Use of the Kärcher Smart Home Service provided by Alfred Kärcher SE & Co. KG, Alfred-Kärcher-Straße 28-40, 71364 Winnenden, Germany, Phone: +49 (0) 7195 / 14-0, Email: info@karcher.com (hereinafter referred to as Kärcher) is only possible by means of the Kärcher Home & Garden App for smartphones and tablets with an iOS or Android operating system.
You can control your smart Kärcher products using the Kärcher Home & Garden App. This applies to both “indoor” and “outdoor” products.
3.1 You must register in the Kärcher Cloud via the Internet before you can use the Kärcher Home & Garden App. A gateway is also needed for devices that communicate via Zigbee, e.g. for outdoor products. This may be included as part of the purchased product, or it may need to be purchased separately. The gateway acts as a bridge and must be connected between the products and the router. If the products use Wi-Fi® as the connection protocol, the ones from the indoor range must be directly connected to the router. Otherwise they are controlled directly via a smartphone. Please refer to the product description for information on the Wi-Fi® standard that the products support. An internet connection is needed to operate smart Kärcher products. Kärcher does not provide this connectivity.
3.2 You must also have a smartphone that is Internet-capable. The operating system versions that are supported can be found on the Kärcher website.
3.3 You can download the Kärcher Home & Garden App free of charge from the Google Play store or the Apple App Store. To do so, you must open a customer account in either the Google Play store or the App Store, and enter your data there. You must also accept the Terms of Use of the App store in question in order to open a customer account. When you download the Home & Garden App, you must also accept the associated Terms of Use with legally binding effect.
4.1 You can download the Home & Garden App from the App store and install it on your device at any time.
However, it is only possible to use the Kärcher Home & Garden App with Smart Home products after registering an account with Kärcher and connecting your devices. With Smart Home products that enable cloud operation (i.e. that can be controlled remotely), the Smart Home product can be used with the available functionalities of the Home & Garden App from the date of first-time registration for a period individually tied to the product at no additional cost.
You can register in the Kärcher Cloud by opening a Kärcher user account, or by registering via Google+ or Facebook.
4.2 The Kärcher Smart Home solution offers the following customer benefits for current and future Smart Home products with a range of convenience options, depending on the technical facilities in the customer’s home environment:
Display associated products of a certain type via an App or web App
Configure linked products from home or remotely (if cloud operation is supported)
Remotely control linked products from your home or on the move (if cloud operation is supported)
Store defined events for the corresponding products when they occur and display them via an App
Store statistics of linked products locally and in the Kärcher Cloud at cyclic intervals and display them via an App or web App
4.3 Kärcher reserves the right to expand the functions of the Kärcher Home & Garden App based on the portfolio of sensor and actuator manufacturers of the Kärcher Smart Home product portfolio. If Kärcher offers software updates, these will be made at irregular intervals. Downloading updates is a mandatory requirement to ensure that you are using the most up-to-date software version and so that the customer can make use of the latest functionalities. Kärcher stresses that functionalities will not be available or only to a limited extent if the updates are not installed. If this is the case, Kärcher is exempt from any liability should Kärcher be able to prove that the defect would not have occurred had the respective latest software version been installed.
4.4 Kärcher provides mandatory security patches in addition to updates to improve the functionality of the Home & Garden App. These security patches are small files that fix vulnerabilities and security loopholes detected in the Home & Garden App or the smart devices. Security patches must be installed by all customers. The customer cannot reject the security patches due to their mandatory relevance to security.
5.1 Customers are granted non-sublicensable, globally valid rights of use for the Home & Garden App for their own internal use.
5.2 The customer may only use the Home & Garden App in unmodified form and must not make any changes. By using the Home & Garden App, the customer accepts the licence terms of Kärcher and any third-parties (see, for example, Section 11). Customers are responsible for backing up all the existing data on their smartphone before installing the Home & Garden App. Kärcher will only accept liability within the scope as defined under Point 9 for software errors, loss of data or other damage resulting from installation or use of the Home & Garden App.
5.3 Customers may only use the Home & Garden App made available to them in the manner provided for in the contract. Unless allowed in a specific case, copying, editing, transmitting, modifying, decompiling or converting the App (reverse engineering) are not permitted.
