Terms of Service — Me Journal

Document control · Version 1.0 · Classification Confidential — Legal · Created 2026-05-22 · Last updated 2026-06-07 · Owner N (Astronero Ltd) · Next review 2026-12-04 · Location legal/TERMS_OF_SERVICE.md

| Version | Date | Author | Summary of change | |---|---|---|---| | 1.0 | 2026-06-07 | N / Claude | Doc-control header added; content pre-existing |

Last updated: 2026-06-01 Effective date: to be set when published Operator: Astronero Ltd, a private company limited by shares registered in England & Wales (Companies House number 15024376, incorporated 24 July 2023).

⚠️ DRAFT — NOT YET LEGALLY REVIEWED. This document was prepared by an AI assistant. It is not legal advice. Me Journal sells to users worldwide and treats the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union with equal weight — no jurisdiction is an afterthought — so this draft addresses US law (including California-specific requirements), UK law, and EU consumer law in balance. Before publication it must be reviewed and finalised by qualified counsel — a lawyer competent in US (ideally California) consumer law as well as English/EU law. The points needing a lawyer's decision are listed in the "Notes for the reviewing lawyer" box at the end. Section 19 contains a binding arbitration agreement and a class-action waiver for US users — please read it.

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and Astronero Ltd ("Me Journal", "we", "us", or "our"). They govern your access to and use of the Me Journal app and website at https://me-journal.com (together, the "Service").

In plain terms: Me Journal is a private journaling app. What you write is encrypted so that only you can read it. These Terms explain the rules for using the Service, what you pay, how subscriptions and refunds work, the limits of what the Service is for, and — for US users — how disputes are resolved. The plain-language notes are here to help; the full text of each section is what binds.

1. Agreement to these Terms

By creating an account or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

When you sign up, we also ask you to make specific, separate consent choices (for example, to the processing of journal and mood data, which may reveal health information). Those choices are described at sign-up and in the Privacy Policy; they are in addition to your acceptance of these Terms.

If you are using the Service on behalf of an organisation, you confirm you have authority to bind that organisation, and "you" includes that organisation.

2. About Me Journal

Me Journal is a personal journaling and self-reflection tool. Depending on your plan, the Service may include:

daily journaling (typed and voice-to-text);
mood logging and gratitude practice;
a free meditation library;
the Future Self – Foundation guided programme (paid);
the Future Self – Journey programme and the book Your Future Self Called (paid, Journey tier);
optional AI-generated reflections and a periodic synthesis of your own entries; and
reminders and notifications.

What Me Journal is not: the Service is a wellbeing and journaling tool. It is not therapy, counselling, medical or mental-health advice, or a crisis or emergency service, and it is not a substitute for professional care. Section 10 explains this in full — please read it.

3. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old to use Me Journal. The Service is intended for adults. By creating an account you confirm that you are 18 or older.

If you are under 18, please do not create an account or use the Service. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18; if we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18 we will close it and delete the data (see the Privacy Policy).

The SOS / emergency-contact feature is for adults only. You must be 18 or older to set it up or use it, and everyone you add as an emergency contact must also be an adult (18 or older). Do not add anyone under 18 as an emergency contact, and do not set up or use the feature for, or on behalf of, anyone under 18.

Where the Service is available. Me Journal is offered in most countries of the world, with some exceptions. First, we do not offer the Service in the EU/EEA until we have appointed a representative under Article 27 of the EU GDPR. Second, we are not yet open in a small number of countries with strict data-protection regimes, which we will open only as their local requirements are met — currently Switzerland, South Korea, India, the United Arab Emirates, the Philippines, China, Turkey, Thailand, South Africa, Egypt and Chile. The Service is also not available to any person located in, resident in, or a citizen of a country or territory subject to comprehensive sanctions — currently Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine — nor to any person or entity on a sanctions or restricted-party list (including OFAC, UK, EU and UN lists), nor in any place where our payment provider cannot lawfully process payments. We check the country your sign-up appears to come from, and you agree not to use a VPN, proxy or other means to misrepresent your location in order to sign up from a place where the Service is not offered. This check is not foolproof, so these eligibility terms — and our decision not to market the Service in the EU/EEA — apply whether or not the check lets a sign-up through. If you already hold an account and travel abroad, you keep your access: the country check applies at sign-up, not on every visit, except where we must restrict access to comply with sanctions law.

