Membership terms

Plain English, because a term you cannot read is not a term you agreed to. These terms apply to paid membership. Reading the site costs nothing and needs no agreement at all.

Who you are dealing with

My Paper is run by a natural person — an individual, not a company — resident in the Czech Republic. Full name and contact address: [doplň]. Business or tax registration, if applicable: [doplň].

You can write to jarda.vojtasek@centrum.cz about anything on this page. A human answers.

What a membership is

A membership is a recurring payment that pays for the work and gets you a small number of concrete things, listed on the membership page and in your welcome e-mail. Today those are: long pieces sent to you a week before they open to everyone, pieces that go out only by e-mail, a weekly selection built from topics you choose yourself, and a site with no advertising on it.

What a membership is not

• It is not a login. This site is a set of static files. There is no account, no password and no server that could check who you are. What you pay for arrives by e-mail and, in the case of early access, by being published to members first. We will never claim a page is locked when it is not.
• It is not a share, an investment or a donation to a charity. You are buying a subscription to journalism.
• It is not influence over what we publish. Partners can suggest topics and every suggestion gets read and answered. Nobody, at any price, can decide what we write, what we leave out, or how a story turns out.
• It is not a promise that a specific article will exist. We publish what passes our editorial rules. Sometimes that means a piece does not get written.

The content is journalism, not advice

Everything here is reporting, background and reflection. It is not legal, medical, financial, tax or investment advice, and it is not a substitute for a professional who knows your situation. For your health, ask a doctor. For your money, ask a licensed adviser. We say where our facts come from so you can check them yourself.

Price and VAT

Prices are shown in euro and include VAT where VAT applies. For consumers in the EU, VAT is charged at the rate of the country you live in and is already contained in the price you see — you will not be asked for anything on top of it. If the applicable VAT rate changes, the price you see at the time of payment is the price that counts.

Payment

Payment is handled by our payment provider, [doplň]. Your card details go to them and never to us. We do not see, receive or store your card number. What we receive is your e-mail address, which tier you chose, and whether the payment went through.

Membership renews automatically for the same period until you cancel. The provider tells you before each renewal in the way its own rules require.

Your 14-day right to withdraw, and why we ask you to waive it

Under EU consumer law you normally have 14 days to withdraw from a contract made online, without giving a reason.

Digital content and digital services have an exception, and this is the honest version of it: if you want your membership to start immediately — which is the whole point of early access — you have to ask us to begin during those 14 days and confirm that you understand you are giving up your withdrawal right for what has already been supplied. You do that with a tick box when you join. It is not pre-ticked and you do not have to tick it.

• If you tick it, your membership starts at once and the withdrawal right ends for what we have already delivered.
• If you do not tick it, your membership starts after 14 days and you can withdraw at any point before then and get everything back.

Either way, write to jarda.vojtasek@centrum.cz and we will confirm in writing what applies to you.

Cancelling, and money back

Cancel whenever you like, without giving a reason. Cancellation stops the next payment; you keep everything you have paid for until the end of the period you paid for.

If something has gone wrong — you were charged twice, you never received what you paid for, you cancelled and were billed anyway — write to jarda.vojtasek@centrum.cz and you get your money back. We would rather refund you than argue with you.

If we stop publishing, we stop charging, and we refund the unused part of any period already paid.

Your data

To send you e-mails we keep your e-mail address with our mailing provider, [doplň]. We do not sell it, rent it or share it, and it is used only for what you signed up for. You can leave with one click in any e-mail we send. What you tick in your reading settings on this site stays in your browser and never reaches us. More on the privacy page.

Changes to these terms

If these terms change in a way that affects you, we will tell you by e-mail before the change takes effect, and you can cancel before it does.

Law and disputes

Czech law applies, and mandatory consumer protections of the country you live in still apply to you — they cannot be signed away. If we cannot sort a complaint out between us, EU consumers can use the Czech Trade Inspection Authority (Česká obchodní inspekce) as an out-of-court dispute body: [doplň — link and current details].

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Note: this is a starting draft, not a finished contract.

It was written to be honest and readable, and it is deliberately marked where facts about the operator, the payment provider and the mailing provider are still missing. It has not been reviewed by a lawyer. Have a lawyer who knows Czech and EU consumer law read it, fill in every [doplň], and check the withdrawal-right wording against the exact way the payment provider records consent — before a single payment is taken.