Terms of use

care.petdwelling.com ("the site") is operated by Digidata Systems, LLC. PetDwelling is a brand of that company. Where these terms say "we", "us" or "our", they mean Digidata Systems, LLC.

Where they say "you", they mean you — the person using the site, whether you are looking for pet care, offering it, or just reading.

By creating an account, or by using the site at all, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree to them, please do not use the site.

You need to be at least 18 years old to have an account here, and to have the legal capacity to enter into an agreement.

If you are using the site on behalf of a business, you confirm you are allowed to accept these terms for it, and "you" then means that business.

3 What this site is

It is an introduction service. We give pet owners a way to find people nearby who offer boarding, house sitting, dog walking, doggy day care and drop-in visits, and we give those people a way to be found. We provide the search, the profiles, the messaging and the tools around them.

That is the whole of what we do. Everything that happens after an introduction — agreeing dates, agreeing a rate, meeting, handing over keys, looking after an animal, paying for it — happens between the two of you.

4 What this site is not

This section matters more than any other on the page. Please read it properly.

We do not employ sitters. Sitters using this site are independent people offering their own services on their own terms. They are not our employees, agents, partners or contractors. They set their own rates, choose their own clients, and decide how they work.

We do not check, vet, verify, screen or background check anyone. We do not run criminal record checks, confirm qualifications, inspect homes, or confirm that anyone is insured. A profile on this site is what its owner wrote about themselves. Reviews are what other users wrote. Neither is a recommendation from us.

We do not handle money for bookings. We do not process booking payments, hold funds in escrow, take a commission, or act as a payment agent. See section 7.

A booking on this site is a record, not a contract with us. If you use our tools to request, accept or keep track of a booking, you are writing down what the two of you agreed — the dates, the service, the price. That is all it is. The agreement to provide the care is still between you, we are still not part of it, and nothing you mark on this site makes us responsible for whether the care happened or what it was like.

We do not provide veterinary, boarding, kennelling, training or any other animal service. We are a website.

Because of all of that, the practical safety of a booking rests with you. Meet before you commit. Ask questions. Ask for references. Trust your judgement about the person in front of you, and walk away if something feels wrong.

You are responsible for your account and for anything done through it. Keep your password to yourself, and tell us promptly if you think somebody else has got into it.

What you put on the site must be true. That includes your name, your location, what services you offer, your rates, your availability, and anything you say about your experience with animals.

• One account per person. Do not create an account for somebody else, or pretend to be somebody you are not.
• Do not sell, rent or transfer your account.
• Keep your contact details current — a booking can depend on somebody being able to reach you.

7 Money between owners and sitters

You settle up directly with each other. Cash, bank transfer, whatever the two of you agree — it does not go through us and we never see it.

We take no commission and no service fee on what you pay a sitter. The rate you agree is the rate that is paid.

Because the money never passes through us, we cannot refund a booking, reverse a payment, release funds, chase an unpaid sitter, or settle an argument about what was owed. If a booking goes wrong financially, that is between the two of you.

You are each responsible for your own taxes on anything you earn or pay through arrangements made here.

Premium membership is the one thing we charge for. It costs $29 a year and it buys text message alerts: when somebody replies to one of your conversations, we text you, so a booking is not held up because you were away from a computer.

It is a subscription to the site’s notifications. It is not connected to what you pay a sitter, and it does not buy insurance, vetting, priority, or any guarantee about anybody on the site.

• Payment is taken by Stripe. We do not store your card details.
• Membership renews automatically each year at the price then shown, unless you cancel before the renewal date.
• You can cancel at any time. Cancelling stops the next renewal and you keep the membership for the rest of the year you have already paid for.
• Except where the law says otherwise, payments already made are not refunded.
• If a renewal payment fails, we will retry it over a couple of weeks. If it still fails, membership ends and the paid features stop.
• We may change the price. If we do, we will tell you before it applies to a renewal, and you can cancel if you would rather not pay it.

Conversations on the site are between the two people in them. We store them so both of you can read them back, and so we can look into a report of abuse.

Text alerts need a mobile number you have verified with a code we send you. By verifying a number you agree we can text you about your conversations at that number. Your mobile network’s usual message and data rates apply.

You can switch text alerts off for any individual conversation, from the switch under the message box. Turning them off does not affect your other conversations, and your replies still arrive on the site either way.

We also send email about your account — a receipt, a password reset, a notice about these terms. Those are part of having an account and are not marketing.