4. Your account and your two passwords

To use the Service you create a registered account. You agree to provide accurate information and to keep it up to date.

Me Journal uses two separate passwords, and it is important you understand the difference:

Your sign-in password logs you into your account. If you forget it, you can reset it through the normal sign-in flow.
Your vault password is the key to your encrypted journal (see Section 7). It is separate from your sign-in password. We never receive it and we cannot reset it. If you forget it and have not saved a recovery code, your encrypted content cannot be recovered by anyone, including us. We make this clear when you set up your vault and ask you to acknowledge it.

You are responsible for keeping both passwords secure and for all activity under your account. Tell us immediately at security@me-journal.com if you suspect unauthorised access.

Accounts and subscriptions are for a single named user. You may not sell, share, transfer, or sub-license your account or subscription, and you may not hold more than one account.

5. Subscriptions, trials, billing, and automatic renewal

5.1 Plans

Me Journal offers a free plan and paid plans:

Free — core journaling, mood and gratitude features.
Future Self – Foundation — the Foundation programme and related content.
Future Self – Journey — everything in Foundation, plus the advanced programme, the book, and the AI Future Self guide.

Paid plans are annual only. Current prices are shown at https://me-journal.com/#pricing. Applicable taxes are added where required by law.

5.2 Free trial

Each paid plan begins with a free trial — 14 days for Foundation, 30 days for Journey. We collect your payment details at checkout, but no charge is taken during the trial. If you cancel before the trial ends, you are never charged.

5.3 Automatic renewal — please read

Your subscription automatically renews. By starting a paid subscription (including by allowing a free trial to convert) you agree to the following, and we present these terms clearly at checkout for your affirmative consent:

The trial converts to a paid subscription automatically. Unless you cancel before the trial ends, at the end of the trial your payment method is charged the then-current annual price for your plan, and the subscription begins.
It renews each year automatically. At the end of each annual term, your subscription renews for another year and your payment method is charged the then-current annual price for your plan (see Section 5.4 on price changes), unless you cancel before the renewal date.
You can cancel at any time, easily and online — see Section 6.1. You do not have to call or email anyone; cancellation is available online in your account, by the same kind of simple online action you used to subscribe.
We send you a reminder by email before you are charged — before a free trial converts, and before each annual renewal — so a charge never comes as a surprise.

This Section is written to meet automatic-renewal disclosure laws, including:

California Automatic Renewal Law (Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §17600 et seq.)
FTC "Click-to-Cancel" Rule (16 CFR Part 425, in force 2024)
UK Consumer Rights Act 2015 + Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013
EU Directive 2011/83 on consumer rights, as modernised by Directive 2019/2161 ("Omnibus Directive")

You may cancel before the renewal date by the online method in Section 6.1.

5.4 Price changes

We may change our prices. If a change would affect what you pay at your next renewal, we will give you clear advance notice (at least 30 days) by email, so that you can decide whether to continue or cancel before the change takes effect. Your existing paid term is never re-priced part-way through.

5.5 Payment

Payments are processed by Stripe. By providing payment details you authorise us, through Stripe, to charge the applicable fees and taxes. You are responsible for keeping your payment details current; we are not responsible for bank or card charges you incur. If a payment fails, we may suspend paid access until it is resolved.

5.6 Referral credits

From time to time we may offer account credit for referring a new subscriber. The following terms apply to any such credit:

