Policies

Acceptance of Terms: Benjamin McHale Tutoring is a sole proprietorship owned and operated by Benjamin McHale, doing business as "Benjamin McHale Tutoring" ("I," "me," or "the Business"). By booking a session, purchasing a digital product, or subscribing to a plan through this website, you agree to these Terms of Service. If you do not agree, please do not use this service.

Services Provided: Benjamin McHale Tutoring provides one-on-one STEM tutoring and Professional Coaching. Professional Coaching may include interview preparation, public-speaking and presentation coaching, professional communication, and related preparation services. I also offer digital curriculum and professional-development products, including worksheets, reference packets, frameworks, templates, and related materials, sold as one-time purchases or subscriptions. Live tutoring and coaching sessions are conducted at scheduled times agreed upon at booking. Digital product terms are set out separately in the Digital Products & Subscriptions section below, which is incorporated by reference into these Terms.

Eligibility & Accounts: Clients booking sessions on behalf of a minor must be the parent or legal guardian of that minor. Adult clients and students may book on their own behalf. Accounts on this website may be created only by adults (18 or older) or by a parent or legal guardian acting on behalf of a minor student; children under 13 may not create accounts or submit personal information directly. By creating an account or signing in, you agree to these Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy.

Booking and Payment: All sessions require payment in full at the time of booking. Sessions are not confirmed until payment is received. Pricing is as listed on the booking page at the time of booking.

Cancellations and Refunds: Cancellations and refunds for live sessions are governed by the Cancellation Policy below, which is incorporated by reference into these terms.

Conduct: Clients and students are expected to engage respectfully during sessions. I reserve the right to terminate any session or ongoing client relationship at my sole discretion in response to abusive, threatening, or inappropriate behavior, with refund or credit issued at my discretion based on the circumstances.

Educational, Coaching & Outcome Disclaimer: Tutoring sessions, coaching sessions, curriculum packets, LaTeX reference sheets, professional-development materials, and other resources are provided for educational and professional-development purposes only. No specific academic outcome, grade, GPA, test score (including but not limited to ASVAB AFQT or mechanical subtest scores, SAT, ACT, or AP exam scores), interview outcome, job offer, hiring or selection result, admission or appointment decision, scholarship, speaking or presentation performance, or other academic, military, collegiate, or professional result is promised or guaranteed. Each client, student, and parent or guardian remains responsible for their own preparation, decisions, performance, and outcomes.

Intellectual Property & Non-Redistribution Clause: All instructional content—including but not limited to custom LaTeX reference sheets, curriculum reference packets (e.g., Engineering Statics, Calculus II, ASVAB Mechanics), problem set solutions, exported OneNote documents, and virtual session video/audio recordings—remains my exclusive, proprietary intellectual property protected by United States copyright. These digital assets are licensed solely to the purchasing individual or coaching client (and, in the case of a minor student, the student and their parent or guardian within a single household) for personal, non-commercial educational or professional-development use. Any unauthorized copying, public posting, uploading to third-party platforms (such as Course Hero, Chegg, Discord, Google Drive share links, or social media), redistribution, resale, or sharing with outside students or organizations is strictly prohibited. Violation of this license constitutes a material breach of these Terms, resulting in immediate termination of portal and vault access without refund, and may subject the violator to legal liability for copyright infringement.

Limitation of Liability: To the maximum extent permitted by law, my total liability for any claim arising from these services — whether relating to live tutoring sessions, digital products, or subscriptions — is limited to the greater of (a) $100, or (b) the total amount you paid me in the 12 months preceding the claim. I am not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages of any kind.

Disclaimer of Warranties: Services and digital products are provided "as is." I make no warranty that digital products will be uninterrupted or error-free, and I disclaim all implied warranties to the maximum extent permitted by law.

Acceptable Use: You may not attempt to gain unauthorized access to any account, share purchased account credentials with anyone outside your household, scrape or systematically download content, or use the service for any unlawful purpose. I may suspend or terminate access, without refund, for violations of this policy.