10 What you post

Photos, pet profiles, moments, reviews, messages and anything else you put on the site stay yours. You keep the copyright.

By posting, you give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, copy, display and distribute that content for the purpose of running and promoting the site. This licence lasts as long as the content is on the site, plus a reasonable period afterwards for backups. It ends when you delete the content, except for copies in backups and anything another user has already been shown.

You confirm that what you post is yours to post: that you took the photograph or have permission, and that showing it does not break anybody’s rights.

We can remove content that breaks these terms or the law, and we can decline to publish something without giving a reason.

Reviews should describe your own genuine experience of a booking that actually happened.

• Do not write a review of yourself, or ask anybody to write a favourable one for you.
• Do not offer anything in exchange for a review, and do not threaten a bad one to get something.
• Do not write a review to settle a score about something that happened away from the site.

Reviews are the opinions of the people who wrote them. We do not endorse them and we do not check that they are true. We may remove a review that breaks these rules.

12 Things you must not do

Do not use this site to:

• Harass, threaten, abuse, stalk or discriminate against anybody.
• Mistreat, neglect or endanger an animal.
• Lie about who you are, what you offer, or what has happened.
• Post anything unlawful, obscene, hateful or deliberately misleading.
• Take other users’ contact details in bulk, scrape the site, or use it to build a competing database.
• Break into accounts, probe the site’s security, or interfere with how it runs.
• Send spam, chain messages or unsolicited advertising through the messaging system.
• Use the site for anything illegal, or to help somebody else do so.

If you think somebody is doing any of this, tell us at steven@mail.petdwelling.com. If an animal or a person is in immediate danger, contact the emergency services first.

You can close your account whenever you like. Some things stay behind afterwards — the messages you sent are part of somebody else’s conversation, and reviews you wrote stay with the sitter they were about.

We can suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, or where we reasonably believe somebody is putting animals or people at risk. Where it is fair to do so, we will tell you why and give you a chance to respond, but we may act first if the risk is serious.

If we close a premium membership account for breaking these terms, we do not refund the remainder of the year.

14 Disclaimers and the limits of our responsibility

The site is provided as it is. We work to keep it accurate and available, but we do not promise it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that anything on it is correct — including anything a user wrote.

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not responsible for:

• What any user does or fails to do, on the site or away from it.
• Injury to, illness of, loss of or death of an animal.
• Injury to a person, or damage to or loss of property.
• Any agreement between an owner and a sitter, or any money owed under one.
• Anything a user posted, including profiles and reviews.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited — including liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud.

Where our liability can be limited, our total liability to you for anything connected with the site is limited to the greater of the amount you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or $100.

If somebody brings a claim against us because of something you did — how you used the site, what you posted, a booking you were part of, or your breach of these terms — you agree to cover our reasonable losses, damages and legal costs in dealing with it.

Arguments between owners and sitters are for the two of you to sort out. We are not a mediator, an arbitrator or a court, and we do not adjudicate who was right.

We may, entirely at our discretion, remove content or suspend an account arising from a dispute. Doing so is not us taking a side, and it does not make us responsible for the outcome.

A separate, fuller privacy policy is being prepared. Until it is published, this section is what we can tell you, and it is accurate.

We hold what you give us in order to run your account: your name and email, the address you search from, your pets, your conversations, and — if you choose to add one — a mobile number you have verified.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with anybody for their own marketing.

We share it with the companies that make the site work, and only so far as they need it to do that job: Stripe, which takes membership payments and holds the card details we never see, and Twilio, which delivers the text messages. Both process that data on our behalf.

Your conversations are visible to the person you are talking to. Your public profile, your reviews and anything you post as a moment are visible to other users of the site.

You can close your account at any time, which removes your profile. Some things stay: messages you sent remain part of the other person’s conversation, and reviews you wrote remain with the sitter they were about.

We may change these terms as the site changes. When we do, we will update the date at the top of this page.

If a change materially affects your rights, we will give you reasonable notice — by email or a notice on the site — before it takes effect. Continuing to use the site after that means you accept the new terms. If you do not accept them, close your account.

These terms, together with the privacy policy, are the whole agreement between us about the site.

If any part of them turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands.

If we do not enforce something straight away, that does not mean we have given it up.

You may not transfer your rights under these terms to somebody else. We may transfer ours if the business is sold or reorganised, provided your rights are not reduced.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, and the courts of New York have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute about them, except where the law where you live gives you the right to bring a claim in your own courts.

Questions about these terms, or anything else, go to steven@mail.petdwelling.com.