Terms of Service

Agency, you, your

the estate agency or letting agency business that opens an Account. If an individual signs up on behalf of a business, that individual confirms they have authority to bind the business.

Duty Agent, we, us, our

[LEGAL ENTITY NAME], a company registered in England and Wales with company number [COMPANY NUMBER], whose registered office is at [REGISTERED ADDRESS], trading as Duty Agent.

Account

the Agency's customer record with us, including the Branches attached to it and the email addresses that receive the Digest.

Branch

one advertised telephone line that we answer for one physical office of the Agency. In practice this is one Rightmove branch registration. A multi-office Agency has one Branch per diverted line. There is no cap on staff headcount per Branch.

Service

the AI receptionist described in clause 3, together with the Digest, the call log page and support.

AI Receptionist

the automated voice agent that answers calls diverted to us from a Branch.

Caller

any person who calls a Branch line while it is diverted to us.

Call Data

the audio recording, transcript, caller telephone number, time and duration of a call, and any details the Caller states during the call (for example name, budget, areas of interest, move-in timing, the property they are asking about).

Digest

the email we send to the Agency each morning, aiming for 8am, listing each call with a link to its recording and transcript, captured leads, viewing requests and callbacks needed.

Divert

the divert-on-no-answer or out-of-hours divert that the Agency sets on its own telephone line so that calls reach us. The Agency owns the line and the divert. We do not port numbers.

Founding Partner Pilot or Pilot

the introductory offer in clause 6.

Billing Month

the monthly period starting on the date a Branch is activated and ending the day before the same date the following month.

Fees

the amounts in clause 5.

Data Processing Addendum or DPA

the data processing terms at /legal/dpa, which form part of these Terms.

Working Day

Monday to Friday, excluding bank holidays in England.

2.1 These Terms are a contract between the Agency and Duty Agent. They apply from the moment the Agency opens an Account or activates a Branch, whichever is first.

2.2 The Service is sold to businesses only. By opening an Account you confirm you are acting in the course of a business and not as a consumer.

2.3 These Terms, the Privacy Notice, the Refunds and Cancellation Policy and the DPA together form the whole agreement. If they conflict, the DPA wins on data protection matters and these Terms win on everything else.

2.4 No other terms, including any terms on the Agency's purchase order, apply unless we agree to them in writing.

3.1 What we do. When a Branch line is diverted to us, the AI Receptionist answers the call, tells the Caller at the start of the call that it is an AI, asks the Caller what they need, qualifies applicants (renting or buying, budget, areas, timing), answers basic questions about the Agency's listings using only the listing data the Agency has provided or made public, takes viewing requests, records and transcribes the call, and includes it in the next Digest. Where a Caller describes an emergency (for example a leak, flood, lock-out or loss of heating) the AI Receptionist attempts to transfer the call to the human number the Agency has configured.

3.2 What we do not do. The Service does not:

(a) give legal, financial, valuation, tax, mortgage or regulated advice to anyone;

(b) confirm viewings, tenancies, offers or prices. It takes requests for the Agency to confirm;

(c) write to the Agency's CRM, diary, calendar or any other system. The Digest email is the only integration;

(d) make outbound calls to anyone, other than transferring a live call as described in clause 3.1;

(e) send SMS or WhatsApp messages;

(f) act as an emergency service. See clause 3.5.

3.3 The AI can make mistakes. The AI Receptionist is an automated system. It may mishear, misunderstand or misrecord what a Caller says, and it may occasionally fail to follow its instructions. The Agency must treat the Digest and transcripts as notes to be checked by a person, not as confirmed facts.

3.4 No guarantee of answering every call. We aim to answer every diverted call promptly. We do not guarantee that every call will be answered, that any call will be answered within a particular time, or that any particular outcome will be captured. Calls can be lost through faults in the Agency's own divert, the public telephone network, our telephony provider, or our own systems. We aim to send the Digest by 8am each morning; that time is a target, not a guarantee.

3.5 Emergencies. Duty Agent is not an emergency service. Where the AI Receptionist detects an emergency it will attempt to transfer the call to the Agency's configured on-call number. If no on-call number is configured, or the transfer fails, the AI Receptionist tells the Caller to contact the emergency services on 999 if there is a danger to life or property, and records the call for the Digest. The Agency must keep its on-call number current and answered.

3.6 The Agency remains responsible for its Callers. The Agency stays responsible for its own tenants, landlords, applicants, vendors and buyers, for acting on the Digest, and for meeting its own legal and professional obligations to them (including any repair, safety or redress obligations). We are a message-taking service.

