Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) govern access to and use of DriveBees, the software platform provided by The Hills Driving School LLC(“DriveBees,” “we,” “us”) at drivebees.com and related addresses, including each driving school's website and portals hosted by DriveBees (together, the “Service”). By creating an account, signing up a driving school, or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you accept these Terms on behalf of a driving school or other organization, you confirm that you are authorized to bind it.

1. Who these Terms apply to

• Schools. A driving school that signs up for DriveBees (a “School”) is our customer. Its owners, administrators and staff use the Service on the School's behalf.
• Instructors use the Service as directed by their School.
• Students and parents or guardians (“Students”) use a School's website and portal to register, pay, book lessons and keep records. Their relationship for driving instruction is with the School, under the School's own terms and privacy policy. These Terms govern their use of the DriveBees platform itself.

2. DriveBees is a software platform, not a driving school

DriveBees provides software. DriveBees is a service of The Hills Driving School LLC, which also runs its own driving school, but in providing DriveBees it acts only as a software provider. Through DriveBees it does not provide driving instruction to any other School's students, employ or supervise their instructors, own or maintain their training vehicles, schedule government driving tests, or issue licenses, permits or certificates. Each School is an independent business that is solely responsible for its instruction, instructors, vehicles, insurance, licensing, pricing, refunds and compliance with the laws that apply to it. Any agreement for driving lessons is between the Student and the School.

3. Accounts and eligibility

• You must give accurate information and keep it current. Keep your sign-in private; you are responsible for activity under your account.
• The Service is not directed to children under 13, and no one under 13 may create an account. A Student under 18 may use the Service only with the involvement and consent of a parent or legal guardian, who may manage the Student's account.
• A School must hold the licenses its jurisdiction requires to operate a driving school. DriveBees verifies a School's license number before its website is made public and may suspend a School whose license cannot be confirmed or lapses.

4. A service of The Hills Driving School: conflict of interest and customer data protection

DriveBees is a service of The Hills Driving School LLC, which also runs an independent driving school (“The Hills school”), and grew out of running that school. We are proud of that and do not hide it. DriveBees also serves other driving schools, including schools that may compete with The Hills school, so we take that responsibility seriously and commit to the following:

1. Your data is yours. Each School's business data, including its student records, schedules, pricing, payments, instructors and website content (“Customer Data”), is confidential and remains under that School's control, subject to applicable law and these Terms.
2. No competitive use. DriveBees will not use another School's identifiable customer data, confidential business information, or nonpublic operating information to compete with that School, and will not share any of it with The Hills school, its staff, or any other School.
3. The same rules for every School. The Hills school uses DriveBees as an ordinary customer, under these same Terms, with access only to its own account. It receives no access to other Schools' data and no advantage in the features, placement, availability or support that DriveBees provides.
4. No solicitation. DriveBees will not use Customer Data to contact, market to or recruit a School's students, parents or instructors for the benefit of any other School.
5. Limited, logged access. Access to Customer Data is limited to authorized purposes necessary to provide, secure, maintain and support the Service, as described in these Terms and our Privacy Policy. DriveBees team members are bound by confidentiality obligations, and every look at or change to a School's records made through our administrative tools is recorded in an audit log.
6. Aggregate information only. DriveBees may use aggregated, de-identified information about how the Service performs (for example, total bookings across the platform) to operate and improve it. Such information never identifies a School, a student or a person, and is never used to compete with a School.
7. Questions or concerns. A School that believes these commitments have not been honored may write to buzz@drivebees.com. We will investigate and respond in writing.

5. Customer Data and privacy

• Our role. For Customer Data, DriveBees acts as a service provider (and, where applicable, processor) to the School. We process Customer Data only to provide the Service, on the School's instructions, as described in our Privacy Policy, and as required by law. We do not sell Customer Data or use it for advertising.
• License to operate the Service. Each School grants DriveBees a limited license to host, store, copy, display and process its Customer Data and website content only as needed to provide and support the Service.
• The School's responsibilities. The School is responsible for having a lawful basis to collect and use its students' information, for giving its students its own privacy notice and terms, and for obtaining any consents required, including parental consent for minors and consent to receive text messages.
• Security. We use administrative, technical and physical safeguards appropriate to the information, including encryption in transit, strict separation between Schools, private storage for documents, and access logging. No system is perfectly secure.
• Security incidents. If we become aware of unauthorized access to a School's Customer Data, we will notify the affected School without undue delay and cooperate with its response and any notices the law requires.
• Service providers. We use carefully selected providers for hosting, database and file storage, sign-in, payments, and email and text delivery, who process data only to provide their services to us. The current list is in our Privacy Policy.

