Terms of Service

ELK Connect is a telecommunications platform published and operated by ELK Consulting LTD, a company incorporated in Mauritius, represented in Cameroon and the CEMAC region by ITCWEB SARL. The registration numbers and registered addresses of both companies are on the Legal notice page.

These terms form the contract between you and ELK Consulting LTD. They apply from the moment you create an account, and they cover every service on the platform: virtual phone numbers, international calls, SMS, eSIM data plans, mobile top-up once it opens, and the ELK Balance that pays for all of it.

Please read them. They are written to be understood without a law dictionary: wherever a rule has a concrete consequence for you — a number that can be lost, an amount that is not refundable — it is said plainly rather than tucked behind a formula.

• “Account”: your personal space on ELK Connect, opened with a verified email address.
• “ELK Balance” or “balance”: the prepaid credit held on your account, from which all our services are paid.
• “Top-up”: the operation by which you add funds to that balance.
• “Number”: a virtual phone number rented monthly and attached to your account.
• “Plan”: an eSIM data plan, defined by a volume, a duration and a coverage area.
• “Carrier” or “provider”: the third-party companies that actually carry the calls, the SMS and the data — ELK Connect assembles them, it does not own them.

You must be of legal age in your country of residence and provide accurate information: name, a valid email address, a phone number, a country. An unverified email address does not give access to paid services.

An account is personal. You are responsible for keeping your password confidential and for everything done from your account. If you suspect that someone else has access, change your password immediately and write to us.

You can change your email address from your account: the change only takes effect after confirmation through a link sent to the new address, which is what stops an account from being taken over by editing a single field.

A company may open an account: the person opening it thereby declares that they have authority to bind that company.

All our services are paid from your ELK Balance, which you top up in advance. Every movement — top-up, purchase, refund, renewal — is written into your account history with its date, amount and reason.

ELK Balance is an internal means of payment, intended solely for buying our own services. It is worth being clear about what it is not:

• It is not a bank account, and it is not covered by any deposit guarantee scheme.
• It is not a money-transfer service: you cannot send your balance to another person, nor withdraw it in cash.
• It bears no interest.
• It is not convertible into currency, except in the cases set out in our Refund policy or required by law.

The available top-up methods are shown at the moment you top up and depend on your country: Mobile Money, bank transfer, cash at an approved point, cryptocurrencies, and card once it opens. Some methods carry a minimum amount, displayed before you confirm, because their fixed fees would make a small top-up pointless.

A top-up is credited when the payment is confirmed. For a bank transfer or a cash deposit, confirmation is done by our team after checking, which usually takes less than one business day. For cryptocurrency, the network confirms, and we credit the amount actually received.

That last point deserves emphasis, because it is the one that surprises people: in crypto, if you send less than the amount requested — network fees, your wallet rounding — your balance is credited with what arrived, not with what was asked for. If you send more, the difference is credited to you as well. We do not keep the gap and we do not invent it.

You must use a payment method you are legitimately entitled to use. A top-up made with a misappropriated payment method is reversed, and the account concerned is suspended.

The price shown at the time of purchase is the price charged to you. It is the most important rule in this section, and it is enforced automatically: the shop and the till use the same calculation, so a displayed price and a charged price cannot drift apart.

Your balance is held in one currency, chosen when the account is opened and changeable afterwards from your settings. When you change currency, your existing balance is converted at the rate the platform publishes at that moment, and the operation is written into your history showing both amounts.

Our supplier costs are in US dollars. Prices in other currencies follow from them through an exchange rate that we publish and update regularly. That rate may differ from the interbank rate of the day: it is a price, not a foreign-exchange operation, and it is shown to you before any purchase.

Our prices may change. A price change never applies retroactively to a period already paid for. For a running subscription — a number rented monthly — the new price applies at the next renewal, and a price change is announced to you before it takes effect.

A virtual number is rented to you: it is not sold to you, and it remains allocated to ELK Connect or its carrier with the relevant regulator. You have exclusive use of it for as long as the rental runs.