3.7 No automated decisions with significant effect. The AI Receptionist does not accept or reject applicants, offers or tenancies. Any qualification it records is information for a member of the Agency's staff to act on.

4.1 The Agency must provide accurate details when opening the Account and keep them current, including the Digest email addresses, the on-call transfer number, opening hours and the listings source.

4.2 One Branch is one advertised line for one office. The Agency may not divert more than one advertised line to a single Branch subscription. Hybrid or online agencies with one virtual office pay the same as a physical office.

4.3 If a Branch's call volume exceeds 1,500 minutes in a Billing Month we may contact the Agency to agree a different price for that Branch. We will not change the price without agreement.

4.4 The Agency is responsible for setting, testing and, when it wishes, removing the Divert on its own line. We supply a one-page divert sheet for common BT and PBX systems. We do not port numbers and never take control of the Agency's line.

4.5 The Agency must make sure its own privacy notices tell Callers that calls diverted out of hours are answered by an AI service on the Agency's behalf and are recorded, and must not instruct us to remove the AI disclosure or the recording notice from the call.

4.6 The Agency must keep its login and magic-link emails secure and tell us at once if it believes the Account has been accessed without authority.

5.1 Standard price. £199 per Branch per Billing Month.

5.2 VAT. [VAT STATUS]. Where VAT applies it is charged in addition at the prevailing rate.

5.3 Currency and payment. All prices are in pounds sterling. Fees are payable monthly in advance by the payment method set up on the Account. The first Fee is taken when a Branch is activated and then on the same date each month.

5.4 Failed payment. If a payment fails we will tell you and retry. If the Fee remains unpaid 7 days after the start of a Billing Month we may suspend the Branch (calls will then follow the Agency's own divert settings, not ours) until payment is made.

5.5 Price changes. We may change the standard price by giving at least 30 days' notice by email. A change never applies to a Billing Month that has already started. If you do not accept the new price, cancel under clause 7 before it takes effect.

5.6 Invoices. We send a VAT invoice or receipt by email for each payment.

6.1 The Pilot is available to the first ten Branches that activate. Places are allocated in the order Branches are activated and we may close the offer at any time once ten places are taken.

6.2 The Pilot price is £99 per Branch per Billing Month for the Branch's first two Billing Months (the "60 days"), in place of the standard price. The Pilot covers out-of-hours call handling only.

6.3 From the third Billing Month the Branch moves to the standard price of £199 per Billing Month, unless the Agency cancels under clause 7 before the second Billing Month ends. We will email a reminder at least 7 days before the second Billing Month ends.

6.4 The Agency may cancel a Pilot Branch at any time during the first two Billing Months. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the Billing Month already paid for. There is no charge for cancelling.

6.5 We may ask a Pilot Agency for a short review or reference once the Pilot ends. Giving one is voluntary and is not a condition of the Pilot price.

6.6 Pilot places are per Branch, not per Agency. An Agency may take more than one place while places remain.

7.1 There is no minimum term. The Agency may cancel any Branch, or the whole Account, at any time by emailing hello@dutyagent.co.uk from an email address on the Account.

7.2 Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current Billing Month. We do not charge for the following month. We do not refund the part of a Billing Month already started, except as set out in the Refunds and Cancellation Policy.

7.3 On cancellation the Agency must remove the Divert on its own line using the divert sheet. Until the Agency does so, calls may continue to reach our number. After the cancellation date we will answer such calls only with a short message that the number is no longer in service and the Caller should contact the Agency directly.

7.4 Recordings and transcripts remain available to the Agency for [POST-CANCELLATION DAYS] days after cancellation. After that we delete them, as described in the DPA and the Refunds and Cancellation Policy.

8.1 The Agency must not use the Service, and must not ask us to configure the Service:

(a) to make outbound marketing calls or any other outbound calls;

(b) to record calls unlawfully, including by removing or muting the recording notice;

(c) to hide from Callers that they are speaking to an AI;

(d) to collect special category data (for example health, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation) beyond what a Caller volunteers, or to ask questions designed to elicit it;

(e) to discriminate against Callers on any protected ground, including by instructing the AI Receptionist to screen applicants by such grounds;

(f) for any property or business other than the Agency's own;

(g) in breach of any law, including the Equality Act 2010, the Estate Agents Act 1979, the Tenant Fees Act 2019, the Renters' Rights Act 2025 and letting agent redress and client money rules.

