Terms of Use

1. Who we are and what you are agreeing to

Phone Screen is made and operated by John Rolewicz, LLC, a limited liability company in the United States. These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, form the entire agreement between you and us about the service, and replace anything said elsewhere.

This agreement is between you and us alone. Apple is not a party to it, though Apple has certain rights under it, which are set out in section 22.

2. What Phone Screen is

Phone Screen answers calls you forward to it from numbers you don’t know. An AI assistant greets the caller, asks who they are and why they’re calling, decides from what they say whether the call should reach you, and then rings your iPhone, takes a message, or ends the call. You get a log of every screened call with a transcript and the assistant’s reasoning.

To do that we assign your account a separate phone number, which we license from a telecommunications carrier. You forward calls from your own number to it using the forwarding feature your mobile carrier already provides. Your own phone number does not change, and callers never see the screening number.

Phone Screen is a software service, not a telephone service. We are not a telecom carrier, we do not replace your mobile plan, and we do not provide phone service, voicemail service, or emergency calling as a regulated carrier does. Your carrier still carries your calls and still bills you for them.

3. Who can use it

• You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter into a binding contract.
• You need an iPhone running iOS 17 or later, an Apple Account, and a U.S. or Canadian mobile number on a carrier that supports call forwarding.
• Phone Screen is offered in the United States. We do not currently support numbers outside the U.S. and Canada, and we cannot promise it will work if you use it elsewhere.
• One subscription covers one phone number and one person. It is for your own calls, not for reselling, sharing, or running a call center.

4. Your account

You sign in with Apple. Keep your Apple Account secure: anyone who can sign in as you can read your call transcripts and change how your calls are handled. Tell us at support@phonescreen.app if you believe someone else has access to your account.

You are responsible for what happens on your account, and for keeping the information you give us, such as your phone number and carrier, accurate. You can delete your account at any time in Settings, which also ends your access to everything in it. Deleting the app by itself does not cancel your subscription or turn off your call forwarding; see sections 6 and 9.

5. Subscription, free trial, and billing

Phone Screen requires a paid auto-renewing subscription. There is no free tier. Both plans include the same features; only the billing period differs.

Prices are in U.S. dollars and exclude any tax Apple collects. The App Store always shows the current price and billing period before you confirm, and that display governs if it ever differs from this page.

How billing works

• Payment is charged to your Apple Account when you confirm the purchase, or when a free trial ends.
• The subscription renews automatically unless you turn off auto-renew at least 24 hours before the end of the current period.
• Your Apple Account is charged for the renewal within 24 hours before the end of the current period, at the price of the plan you chose.
• You can manage the subscription and turn off auto-renew in your Apple Account settings after purchase. See section 6.

The free trial

• New subscribers get 7 days free. Nothing is charged during the trial.
• Unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the trial ends, it converts to a paid subscription automatically and the plan’s price is charged.
• The trial is offered once per Apple Account for this group of subscriptions. If you have used it before, subscribing again starts a paid period immediately.
• If you buy a subscription while a free trial is running, any unused part of that trial is forfeited.

Price changes

We may change prices. Apple will notify you of an increase and, where Apple requires it, ask you to agree before the increase takes effect. If you don’t agree, cancel before the next renewal. Changes never apply to a period you have already paid for.

6. Managing, canceling, and refunds

All purchases go through Apple. We never see or handle your payment details, and we cannot charge you, change your plan, or refund you directly.

To cancel: on your iPhone, open Settings, tap your name, tap Subscriptions, choose Phone Screen, and tap Cancel Subscription. You keep access until the end of the period you have already paid for, and it does not renew after that. Deleting the app does not cancel the subscription.

Refunds are governed by the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions. Request one at reportaproblem.apple.com. Apple decides; we have no power to grant or refuse a refund. Except where the law requires otherwise, payments are otherwise non-refundable, and canceling partway through a period does not produce a partial refund. If you think you were charged unfairly, write to us anyway at support@phonescreen.app and we will help you make the case to Apple.

Restoring a purchase: if you reinstall the app or move to a new iPhone, tap Restore purchases on the subscription screen or in Settings to bring your existing subscription back.

7. Your screening number

The screening number assigned to your account is licensed to you for as long as your subscription is active. You do not own it and cannot port it, transfer it, sell it, or publish it as a contact number. It is plumbing, not a second phone line: it exists so your carrier has somewhere to forward calls.

We may need to change the number in rare cases, such as a carrier reclaiming a range or a number that attracts persistent abuse. If we do, we will tell you in the app and give you the new forwarding instructions.

When your subscription ends, the number is released back to the carrier and may later be reassigned to somebody else, as recycled numbers always are. It is not held for you.

8. If your subscription ends

Whether you cancel or a payment fails, the sequence is the same:

• While a payment is being retried, Apple gives a grace period. Screening keeps working normally and we tell you in the app that billing needs attention.
• Once the subscription has actually ended, screening stops. Calls forwarded to your screening number hear a short notice that the service is inactive, and the call ends. No messages are taken and nothing rings your phone.
• After 30 days paused, we release your screening number. Resubscribe before then and everything resumes on the same number, with your forwarding untouched. Resubscribe after that and you get a new number and must set forwarding up again.