The rental is monthly and is charged automatically to your balance on each due date. The price, the renewal date and the number concerned are shown before purchase and repeated in your account.

Some numbers can only be allocated against a declared address, because the regulator of the country concerned requires it. In that case, and only in that case, you are asked for an address before purchase. That address is passed to the carrier to satisfy that obligation; it must be accurate, and a false address may lead the carrier to suspend the number, which we cannot prevent.

If your balance is insufficient on the due date, the number is suspended: it no longer receives calls or messages, but it stays reserved for you. It is reactivated as soon as your balance allows. After a period shown in your account, a number left unpaid is permanently released and may be reassigned to someone else — we cannot then get it back for you.

You can release a number at any time. A period already paid for is not refunded pro rata, and a released number returns to stock immediately: it may be taken by another customer within the minute.

A number cannot be ported away from ELK Connect, and a number you hold elsewhere cannot be ported into ELK Connect.

Calls are billed per minute, at the destination rate shown before you dial. The duration used is the one measured by the carrier that carries the call — never the one reported by your browser or your phone.

The rate depends on the number called, and in particular on whether it is a landline or a mobile: on many destinations the gap is considerable. The exact rate is shown for the number you dialled, before the call connects.

Some destinations are not offered for sale. These are mainly premium-rate numbers and destinations whose wholesale cost exceeds a ceiling we set to prevent revenue-share fraud. This is not a fault: those numbers are simply not offered.

A call that does not connect is not billed. A call cut short by an incident on our side or the carrier's is credited back for the portion not used.

Emergency calls are not possible through ELK Connect. Our numbers and our calling service do not replace a conventional telephone line and cannot reach emergency services. You must have another means of calling them.

SMS received on your numbers are delivered in your account. SMS you send are billed per 160-character segment — a longer message, or one containing special characters, counts as several segments, and the number of segments is shown to you before sending.

An SMS that the carrier refuses or could not deliver is not billed; if it has already been charged, the amount is credited back automatically.

Some destinations require the sender to be registered in advance with the local carriers — this is the case for commercial messaging to the United States. Until that registration is in place, sending to those destinations is refused, with an explicit message.

You may not use our numbers to receive verification codes on behalf of someone else, or to create accounts in bulk on third-party services. It is the leading reason accounts are closed on every platform of this kind, and it will be ours.

An eSIM plan gives you a data volume, for a duration, over a coverage area — all three shown before purchase. After payment, an eSIM profile is delivered to you as a QR code and a manual activation code, to be installed on a compatible device.

Check that your device is compatible before buying. A phone that does not support eSIM, or that is locked to a carrier, will not be able to install the profile — and a profile already delivered cannot be taken back, because it was consumed at the provider the moment it was issued to you.

An eSIM profile can only be installed once. If you delete the profile from your device, or reset the device, the plan is lost: that is a constraint of eSIM technology, not a commercial rule of ours.

Validity starts, depending on the plan, at installation or at first connection to a network — this is stated on the plan card. Data not used by expiry is lost and does not carry over.

Coverage quality depends on the roaming agreements of the plan's carrier. We list the countries covered; we cannot guarantee a speed or coverage at a specific spot.

When this service opens, it will let you credit a phone number directly with its carrier. A top-up sent to an exact number is final: neither we nor the carrier can take it back. Check the number before confirming — that is the only protection that exists.

If the receiving carrier refuses the top-up or does not credit it, the amount is credited back to you in full.

We may offer temporary discounts. A promotion applies automatically, with no code to enter: the struck-through price and the reduced price are shown side by side, and the reduced price is the one charged.

A promotion has a start date and an end date. For a subscription taken out during a promotion, the discount applies to renewals for as long as you keep the subscription without interruption, where the offer says so; otherwise it applies to the first payment only, and the offer says that too.

A promotion cannot be applied retroactively to a purchase already made, and two promotions do not stack on the same item.