6. Payments

• Students pay Schools through Stripe. Each School connects its own Stripe account and is the seller of its lessons and packages. DriveBees does not receive or store card numbers.
• Each School sets its prices, refund policy, cancellation rules (within limits DriveBees sets), and is responsible for refunds, chargebacks, disputes and any taxes on its sales.
• DriveBees may charge Schools fees for the Service, which may be collected from payments processed through the Service or charged to a payment card the School keeps on file with DriveBees. Current fees are shown to the School before they apply. We will give at least 30 days' notice of a fee increase.
• A School may bring balances its Students owed under a previous system into the Service. The School confirms each such balance is accurate and owed to it, is solely responsible for it and for answering any question or dispute about it, and may waive it at any time. DriveBees only shows these balances and lets Students pay them to the School; DriveBees does not collect debts, does not add interest or fees to them, and takes no fee on them.
• Stripe's own terms apply to payment processing.

7. Messages

The Service sends emails about accounts, bookings and reminders. Text messages are sent only when the School has turned them on and the recipient has agreed; see our Text Message Terms. A School may only use the Service to message people who have a relationship with it and, where required, have consented.

8. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• access or attempt to access another School's or another person's information, or test or bypass the Service's security;
• upload anything unlawful, infringing, deceptive, harmful or that you do not have the right to share;
• misrepresent a School's licensing, instructors, prices or services;
• use the Service to send unsolicited messages, or to collect information about people without a lawful basis;
• copy, resell, reverse engineer or interfere with the Service, or overload it with automated requests; or
• use the Service in violation of any law.

9. School websites and content

Each School is responsible for its website content, including its logo, pictures, videos, words, prices, terms and privacy policy. The School confirms it owns or has permission to use that content. DriveBees may remove content that is unlawful, infringing or harmful, or that violates these Terms, and will tell the School when it does. If a School uses DriveBees' ready-made terms or privacy policy templates, the School adopts them as its own and remains responsible for whether they suit its business.

Website design and custom themes

Every School's website is built from DriveBees' ready-made templates, themes, color choices and layouts, which the School sets up itself in Edit website. The layout and structure are the same for every School; Schools choose their own colors, pictures, words and theme from what the Service offers. Custom design work for an individual School (for example, a theme, artwork or animation made only for that School) is not included in the Service or its fees, and DriveBees has no obligation to provide it. DriveBees may offer limited custom design at its sole discretion, may decline any request, may charge a separate fee for it, and may change, limit or stop offering it at any time. A custom design made for one School, including the custom theme used by The Hills Driving School LLC, which was made while developing and testing DriveBees, does not entitle any other School to the same. DriveBees may update templates and themes from time to time, which may change how a School's website looks.

Search settings and website tags

A School may enter its own search engine settings (such as search titles, descriptions, phrases and areas served) and its own Google Analytics or Google Ads tag IDs. These are the School's sole responsibility. DriveBees does not review, monitor, manage or optimize them, makes no promise about search rankings, website traffic or advertising results, and is not responsible for them, for any third party's use of data collected by those tags, or for the School's compliance with the law and with Google's terms in using them. The School must disclose its use of such tags in its own privacy policy. Tags run only on the School's public website pages.

10. Our intellectual property

DriveBees and its software, design and trademarks belong to The Hills Driving School LLC and its licensors, including the templates, themes, artwork and animations of School websites, whether ready-made or made for a particular School (a School's own logo, pictures and words stay the School's). We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Service under these Terms. If you send us suggestions, we may use them without obligation to you.

11. Term, suspension and ending the Service

• A School may stop using the Service at any time. We may suspend or end access for a material breach of these Terms, non-payment, a license that cannot be confirmed, or to protect the Service or others; where practical, we will give notice first.
• When a School's account ends, it may request an export of its Customer Data within 30 days. We then delete Customer Data within 90 days, except where the law requires us to keep it, and except for copies in backups, which are deleted in the ordinary backup cycle.

12. Disclaimers

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available.” To the fullest extent permitted by law, DriveBees disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. DriveBees does not guarantee that the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free, and is not responsible for driving instruction, road safety, vehicles, the outcome of any driving test, or the acts of any School, instructor or Student.

13. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, DriveBees will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue or data. DriveBees' total liability for any claim relating to the Service is limited to the greater of the fees the School paid DriveBees in the 12 months before the claim or one hundred U.S. dollars. Some jurisdictions do not allow some of these limits, so they may not apply to you.

14. Indemnity

Each School will defend and indemnify DriveBees against third-party claims arising from the School's instruction, instructors, vehicles, content, use of Customer Data, or breach of these Terms or the law.

15. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Before filing a claim, each party agrees to try to resolve the dispute informally for 30 days by writing to the other. Any claim that is not resolved will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Los Angeles County, California, and the parties consent to their jurisdiction. Nothing in these Terms limits rights that consumers have under the laws of their own state or province that cannot be waived.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. If a change is material, we will tell Schools by email or in the Service at least 30 days before it takes effect. Continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect means you accept it.

17. General

These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy and Text Message Terms and any order or fee schedule shown to a School, are the entire agreement about the Service. If any part is unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. A failure to enforce a part is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them in connection with a merger or sale of the business, and the commitments in section 4 continue to bind any successor.

18. Contact

The Hills Driving School LLC. Email: buzz@drivebees.com.

DriveBees is a service of The Hills Driving School LLC. Questions about how we keep that fair for every School can go to the same address.