The average availability of the Kärcher Home & Garden App together with the back-end (Kärcher Cloud) is 98.0 % as an annual average.
The Kärcher Cloud stores the data on a storage location of Amazon Web Services, Inc., 410 Terry Avenue North, Seattle WA 98109, U.S.A.. Data is stored and processed on servers of Amazon Web Services in the European Union.
For the use of Kärcher Skill for Amazon Alexa via the Online service “Alexa” (“Alexa”) of Amazon Europe Core S.à r.l., 5 Rue Plaetis, L-2338 Luxembourg (“Amazon”) the Amazon Alexa Terms of Use https://www.amazon.de/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201809740 also apply. The customer has no claim to the use of the contents.
Amazon is solely responsible for access to and the availability of Alexa. The customer has no claim against Kärcher for the provision of access to and/or the availability of Alexa.
9.1 In the event of wrongful intent or gross negligence and of absence of a guaranteed feature, Kärcher will have unlimited liability for all damage attributable to this.
9.2 In the case of ordinary negligence, Kärcher will have unlimited liability in the event of injury to life, limb or health. In the event of a negligent breach of a material contractual duty, liability will be limited to contractually typical, foreseeable damage. Kärcher accepts no liability in any other cases of simple negligence. A material obligation is an obligation for which fulfilment is essential for the proper performance of the contract, the breach of which jeopardises the achievement of the purpose of the contract and upon adherence to which the customer may normally rely.
9.3 Kärcher accepts no responsibility for permanent storage of the data processed in the course of the use of the Home & Garden App. Where necessary, customers should back up any data themselves.
9.4 Liability for any other damage is excluded, in particular for loss of data or hardware faults caused by incompatibility between the components already present in the customer’s PC system and the new or modified hardware and software, and for system malfunctions that may result from existing configuration errors or older, interfering drivers that were not completely removed. Liability under the Product Liability Act (Produkthaftungsgesetz) remains unaffected.
9.5 The Home & Garden App is not designed to provide or replace safety-related functions or emergency calls, such as alarm systems, for instance, are known to do. You therefore use the App at your own risk. Kärcher accepts no liability for damage that occurs due to malfunctions or technical faults in actuators and sensors.
9.6 Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that may not be excluded or limited by law.
The period of use of the Kärcher Home & Garden App is unrestricted. Only the use of some individual smart products may be limited.
The Kärcher Home & Garden App contains software which, as free software, may be fully or partly subject to the terms of licence of the Apache 2.0, MIT, ISC, BSD, EPL 1.0, BSD 2 "simplified" licence clause (open source software).
The licence terms for the open source software can be found in the Appendix to these Terms of Use.
The obligations of Kärcher towards the customer are not restricted by this, and, in particular, the customer’s warranty remains fully valid.
12.1 Kärcher is authorised to modify these Terms of Use at any time with effect for the future. The changes shall take effect at the earliest six weeks after the time of notifying the customer.
12.2 If the customer continues to use the services, this is considered as acceptance of the changes and further Terms of Use. Kärcher is to point out this consequence to the customer in the notification of the change.
13.1 Kärcher reserves the right to discontinue support of the Kärcher Home & Garden App after a reasonable period. In this event, the customer will be informed by email and advised of any alternatives offered. These notifications cannot be provided if you have objected to your email address being used.
13.2 Kärcher is entitled to provide the services through third parties as sub-contractors. Kärcher will be liable for the provision of services by sub-contractors to the same extent as it is for its own actions.
13.3 The customer may only assign the rights and obligations arising from this contract to a third party with the prior written consent of Kärcher.
13.4 The place of jurisdiction for all disputes arising from or in connection with this contract is the principal place of business of Kärcher, in so far as the customer is a merchant acting in a commercial or professional capacity, a legal entity under public law or a special fund under public law. Any exclusive place of jurisdiction takes precedence and for consumers, this shall not remove the jurisdiction of the law of the state in which the consumer has his or her habitual residence.
13.5 The law of the Federal Republic of Germany applies to all legal relationships between the Parties. Legislation governing the international purchase of movable goods is excluded. For consumers, this choice of law applies only to the extent that the protection granted is not removed by mandatory provisions of the law of the state in which the consumer has his or her habitual residence.