Terms and conditions

These terms are the agreement between you and MyHivekeeper. They explain what we do for you, what we ask of you, and what happens if something goes wrong. Please read them before you join. By joining MyHivekeeper or using the portal, you agree to them.

We have written them in plain English. If anything is unclear, ask us before you join.

1. Who we are

MyHivekeeper is a service provided by arcj Ltd, 20-21 Wenlock Road, N1 7GU, United Kingdom (company number [to be added]). In these terms "we", "us" and "our" mean arcj Ltd, and "you" means the person who joins MyHivekeeper.

You can contact us at info@myhivekeeper.com.

2. What MyHivekeeper is

MyHivekeeper is a membership service that helps you look after your home. It has five parts:

• Home MOT: a yearly visit to review the condition of your home.
• Home Health Plan: what we found, in order of urgency, cost and consequence.
• We Arrange: we find and coordinate local professionals for work you approve.
• Home Passport: we keep your home's documents, photos, invoices and history together.
• Sale Ready: a structured history of your home that you can share when you sell.

You use the service through the portal at www.myhivekeeper.com.

[To be confirmed: the service is currently a pilot. If so, say here what that means for members, for example that features may change and how long the pilot runs.]

3. What MyHivekeeper is not

It is important that you understand the limits of the service.

• A Home MOT is a visual review of the parts of your home we can safely see and reach. It is not a building survey, a structural survey or a valuation, and it is not a gas, electrical or other safety certificate.
• We cannot find defects that are hidden, for example behind walls, under floors, above ceilings or underground, and we do not move furniture or lift fitted floor coverings.
• Your Home Health Score and area scores are our guide to condition, based on what we saw. They are not a guarantee about the state of your home and should not be relied on by a buyer, lender or insurer in place of their own checks.
• Costs shown in your plan are estimates until you are given a price to approve.
• MyHivekeeper is not insurance and is not an emergency service. In an emergency, such as a gas leak, a flood or a fire, call the emergency services or the relevant emergency line straight away.
• A Home Passport is a record of what has been done and what documents exist. It is not a legal pack for a sale and does not replace the forms and searches used in conveyancing.

4. Who can join

• You must be 18 or over.
• You must own the home, or have the owner's permission to arrange inspections and work there.
• The home must be in an area we cover. [Area to be confirmed.]
• The service is for private homes. If you want to use it for a business, for example as a landlord with several properties, tell us first. [To be confirmed: whether landlords are accepted and on what terms.]

5. Your account

• Give us accurate information about yourself and your home, and tell us if it changes.
• Keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for what is done through your account, so tell us straight away if you think someone else has used it.
• If you ask us to give someone else in your household access, they will be able to see your home's record and approve work. You are responsible for the decisions they make.

6. Membership and fees

[To be confirmed: the membership fee, how often it is charged, how it is paid, whether the Home MOT is included, and whether a minimum period applies. The price being tested is £24.99 a month.]

• We will always tell you the price before you join.
• If we change the membership fee, we will give you at least 30 days' notice, and you can cancel before the change takes effect.
• Membership fees do not include the cost of maintenance or repair work. That is priced separately and only goes ahead if you approve it.

7. Home MOT visits

• We will agree a date with you. Please tell us as early as you can if you need to change it.
• An adult must be at home to let us in and stay for the visit, unless we agree otherwise.
• Please make sure we can reach the areas we need to see safely, and tell us about anything that could be a risk to the person visiting, such as pets, asbestos or unsafe floors.
• We may take photos of your home to record its condition. These are kept in your home's record.
• If we cannot carry out a visit because we were not given access, we may charge for a wasted visit. [Amount to be confirmed.]
• After the visit we will add our findings to the portal.

8. Work we arrange for you

You decide

• We will recommend work and explain why, when it should be done and what could happen if it is left. Whether to go ahead is your decision.
• Nothing is booked until you approve it in the portal. Before you approve, we will show you what the work is, the price and who would do it.
• If the price or the work needs to change after you have approved it, for example because the contractor finds something unexpected, we will ask for your approval again before it continues.

The people who do the work

• The work is carried out by independent local contractors, not by our own employees.
• We choose contractors with reasonable care. [To be confirmed: the checks carried out, for example qualifications, registrations such as Gas Safe, insurance and references.]
• [To be confirmed: whether your contract for the work is with MyHivekeeper, or directly with the contractor with MyHivekeeper acting as your agent. This decides who is responsible to you for the quality of the work and must be stated clearly here.]

Paying for work

• [To be confirmed: how and when you pay for arranged work, and to whom.]
• [To be confirmed: how MyHivekeeper is paid when it arranges work, for example a margin or commission, and how that is shown to you.]