8.2 We may suspend a Branch immediately if we reasonably believe clause 8.1 has been breached, and will tell you why.

9.1 Ownership. Call Data belongs to the Agency. The Agency is the controller of Callers' personal data and we act as its processor, as set out in the DPA.

9.2 Licence to us. The Agency grants us a non-exclusive licence to process Call Data for the purpose of providing the Service, including recording, transcribing, summarising, storing and sending it to the Agency, and to use aggregated statistics that do not identify any Caller or Agency to improve and describe the Service.

9.3 We do not share recordings. A recording is shared only with the Agency it belongs to. We do not sell Call Data, use it for advertising, or use it to train a general AI model. Our sub-processors process it only to deliver the Service.

9.4 Retention. Unless the Agency asks for a shorter period, we keep Call Data for [RETENTION MONTHS] months from the date of the call, then delete it. The Agency can download recordings and transcripts from the call log page at any time during that period.

9.5 Account data. We are the controller of the data we hold about the Agency's staff (names, work emails, phone numbers, login records, billing records). Our Privacy Notice explains how we use it.

10.1 We provide the Service on a best-efforts basis. During the Pilot and until we say otherwise in writing there is no service level agreement, no uptime commitment and no service credits.

10.2 We rely on third-party telephony, hosting and AI providers. Their outages affect the Service and are outside our control.

10.3 We may take the Service offline for maintenance. Where we can, we will do this outside the hours the Agency has diverted to us and give notice by email.

10.4 Support is by email to hello@dutyagent.co.uk. We aim to reply within 2 Working Days. Complaints are handled under our Contact page.

11.1 We own the Service, the AI Receptionist's conversation design, the software, the Digest format and all related intellectual property. The Agency receives only the right to use the Service under these Terms.

11.2 The Agency owns its name, branding, listing content and Call Data. The Agency grants us a licence to use its name, listing content and tone-of-voice notes so that the AI Receptionist can present itself as answering on the Agency's behalf.

11.3 The Agency may not copy, reverse engineer, resell or white-label the Service.

12.1 Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited under English law.

12.2 Subject to clause 12.1, our total liability to the Agency under or in connection with these Terms, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty or otherwise, is limited to the total Fees the Agency paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.

12.3 Subject to clause 12.1, we are not liable for: loss of profit, revenue, business, contracts or anticipated savings; loss of a sale, letting, applicant or instruction; loss or corruption of data caused by the Agency's own systems or divert; any indirect or consequential loss; or any loss arising from a call that was not answered, was answered late, was mistranscribed, or where the AI Receptionist made an error.

12.4 The Agency indemnifies us against claims by Callers or third parties arising from the Agency's breach of clause 4.5 or clause 8, or from the Agency's own conduct towards its Callers.

12.5 Each party must take reasonable steps to mitigate any loss.

13.1 Either party may end this agreement immediately by written notice if the other party materially breaches it and, where the breach can be put right, fails to do so within 14 days of being asked.

13.2 We may end this agreement immediately if the Agency becomes insolvent, stops trading, or fails to pay Fees within 30 days of them falling due.

13.3 On termination for any reason: the Agency must remove the Divert; access to the call log page ends after the period in clause 7.4; and any clause that by its nature should continue (including clauses 9, 12, 15 and 16) continues.

14.1 We may change these Terms by emailing the Account's contact addresses at least 30 days before the change takes effect and by updating the version at /legal/terms.

14.2 If the Agency does not accept a change, it may cancel under clause 7 before the change takes effect. Continuing to use the Service after the effective date means the Agency accepts the change.

14.3 We may make changes sooner where required by law or to fix a security issue. We will explain why.

15.1 Notices. Notices to us go to hello@dutyagent.co.uk. Notices to the Agency go to the email addresses on the Account. Notices are treated as received on the next Working Day after sending.

15.2 Assignment. The Agency may not transfer this agreement without our written consent. We may transfer it to a successor business that takes on the Service, and will tell the Agency if we do.

15.3 Events outside our control. Neither party is liable for failing to perform because of events outside its reasonable control, including failures of the public telephone network, power, hosting or third-party AI providers.

15.4 Severance. If any clause is found invalid, the rest continues in force.

15.5 No waiver. Not enforcing a right does not waive it.

15.6 Third parties. No one other than the Agency and Duty Agent has any right to enforce these Terms. Callers are not parties to this agreement.

16.1 These Terms and any dispute arising from them are governed by the law of England and Wales.

16.2 The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction, except that we may bring proceedings to recover unpaid Fees in any court with jurisdiction over the Agency.