SMS Terms of Service

1. Who is texting you

VERA is a business operations product made by Vera Labs LLC. Contractors and small businesses use it to run their jobs, and one of the things it does is send and receive text messages with their customers and their crews.

The business you dealt with decides what is sent and to whom. Vera Labs LLC operates the platform and registers the sending numbers with the carriers on behalf of those businesses. Delivery is carried out by Twilio and by your own mobile carrier.

Every automated text carries the business's name, and the first message a number ever receives from a business also carries the instruction for how to stop. If you cannot tell who a message is from, reply HELP and the system will answer with the business name and how to opt out.

2. What the messages are

There is no bulk or broadcast program here. Messages are tied to a specific job, appointment, estimate, or invoice that involves you.

• Customer messages. The messages a business can have VERA send to a customer are limited to this list: appointment reminder, on my way, estimate ready, estimate follow-up, invoice reminder, overdue invoice, job completed, review request, missed-call text-back. Each of these is triggered by something that happened on your job.
• Crew messages. If you work for a business that uses VERA, the messages sent to you as a team member are limited to this list: new job assignment, schedule change, morning schedule, upcoming job reminder, missing photos, end-of-day check-in.
• Replies typed by a person. A business owner or an employee can also type a reply to you by hand, in the same conversation. Those are ordinary two-way messages and are not automated.
• Promotional messages. Promotions, seasonal offers, and referral campaigns are a separate category with a separate permission. A business cannot send you one on the strength of you agreeing to appointment reminders. See the Mobile Messaging Opt-In Policy.

3. How you came to receive these messages

A business may text you about your job because you gave that business your mobile number in the course of hiring it, requesting an estimate, booking an appointment, or contacting it. It may also be because you texted the business first, or texted START to resume messages after previously stopping them.

You are never enrolled by VERA. Consent is held by the business that collected it, recorded against your phone number, and the record includes where the business says it came from. Consent to be texted is never a condition of buying anything.

4. Message frequency

Message frequency varies. There is no fixed recurring schedule: messages happen when something on your job happens, such as an appointment approaching, a crew being on the way, an estimate going out, or an invoice coming due. Most jobs produce a handful of messages in total.

5. What it costs

Message and data rates may apply. Neither VERA nor the business charges you for the messages, but your mobile carrier may charge you for sending and receiving text and picture messages under your plan. Check with your carrier if you are unsure.

6. How to stop messages

Reply STOP, STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT, OPTOUT or OPT-OUT to any message from the business. Any one of those words is honored.

You will receive one confirmation message telling you that you are unsubscribed, and then nothing further. That confirmation is the only message sent after an opt-out.

Stopping is immediate and does not wait for anyone at the business to act on it. Once a number has opted out, VERA blocks messages to it, including a reply an employee tries to type by hand, and shows them the reason rather than sending it.

If you change your mind, reply START, UNSTOP, YES, OPTIN or OPT-IN to the same number and messages resume.

Opting out of one business does not opt you out of another. Each business's messages are governed by its own consent record.

7. How to get help

Reply HELP or INFO to any message. You will get an automatic reply naming the business, what the number is used for, and how to opt out.

For anything the automatic reply does not answer, contact the business directly. If you need to reach the platform rather than the business, write to support@myvera.io.

8. Delivery and carriers

Mobile carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages. Delivery depends on your carrier, your device, and your coverage, none of which VERA controls.

VERA does not claim a message was delivered when it was not. Where a message could not be sent, the sending business sees that it failed rather than seeing it marked as sent.

9. Eligibility and your number

This messaging is for United States and Canadian mobile numbers, and is intended for people aged 18 or older. Do not provide a number you are not authorized to give.

If you give up a mobile number or transfer it to someone else, tell the business, or reply STOP from the number, so that messages meant for you do not reach whoever holds the number next.

10. Privacy

Mobile phone numbers and text messaging consent collected for these programs are never sold, rented, or shared with third parties or affiliates for their own marketing or promotional purposes. Phone numbers are shared only with the messaging carrier that delivers the message, and with service providers acting on our instructions, in order to send the message you asked for.

What is done with the content of the messages, how long it is kept, and the rights you have over it are covered by the Privacy Policy and, for information a business holds about you, by that business's own privacy notice. The Mobile Messaging Opt-In Policy describes consent handling in detail.

11. If you are the business sending the messages

These terms describe what your customers are told. Your own obligations sit alongside them, and they are yours rather than ours because the consent is yours.

• Collect real consent. Only text people who gave you their mobile number for that purpose, with disclosure of what they will receive. Never buy, rent, or scrape a list and load it into VERA.
• Keep the record. Record consent in VERA against the number, with a truthful source. Where a person opts out by any other route, such as telling your crew in person, record that too. VERA can only honor what it knows.
• Keep marketing separate. Promotional texts require their own opt-in. Operational consent is not marketing consent, and the product enforces that separation rather than trusting the setting.
• Identify yourself. Do not remove your business name or the opt-out instruction from a message. Both are what make an opt-out possible.
• Register accurately. The business details you submit for carrier registration must be your real legal entity and address. A registration built on inaccurate details is rejected by the carriers, and misuse of a registered number can suspend messaging for your account.
• Prohibited content. Carriers prohibit certain categories outright, including messages about cannabis, prescription drugs sold without a prescription, firearms, gambling, high-risk lending, debt collection, and get-rich-quick schemes. Sending them through VERA is a breach of the Acceptable Use Policy as well as of carrier rules.

12. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the product or the carrier rules change. The effective date at the top of this page shows when the current version took effect, and the change history at the bottom records what moved. Continuing to receive messages after a change means the updated terms apply.

13. Contact

Questions about a specific message are best answered by the business that sent it. For questions about the platform, write to support@myvera.io.

Vera Labs LLC, 8605 Santa Monica Blvd, PMB 241295, West Hollywood, California 90069-4109 US