Support

Contact us

Use the form below, or email us at support@val.chat. There is no phone line or live chat, and we aim to reply within 2 business days. Privacy and data requests come through the same address; just say so in your message and it will reach the right person.

It helps if you tell us the email address on your VAL account, your device model and iOS version, and roughly when the problem happened. Please do not send us anything your child said. We do not need it, and we would rather not hold it.

You can also write to PodQ Limited (company number 000010123) at 16 Al Khatem Tower, Hub71, Abu Dhabi Global Market Square, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Frequently asked questions

How do I start VAL for my child on my iPhone?

Open the parent dashboard and tap “Start VAL for” followed by your child’s name. The iPhone then becomes that child’s VAL: the parent controls are hidden and the screen shows only the child-facing companion. Hand the phone over at that point and your child can start talking.

How do I get back to the parent dashboard?

Press and hold the exit control, then authenticate with Face ID, Touch ID, or your device passcode. The press-and-hold stops a stray tap from ending child mode, and the authentication step means a child cannot reach the parent area unless they can pass Face ID or Touch ID, or they know your device passcode. Keeping that passcode to yourself is what keeps the parent area closed.

How do I keep my child inside the VAL app?

VAL hides its own parent controls while child mode is active, but VAL cannot lock your whole iPhone to a single app, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. To stop a child leaving the app altogether, use Apple’s Guided Access: turn it on in Settings › Accessibility › Guided Access, then triple-click the side button (or the home button on older devices) while VAL is open.

Triple-click again and enter your Guided Access passcode to end it. For younger children we recommend using Guided Access every time you hand the phone over.

Why did VAL stop talking to my child?

The most likely reason is the free allowance. Each household gets five free conversations, and once they are used up VAL tells the child to go and fetch a grown-up, while the parent area shows the subscription options.

The other common reason is that consent has been withdrawn for that child in the Data & Privacy screen. Without a valid consent grant no session can start, so granting consent again will bring VAL back. A conversation also ends after 15 minutes of inactivity, and VAL needs a working internet connection to run at all.

VAL said something inappropriate or upsetting. How do I report it?

Please tell us at support@val.chat. Because VAL deliberately keeps no parent-readable transcripts, we cannot look up what was said, so describe in your own words what happened and roughly when. Reports from parents are how the safety rules get better, and we would much rather hear about it than not.

If you would rather your child did not use VAL while we look into it, withdraw consent for that child in the Data & Privacy screen. That takes effect within about a minute, after which no new conversation can start for them, and you can grant consent again whenever you want.

How do subscriptions, cancellation, and Restore Purchases work?

VAL is offered as a single monthly auto-renewing subscription bought through Apple, and it covers unlimited conversations for the whole household. Because Apple handles the billing, you cancel it in your Apple subscription settings on your iPhone, not inside VAL.

If you reinstall VAL or move to a new phone, open the app’s Account screen and tap Restore Purchases to bring your subscription across. Note that deleting your VAL account does not cancel the subscription. You need to cancel with Apple as well.

How do I delete my child’s data, or our whole account?

For a single child, open the Data & Privacy screen. From there you can reset what VAL remembers (conversation history, summaries, and learned facts), delete one book or all books along with their stored audio, withdraw consent, or delete that child’s profile entirely.

To remove everything, use the Account screen and delete the household account. That takes out every child, all of their data, your sign-in identities, and your sessions. Each of these actions asks you to authenticate first with Face ID, Touch ID, or your passcode, and to type a confirmation such as your child’s name or your account email. The Privacy Policy sets out exactly what each action removes.

Does VAL record my child?

Not in the way that phrase usually means. Your child’s speech is sent securely to our speech-to-text provider so that VAL can understand it and reply, and that live conversation audio is not stored, neither by us nor by the provider, who is not permitted to keep it or train on it.

There is one exception and we would rather be plain about it: when VAL narrates a story that your child saves as a storybook, that narration audio is stored, encrypted, so your family can play the story again. Deleting the book deletes that audio too. The Privacy Policy explains what is kept and for how long.

Can I see transcripts of what my child said?

No, and that is a deliberate design decision rather than a missing feature. VAL does not give parents transcripts, conversation summaries, activity feeds, or alerts derived from conversations, and there is no setting anywhere that switches them on.

A child who knows that every word is reported back is not really talking to a companion. What you can see and share are the storybooks your child chose to save, which is the part of the experience meant to be enjoyed together.

Policies

• VAL Privacy Policy: what VAL processes, who else is involved, how long it is kept, and what you can delete.
• VAL Terms of Use: the free allowance, the subscription, acceptable use, and the legal terms.