Last updated: May 6, 2026
These Terms of Service (the "Terms") govern your access to and use of the TeaTime Chinese website, podcast platform and related services (the "Service"). By creating an account or otherwise using the Service, you accept these Terms.
1. Legal information
- Publisher: TEATIMEDIA — sole proprietorship (French micro-entreprise)
- Registered office: 6 Hameau Béranger, 75116 Paris, France
- Registration: SIRET [to be completed] — French National Business Register (RNE)
- VAT: not applicable, art. 293 B of the French Tax Code (VAT exemption regime)
- Publication director: Nathan RAO
- Contact: nathan@teatimechinese.com
- Hosting provider: Hostinger International Ltd., 61 Lordou Vironos Street, 6023 Larnaca, Cyprus — hostinger.com/contact
2. Acceptance and modification
These Terms form a contract between you and the Publisher. We may modify the Terms; we will notify users at least 15 days before material changes take effect. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance.
3. Eligibility
You must be at least 15 years old in France, 16 in EEA member states where local law so provides, or 13 elsewhere, and have legal capacity to contract. Minors must obtain the consent of their legal representative.
4. Account
You must provide accurate information when creating an account and keep your credentials confidential. You are responsible for all activity occurring under your account. Notify us immediately of any unauthorised use. We may suspend or close accounts in case of fraud, security risk or breach of these Terms, with prior notice except where the breach makes notice impossible.
5. The Service
TeaTime Chinese provides Chinese-language podcast episodes, articles, community letters, a partner directory and the option to support the project through voluntary donations. The Service evolves over time; we may add or remove features. Material reductions in feature scope are announced at least 15 days in advance.
6. User-generated content
You retain all rights — including moral rights, which are inalienable under French law — in the content you publish (letters, comments). You grant the Publisher a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, reproduce, display and distribute that content for the purpose of operating and promoting the Service, for the duration of legal protection.
You undertake not to publish content that is illegal, infringing, defamatory, harassing, hateful, sexually explicit involving minors, or that incites violence or discrimination. You warrant that you hold the rights necessary to grant the licence above.
Notice and action. Anyone may report illegal content by writing to nathan@teatimechinese.com. The notice must identify the content, its location and the legal grounds for the complaint. We examine reports diligently and may remove or restrict access to content we consider manifestly illegal, in line with Article 16 of the EU Digital Services Act.
7. Donations
Donations are voluntary and processed through Stripe. They are not in consideration of any specific service. The Publisher is not an organization eligible for tax-deductible donations under articles 200 and 238 bis of the French Tax Code. Donations made on the platform are not eligible for a tax receipt and cannot be deducted from your income tax.
If you subscribe to a recurring donation online as a consumer, French and EU law grants you a 14-day right of withdrawal from the date of subscription (Code de la consommation art. L221-18). You may exercise this right by writing to us; we will refund any amount charged in the past 14 days within 14 days of receiving your notice. One-off donations are gifts and are not refundable except for manifest error (e.g. duplicate charge). You may cancel a recurring donation at any time from your account or by contacting us.
8. Intellectual property
All audio, articles, artwork, logos and other materials produced by or for the Publisher are protected by copyright, trademark and related rights. You may listen, read and share our content for personal, non-commercial use, with proper attribution and a link to the original page. Any other use — republication, transcription for sale, automated extraction, training of machine-learning systems — requires our prior written consent.
9. Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- use the Service in violation of any law;
- circumvent security, authentication or rate-limiting measures;
- scrape, mass-download or generate excessive load on the Service;
- impersonate another person or misrepresent your affiliation;
- upload malicious code or interfere with other users.
10. Third-party services
The Service uses third-party services (Stripe, Brevo, Google) whose terms also apply when you use the corresponding features. We are not responsible for the availability or content of third-party websites linked from the Service.
11. Suspension and termination
You may close your account at any time from your account settings or by writing to us. We may suspend or terminate your access for breach of these Terms, with reasonable notice except in cases of serious or repeated breach. After closure, your data is deleted or anonymised as set out in the Privacy Policy.
12. Warranties
We provide the Service with the care of a reasonable professional. To the extent permitted by law, the Service is provided "as is" and we make no warranty that it will be uninterrupted, error-free or fit for any specific learning goal. Statutory consumer warranties (in particular C. conso art. L217-3 ff. and C. civ. art. 1641 ff. in France) remain unaffected.
13. Limitation of liability
We are liable for direct damages caused by our breach of these Terms or our negligence. To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect or consequential damages, loss of profit, loss of data resulting from your acts, or interruptions caused by force majeure or third-party services. Our aggregate liability towards a user in any 12-month period is limited to the higher of (a) the amount that user donated to us in that period or (b) 100 EUR.
Nothing in these Terms limits our liability for: gross negligence, wilful misconduct, fraud, death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or any other liability that cannot be limited or excluded under applicable law.
14. Force majeure
Neither party is liable for any failure to perform caused by events beyond reasonable control (natural disaster, war, large-scale internet outage, regulatory action), provided that the affected party informs the other and takes reasonable measures to mitigate.
15. Consumer mediation
If you are a consumer and a dispute arises that we cannot resolve directly, you may resort free of charge to consumer mediation. The competent mediator is [MEDIATOR NAME] — [WEBSITE / ADDRESS]. You may also use the European Online Dispute Resolution platform: https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr.
16. Governing law and jurisdiction
These Terms are governed by French law. As a consumer, you keep the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of your country of habitual residence, and you may bring an action either before the courts of [PUBLISHER COUNTRY] or before the courts of your domicile (EU Reg. 1215/2012 art. 18). For all other users, the courts of [CITY, COUNTRY] have exclusive jurisdiction.
17. Severability and entire agreement
If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in force. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and the Publisher regarding the Service.
18. Indemnification
You agree to indemnify the Publisher against third-party claims arising out of content you publish on the Service in breach of these Terms or of applicable law.
19. Contact
Questions about these Terms? Write to nathan@teatimechinese.com.