Subscription and Payment Terms

1. Subscription Plans and Tiers

• Free Tier: Basic recipe discovery, full recipe search, and public profile browsing. Saving searches and reusing account search preferences are not included.
• Home Cook Tier: Enhanced recipe upload and import tools, saved searches, reusable account search preferences, personal cookbook curation, and ad-free browsing.
• Chef Tier: Generative AI recipe enrichment, AI-assisted image generation, advanced cookbook tools, and priority user support.
• Professional Tier: Commercial publishing features, verified brand profiles, custom analytics, shoppable integrations, and white-label cookbook PDF exports.

2. Stripe Managed Payments

• Merchant of Record: All paid subscription Checkout sessions use Stripe Managed Payments. Stripe or Stripe Link acts as merchant of record for the transaction. Ordinary Stripe Payments is not used as a fallback.
• Payment Security: The Yum Pandemic does not collect, receive, or store your credit card details. Payment details are saved directly with Stripe or Stripe Link.
• Billing Identifiers: We store unique Stripe identifiers (Stripe Customer ID, Stripe Subscription ID) in our database to authenticate your subscription status.

3. Pricing, Currencies, and Taxes

• Price and Tax Display: Stripe or Link displays the final amount and any tax handled through Managed Payments at Checkout. Regional tax and consumer rules are detailed in the Regional Legal Annexes.
• Supported Countries: New paid subscriptions are available only where the customer country is covered by the current Stripe Managed Payments country policy for this digital subscription.
• Honest Country Declaration: You are solely responsible for honestly and accurately declaring and maintaining your country of residence and for ensuring that the billing country you provide to Stripe or Link is accurate and consistent with it. You must not conceal or misrepresent your location or country information.
• Country Controls: We may refuse Checkout, withhold subscription activation, stop renewal, or cancel or refund a transaction where country information is missing, inconsistent, or outside the countries currently supported for Stripe Managed Payments.
• Residual Responsibility: Country checks reduce, but cannot eliminate, location errors and do not guarantee a transaction's tax treatment. Stripe or Link remains merchant of record for a Managed Payments transaction. Where Managed Payments tax coverage does not apply, The Yum Pandemic may retain legal obligations that cannot be transferred to you by these Terms. Nothing in this clause limits mandatory consumer rights.
• Price Increases: We may increase subscription prices at our discretion. We will notify you by email at least 30 days before the price change takes effect.

4. Plan Upgrades and Downgrades

• Immediate Upgrades: Upgrading your plan takes effect immediately. Stripe calculates a prorated charge for the remaining days of your current billing cycle.
• Webhook Entitlement: Access to higher-tier features is granted only after Stripe confirms the transaction through a secure webhook event.
• Scheduled Downgrades: Downgrading to a lower plan takes effect at the end of your current paid billing cycle. You keep your current benefits until the next renewal date.
• Annual to Monthly: Switching from an annual plan to a monthly plan is treated as a downgrade and takes effect at the annual renewal date.

5. Automatic Renewal and Cancellation

• Auto-Renewal: Subscriptions automatically renew at the end of each billing cycle (monthly or annually) using your saved payment method, unless cancelled.
• Online Cancellation: You can cancel your subscription at any time online through your Account Settings or by accessing the Stripe Customer Portal.
• Effective Date: Cancellation stops the automatic renewal. You retain full access to your paid features until your current paid-through date.
• No Minimum Commitments: Monthly plans can be cancelled at any time prior to the next renewal without penalty.

6. Failed Payments and the Grace Period

• 3-Day Grace Period: If a recurring subscription payment fails (due to card expiration, insufficient funds, etc.), your account enters a 3-day grace period.
• Access During Grace: During these 3 days, you retain full access to your paid subscription features. System warnings and recovery links will be displayed on the platform.
• Fallback to Free: If the failed payment is not resolved within 3 days, the system automatically downgrades your entitlement to Free access until payment succeeds.

7. Account Entitlements After Downgrade

• Asset Preservation: If you cancel or downgrade from the Professional tier, your existing generated white-label PDF books and custom profiles are preserved.
• Read-Only Access: Preserved Professional assets are set to read-only. You cannot edit, republish, or create new Professional-tier assets unless you resubscribe.

8. Dynamic Regional Compliance Rules

• US Auto-Renewal: Checkout identifies that the subscription renews automatically, the billing interval, price, and cancellation route before purchase. You can stop future renewal online through the Stripe Customer Portal. Applicable state cancellation and refund rights remain unaffected. See Regional Legal Annexes for US details.
• EU/EEA/UK Right of Withdrawal: Eligible residents may withdraw from an initial subscription within 14 days without giving a reason. During that period, the Subscription Account provides a continuously available online withdrawal function, sends a durable email acknowledgement, ends paid access, and initiates a full refund of the initial subscription payment. We do not ask you to waive this launch right at checkout. See Regional Legal Annexes for details.
• Australia and New Zealand Guarantees: Subscription fees are subject to non-excludable consumer guarantees under the ACL and Consumer Guarantees Act. See Regional Legal Annexes for details.

9. Subscription Liability Cap

• Maximum Liability: To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, our aggregate liability arising from or relating to a paid subscription is limited to the subscription amount you paid for the subscription period giving rise to the claim.
• Free Accounts: If you use a Free account and paid no subscription amount for the relevant period, our aggregate liability is limited to EUR 0 where permitted by applicable law.
• Non-Excludable Rights: Nothing in these Subscription and Payment Terms excludes or limits liability where it cannot legally be excluded or limited, including non-waivable consumer guarantees.