aids, not authoritative statements, and never professional advice.

Our dictionary Content is produced with the help of AI models and then verified through editorial gates; a certification indicator on a card shows which content has passed them. Despite our care, errors can remain. Please report them; correcting them is part of the Service.

16. Suspension and termination

By you. You can stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. Deleting your account ends the license in section 11 and does not refund amounts paid, except as provided in section 9. An active subscription must be cancelled separately (section 6) so that it does not renew.

By us. We may suspend or terminate your account if you seriously or repeatedly breach these terms (in particular sections 11 to 14), if the law requires it, or if we discontinue the Service or a Course. Except in the case of section 13 or of another serious breach, termination on our initiative entitles you to a pro-rata refund of the paid period not used and, for Lifetime access, to the refund described in section 7. We will give you at least 30 days' notice before discontinuing a Course.

17. Conformity, warranties and updates

As a consumer, you benefit from the legal guarantee of conformity of digital content and services (articles L224-25-1 and following of the French Consumer Code): the Service must conform to its description and we must provide the updates necessary to keep it conforming during the subscription period, or for a reasonable period after a one-time purchase. If the Service does not conform, you may ask us to bring it into conformity; failing that, you may obtain a price reduction or terminate the contract, under the conditions provided by law.

Beyond that guarantee, the Service is provided as is. We do not promise that it will meet your particular needs, that you will reach a given level, or that it will be free of errors.

18. Liability

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability where the law does not allow it, in particular for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for our statutory obligations towards consumers.

Subject to that, our liability towards you for any loss arising from these terms or the Service is limited to direct and foreseeable loss and, for paid plans, to the amounts you paid us in the 12 months preceding the event, and to 50 euros for the free tier. We are not liable for losses caused by events beyond our reasonable control, by your breach of these terms, or by third-party services you use with the Service.

19. Personal data

We process your personal data as described in the Privacy Policy. In short: your data is hosted in the European Union, we do not sell it, and you can access, export, correct and delete it.

20. Changes to these terms

We may amend these terms to reflect changes in the Service, the law or our business. For material changes, we will notify you at least 30 days in advance by email or in the application. If you do not accept a material change, you may terminate before it takes effect and, for a paid plan, obtain a pro-rata refund of the period not used. Continuing to use the Service after the effective date means you accept the new terms. The current version is always available at nuancedeck.com/en/terms, with its date.

21. Governing law, mediation and courts

These terms are governed by French law. If you are a consumer residing in another country of the European Union, you also benefit from the mandatory protections of the law of your country of residence.

In case of a dispute, please contact us first at support@nuancedeck.com; we answer within 30 days. If we cannot resolve it, you may, free of charge, refer the matter to a consumer mediator within one year of your written complaint to us. The contact details of the consumer mediator designated by CARACARA LABS are communicated on request at support@nuancedeck.com and will be published in this article. You may also bring the dispute before the competent courts; as a consumer you may choose the courts of your place of residence.

22. Miscellaneous

These terms are drafted in French and translated into English; the French version prevails. If a provision is held invalid, the rest remains in force. We may transfer these terms, together with the operation of the Service, to another company (for example a successor or an affiliated company); we will inform you, and your rights and paid plans are unchanged by such a transfer. You may not assign your account. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. These terms, the pricing page and the Privacy Policy constitute the entire agreement between you and CARACARA LABS regarding the Service.

Annex: model withdrawal form

(Complete and return this form only if you wish to withdraw from the contract.)

To: CARACARA LABS, 173 rue de Courcelles, 75017 Paris, France, support@nuancedeck.com

I hereby give notice that I withdraw from my contract for the provision of the following service: NuanceDeck Premium (course: ............, plan: ............), ordered on ............, account email ............

Name of consumer: ............ Address: ............ Date: ............ Signature (only if this form is notified on paper): ............