Changes to Terms: These terms may be updated from time to time. The current version will always be available at https://benjaminmchale.com/policies. If I make a material change to these terms, I will make reasonable efforts to notify account holders by email before the change takes effect. Continued use of the service after changes constitutes acceptance.

Governing Law: These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles.

Dispute Resolution: If you have a concern or dispute, please contact me first at benjaminm.tutor@gmail.com with a written description of the issue. Both parties agree to attempt to resolve any dispute informally and in good faith for at least 30 days before filing any formal claim. Any claim that cannot be resolved informally must be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts serving Virginia Beach, Virginia, and both parties consent to the jurisdiction of those courts. Notwithstanding the foregoing, either party may bring an individual claim in small claims court where its jurisdictional requirements are met.

Contact: benjaminm.tutor@gmail.com

Payment: Payment is required at the time of booking to reserve your session slot. Booking and payment for live sessions are handled through my third-party scheduling provider, TidyCal (book.benjaminmchale.com). Bookings are not confirmed until payment is received.

Cancellations Outside 24 Hours: Sessions cancelled or rescheduled more than 24 hours before the scheduled start time are eligible for a full credit toward a future session. Credits are issued as a promotional code that can be applied at checkout for any future booking. Credits must be applied to a session that takes place within 90 days of the original cancelled session.

Cancellations Within 24 Hours: Sessions cancelled or rescheduled less than 24 hours before the scheduled start time are forfeited and not eligible for credit or refund. This policy compensates for the inability to fill the reserved time slot on short notice.

No-Shows: Failure to attend a scheduled session without prior notice is treated as a within-24-hour cancellation and is forfeited.

Late Arrivals: Sessions begin at their scheduled time. Time lost due to late arrival cannot be added to the end of the session or made up at a later date.

Instructor Cancellations: In the rare event that I must cancel or reschedule a session, you will receive a full refund to your original payment method within 48 hours, or, at your preference, a credit toward a future session.

Refunds: Monetary refunds are not issued for client-initiated cancellations under any circumstances. All eligible cancellations receive credit only.

Exceptions: Genuine emergencies will be considered on a case-by-case basis at my sole discretion.

What's Sold: Alongside live tutoring and Professional Coaching, I sell one-time "lifetime access" purchases of curriculum bundles, individual subject modules, and, where offered, professional-development resources. I may also offer recurring subscriptions billed monthly or annually for ongoing access to selected materials; the subscription terms below apply only if and when subscriptions are offered for sale. All digital-product payments are processed by Stripe.

Lifetime Purchases — Final Sale: One-time lifetime-access purchases are a final sale. Because you receive immediate, unrestricted access to downloadable digital content, refunds are not guaranteed. I may, at my sole discretion, issue a full or partial refund on a case-by-case basis (for example, a duplicate purchase or a technical failure preventing delivery).

What "Lifetime" Means: "Lifetime access" means access for the operating life of the digital-product service, not a guarantee that the service will operate forever. Files you have already downloaded are yours to keep under the Content License below. If I ever discontinue the digital-product service, I will provide at least 90 days' advance notice by email to purchasers and a final window to download everything you have purchased.

Subscriptions — Cancel Anytime: If and when subscriptions are offered, subscriptions renew automatically each billing period until cancelled. You may cancel at any time through the Billing Portal. Cancelling stops future renewals but does not end your current paid period early — you keep full access through the end of the period you already paid for. Cancellation does not itself entitle you to a prorated or partial refund for the current period.

Refunds Revoke Access: Because digital access is granted immediately, any refund I issue — full or partial, whether requested by you or initiated by the payment processor — immediately and permanently revokes access to the associated lifetime purchase or subscription. This mirrors how the system is built: access is tied 1:1 to payment status.