You use ELK Connect to communicate, not to cause harm. Concretely, you may not:

• send bulk unsolicited, fraudulent, deceptive, abusive or harassing messages;
• impersonate a person, a company or a public authority;
• use a number to circumvent the registration, verification or rules of a third-party service, or to create accounts in bulk;
• distribute unlawful content, in particular content involving minors or inciting hatred or violence;
• resell our services, in whole or in part, without our written agreement;
• attempt to access accounts, data or systems that are not yours, or probe, flood or circumvent our protections;
• use automated means to create accounts or place orders in bulk;
• use our services in a way that breaches the regulations applicable in the country of the number, in your own country, or in your correspondents' countries.

Collecting payments in Mobile Money and cryptocurrencies places due-diligence obligations on us. We may therefore, above certain thresholds or where something unusual appears, ask you to evidence your identity, the origin of the funds, or the intended use of a service, and hold the operation concerned until that check is done.

We also monitor patterns that betray fraud: purchases in rapid succession, premium-rate destinations, top-ups followed by immediate consumption from several countries. An operation that is plainly fraudulent is blocked before it runs.

These checks exist to protect your funds as much as ours. We work to keep them as rare and as fast as possible.

Our services rely on carriers, regulators and third-party providers. An outage, a tariff change, a withdrawal from sale or a regulatory decision on their side may affect a service — including the ability to keep a number or to serve a country.

We work towards continuous availability, with several carriers and automatic failover when one of them fails. We cannot, however, guarantee absolute availability, and no service-level commitment is given unless separately agreed in writing.

Maintenance windows may be necessary. We announce them in advance when they are planned.

The refund rules, service by service, are set out in our Refund policy, which forms part of these terms. The principle: whatever fails through us or through a provider is credited back to you automatically, and a service properly delivered is not refundable.

You can stop using the service at any time and ask for your account to be closed from your account page or by email.

We may suspend or close an account in the event of a breach of these terms, proven or strongly suspected fraud, persistent non-payment, or a legal obligation. Except where the law or the seriousness of the facts prevents it, we tell you the reason and give you the opportunity to respond.

On closure, numbers are released, running plans end, and any remaining balance is handled under our Refund policy. A balance built from fraudulent top-ups is not returned.

How we handle your data — what we collect, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it and what rights you have — is described in our Privacy policy, which forms part of these terms.

The platform, its code, its brand, its texts and its graphics belong to ELK Consulting LTD or its partners. Your account gives you the right to use the service, not to copy, resell, decompile or exploit those elements.

The content you send through our services — your messages, your files — remains yours. We access it only as far as necessary to deliver the service, to meet a legal obligation, or to handle a complaint you bring to us.

We are answerable for failures attributable to us. To the extent permitted by law, our total liability to you, all heads of loss combined, is limited to the amounts you actually paid for the service concerned in the three months preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

We are not liable for indirect losses: loss of business, loss of opportunity, loss of profit, loss of data, reputational harm, or the consequences of a message or call not received.

None of these limits applies in cases of gross negligence or wilful misconduct, nor where the law forbids them — in particular towards a consumer protected by a mandatory rule of their country of residence.

Neither party is liable for a failure caused by an event beyond its reasonable control: natural disaster, war, decision of a public authority, widespread power or network outage, major failure of a carrier or infrastructure provider.

We may update these terms, in particular to reflect a new service or a regulatory change. The date of the last update is shown at the top of this page.

A material change is announced to you by email or in your account at least thirty days before it takes effect. If it does not suit you, you may close your account before that date; continuing to use the service after that date constitutes acceptance.

Write to us first: most disputes are settled in a few exchanges. The contact address is on the Legal notice page. We acknowledge receipt within two business days and work to give a reasoned answer within fifteen days.

If our answer does not satisfy you, you keep all your avenues of recourse, including before the consumer-protection or data-protection authorities of your country of residence.

These terms are governed by the laws of Mauritius, the seat of the company operating the platform. Disputes fall under the competent courts of Mauritius.

This clause deprives you of no mandatory right: if you are a consumer, you keep the benefit of the protective provisions of your country of residence and the ability to bring proceedings before its competent courts. For customers resident in Cameroon, ITCWEB SARL is our local point of contact and may be approached on the same basis.

If any clause of these terms is held invalid, the others remain in force.