What it is. A referral credit is a discount applied to your Me Journal account. It is not cash, has no cash value, and is not redeemable for money. It cannot be withdrawn, transferred, sold, or assigned to anyone else, and it cannot be combined except as we expressly allow.
How it is earned. A credit is earned only when a person you referred starts a paid subscription that completes its first payment and is not later refunded, charged back, or cancelled within any applicable cooling-off period. A self-referral, or a referral of an account you also control, does not qualify.
Amount. Where offered, the credit is a fixed amount in your billing currency (for example £5 / $5 / €5) per qualifying referral, as shown in the app at the time. The same numeric amount applies per currency; we do not convert between currencies.
How it is applied. Credit is applied automatically against your next subscription invoice. If your credit exceeds an invoice, the remainder stays on your account for future invoices. Credit only has effect while you hold (or take out) a paid subscription; it is not paid out if you remain on, or return to, the free tier.
Expiry. Unused credit may expire after a period we tell you about at the time of the offer. Expired credit is not reinstated.
Fair use / anti-abuse. We may withhold, reduce, reverse, or cancel credit — and suspend participation — where we reasonably suspect fraud, manipulation, fake or duplicate accounts, or other abuse of the programme.
Changes. Referral credit is a discretionary promotion. We may change, pause, or end the programme, or vary these terms, at any time; changes do not affect credit already validly applied to an invoice.

Drafting note (not part of the published Terms): this clause is an assistant-drafted starting point and must be reviewed and signed off by a qualified lawyer before launch, alongside the consumer-promotion rules in each market served.

6. Cancellation and refunds

6.1 How to cancel

You can cancel a paid subscription at any time through the billing portal linked from your account settings (an online, self-service cancellation — no phone call or email required), or by emailing support@me-journal.com. Cancelling stops the renewal — you keep paid access until the end of the period you have already paid for, and the account then moves to the Free plan. No data is deleted when you cancel or downgrade.

6.2 Refunds

During the free trial — no charge has been taken, so there is nothing to refund. Cancel before the trial ends and you are never billed.
After the trial — the annual plan is billed for the year. If you then cancel, we do not provide a pro-rata refund for the unused part of the term; instead you keep full access until the end of the period you paid for.
Bereavement — where a subscriber's death is verified through our bereavement process, we will, as a matter of compassion, offer a pro-rata refund of the unused remainder of the term and stop billing (see Section 15).
We may also issue refunds at our discretion — for example for a duplicate charge or a fault that prevented access — and we will always honour refunds required by applicable law.

6.3 Your statutory cancellation rights

Nothing in these Terms removes the consumer rights you have by law.

UK consumers have a statutory right to cancel a distance contract within 14 days without giving a reason under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 ("CCRs"). Because every paid plan begins with a free trial of at least 14 days during which no payment is taken, that statutory window is fully covered — you can cancel during the trial and will not be charged.
EU consumers have the equivalent 14-day cooling-off right under EU Directive 2011/83 on consumer rights (as modernised by Directive 2019/2161). Same outcome as the UK: cancel during the trial, no charge.
US consumers retain all cancellation and refund rights granted by federal law and the law of their state, including:
- California's Automatic Renewal Law (ARL, Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §17600 et seq.): the cancellation method must be at least as easy as the sign-up method, and the cancellation must take effect immediately when requested.
- FTC "Click-to-Cancel" Rule (16 CFR §425, in force 2024): online subscriptions must offer an online cancellation that is at least as simple as the online sign-up. Cancellation through the billing portal in Section 6.1 meets each of these requirements: one click + confirm, online, no phone call or email, takes effect immediately.

Subscription cancellation takes effect immediately when you request it — your card is no longer charged. This is a separate process from any account deletion or data erasure (see Privacy Policy § 7.4 + Section 14 below): paid access continues to the end of the period you already paid for unless you also delete the account, and data erasure follows its own timeline (immediate in-app, or a 30-day soft-delete grace if the deletion happens at the identity provider's side).

If you believe a statutory refund or cancellation right is due, email support@me-journal.com.

7. Your content, your privacy, and encryption

7.1 You own your content

The journal entries, mood logs, gratitude entries, programme answers and other content you create in Me Journal are yours. We claim no ownership of them.

7.2 Your content is end-to-end encrypted

What you write is encrypted on your own device, using a key derived from your vault password, before it reaches our servers. We store only the encrypted result. We cannot read, search, analyse, or hand over the content of your journal — not to anyone, and not in response to a legal request, because we do not hold the key.

We do not take any licence to use the content of your entries. The only rights you grant us are the limited, practical rights needed to operate the Service for you — to store and back up the encrypted data and sync it to your devices, and (only if you switch on the optional AI features) to process the specific content those features need, as described in Section 11. We do not use your content to train AI models, sell it, or share it for advertising — ever.