Chargebacks: Please contact me before filing a payment dispute so I can try to resolve the issue directly. Access to the associated product may be suspended while a dispute is pending and may be revoked if payment is reversed.

Content License: Digital products are licensed, not sold, to the purchasing individual or client (or, for a minor student, the purchasing parent or guardian on the student's behalf) for personal, non-commercial, single-household educational or professional-development use, subject to the Intellectual Property terms above. Redistribution or resale is prohibited. Each PDF you download is personalized with the purchaser's email address embedded in the document; this watermark identifies your licensed copy and deters unauthorized redistribution (see the Privacy Policy's Purchase & Download Records section).

Pricing Changes: I may change prices for digital products and subscriptions at any time. Price changes apply prospectively only — they do not affect a lifetime purchase you've already made or the pricing of your current, already-paid subscription period.

Information I Collect: Depending on how you use the site, I collect: your name and, where applicable, the student's name; email address and phone number; if you complete an account profile, the student's date of birth (used to determine whether the student is a minor), academic level, subjects of interest, learning goals, or professional-development goals; for minor students, the parent or guardian's name and contact information and an emergency contact's name and phone number; a mailing address or ZIP code where provided for in-person scheduling; payment information (processed and stored by Stripe, not by me); account and purchase/subscription records (stored in my Supabase database) if you create an account or buy a digital product; diagnostic quiz responses and scores if you take a practice diagnostic; questions you submit through the client or student portal; purchase and download records for digital products (see Purchase & Download Records below); information you provide during sessions relevant to tutoring or coaching; audio, video, and screen-capture recordings of virtual sessions (see Session Recordings below); and limited website-usage data (see Website Analytics below).

Purchase & Download Records: When you purchase digital products, each PDF you download is watermarked with your email address to identify your licensed copy. Each download is also logged with your account, the file retrieved, the date and time, your IP address, and your browser's user-agent string. These records support delivery, prevent abuse, and enforce the content license; they are linked to your account and are not anonymous.

How I Use Your Information: I use this information to schedule and conduct tutoring and coaching sessions; send booking confirmations, reminders, receipts, and transactional emails through Resend; process payments and manage subscriptions through Stripe; provision and maintain access to purchased digital products through Supabase; communicate with you about your sessions or purchases; and generate post-session study, coaching, or review materials and video archives for the client's or student's personal use.

Session Recordings & AI-Assisted Transcription: Online tutoring and coaching sessions may be recorded (audio, video, and screen capture) to provide post-session video archives, exported notes, summaries, and related review materials as part of the service; in-person sessions are not recorded. These recordings are used solely for the client's or student's personal review, stored in a tutor-controlled Google Drive account and/or uploaded to a tutor-controlled YouTube account as private or unlisted content, and shared through the applicable portal or directly with the client. They are not published for general public viewing.

To produce written session summaries, session audio may also be processed by AI-assisted meeting-transcription services, currently Granola and Plaud, which generate transcripts and notes that I use to prepare session summaries. These providers act as service providers under their own privacy policies. Session recordings are retained for the duration of the client relationship and for up to 12 months afterward. A parent, guardian, adult student, or adult coaching client may request earlier deletion at any time, subject to applicable legal or business record-keeping needs.

By booking an online session, the parent or guardian of a minor student, adult student, or adult coaching client consents to this recording and AI-assisted transcription for educational or professional-development purposes and to the use of the service providers named here. If you do not wish for an online session to be recorded, please contact me before booking to discuss alternatives. If an alternative is agreed upon, the standard session rate still applies, and the client waives delivery of post-session video archives.

Google API Services: The application requests access only to Google services needed to operate the tutoring and coaching workflow. Read-only Google Calendar access is used to identify upcoming tutoring and coaching sessions and display them in the applicable client or student portal. Google Drive access is used to organize and deliver tutor-controlled session notes, worksheets, recordings, and other tutoring or coaching materials. YouTube access is used to upload, manage, and provide private or unlisted session recordings. Limited metadata, such as a client's or student's name, subject or service type, session date, Google event identifier, file link, or video identifier, may be stored in the secured Supabase portal database to associate the material with the correct client or student. Google user data is not sold, rented, used for advertising, or used to train generalized artificial-intelligence models. Use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements.

