Terms of service

This is a draft. It has not yet been reviewed by a lawyer, and it will change before we open contractor accounts. We are publishing it now because you should be able to read what we intend to hold ourselves to. If something here looks wrong or unfair, tell us — that is genuinely useful while it is still a draft.

The short version

Handigram introduces homeowners and landlords to contractors. We are not the contractor, we do not employ them, we do not check them, and we are not part of the agreement you make with each other.

• A customer pays nothing. Not to post, not to be matched, not to be contacted, and not when the work is done. We take no commission and never see what you agree to pay.
• A contractor pays one published fee, between $5 and $25, when they accept a job. It is shown on the job before they accept it and does not change afterwards. No subscription, no charge per lead, no charge for being contacted.
• Accepting is exclusive. One contractor takes the job and it closes to everybody else, so nobody is racing anybody to a phone call and nobody else is charged for it.
• We check less than you might assume, and here is exactly what. Every contractor has confirmed a phone number, accepted these terms and put a card on file. We do not check licenses, insurance, certifications, background or identity ourselves. What a contractor tells you about themselves is their own claim, shown as a claim, and worth checking before you let them into your home or pay them.
• Your name, address and number stay hidden until a contractor accepts. Until then they see the work, your photographs and the ZIP code, and nothing that identifies you.
• A contractor can ask for a refund within 24 hours of accepting. We ask you whether they got in touch before deciding, and the job goes back on the board if they did not.
• We text you only about your own jobs, only if you agreed to it on the form that took your number, and never to market anything. Reply STOP and it stops for good.
• Once a job is accepted, ending it takes both of you. A customer cannot cancel out from under a contractor who has paid, and a contractor cannot walk away and leave the job closed. Either can propose it; the other has to agree; the contractor gets their fee back.
• We watch for people working that on purpose, and we may close an account over a pattern. We would rather rely on you being straight with us than build a system that assumes you are not — see section 13 for what we are promising in return.
• What we owe you if this goes wrong is limited — to nothing for a customer, who pays us nothing, and for a contractor to the fees they paid us in the last twelve months.

Everything below says the same thing more carefully. Where the two disagree, the careful version governs — but if the short version surprised you, stop and read on.

1. What Handigram is

Handigram, LLC operates an introduction service. Customers describe work they want done; contractors choose which of those jobs to accept. When a contractor accepts, we release each party's contact details to the other and our involvement ends.

We are not a party to the agreement you reach. We do not employ, contract, supervise, schedule, direct, inspect or guarantee any contractor or any work. We do not set prices, hold funds, process payment for the work, or mediate disputes about it. Any agreement about the work — including its price, scope, timing and quality — is between the customer and the contractor alone.

2. What we check, and what we do not

What we check. Every contractor on Handigram has confirmed control of a phone number, accepted these terms, and put a payment card on file. That is the whole of it, and we would rather tell you than let you assume otherwise.

What we do not check ourselves. We do not verify licenses, insurance, certifications, qualifications, criminal history, references or identity. We do not conduct background checks. A contractor appearing on Handigram is not endorsed, approved, recommended or vouched for by us in any way.

Anything a contractor states about themselves — including license numbers, years in business, and certifications — is their own claim. We record what they claimed and show it as a claim. We do not check whether it is true, and you should verify anything that matters to you before letting somebody into your home or paying them.

Where that is heading. We are building a way for a contractor to prove their identity through us and show that they have. It is optional, it is paid for by the contractor rather than by you, and until you see it on a profile it does not exist — nothing on this site today means anybody has been checked beyond what this section describes.

Contractors are solely responsible for holding every license, registration, permit, insurance policy and certification their work requires in their jurisdiction, and for complying with all laws that apply to it. By listing work on Handigram a contractor confirms they are responsible for this and that we have not assessed it.

3. What a customer pays

Nothing. Posting a job, being matched, being contacted and completing work all cost the customer nothing. We take no commission on the work and do not see what you agree to pay.

4. What a contractor pays

A published fee between $5 and $25 when they accept a job, charged to the card they have on file. The amount depends on the type of work, is shown on the job before they accept it, and does not change afterwards even if we change our prices. There is no subscription, no per-lead charge, no charge for being contacted, and no charge for appearing higher in a list.

Accepting a job is exclusive: it closes the job to every other contractor. Nobody else is charged for that job, and no second contractor can accept it.

5. Refunds, and ending a job after it is accepted

A contractor may request a refund within 24 hours of accepting a job. They choose a reason from a list; no evidence is required and no explanation is asked for.

We then ask the customer whether that contractor got in touch, and ask a second time 24 hours later if they do not answer. If the customer says no, or does not answer either message, we refund to the original payment method and the job returns to the board. If the customer confirms contact was made, the fee stands.

We ask about contact, not about whether the work was finished. Contact is what the fee buys, and work legitimately may not be complete two days later.

We review refunds for patterns. A contractor who refunds repeatedly is taking contact details and then reclaiming the fee, which is the one way this model can be abused.

We built this because of what other platforms charge for leads that never turn into work, and we priced it to match: the accept fee covers running the site and not much more. There is no margin in it to absorb somebody working the refund window, and a fee reclaimed that way is carried by the contractors who did not. If a job genuinely went wrong, refund it. That is what the window is for. The reason you pick is how we find out what is failing and fix it — it is not a test, no answer on that list is a worse answer than another, and none of them is a ground for declining you.

Where we do see that pattern we may decline further refunds for that account, suspend or close it, and decline to accept new accounts associated with the same person, business or phone number. Any such decision may be appealed by contacting us, and we will review it. A single request is never judged; a history is.