7.3 The trade-off

Because we never hold your vault password, the strong privacy in Section 7.2 comes with a trade-off: if you lose your vault password and have not saved a recovery code, your encrypted content cannot be recovered. This is a deliberate security design, not a fault. We strongly recommend you store your vault password in a password manager and generate a recovery code at setup.

7.4 Privacy

How we handle personal data — including the limited, non-content "metadata" we can see — is set out in our Privacy Policy, which also describes the rights of users in California and other US states. By using the Service you acknowledge that policy.

8. Acceptable use

When you use the Service, you agree not to:

use the Service for any unlawful, harmful, or fraudulent purpose;
reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract the source code, except as permitted by law;
copy, scrape, mass-extract, or systematically download content from the Service;
use the Service, or any content from it, to train machine-learning models or large language models;
use bots, crawlers, or other automated means to access the Service, except for compliant search-engine indexing of public pages;
bypass, or attempt to bypass, security measures, rate limits, payment, or feature gates;
resell, rent, or otherwise commercially exploit the Service or your access to it;
upload content you do not have the right to share, or that infringes the rights of others; or
interfere with, disrupt, or place undue load on the Service or its infrastructure.

Me Journal is a private journaling tool — what you write is yours alone. If a feature ever lets you submit content that others can see, you also agree not to post anything unlawful, abusive, harassing, hateful, or that identifies another person without their consent.

9. Our intellectual property

The Service itself — the software, design, brand, the Me Journal name and logo, the programme curricula, the meditation content, and the book Your Future Self Called and any excerpts of it — is owned by Astronero Ltd or its licensors and is protected by intellectual-property law.

We grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the Service and its content for your own personal, non-commercial use while your account is in good standing. You may not copy, republish, distribute, modify, or create derivative works from our content except as the Service expressly allows or as permitted by law.

If you believe content on the Service infringes your intellectual-property rights — including a copyright claim under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act — contact us at legal@me-journal.com with enough detail to identify the content, your rights, and your contact details, and we will review and respond.

10. Me Journal is not a health or crisis service

Me Journal is a journaling and self-reflection tool. It is not therapy, not counselling, not medical, psychological, or clinical advice, not a diagnosis or treatment, and not a crisis or emergency service. We are not your healthcare provider.

Any reflections, prompts, or AI-generated content are for personal reflection only. They are not professional advice and must not be relied on as such.
Always seek the advice of a qualified health professional for any question about a medical or mental-health condition. Never disregard professional advice, or delay seeking it, because of something in the Service.
The Service is not for use in an emergency. If you are in crisis or in danger, please contact emergency or crisis services now:
- United States — call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline; or call 911 for a medical emergency.
- UK & Ireland — Samaritans: call 116 123 (free, 24/7).
- Elsewhere — your local emergency number, or find a helpline at https://findahelpline.com.
The Service includes a feature that surfaces crisis resources when it detects certain keywords. This is a courtesy safety prompt — not a clinical screening or monitoring tool, and not something you should rely on. Because your entries are encrypted, we cannot read them and cannot see if you are struggling.

A note on meditation and movement content: wellbeing content is not a guaranteed therapeutic benefit. If you have a physical or mental-health condition, speak to your healthcare provider before relying on it. You take part in any meditation, breathing, or movement activity at your own discretion.

Safety features — SOS, grounding tools, and emergency contacts. Me Journal may offer optional safety features — for example an SOS / alert button that tries to notify the people you have chosen and to show an in-app alarm, a set of grounding and panic tools (such as box breathing, the 5-4-3-2-1 senses exercise, and colour counting), and an emergency-contacts directory where you can store the details of people you want to reach. If you allow it, the SOS button can also include a one-time link to your approximate location at the moment you press it, so the people you alert can see roughly where you are. These features are provided "as is" and "as available", as a convenience and a self-help aid only.