This is the important part: turn off call forwarding yourself. Forwarding is a setting on your carrier account, not ours, so ending a subscription cannot switch it off for you. If you leave it on after screening stops, calls forwarded to us will be turned away and your callers will not reach you. The app shows the disable code for your carrier, our support page lists them, and for most U.S. carriers dialing ##004# clears all forwarding. Doing this is your responsibility, and we are not liable for calls missed because forwarding was left on.

Your call history and settings stay in your account and become available again if you resubscribe, subject to the retention periods in the Privacy Policy. Deleting your account removes them immediately.

9. Call forwarding and your carrier

Phone Screen only works if you set up call forwarding, which you do by dialing a code your carrier provides. That relationship is between you and your carrier. We do not control it, cannot switch it on or off for you, and cannot fix it if your carrier changes how it works.

Your carrier may charge for forwarded minutes, and calls delivered to the app use cellular data or Wi-Fi. Those charges are yours. Some carriers, plans, and numbers, including some prepaid and business accounts, do not support the forwarding types Phone Screen needs, and we cannot make the service work on them.

10. Emergency calls

Phone Screen does not provide emergency calling and is not a substitute for a phone line. Calling 911 or any other emergency number from your iPhone works exactly as it does today: those calls go out over your carrier’s network and never touch Phone Screen. Call forwarding does not affect them.

One thing to know about calls coming in: if you use Gatekeeper mode, where every unknown caller is screened before your phone rings, a call back from an emergency dispatcher, a hospital, or a school will be screened like any other unknown number. That usually adds only seconds and the assistant is built to put such callers through, but it is a delay, and no automated system is perfect. If you are expecting a call where seconds matter, use Safety Net mode so your phone rings first, add the number to your contacts so it skips screening entirely, or pause screening in the app.

11. What the assistant can and cannot do

The assistant judges calls from what callers actually say. That is what makes it useful, and it is also why it cannot be perfect. It will sometimes get a call wrong. It may end a call you would have wanted, or put through one you would rather not have taken. Speech recognition can mishear, callers can lie, and a caller who says nothing intelligible cannot be judged at all.

You accept that risk when you use Phone Screen. Do not rely on it as the only path for calls you cannot afford to miss. The tools to manage this are in your hands: mark numbers as always allowed, keep your contacts synced, write screening rules in your own words, choose Safety Net mode so your phone rings first, and review your call log.

The service also depends on things outside our control, including your carrier, Apple’s push notifications, and our own providers. If a part of that chain fails mid-call, Phone Screen is built to fail open, meaning it rings you or takes a message rather than dropping the caller, but we cannot guarantee any level of availability or that no call will ever be lost.

12. Acceptable use

Don’t use Phone Screen to:

• break any law, or record or intercept a call in a way that is unlawful where you or your caller are;
• harass, threaten, defraud, or deceive anyone, or gather information about callers for any purpose other than deciding whether to take their calls;
• screen calls for a number you do not control, or on someone else’s behalf without their knowledge;
• resell, sublicense, or provide the service to others, or use it as a call center, answering service, or robocall filter for bulk operations;
• write screening rules or greetings intended to impersonate a person or business, mislead callers about who they have reached, or extract sensitive information such as account numbers or passwords;
• interfere with the service, probe or overload our systems, work around limits, or attempt to reverse engineer, decompile, or extract the source of the app or service, except to the extent the law says you may;
• use automated means to access the service outside the app.

The screening number is for receiving forwarded calls. Do not publish it, use it to originate calls or messages, or register it as your number with other services.

13. Recording and consent

Phone Screen does not record the screening conversation; it transcribes it as it happens. It does record voicemail, after telling the caller they have reached voicemail. The full breakdown of which parts of a call are recorded, which are only transcribed, and what callers hear first is in section 16 of the Privacy Policy.

You can customize the greetings callers hear. If you do, keep the parts that tell callers they have reached an assistant and that a message will be recorded after the tone. Recording and consent laws vary by state, and several require every party to consent before a call is recorded. Making sure your configuration complies with the laws that apply to you and your callers is your responsibility, not ours.

14. Privacy

The Privacy Policy explains what we collect, what happens to a screened call, which vendors are involved, how long things are kept, and the controls you have. It is part of this agreement.

Screening calls means we process information about the people who call you. You confirm that you have the right to have those calls forwarded and screened, and that you will handle what you learn from a screened call, including transcripts and recordings, lawfully.

15. Your content and our software

The greetings, screening rules, labels, and voice recordings you create stay yours. You give us permission to store, process, and transmit them as needed to run the service for you: to synthesize your greeting and play it to callers, to give your rules to the classifier when it judges a call, and to show you your own call history. That permission ends when you delete the content or your account.