Changing your mind and problems with work

• You can cancel approved work before it is booked at no cost. If you cancel after it is booked, you may have to pay costs the contractor has already reasonably incurred. [To be confirmed.]
• If you are unhappy with work we arranged, tell us as soon as you can and we will help to put it right.
• You will need to give the contractor safe access at the agreed time.

9. Your documents and your Home Passport

• Documents and photos you upload remain yours. You give us permission to store them and show them to you, our team and anyone you share your Home Passport with, so that we can provide the service.
• Only upload documents and photos you have the right to share, and nothing unlawful or harmful.
• Keep your own copies of important documents. The portal is a convenient record, not a substitute for the originals.
• Your Home Passport is private unless you switch sharing on. If you do, anyone with the link can read it until you switch sharing off. Who you give the link to is your decision and your responsibility.
• We record what we are told and what we see. We do not check that documents supplied by you or by third parties are genuine or accurate, and anyone relying on a Home Passport should make their own checks.

How we handle personal information is explained in our privacy policy, which forms part of these terms.

10. Using the portal

You agree not to:

• try to see anyone else's home, account or documents;
• interfere with the portal or its security, or introduce viruses or other harmful code;
• copy, resell or reverse engineer the portal;
• use the portal for anything unlawful.

We own the portal, the MyHivekeeper name and logo, and the reports and scores we produce. You may use your own reports and your Home Passport for your own purposes, including sharing them with buyers and advisers.

11. What we promise

• We will provide the service with reasonable care and skill.
• We will try to keep the portal available, but we cannot promise it will always be available or free of faults. We may need to suspend it for maintenance or to fix a problem.
• We may change or improve the service and the portal. If a change makes the service materially worse for you, we will tell you in advance and you can cancel.

Nothing in these terms affects your legal rights as a consumer, including your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015. For advice about your rights, contact Citizens Advice.

12. Cancelling your membership

Your right to change your mind

If you join online, by phone or away from our premises, you normally have 14 days from joining to cancel for any reason and receive a refund. If you ask us to start the service within those 14 days, for example by carrying out a Home MOT, we may charge for what we have provided up to the time you cancel. [Legal adviser to confirm wording and the cancellation form.]

Cancelling later

• You can cancel your membership at any time by emailing info@myhivekeeper.com. [Notice period and any refund of fees paid in advance to be confirmed.]
• You will still need to pay for any work you approved that has been booked or carried out.

When we may end your membership

• We may end your membership if you seriously or repeatedly break these terms, do not pay what you owe after we have reminded you, or behave abusively towards our team or contractors.
• We may also end it if we stop providing the service, or stop covering your area. We will give you at least 30 days' notice and refund any fees you have paid for a period after it ends.

Your records when you leave

• Before your membership ends, you can ask us for a copy of your home's record and documents.
• After it ends, we will delete or anonymise your information as explained in our privacy policy.

13. Our responsibility to you

We do not exclude or limit our liability to you where it would be unlawful to do so. This includes liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, and for breach of your legal rights as a consumer.

If we fail to keep to these terms, we are responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breaking this agreement or failing to use reasonable care and skill. Loss is foreseeable if it is obvious that it will happen, or if we both knew it might happen when you joined.

We are not responsible for:

• defects that could not reasonably have been found in a visual review of the kind described in section 3;
• loss caused by your decision not to go ahead with, or to delay, work we recommended;
• loss caused by information you gave us that was inaccurate or incomplete;
• loss caused by events outside our reasonable control;
• business losses. The service is for private use, so we have no liability to you for loss of profit, loss of business or business interruption.

[To be confirmed by legal adviser: responsibility for contractors' work, which depends on the decision in section 8, and whether any overall limit on liability applies.]

14. Complaints and disputes

• If you are unhappy, please email info@myhivekeeper.com and tell us what has gone wrong. We will reply within [period to be confirmed] and try to put it right.
• [To be confirmed: whether MyHivekeeper belongs to an alternative dispute resolution scheme or trade body.]
• These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. You can bring legal proceedings in the courts of England and Wales. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can also bring proceedings in the courts where you live. [To be confirmed.]

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms, for example when the service changes or the law requires it. The date at the top shows when they were last changed. If a change is important, we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email or in the portal before it takes effect. If you do not agree to the change, you can cancel your membership before then.

16. Other important terms

• We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to another organisation, for example if the business is sold. We will tell you, and it will not reduce your rights.
• You may only transfer your membership to someone else, such as a person who buys your home, if we agree. [To be confirmed: whether a Home Passport can be passed to a buyer.]
• This agreement is between you and us. Nobody else has rights under it.
• If a court finds part of these terms unlawful, the rest will continue to apply.
• If we do not insist straight away that you do something these terms require, or we delay in taking action, we can still do so later.

17. Contact us

• By email: info@myhivekeeper.com
• By post: MyHivekeeper, arcj Ltd, 20-21 Wenlock Road, N1 7GU, United Kingdom