Please understand their limits before you rely on them:

They are not an emergency, crisis, medical, or monitoring service, not a substitute for professional or emergency help, and no one is watching for your alerts on our side.
They depend on things outside our control — your device, its battery and settings, your internet or mobile connection, your operating system, and third-party messaging and push-notification services. For these reasons an alert may be delayed, fail, be blocked, or never arrive, and the people you chose may not see it, may not be available, or may not respond. An in-app alarm needs the app to be open and your device to be on and working.
We do not guarantee that any alert will be delivered, received, seen, or acted on, or that any tool will be available when you need it.
Any location you choose to share is your device's best estimate only — it can be inaccurate, out of date, or unavailable, and is not a precise or reliable position. We ask your permission each time, capture it only when you press SOS, and delete it once you mark yourself safe. Never depend on it to bring help to the right place.

In an emergency, always contact the emergency services directly — call your local emergency number straight away (for example 999 in the UK and Ireland, 112 across the EU, or 911 in the US) — and use the crisis lines listed above. Do not wait for, or depend on, an in-app alert or any Me Journal feature.

These safety features are for adults only: you must be 18 or older to set them up or use them, and by using them you confirm that you are. To the maximum extent permitted by law, and subject to Section 17, Me Journal is not liable for any failure, delay, error, or non-delivery of these features, for the acts or omissions of any person you contact through them, for any use of these features by, or on behalf of, a person under 18, or for any loss or harm arising from your use of, or reliance on, them. Nothing in this paragraph limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited or excluded by law (see Section 17).

11. AI features

Me Journal includes optional AI features (for example AI-generated reflections and a periodic synthesis of your own entries). They are off by default and run only if you switch them on and give the specific consent described at sign-up and in the Privacy Policy. You can withdraw that consent at any time in Settings.

When an AI feature runs, your device decrypts only the content the feature needs, sends it to our AI provider to generate the output, and stores the result back in encrypted form. AI-generated content is clearly labelled as AI-generated. It can be inaccurate or incomplete, and — as stated in Section 10 — it is not advice of any kind. Treat it as a prompt for your own thinking, nothing more.

12. Communications from us

By using the Service you agree that we may communicate with you electronically — by email, in-app messages, and (if you enable them) push notifications.

Service messages — receipts, trial-conversion and renewal reminders, security and account notices, and similar — are part of providing the Service and are not marketing. You cannot opt out of these while you hold an account.
Re-engagement and marketing messages are optional. Where we send them, they include a way to unsubscribe, and we will respect that choice. We handle marketing email consistently with applicable law, including the US CAN-SPAM Act.
If we ever offer SMS/text messaging, it will be opt-in, message-and-data rates may apply, and you can stop messages by replying STOP.

You can manage notification preferences in Settings.

13. Availability, changes, and discontinuation of the Service

We aim to keep the Service available and working well, but we do not guarantee it will be uninterrupted or error-free. We may suspend access for maintenance, updates, or repairs, and we will restore it as soon as we reasonably can.

We may add, change, or remove features over time. If a change would materially reduce what a paid plan delivers, we will give at least 30 days' notice, and you may either continue your current term unaffected or cancel and receive a pro-rata refund for the unused time.

If we discontinue the Service entirely, we will give at least 60 days' notice, make a data export available so you can take your content elsewhere, and refund any pre-paid period beyond the discontinuation date.

14. Suspension and termination

By you. You may stop using the Service at any time. You can cancel a paid subscription as described in Section 6, and you can permanently delete your account and data from Settings → Account (immediate erasure on typed confirmation).

Out-of-band deletion + 30-day recovery window. If your authentication account is deleted at our identity provider's side without going through the in-app erasure flow — for example via the identity provider's user portal, an admin action, or an account compromise — your Me Journal data is not immediately erased. It enters a 30-day soft-delete grace window: the account is locked, paid subscriptions are flagged to cancel at the end of the current billing period, and you can restore the full account by signing in again with the same email and proving knowledge of your vault password (or, for accounts without a vault password, confirming via the recovery screen). After 30 days the data is permanently and irreversibly purged. Full details in the Privacy Policy § 7.4.

