Terms of Service

Effective date: 5 June 2026

Last updated: 5 June 2026

1. Who we are

These Terms of Service govern your use of the Haile product family (the “Service”), operated by Nowtech Limited (NZBN 9429033497617, registered at 66 Centennial Drive, Whitianga 3510, New Zealand) (“Nowtech”, “we”, “us”, “our”).

By creating a Haile account, installing the Haile Companion or Haile Assist app, purchasing hardware through haile.nz, or subscribing to Haile Monitor or Assist Care, you agree to these Terms.

If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

We may update these Terms from time to time. The “Last updated” date at the top of the document reflects when. If we make material changes that affect your rights, we will email all active account holders at least 30 days before the change takes effect.

2. What Haile is

Haile is a family of products designed to help elderly people stay independent at home and to keep their families informed and connected. The Service has several parts:

• Haile Companion: a free app for the elderly person’s tablet (iOS or Android). Provides video calls, simple smart-home control, family photo feed, weather, clock, and an emergency SOS button.
• Haile Assist: a free app for the family-member account holder. Manages the household, configures the Companion app, sends photos and messages, and surfaces alerts from any Haile Monitor sensors installed.
• Assist hardware retail: smart-home devices (IR blasters, switch modules, smart plugs, sensors) sold through the Haile shop on haile.nz. Optional. Standard 12-month manufacturer warranty applies; if you also subscribe to Assist Care, the lifetime device guarantee in section 7 applies.
• Assist Care subscription: NZD $9.99 per month (or as listed on haile.nz at the time you subscribe). Includes proactive battery delivery via NZ Post, an expanded LiveKit calling allowance, full archive storage for photos and messages, configuration management, the lifetime device guarantee, and priority support.
• Haile Monitor: passive activity monitoring with sensors and (in some tiers) cameras. Available as a monthly subscription that includes hardware, or as a one-time hardware purchase with a smaller monthly service fee. Three tiers (Essentials, Standard, Premium) with prices as listed on haile.nz at the time you subscribe.

We may add, remove, or change features of any of these parts. Material reductions in service to active customers will be communicated at least 30 days in advance.

3. What Haile is not

To be clear about what we provide:

• Haile is not a medical alarm service. It does not replace a personal emergency response system, ambulance service, or professional medical monitoring. Critical events are routed to family members listed on the household account, not to a 24-hour monitoring centre. If you need 24-hour professional emergency response, please use a medical alarm provider approved by the New Zealand Ministry of Social Development (St John, Freedom Medical Alarms, ADT Care / VitalCALL, or MePACS).
• Haile is not a substitute for in-person care or check-ins. Sensor activity monitoring helps families notice when something is unusual, but it cannot detect every emergency, and it cannot replace human contact.
• Haile is not health-care or medical advice. Daily summaries describe activity patterns, not health conditions, and should not be relied on for medical diagnosis.

If you choose to use Haile, you accept these limitations. We strongly recommend pairing Haile with at least one of: (a) a person who checks on the elderly user in their home regularly, (b) a professional emergency response service, or (c) a wearable fall-detection device for users who will reliably wear one.

4. Accounts and access

To use the Service you must:

• Be at least 18 years old.
• Provide accurate account information.
• Keep your password secure.
• Notify us promptly if you suspect your account has been compromised.

You may invite other family members to join your household as additional admins through the Assist app. Each admin gets their own account. You are responsible for the people you invite and for the consent of the elderly user before installing Haile Companion on their tablet.

5. Pricing and payment

Current pricing is shown on haile.nz at the time you sign up or purchase. Pricing may change for new sign-ups, but existing subscribers will be notified at least 30 days before any increase to their existing plan.

Payment is processed by Stripe. We do not store full card numbers on our servers.

Subscription billing is monthly in advance. You can cancel any time; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, and you will retain access until then.

Hardware purchases are charged immediately. Delivery is by NZ Post within New Zealand only at this time. We do not currently ship hardware overseas.