Information Sharing: I do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information. I share information only with the service providers that operate the Business, each acting under its own privacy policy: Stripe, for payment and subscription processing; Supabase, for account, purchase, and entitlement data storage; TidyCal, for tutoring and coaching session scheduling and booking payments; Google, for calendar scheduling, Google Meet online-session delivery, storage of session recordings and notes in Google Drive, and private or unlisted recording hosting on YouTube; Granola and Plaud, for AI-assisted transcription and session-note generation from recorded online tutoring and coaching sessions; Microsoft, whose OneNote is used as a session whiteboard or note-taking tool; Resend, for delivering transactional emails; Cloudflare, which hosts this website, handles network traffic, screens form submissions for bots through Turnstile, and provides cookie-free aggregate page analytics; and legal authorities if required by law.

Children's Privacy & COPPA Compliance: I work with students across a range of ages, including minors. In accordance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), I do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children under 13 without verifiable parental consent.

As an additional Business policy, all portal accounts, tutoring bookings, and digital-product purchases for any minor under 18 must be initiated, authorized, and overseen by that minor's parent or legal guardian. A parent or guardian consents to the collection and processing of the minor student's academic, scheduling, and service-related information solely to provide tutoring, curriculum delivery, progress tracking, and related services. Parents and legal guardians may review their child's personal information, request corrections, or request deletion of their child's records and recordings by contacting benjaminm.tutor@gmail.com.

Data Storage and Security: Booking and scheduling data is processed and stored securely through our third-party scheduling partner, TidyCal. Session recordings and digital notes are stored in a tutor-controlled Google Drive account and are shared with students and families through the student portal. Account, purchase, and subscription-entitlement data is stored in Supabase, a hosted database provider with row-level access controls. This website is hosted and served through Cloudflare. Payment data is handled entirely by Stripe and is not stored on my systems.

Website Analytics: When you browse this website, I log limited engagement data — such as which promotional videos you watch, how long you watch them, the page you were on, the referring page, and your browser's user-agent string — tied to a random session identifier generated in your browser's session storage (cleared when you close the tab). I also log how far the inquiry form gets: that it was started, which of its three steps were completed, and whether a submission was attempted and succeeded. That record is progress only — never the answers you type into the form, and never anything that identifies the inquiry itself. This engagement data is not linked to your name, email, or payment information, and is used only to understand which content is helpful to visitors and where the inquiry form is losing people. This site may also use Cloudflare Web Analytics, a privacy-preserving page-view service that sets no cookies and does not track visitors across sites. Purchase and download records (described above) are account-linked and are separate from this analytics data.

Your Rights: You may request to: access the information I have about you; correct inaccurate information; delete your information (subject to legal record-keeping requirements); opt out of non-essential communications. To exercise any of these rights, contact me at benjaminm.tutor@gmail.com. I will respond to verified requests within 30 days.

Cookies & Local Storage: This website may use essential cookies to maintain your session and browser session storage for the anonymous analytics session ID described above. No advertising cookies or third-party ad-tracking cookies are used.

Communications: I may send you transactional communications related to your bookings, purchases, and account. If you provide your email address to receive a free resource or diagnostic report, I may also send occasional tutoring updates, as disclosed at the point where your email is collected. Every marketing email includes a one-click unsubscribe link, and unsubscribed addresses are added to a suppression list that blocks future marketing sends. I will not send marketing emails without your consent.

Changes to This Policy: This policy may be updated. The current version will always be available at https://benjaminmchale.com/policies.

Contact: For privacy questions, contact benjaminm.tutor@gmail.com.