Making BetterHelp Better with Better Terms and Conditions

BetterHelp has been helping people for more than five years, but it often feels like we are just getting started. Our tremendous growth confirms what we expected when we set out to build BetterHelp: So many people desperately need but do not have access to affordable, convenient, and professional counseling.

The mass adoption of our services is full of exciting opportunities but not free from challenges. Being the world’s largest online counseling service makes us responsible for meeting not only the expectations of our members and providers, but also the expectations of the overall community.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve received comments and feedback related to our Terms & Conditions document. Although we used the standard legal language that is often found in the Terms & Conditions of similar platforms, we now realize that given our leadership position and the nature of our service, we need to raise the bar and to set higher standards. At the end of the day, it’s apparent that the way our Terms & Conditions were written made some people feel uneasy, which means our execution in that regard fell short.

Today, we are happy to share with you the new Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy for BetterHelp. Instead of patching and fixing, we decided to take this opportunity to completely rewrite them. We wanted to make sure they don’t just please lawyers, but also resonate with everyone.

To clarify, nothing has changed in the way we do things. We continue to go above and beyond what’s required by laws, regulations and industry standards, as we always have. We continue to take extensive measures to ensure that all the counselors on the platform are credentialed and licensed, as we always have. We continue to act ethically and responsibly by referring people whose needs aren’t appropriate for online counseling to other resources (such as traditional face-to-face counseling), as we always have. We continue to be fully committed to the privacy of our members and to carefully safeguard their information, as we always have. The difference is that these processes and practices are now better reflected in our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

I’d like to thank our team, our members, our counselors, and many people on social media who were engaged in this effort by sharing their thoughts and feedback from a place of care and trust. If you have any questions or concerns after reviewing our new Terms & Conditions or Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact me directly. I would be happy to hear from you.

Yours,
Alon Matas
BetterHelp, Founder