Refunds for hardware purchases are governed by the New Zealand Consumer Guarantees Act 1993. Hardware that is faulty on arrival or fails within a reasonable time can be returned for repair, replacement, or refund as the Act requires.

6. The free tier and the Assist Care subscription

You can use Haile Companion and Haile Assist apps free of charge, with the following service limits:

• Video and audio calling: 500 minutes per month per household, combined.
• Photo feed: photos older than 90 days are deleted from the feed.
• Async voice and video messages: deleted 30 days after upload.
• Hardware that you own outright has a 12-month manufacturer warranty.

When you subscribe to Assist Care, the service limits are lifted as follows:

• Video and audio calling: 2,000 minutes per month per household. Audio-only calls remain unmetered.
• Photo feed: full archive; nothing is deleted while Care is active.
• Async messages: full archive; nothing is deleted while Care is active.
• Battery mailout: when a Haile-certified device on your account reports low battery, we ship a replacement battery to you free of charge via NZ Post.
• Lifetime device guarantee: see section 7.
• Priority support: response within one business day during NZ business hours.

If your Care subscription lapses, the service limits revert to the free-tier values above. Existing photos and messages older than the limit are not retroactively deleted within 60 days of lapse, giving you time to download or re-subscribe. After 60 days, they will be deleted with notice.

7. Lifetime device guarantee

If you are an active Assist Care subscriber, hardware purchased from the Haile shop is covered by a lifetime device guarantee for as long as your Care subscription remains active. This is in addition to the standard manufacturer warranty.

What is covered

• Manufacturing defects in Haile-certified devices.
• Normal-use failure (a component wears out, becomes intermittent, or stops working without you having damaged it).
• Battery degradation in devices with non-replaceable batteries.

What is not covered

• Damage caused by you or others using the device outside its rated conditions (dropping, water beyond the device’s IP rating, paint or solvent exposure, electrical surges from non-compliant power sources).
• Loss, theft, or accidental destruction.
• Cosmetic wear that does not affect function.
• Devices purchased from third parties, including devices in the “Compatible” or “Experimental” categories on haile.nz (see section 8).
• Devices that have been deliberately disassembled, modified, or repaired by anyone other than us.

How a claim works

1. Report the failure via the Haile Assist app or by email to hello@haile.nz.
2. We may run a remote diagnostic check before approving a replacement, to confirm that the issue is a hardware failure rather than an installation, network, or pairing issue we can fix without shipping anything.
3. If approved, we ship a replacement device via NZ Post at our cost, with a prepaid return label for the failed device. The failed device must be returned within 30 days of receiving the replacement.
4. Substitution policy: where the original device is no longer sold by the manufacturer, we will replace it with a functionally equivalent device of comparable or better specification. If we cannot source an equivalent, we will refund the device portion of your Care subscription fee for that month.
5. We may limit replacement to one claim per device per failure type within any twelve-month period, to prevent abuse. This does not affect your statutory rights.

When coverage ends

Coverage ends when your Care subscription ends. If you re-subscribe later, coverage on devices you still own resumes.

The lifetime device guarantee is in addition to your rights under the New Zealand Consumer Guarantees Act 1993, which cannot be excluded for goods or services supplied to consumers.

8. Certified, compatible, and experimental devices

The Haile Companion and Haile Assist apps work with three levels of supported hardware:

• Certified: tested by us, sold through the Haile shop, full support, eligible for the lifetime device guarantee under section 7.
• Compatible: hardware that uses standards-based protocols (Matter, Tasmota, Zigbee 2 MQTT) and works with Haile via our drivers, but was not purchased from us. We provide best-effort support. The lifetime device guarantee does not apply.
• Experimental: anything else that you have managed to connect via a standards-based protocol. You use it at your own risk. We may disable Experimental device support in future versions of the apps.

When the apps detect an Experimental device, you may see a warning that explains the support level.

9. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Use the Service for any illegal purpose.
• Attempt to access any other household’s data without their authorisation.
• Reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to derive the source code of the apps or API beyond what New Zealand law permits.
• Use the Service to harass, threaten, or surveil any person who has not consented to being on a Haile-Monitored household.
• Resell, redistribute, or sub-license access to the Service without our written agreement.

If you violate this section we may suspend or terminate your account.

10. Privacy

How we collect, use, store, and share information is described in the Haile Privacy Policy. By using the Service you agree to that policy.

11. Intellectual property

The Haile name, logo, app branding, and any documentation we publish are owned by Nowtech Limited. Third-party trademarks (Sonoff, Athom, Apple, Google, and others) belong to their respective owners.

You retain ownership of content you upload to Haile (photos, messages, configuration data). By uploading, you grant us a licence to store, transmit, and display that content as needed to operate the Service.

The Haile Companion app, the Haile Assist app, and the Haile API are proprietary software. In the event of Service shutdown (section 13), we have committed to open-sourcing these under a permissive licence.

12. Limitation of liability

To the extent permitted by New Zealand law:

• The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or available at all times.
• We do not guarantee that the Service will detect every emergency or alert family members to every concerning event.
• Our total liability to you for any claim arising out of the Service is limited to the amount you have paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or NZD $200, whichever is greater.
• We are not liable for indirect, consequential, special, or punitive damages, or for loss of profit, goodwill, or data.

These limitations do not apply where they would be void under the New Zealand Consumer Guarantees Act 1993, the Fair Trading Act 1986, or other New Zealand law that cannot be contractually excluded.

If you are using Haile for the purposes of a business (for example, a retirement village procuring Haile for its residents), you contract out of the Consumer Guarantees Act and Fair Trading Act protections for that use, and the limitations above apply in full.

13. End of service

If Nowtech Limited ceases to operate the Haile Service, whether by choice or by force of circumstance, we commit to the following:

1. Notice: at least 90 days notice before service shutdown, except in cases of regulatory shutdown or insolvency where shorter notice may be unavoidable.
2. Data export: a tool to export your data (device list, family roster, message archive, photo feed) in standard formats.
3. Open-source: we will release the source code of the Haile Companion app, Haile Assist app, and Haile API under a permissive open-source licence (MIT, Apache 2.0, or equivalent), so that you can run your own Haile stack on equivalent open-source software (such as Home Assistant) or transfer your hardware to another operator.
4. Hardware: you keep all hardware you have purchased outright.
5. Active warranty claims: claims open at time of shutdown will be honoured for the remaining cover period or for 90 days from shutdown, whichever is shorter.

This commitment is contractual. It is part of why we ask families to trust us with the safety of their elderly relatives.

14. Dispute resolution

If you have a problem with the Service, please contact us first at hello@haile.nz. Most issues can be resolved quickly.

If we cannot resolve a dispute through direct conversation:

• For consumers in New Zealand: you can take a claim to the Disputes Tribunal (for claims up to NZD $30,000) or the District Court.
• For business customers (including retirement villages): disputes will be resolved by good-faith negotiation, then by mediation under the Resolution Institute of New Zealand, and only then by litigation in the courts of New Zealand.

These Terms are governed by New Zealand law. New Zealand courts have exclusive jurisdiction.

15. Other

• Severability: if any part of these Terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest remains in effect.
• Assignment: we may assign these Terms (for example, in the case of a sale or restructure of the business) on at least 30 days notice to you. You may not assign your account to another person without our written consent.
• Waiver: if we do not enforce a particular right under these Terms in one instance, that does not waive our right to enforce it later.
• Entire agreement: these Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any service-specific terms presented at the time you subscribe, are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service.

16. Contact

Questions about these Terms: hello@haile.nz

Postal: Nowtech Limited, 66 Centennial Drive, Whitianga 3510, New Zealand.