By us. We may restrict, suspend, or terminate your access if you materially breach these Terms, if we reasonably suspect fraud or unlawful use, or where we reasonably believe it is necessary to protect other users, the public, or the Service. We will choose the least disruptive measure that addresses the situation, and we will notify you, with a reason where it is lawful and safe to give one.

We may also contact the appropriate authorities if we reasonably believe there is a risk of serious harm to you or to another person.

If your account ends, your right to use the Service stops. What happens to your data is governed by the Privacy Policy and Section 15.

15. Inactive accounts and digital legacy

15.1 Inactive accounts

To avoid keeping personal data indefinitely, an account with no activity for 24 months is closed and its data permanently deleted. Before that point we send reminders — re-engagement emails while the account is idle, then clear deletion warnings in the final months, with a final notice about a week before. Signing in at any time resets the clock. An account with an active paid subscription is not subject to inactivity deletion.

15.2 Digital legacy

You can set, in advance, what should happen to your account after your death, in Settings → Digital Legacy: delete everything, transfer to a nominated contact, or keep the account dormant. A nominated contact must confirm their nomination by email.

Because your journal is end-to-end encrypted, no one — including us — can recover its content unless you personally shared your vault password or recovery code while alive. Our bereavement process can close the account, stop billing, and hand over the unencrypted data to a verified next-of-kin where appropriate — it cannot decrypt your journal.

15.3 Bereavement

If a subscriber dies, a family member or executor can report it at /legal/bereavement or by emailing bereavement@me-journal.com. We review the supporting documents, apply a cooling-off period as a safeguard against mistaken or false reports, and then act on the pre-set digital-legacy preference. The full process and the related retention periods are described in the Privacy Policy. For US users, our process is designed to respect state digital-asset laws (such as the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act).

16. Disclaimers

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Service and all content in it are provided "as is" and "as available", and we disclaim all warranties that are not expressly stated in these Terms — including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement. In particular, we do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or fit for any particular purpose, or that AI-generated content will be accurate or suitable for your situation.

This does not affect your statutory rights. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so some of the above may not apply to you. If you are a consumer in the UK or the EU, you have legal rights — including that a service be supplied with reasonable care and skill — that cannot be excluded or limited, and nothing in these Terms restricts them. US consumers likewise keep any warranty rights that cannot be disclaimed under applicable state or federal law.

17. Limitation of liability

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes our liability for:

death or personal injury caused by our negligence;
fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; or
anything else that cannot be limited or excluded under applicable law, including your non-excludable rights as a consumer.

Subject to that, and to the fullest extent permitted by law:

we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, business, goodwill, data, or opportunity, or for loss or damage that was not reasonably foreseeable; and
our total liability to you for all claims connected with the Service or these Terms is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) USD 100.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of the above may not apply to you. We are also not liable for any failure or delay caused by events beyond our reasonable control (see Section 22).

18. Indemnity

If a third party brings a claim against us because you have used the Service unlawfully or in serious breach of these Terms, you agree to be responsible for the reasonable costs (including reasonable legal costs) we incur in dealing with that claim. This Section does not apply to anything you do as a consumer using the Service in the ordinary, lawful way, and it does not limit your statutory rights.

19. Dispute resolution and arbitration — US users

This Section 19 applies to users in the United States. PLEASE READ IT — it affects how disputes are resolved and limits your rights. It requires individual arbitration and waives your right to a jury trial and to participate in a class action. If you are a consumer in the UK or the EU, Section 19 does not apply to you — your disputes are governed by Section 20, and nothing in these Terms requires you to arbitrate or to give up your right to go to court or to bring or join group proceedings.

19.1 Talk to us first

Most concerns can be resolved quickly. Before starting a formal proceeding, you agree to first contact us at legal@me-journal.com with a short description of the dispute and the resolution you want, and to give us 60 days to resolve it informally. We will do the same before bringing a claim against you.

19.2 Agreement to arbitrate

If the dispute is not resolved within that 60-day period, you and Me Journal agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be resolved by final and binding individual arbitration, rather than in court. The US Federal Arbitration Act governs the interpretation and enforcement of this Section 19.

