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, 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. The fee buys the lead — the introduction, not the work — and it is the whole price: no subscription, no commission, 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.
• Always verify with your contractor that their license, insurance, and certifications are valid. What a contractor tells you about themselves is their own statement, and your agreement with them — price, timing, the work itself — is between the two of you. Section 2 says exactly where we stand.
• 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.
• Refunds go through us, not through a button. If something was genuinely wrong with a job, a contractor tells us what happened; a person reads it against our refund policy and decides on the circumstances, and they are told either way. Handing a lead back is not a refund — see section 5.
• We text you only if you tick the optional box that asks — it is never ticked for you, texts are never required to use the service, and we use your email instead without it. Only ever about your own jobs, never to market anything. Reply STOP and it stops for good.
• Once a job is accepted, there are two ways it ends early. Either side can hand the lead back on their own — the job returns to the board and the fee stays paid, because the fee bought the lead and the lead was delivered. Or both sides can agree to end it together, and the contractor's fee is returned when they do. What nobody can do is cancel out from under the other and leave them holding nothing.
• 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.

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. The fee buys the lead — the introduction — and it is the whole price: no subscription, no commission, 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, handing a lead back, and ending a job after it is accepted

The fee buys the lead, not the work. Accepting a job states this at the moment it charges: you are being charged for the lead — the introduction and the contact details — not for the work, which is agreed between you and the customer.

Refunds

Refunds are decided by a person, on the circumstances. If something was genuinely wrong with a job, tell us what happened from your accepted jobs; we read it against our refund policy, which lists what we send the fee back for, and decide — and you are told either way, with the reason if we decline. A declined request is final for that job's fee, though if you believe we got something wrong you can write to us and we will look again.

A refund is not a button and does not follow automatically from anything — including handing the lead back, which is described next and is deliberately not a refund.

We review refund requests and handed-back leads for patterns. A contractor who repeatedly takes contact details and then asks for the fee back is working the model; where we 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.

Handing a lead back

Either side can end a lead on their own after a job is accepted. A contractor who decides not to continue can hand the job back; a customer can tell us the contractor declined it. The job returns to the board either way, the customer is told what happened, and the fee stays paid — the fee bought the lead, and the lead was delivered. The contractor saw the job in full before buying it; handing it back is a decision about the work, not a defect in the lead.

Withdrawing by agreement

Both sides can also agree to end an accepted job together.

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

Texts are optional, and nothing on Handigram requires them. Posting, signing up and every other part of the service work identically whether or not you agree to be texted; where we have your email address, anything we would have texted goes there instead. Agreeing is a separate checkbox, never ticked for you, shown wherever a form collects a mobile number — with the exact words you would be agreeing to as its label. Ticking it is your opt-in; leaving it alone changes nothing about the service. There is no pre-ticked box and no other way onto our list — we never buy, rent or import numbers.

There are exactly three of those checkboxes.

Posting a job. You fill in what needs doing, where it is, and how to reach you. Beside the mobile number field, above the *Post this job* button, the unticked box says:

Text me about this job — Handigram texts you when a contractor takes it, and afterwards to check they got in touch. Optional: posting works the same without it, and we use your email instead where we have one. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to stop, HELP for help.

Ticking the box is your opt-in. We record the date, the number, and the exact wording above as it appeared — and if you never tick it, we record nothing and text nothing.

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 — that code is a one-time check you asked for, not an opt-in to anything. Above the *Create account* button, the unticked box says:

Text me about work I take — Handigram texts you when a hold is about to run out, or a job you took needs your attention. Optional: taking work is the same without it, and we use your email instead where we have one. 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. On that form, the unticked box says:

Text me about my jobs — Handigram texts you about things like a contractor taking one. Optional: your account works the same without it, and we use your email instead where we have one. 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 subscription, no charge for being contacted, no charge beyond the published accept fee, 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.