Terms & Conditions

Last updated: 23 August 2026

These terms govern your use of tim.mudford.me, the AI voice assistant on it, and the SMS messages sent by the voice assistants we operate. By using any of them you agree to what follows. If you do not agree, please do not use them.

1.Who you are dealing with

This website and the services described in it are operated by Tim Mudford Consulting Limited (NZBN 9429053901118), a company registered in New Zealand, trading as Tim Mudford — “we”, “us” or “our” below. “You” means anyone using the website, the voice assistant, or receiving a message from a system we operate.

2.What this website is

It is a description of a consulting practice, and an invitation to get in touch. Everything on it is general information published in good faith. It is not professional, legal, financial or technical advice, and nothing on it forms an offer capable of acceptance, a quote, or a commitment to do work. Do not act on it as if it were advice specific to your situation — talk to us, or to an appropriate professional, first.

We do our best to keep the site accurate and available, but we do not promise it will be free of errors or continuously available, and we may change or remove any part of it at any time.

3.The AI voice assistant

The orb on the contact section, and the assistants we deploy on client phone lines, are powered by AI language and speech models. Using one, you accept that:

• It is an AI, not a person. It can be wrong, incomplete or out of date, and it can misunderstand what you said. Anything important should be confirmed with a human before you rely on it.
• Nothing it says binds us or a client business. It cannot agree a price, form a contract, make a booking commitment, or give professional advice on our behalf.
• The conversation is processed and may be recorded and transcribed in order to work at all, and to follow up on your enquiry. See the Privacy Policy for the detail.
• Do not give it sensitive information — health information, financial account or card details, passwords, or government identifiers.
• It relies on your microphone, your browser and your network. If any of those are unavailable, so is the assistant.

4.SMS messaging terms

We operate AI voice assistants that answer inbound calls for client businesses. One of them is deployed for Vertical Arborists, answering calls to its 0800 number. These terms apply to the SMS messages sent through that workflow and any similar deployment we operate.

Programme description

When you call the business, the voice assistant may offer to text you information you have asked for — for example, the email address to send photographs of a job to. If you accept and give your mobile number, a single text message containing that information is sent to you.

How you opt in

Consent is given verbally, by you, during a call that you placed. The assistant asks whether you would like the message; you say yes and read out your mobile number. That is the entire opt-in. We do not buy, rent or import phone numbers, and we do not message anyone who has not asked us to.

Cost

We do not charge you for the message. Message and data rates may apply from your own mobile carrier, according to your plan.

HELP and STOP

• Reply HELP to any message for assistance, or email tim@mudford.me.
• Reply STOP to opt out. Because the programme is one-time there is normally nothing to stop, but a STOP reply is honoured and blocks any future messages to your number.
• You can also simply decline when the assistant asks — then no message is sent at all.

Delivery

Messages are delivered by third-party telecommunications providers and by your own mobile carrier. Delivery cannot be guaranteed: messages can be delayed, blocked or undelivered for reasons outside our control, including carrier issues, coverage, handset settings and number portability. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.

Please give the correct mobile number, and only your own. Do not give us someone else's number to message.

Privacy of your mobile number

No mobile information will be sold or shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent are not shared with any third party. Numbers go only to the provider required to deliver the message. See the Privacy Policy.

5.Consulting services

Consulting work is never governed by this page alone. Any engagement is set out in a separate written agreement, proposal or statement of work covering scope, fees, timeframes, intellectual property and confidentiality. Where that agreement conflicts with these terms, that agreement wins. No work begins, and no obligation arises on either side, until it is agreed in writing.

Engagements are also subject to the AI Services Terms, which cover how AI is used in the work, the review you must carry out before relying on what it produces, and how risk is allocated between us. Every quote identifies the version of those terms in force at the date it is issued.

6.Intellectual property

The content of this site — text, imagery, film, code and design — belongs to us or is used with permission, and is protected by copyright. You may view it, and quote briefly from it with attribution and a link. You may not republish, redistribute, sell, or use it to train a machine learning model, without our written permission.

Anything you send us stays yours; you grant us the permission we need to read it, store it, and respond to it.

7.Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Use the site or the assistant for anything unlawful, deceptive, abusive or harassing.
• Attempt to gain unauthorised access to the site, the voice servers, or any connected system.
• Interfere with the service, including by scraping at volume, flooding it with requests, or running automated calls against the assistant.
• Submit someone else's personal information, including their phone number, without their knowledge and agreement.
• Attempt to manipulate the assistant into acting outside its purpose, or to extract its instructions or underlying data.

We may block access to anyone who does.

8.Third-party links and services

The site links to third-party sites and relies on third-party infrastructure for hosting, calls and messaging. We do not control those services and are not responsible for their content, availability or practices. Their own terms and privacy policies apply to your use of them.

9.Privacy

Our handling of personal information is described in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms.

10.Disclaimers

The website, the assistant and the messaging workflow are provided “as is”. To the fullest extent the law allows, we exclude all warranties, representations and guarantees that are not expressly set out here, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, uninterrupted availability, or the accuracy of AI-generated output.

Consumer Guarantees Act 1993. If you are a consumer as defined in that Act, nothing in these terms limits rights you have under it, or under the Fair Trading Act 1986. Where you acquire our goods or services for the purposes of a business, you agree that the Consumer Guarantees Act does not apply, and that sections 9, 12A and 13 of the Fair Trading Act 1986 do not apply, as permitted by section 5D of that Act.

11.Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any indirect, consequential, incidental or special loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, data, goodwill or business opportunity, arising out of your use of the website, the voice assistant, or any message sent or not sent.

Where liability cannot be excluded, our total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with the website and the free services described on it is limited to NZ$100. Liability arising out of a paid consulting engagement is governed by the written agreement for that engagement, not by this clause.

12.Indemnity

You agree to indemnify us against any claim, loss or cost arising from your breach of these terms, your misuse of the site or the assistant, or your submission of another person's information without their agreement.

13.Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the site and services change. The current version always lives at tim.mudford.me/terms.html, and the date at the top tells you when it last changed. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the updated terms.

14.Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of New Zealand, and you and we submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the New Zealand courts.

If any provision of these terms is found to be unenforceable, it is severed and the rest continues to apply.

15.Contact

Tim Mudford
Tim Mudford Consulting Limited, NZBN 9429053901118
Email: tim@mudford.me
New Zealand