Withdrawing after a job is accepted

Accepting closes a job to everybody else and the contractor has paid for it. So once a job is accepted, neither side can end it alone.

Either of you can propose withdrawing, and it takes effect when the other agrees. The contractor's fee is returned when it does — they paid for a job that is not happening, and keeping the fee for work nobody did is the thing this whole product is against. A proposal nobody answers lapses, and the job stands.

This is not a complaint about anybody and nothing about it is held against either of you. Plans change, and a contractor who looks properly and finds it is not their trade has done the right thing by saying so early.

We watch this the same way we watch refunds. A contractor who accepts, takes the customer's details and then proposes a withdrawal has been given contact details for nothing, and the same is true of a customer who repeatedly agrees to withdrawals. We look at the rate rather than the count — anybody can have a run of jobs fall through — and where we see a pattern we may suspend or close the account, and decline new accounts associated with the same person, business or phone number. As with refunds, any such decision may be appealed by contacting us and we will review it, and a single withdrawal is never judged.

6. Contact details and the board

Before a contractor accepts a job, they can see what the customer wrote, any photographs the customer attached, the category of work and the ZIP code. They cannot see the customer's name, address, phone number or email.

Attempting to obtain or publish contact details outside this process — including putting them into a job description, a photograph or a profile in order to route around the accept fee — is a breach of these terms and may result in the account being closed.

7. Text messages

How you opt in

There are exactly three places you can give us a mobile number, and each one shows you what you are agreeing to, on the screen, immediately above the button that submits it. There is no pre-ticked box and no other way onto our list — we never buy, rent or import numbers.

Posting a job. You fill in what needs doing, where it is, and how to reach you. Above the *Post this job* button we show:

By posting this job you agree that Handigram may text you about it — when a contractor takes it, and afterwards to check they got in touch. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to stop, HELP for help.

Submitting the form is your opt-in. We record the date, the number, and the exact wording above as it appeared.

Signing up to take work. You enter your business name and mobile number, and we text you a code to confirm the number is yours. Above the *Create account* button we show:

By signing up you agree that Handigram may text you about work you take — when a hold is about to run out, and when a job needs your attention. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to stop, HELP for help.

Putting a password on an account. If you posted a job before creating an account, you can set a password later. Above that button we show:

By setting a password you agree that Handigram may text you about your jobs. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to stop, HELP for help.

What we send

Messages about a job you posted or took: a contractor has taken your job and here is how to reach them; your hold is about to run out; and afterwards, did they get in touch. Confirmation codes when you sign in or verify a number.

We do not send marketing or promotional texts of any kind, and we do not share your number with anyone for their own marketing.

Message frequency varies with what is happening on your jobs — most people receive a few messages per job and nothing between jobs. Message and data rates may apply; those are your carrier's, not ours.

How you opt out

Reply STOP to any message. We honour it immediately and it stays honoured, including if you later post another job from the same number. STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END and QUIT do the same thing.

Reply HELP for help, or write to us at the address at the end of this document.

Stopping texts does not close your account and does not stop us emailing you about a job. If a phone number is the only way we have to reach you, stopping texts means we cannot tell you when a contractor takes your job — so add an email address if you would still like to hear.

Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.

8. Your content

You keep ownership of what you post. You grant us permission to store and display it for the purpose of running the service — a job description and its photographs are shown to contractors browsing the board, which is what they are for.

Do not post anything you do not have the right to post, anything unlawful, or photographs of people who have not agreed to appear. We remove metadata, including location coordinates, from every photograph before storing it.

9. Acceptable use

Do not post jobs you do not intend to have done, accept jobs you do not intend to do, impersonate anybody, harass anybody, scrape the service, or use it to advertise something other than the work at hand. We may suspend or close accounts that do.

10. No warranty, and the limit of what we owe you

The service is provided as it is. We do not warrant that a job will be accepted, that any contractor is available in your area, that any work will be done, or that it will be done well. Coverage is thin in most places today and we say so where you post.

To the extent the law allows, our total liability to a customer is zero, because a customer pays us nothing; our total liability to a contractor is limited to the fees that contractor paid us in the twelve months before the claim. We are not liable for the acts or omissions of any contractor or customer, or for any work done or not done.

11. Ending it

You can stop using Handigram at any time and ask us to delete your account. We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms. Sections 2, 9 and 10 survive.

12. Changes

We version these terms. When they change we record which version you agreed to and when, and the wording you actually saw is kept with that record rather than replaced by the current text.

13. What we are promising you

Two sections of this document reserve the right to close somebody's account, and both of them ask you to take our word for how we will use it. So here is our side of that.

We are not going to try to get as much money out of you as we can. The accept fee is published per category, it is between $5 and $25, it is shown on the job before anybody accepts, and it does not change afterwards. There is no commission on the work, no charge for a lead, no charge for being contacted, no subscription, and nothing a customer pays at any point. If that changes it changes in a new version of these terms, which you will be asked to agree to — it will not arrive as a line on a statement.

We built this because of what the other platforms charge for leads that never become work. The fee is what it costs to run the site and a modest amount beyond that, and it is deliberately too small to be worth working around. There is no margin in it to absorb somebody doing so, and what one person reclaims that way is carried by everybody who did not.

So the monitoring in sections 5 and 9 is not there because we assume the worst of you. It is there so that relying on people being straight with us is a workable way to run this rather than a naive one. We would much rather ask you plainly to keep that in mind — over a few dollars, on a platform that is trying not to be the thing you left — than build a product that treats every customer and every contractor as a problem to be managed.