Phone Screen, its software, design, and name belong to us. Subject to these Terms, we grant you a personal, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the app on Apple-branded devices that you own or control, as permitted by the Usage Rules in the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions. You get no other rights, and you may not copy, modify, distribute, or create derivative works from the app.

If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them freely and without obligation to you.

16. Changes to the service

We are actively developing Phone Screen, and we may add, change, or remove features. If we remove something significant that you are paying for, or discontinue the service entirely, we will tell you in the app with reasonable notice so you can cancel and turn off your forwarding. We may also perform maintenance that interrupts the service, and will keep it as brief as we can.

17. Suspension and termination

You can stop at any time by canceling your subscription and deleting your account. Remember to turn off call forwarding.

We may suspend or terminate your account if you breach these Terms, if your use harms the service or other people, if we are required to by law or by a provider we depend on, or if your subscription lapses as described in section 8. Except where the breach is serious or urgent, we will warn you first and give you a chance to fix it. If we terminate your account without cause, we will refund the unused part of the period you have paid for, through Apple where Apple’s rules require that.

Sections that by their nature should survive, including sections 15, 18, 19, 20, 22 and 23, survive the end of this agreement.

18. Disclaimers

We work hard to make Phone Screen reliable and accurate, and section 11 describes honestly what it can and cannot do. Beyond what we say in these Terms, and to the fullest extent permitted by law, the service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, quiet enjoyment, accuracy, or non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free, that every call will be judged correctly, that no wanted call will ever be blocked, that no unwanted call will ever get through, or that any call, message, transcript, or notification will always be delivered.

Some states do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing here limits rights you have under consumer protection law that cannot be waived.

19. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost business, lost opportunities, or lost data, arising from or relating to the service. That includes losses from a call that was screened out, a call that was let through, a call that arrived late, a missed message, or the service being unavailable.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total liability for all claims relating to the service is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us for Phone Screen in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or one hundred U.S. dollars.

These limits apply even if a remedy fails of its essential purpose, and they apply whatever the legal theory. Some states do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

20. Indemnification

You agree to defend and indemnify us against claims, losses, and reasonable legal costs arising from your use of the service in breach of these Terms or the law, including claims by a caller relating to how you configured your greetings, recorded a call, or used what you learned from a screened call. We will tell you promptly about any such claim and let you control the defense, provided any settlement releases us fully.

21. Apple

Phone Screen is distributed through the App Store, and the following terms apply because of that. In this section, “Application” means the Phone Screen app.

• Acknowledgement. These Terms are between you and John Rolewicz, LLC only, not with Apple. We, not Apple, are solely responsible for the Application and its content.
• Scope of license. The license granted to you in section 15 is limited to a non-transferable license to use the Application on Apple-branded products that you own or control, as permitted by the Usage Rules in the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions.
• Maintenance and support. We are solely responsible for providing maintenance and support for the Application. Apple has no obligation whatsoever to furnish any maintenance or support services.
• Warranty. We are solely responsible for any product warranties, whether express or implied by law, to the extent not effectively disclaimed. If the Application fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price of the Application to you, if any. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Apple has no other warranty obligation whatsoever with respect to the Application, and any other claims, losses, liabilities, damages, costs, or expenses attributable to a failure to conform to any warranty are our sole responsibility.
• Product claims. We, not Apple, are responsible for addressing any claims by you or a third party relating to the Application or your possession and use of it, including product liability claims, any claim that the Application fails to conform to a legal or regulatory requirement, and claims arising under consumer protection, privacy, or similar legislation.
• Intellectual property rights. If a third party claims that the Application or your possession and use of it infringes their intellectual property rights, we, not Apple, are solely responsible for the investigation, defense, settlement, and discharge of that claim.
• Legal compliance. You represent and warrant that you are not located in a country subject to a U.S. Government embargo or designated by the U.S. Government as a “terrorist supporting” country, and that you are not listed on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• Developer name and address. John Rolewicz, LLC. Questions, complaints, and claims about the Application should go to support@phonescreen.app.
• Third-party terms. You must comply with applicable third-party terms of agreement when using the Application, including your wireless carrier’s terms of service.
• Third-party beneficiary. Apple and Apple’s subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms, and upon your acceptance of them Apple will have the right, and is deemed to have accepted the right, to enforce these Terms against you as a third-party beneficiary.

22. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the United States and of the state in which John Rolewicz, LLC is organized, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, except that this does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory consumer-protection laws of the state where you live.

Please email us first. Nearly everything is resolved faster that way than through a court. If we cannot resolve it, the dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in that state, and we each consent to their jurisdiction. Either of us may still bring a claim in small claims court.

If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force. Our not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign this agreement; we may assign it in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of the business, in which case we will tell you in the app.

23. Changes to these Terms

When we change these Terms we will post the new version here with a new effective date. If a change materially reduces your rights or increases your obligations, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect, and continuing to use Phone Screen after that means you accept the change. If you don’t accept it, cancel your subscription and turn off your call forwarding.

24. Contact

John Rolewicz, LLC
support@phonescreen.app