19.3 Exceptions

This Section 19 does not require arbitration of:

a claim brought in small-claims court, if it qualifies and stays there on an individual basis; or
a request for an injunction or other equitable relief to stop the actual or threatened infringement or misuse of intellectual property.

19.4 Class-action and jury-trial waiver

You and Me Journal agree that each may bring claims against the other only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, consolidated, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person's claims or preside over any form of a class or representative proceeding. You and Me Journal also waive any right to a jury trial. If this waiver of class or representative proceedings is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim — and only that claim — is severed from arbitration and brought in court under Section 20.

19.5 How arbitration works

The arbitration will be administered by an established arbitration provider under its consumer arbitration rules, by a single neutral arbitrator. You may choose for the arbitration to be conducted by document submission, by telephone/video, or in person near your residence. The arbitrator's award is final and binding and may be entered as a judgment in any court of competent jurisdiction. Arbitration filing and arbitrator fees are handled under the provider's consumer rules, with Me Journal paying the share those rules assign to the business.

19.6 Coordinated or "mass" arbitrations

If 25 or more similar arbitration demands are submitted against Me Journal by or with the coordination of the same or coordinated counsel, you and Me Journal agree the demands will be administered in staged batches, and that the administrator's mass-filing or multiple-case rules and fee schedules apply. This keeps large coordinated filings workable; it is not intended to deny or delay any individual's access to arbitration.

19.7 Your right to opt out

You can opt out of this Section 19. To do so, email legal@me-journal.com within 30 days of first accepting these Terms (or of this Section first applying to you), with your name, the email on your account, and a clear statement that you opt out of the arbitration agreement. If you opt out, neither you nor Me Journal can require the other to arbitrate; the rest of these Terms still applies, and disputes are then handled under Section 20.

19.8 Survival and severability

This Section 19 survives termination of your account and of these Terms. If any part of this Section 19 (other than the class-action waiver, which is addressed in Section 19.4) is found unenforceable, that part is severed and the rest of this Section 19 remains in effect.

20. Governing law; courts; EU/UK consumers

These Terms are governed by the law of England & Wales, except that (a) the arbitration agreement in Section 19 is governed by the US Federal Arbitration Act, and (b) nothing in these Terms overrides the mandatory consumer-protection law of the country, or US state, where you live.

US users — disputes are resolved under Section 19 (arbitration). For any matter not subject to arbitration (for example a small-claims matter, or if you have opted out under Section 19.7), you and Me Journal submit to the courts with jurisdiction, and you keep the protection of the mandatory consumer law of your state of residence.
UK and EU consumers — Section 19 does not apply. You can bring proceedings in the courts of England & Wales or in the courts of the country where you live, and you keep the benefit of the mandatory consumer-protection rules of the country where you live.
Non-consumers — the courts of England & Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.

Whoever you are, please contact us first at support@me-journal.com — we would like the chance to put things right — and you may also be able to complain to the consumer-protection or data-protection authority where you live.

21. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms — for example as the Service evolves or the law changes. When we do:

we update the "Last updated" date above;
for material changes (to fees, your rights, our liability, the arbitration agreement, or how the Service works), we give account holders advance notice by email, and where the law requires fresh consent we will ask for it; and
continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms. If you do not accept a change, you may cancel and stop using the Service before it takes effect. A change to Section 19 does not apply to a dispute of which we had notice before the change.

Previous versions are archived at https://me-journal.com/legal/terms/history.

22. General

Entire agreement — these Terms, the Privacy Policy, and any plan-specific terms shown to you at checkout are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service.
Severability — if any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest remains in effect.
No waiver — if we do not enforce a right straight away, we do not lose it.
Assignment — you may not transfer your rights or obligations under these Terms. We may transfer ours to a successor (for example on a sale of the business), provided this does not reduce your rights.
Events beyond our control — we are not liable for any failure or delay in performing our obligations caused by events beyond our reasonable control.
Third-party services — the Service relies on third-party providers (such as our payment, authentication, and hosting providers, listed in our Sub-Processors page). Their own terms may apply to their part of the service.
Notices — we may give you notice by email or within the Service; you give us notice at the contact addresses below.

