Terms of Service

1. Who we are

Pikkolo Pinyin is a Mandarin learning site operated by Rosemary Neil, a sole trader based in New South Wales, Australia. Throughout these terms, "we", "us" and "our" mean Pikkolo Pinyin, and "you" means the person using the site.

You can reach us any time at hello@pikkolopinyin.com.

2. Agreeing to these terms

By using pikkolopinyin.com or buying access to it, you agree to these terms. If you don't agree with them, please don't use the site.

Pikkolo Pinyin is for anyone learning Mandarin, at any age. Purchases must be made by someone aged 18 or over. Younger learners are welcome to use it with the permission of a parent or guardian, who is responsible for their use of the site.

3. What you're buying

Lifetime Books is a single payment of $14.95. It includes every story, word list and study guide on the site, plus new HSK levels as they're released, for as long as the site runs. It does not include talking with Pikkolo.

Plus includes everything in Lifetime Books and adds spoken practice with Pikkolo. It is $9.95 per month, or $79 per year, for as long as you keep it.

If you already have Lifetime Books, you can add spoken practice on its own for $4.95 per month.

Talking with Pikkolo is sold as a subscription rather than as part of the one-time purchase because each spoken reply is generated on demand and carries a cost to us every time, which a single payment cannot cover indefinitely.

All prices are in US dollars.

Some parts of the site are free to use without paying, including 5 turns a day with Pikkolo. We may change which parts those are at any time.

Spoken practice is subject to fair use. If someone's usage is far beyond normal personal study we may ask them to move to a suitable plan, and in the meantime Pikkolo may reply in writing rather than out loud. We will always tell you before this happens.

4. What "lifetime" means

Lifetime Books means your access to the books doesn't expire and you'll never be charged again for them — for as long as Pikkolo Pinyin operates. We intend to run it for many years, but we can't honestly promise a service will exist forever.

If we ever had to close the site permanently, we'd give lifetime members at least 90 days' notice by email and make the content you'd paid for available to download where we reasonably can.

5. Your account

Access is tied to an account. Create one with the same email address you paid with and your purchase attaches to it automatically — sign in on any device and everything you've bought is there.

Your account is for you and the people in your household. Please don't post the login publicly, sell it, or hand it round beyond that. Where an account is clearly being shared widely, or used automatically, we may limit or suspend it.

Forgotten your password? Use the reset link on the sign-in page. If you paid with a different address from the one you signed up with, email us and we'll join the two together.

6. Talking with Pikkolo

Pikkolo is an AI, not a person and not a teacher. He is there to give a learner someone patient to speak Mandarin with, and he is good at that — but he can be wrong, mishear a word, or say something that doesn't quite fit. Treat what he says as practice, not as a lesson to be trusted without checking.

The feature needs your voice to work. When you speak, a short recording is sent to Google to be understood and to ElevenLabs to be spoken back. We keep no recording and no transcript — only a count of how many turns you have used. Our Privacy Policy sets this out in full, and it's worth reading before you start.

An account is required to use it at all. If a younger learner is using your account, that's your call to make and your responsibility to supervise. Everything else on the site works without the chat.

Please don't try to make Pikkolo produce content that is unlawful or hateful, or push the conversation somewhere a learning site has no business going. Accounts used that way may be suspended.

7. How you may use the content

The stories, illustrations, audio, translations and study materials on Pikkolo Pinyin belong to us or our licensors. Your purchase gives you a personal, non-transferable licence to use them for your own learning and your household's.

• You may read, listen, print pages, and use the material for your own learning and that of others in your household.
• You may not republish, redistribute, resell or upload our content elsewhere.
• You may not use our content to train machine learning models, or scrape the site in bulk.
• You may not remove or obscure credits or notices on the material.

8. Schools and tutors

A personal purchase covers one household. If you'd like to use Pikkolo Pinyin with a class, a tutoring business or a library, get in touch at hello@pikkolopinyin.com — we're glad to sort out something that works.

9. Payments

Payments are handled by Lemon Squeezy, which acts as the merchant of record for every order. That means Lemon Squeezy sells the product to you on our behalf, handles sales tax, VAT and GST worldwide, and issues your invoice.

We never see or store your card details. Your card statement and receipt will reference Lemon Squeezy alongside Pikkolo Pinyin.

Monthly subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel. You can cancel any time using the link in your receipt email, and you'll keep access until the end of the period you've already paid for.

We may change our prices, but a change never affects a Lifetime purchase you've already made. Existing subscribers will get at least 14 days' notice by email before a price change applies to them.

If you bought the lifetime bundle while it was described as including everything on the site, that is what you keep, including spoken practice with Pikkolo, at no extra cost. Splitting the chat into its own plan applies only to purchases made afterwards.

10. Refunds

We offer a 14-day refund on Lifetime Books, and we handle other situations case by case. The details are on our Refunds page, which forms part of these terms.

11. Availability and changes

We add and improve content regularly, so the site changes over time. Occasionally stories may be revised, replaced or retired as we improve them.

We aim to keep the site running smoothly but can't guarantee it will always be available or error-free. Maintenance, outages at our hosting provider, and the occasional bug are all facts of life on the web.

Story audio is generated with a high-quality AI voice rather than recorded by a person. A small number of the newest stories are still being processed and fall back to your browser's built-in speech until their audio is ready, which sounds different from device to device.

12. Acceptable use

Please don't:

• Attempt to break, overload or gain unauthorised access to the site.
• Use bots or automated tools to download the site in bulk.
• Circumvent or attempt to circumvent the paywall, or share an account to avoid paying.
• Automate, script or resell access to talking with Pikkolo.
• Use the site for anything unlawful.

13. Your rights under Australian law

Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any guarantee, right or remedy you have under the Australian Consumer Law or any other law that cannot be excluded. If you're entitled to a remedy under those laws, you have it regardless of anything written here.

Where it's permitted, our liability for a failure to meet a consumer guarantee is limited to supplying the service again or paying the cost of having it supplied again.

14. Liability

Subject to section 12, Pikkolo Pinyin is provided "as is". We don't warrant that the content is free of errors, and we're not liable for indirect or consequential loss.

Where our liability can be limited, it is limited to the amount you have paid us in the 12 months before the claim.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the site grows. The "last updated" date at the top always reflects the current version, and if we make a significant change we'll say so on the site or by email.

16. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia. Disputes are subject to the courts of New South Wales, though we'd much rather sort anything out by email first.