Terms of service

1. Who we are

Dog Groomer Booking is run by David West, County Durham, United Kingdom ("we", "us"). You can reach us at hello@doggroomerbooking.co.uk. "You" means the grooming business that signs up, and everyone you give a login to.

Dog Groomer Booking is a service for businesses. By creating an account you confirm you're signing up for your grooming business – including if you work on your own – and that you can agree to these terms on its behalf.

2. The service

Dog Groomer Booking is online booking and records software for dog groomers. We'll keep it running and look after it with reasonable care and skill. We'll keep improving it, which sometimes means changing how things work; we won't remove something you rely on without telling you first.

We can't promise it will never be unavailable – the internet, hosting and updates all occasionally need a pause – but we'll keep interruptions short and, where we can, plan them for quiet times.

3. Your free month

New groomers get the first month free, with every feature. You don't need to give card details to start. Before the free month ends we'll remind you, and you can choose a plan. If you don't, nothing is charged: your account becomes read-only, so you can still see and download your records for 60 days, after which we delete them.

4. Plans and prices

Our plans and prices are on our pricing page. Your price depends on how many groomers you have on a typical day. If you take on more groomers and move into a bigger plan, your price moves to that plan from your next payment; we'll tell you first.

Founding groomers pay the founding price shown on our pricing page for as long as their subscription carries on without a break.

Optional add-ons, such as route planning for mobile groomers, are priced separately. We'll always tell you the price before you choose one.

Price rises. We may raise prices once a year, by no more than inflation (the UK Consumer Prices Index over the previous 12 months), and we'll tell you at least 30 days beforehand. You can cancel before the new price applies.

We aren't registered for VAT, so there's no VAT to add. If that changes, we'll tell you how it affects your price before it does.

5. Paying

You pay monthly in advance, by card, through our payment provider, Stripe. Payments are taken automatically at the start of each month until you cancel. If a payment fails, we'll let you know and try again; if it still hasn't gone through after 14 days, we may make your account read-only until it's sorted.

Texts. Each plan includes free text messages every month. Unused free texts don't carry over. Extra texts are sold in top-ups, which don't expire while your account is open but can't be refunded. A long message can use more than one text.

Deposits from your customers. If you choose to take card deposits, the payments are made to you through a card payment provider, whose own fees and terms apply. Whether to keep or refund a deposit is your decision.

6. Cancelling

There's no contract and no minimum term. You can cancel any time from your account, or by emailing us, with no cancellation charge. You can keep using everything until the end of the month you've already paid for. Because there's no contract or notice period, we don't refund part of a month.

After that, your account becomes read-only for 60 days so you can download everything, and then we delete your records (copies in our backups are deleted as those backups are replaced, within 30 days).

7. Your data

Your records – your customers, their dogs, your bookings and payments – belong to you. You can download all of them as spreadsheets at any time.

We look after your customers' details on your behalf, under our data processing agreement, which is part of these terms. You're responsible for having a fair reason to keep your customers' details, for telling them how you use them, and for only sending emails and texts to people who are happy to get them. The system helps by recording each customer's choices.

8. What you look after

• Keeping your logins private, giving them only to people you trust, and removing people who leave.
• Checking what you and your staff put into the system – prices, times, health and behaviour notes.
• How you run your grooming business, including your insurance and any rules that apply where you work. Dog Groomer Booking helps with records and reminders, but it doesn't replace your own checks.
• Using the service lawfully: no spam, nothing harmful, and no attempts to get round its security or into anyone else's account.

9. Our responsibility

We're responsible for losses you suffer that are a foreseeable result of us breaking these terms or not using reasonable care. Our total responsibility to you in any 12 months is limited to what you've paid us in those 12 months. We're not responsible for lost profits, lost business or indirect losses, or for problems caused by things outside our reasonable control.

Nothing in these terms limits responsibility that can't legally be limited, such as for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

10. If we need to stop

We may suspend or close an account that isn't paid, that breaks these terms seriously, or that puts the service or other groomers at risk – telling you first unless it's urgent. If we ever decide to close the service altogether, we'll give you at least 90 days' notice and time to download your records.

11. Changes to these terms

If we change these terms, we'll tell you at least 30 days before the changes apply, and ask you to agree to them the next time you log in. If you don't agree, you can cancel before they apply.

12. The legal bit

These terms are the whole agreement between us about Dog Groomer Booking. They're governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales can deal with any dispute – though we'd always rather talk it through first.

Questions about these terms? Email hello@doggroomerbooking.co.uk.