23. How to contact us

Support and general questions: support@me-journal.com
Legal notices, IP claims, and arbitration opt-out: legal@me-journal.com
Security issues: security@me-journal.com
Privacy and data requests: privacy@me-journal.com
Bereavement: bereavement@me-journal.com
Postal: Astronero Ltd, 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom

Notes for the reviewing lawyer — please focus here

This draft was prepared by an AI assistant and must not be published until qualified counsel has reviewed and finalised it. Me Journal sells worldwide and gives the US, UK and EU equal weight, so this draft addresses all three in balance — a California-aware auto-renewal section and a US-user arbitration agreement, alongside the UK/EU consumer-law protections. It is written to sit consistently with the Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, Security Statement, Sub-Processors page, and the internal SUBSCRIPTION_LIFECYCLE.md policy document. Specific points needing a decision or confirmation:

Competent counsel. Because the US, UK and EU are all in scope — and because of the arbitration agreement — this should be reviewed by counsel competent in US (ideally California) consumer law as well as English/EU law, not by an English solicitor alone.

Entity, domicile, and effective date. The operator is Astronero Ltd, registered in England & Wales (confirmed by the founder, 2026-05-22) — so these Terms are governed by the law of England & Wales and the lead data-protection regulator is the UK ICO. Insert the Companies House company number and registered office address, set the effective date, and confirm the VAT-registration position. The founder is separately weighing an IP-holding-company structure that would license the app's IP to Astronero Ltd; that would not change the contracting party in these Terms (still Astronero Ltd), but counsel should be aware of it.

Arbitration agreement (Section 19). N has chosen to include a binding individual-arbitration agreement and class-action / jury-trial waiver for US users. Counsel must finalise the full clause — name the arbitration provider and rules, confirm the fee allocation, the 60-day informal- resolution and 30-day opt-out mechanics, the mass-arbitration batching, and enforceability after recent case law and any 2025–2026 developments.

Automatic renewal (Section 5.3). Confirm the disclosures satisfy California's Automatic Renewal Law and other US state auto-renewal statutes, the FTC's negative-option / "click to cancel" rule, and EU/UK requirements. NOTE: the Terms alone do not achieve compliance — the checkout flow must present the auto-renewal terms clear-and-conspicuous, obtain separate affirmative consent, and provide an acknowledgement; and online cancellation must be at least as easy as sign-up. Confirm the UI meets this.

Refund position (Section 6). Confirm "no pro-rata refund after the free trial" is compatible with the EU Consumer Rights Directive, the UK Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, and US state law, given the free trial covers the statutory windows.

Governing law (Section 20). This draft keeps the law of England & Wales as the contract default, with the FAA governing Section 19 for US users and mandatory local consumer law preserved. Confirm whether, given that the US, UK and EU markets carry equal weight, a US state governing law is preferable for any segment, and confirm the venue wording.

Limitation of liability (Section 17). Confirm the cap and carve-outs are enforceable, and not "unfair", against consumers in each target market.

Eligibility (Section 3). Confirm the 18+ threshold and how the UK Age Appropriate Design Code and US COPPA apply — see the launch-readiness review and CHILDRENS_CODE_DECISION.

IP claims (Section 9). Confirm whether a full US DMCA notice-and- takedown procedure and a designated DMCA agent should be set out in detail.

Cross-document consistency. Confirm consistency with the Privacy Policy (which must carry CCPA/CPRA and other US state privacy rights), the Cookie Policy, the Security Statement, and the Sub-Processors page, and that all are reviewed together. Note also that the US market widens the compliance picture beyond these Terms — US state "consumer health data" laws may apply to mood/journal data; raise this in the launch-readiness review.

App Store / Google Play billing (roadmap). A native app with Apple / Google in-app billing is planned ("the Native Apps Phase"). This draft is web/Stripe-only and accurate for launch; when in-app billing ships, Sections 5–6 need a channel fork. See APP_STORE_BILLING_PLAN.md.

End-to-end encryption / no post-mortem recovery (Sections 7 and 15). Confirm the position is defensible — it mirrors the same flag in the Privacy Policy.

This document is © 2026 Astronero Ltd. The canonical published version, once finalised, will live at https://me-journal.com/legal/terms.