Cleaner terms

You use MaidMatcher as a self-employed person or a business. Nothing in these terms, and nothing about how the service works, makes you our employee, worker, agent, partner or franchisee. We do not control when, where, how or for whom you work, we do not set your prices, and you are free to find customers anywhere else. You are responsible for:

• your own tax, National Insurance and record keeping, and registering as self-employed or as a business where the law requires it;
• having the right to work in the United Kingdom;
• complying with the law in the work you do, including health and safety and the safe use of products;
• your own insurance. We strongly recommend public liability insurance. We do not require it and we do not check it (see section 3).

You must be at least 18 to hold a cleaner account.

When a customer hires you, the contract is between you and that customer. We are not a party to it, we do not guarantee it, and we do not collect payment for it. You agree the price, the scope, the timing, cancellation terms, access and what happens if something goes wrong directly with the customer, and the customer pays you directly.

You are responsible for the work you do and for any loss, damage or injury you cause in doing it. We are not. Section 10 and section 11 of the terms of use set this out, and section 12 says that you will compensate us for claims made against us that arise from your work.

We recommend agreeing the essentials in the conversation on the site, so the record is there for both of you.

• Everything on your page must be true and kept up to date: your name or trading name, your experience, your services, your prices, your areas and your availability.
• Photographs you upload must be of your own work, or photographs you have the right to use. Library photographs we provide are illustrative and are shown as ours in your editor; you may use them only on your page on this site.
• If you enter insurance details, they must be accurate and current, and you must update them if the policy changes or lapses. We do not currently verify insurance details and we do not show a verified badge. If we introduce verification, we will say on your page exactly what was checked and when, and these terms will be updated first.
• You may not claim any qualification, membership, check or accreditation you do not hold.
• Testimonials you add from outside the site must be genuine statements by real customers and are labelled as unverified.
• Your page is published under a web address on our domain. We may take a page offline if it breaks these terms or the guidelines, and will tell you why.

• You see jobs within the travel distance you set from your base postcode, and jobs in areas you have said you cover. You may switch job alert emails off at any time.
• Apply only to jobs you genuinely intend to do, at a price you will honour if the customer accepts it.
• An application, a reply to an enquiry, or a response to an invitation opens a conversation with that customer. You may only contact a customer who has messaged you, invited you, or posted a job you applied to. You must not use details from the site to approach anyone for anything else.
• A customer may decline you or hire someone else without giving a reason. A job leaves the board when it is filled or after 60 days.
• The free plan includes a number of applications each month; the pricing page states the current number and what a paid plan changes.

Where the site shows a list of cleaners, whether to a customer searching or to a customer choosing who to invite, the order is decided by these things, in roughly this order of importance:

1. Distance from the customer’s postcode to the nearest area you cover or your base postcode. Nearest first.
2. Whether your page is complete: a photograph, a description, services with prices, and areas.
3. How quickly you tend to reply and how recently you were active.
4. Reviews: how many, and the average.

A paid plan does not buy a higher position. It adds tools, not rank. A cleaner who is consistently well reviewed and quick to reply may be shown a badge saying so; the rules for it are the same for everyone and it cannot be bought. We may adjust how ranking works to keep the list useful for customers; where a change would materially affect cleaners we will describe it here first.

• The free plan is free for as long as you like. It includes your page, your inbox, the job board, job alerts and reviews, with the limits stated on the pricing page.
• A paid plan is billed monthly in advance by card through Stripe, at the price shown on the pricing page when you subscribe, including VAT where it applies. Stripe is the merchant of record for the card transaction; your card details never touch our servers.
• Cancelling. You can cancel at any time from your dashboard. The plan runs to the end of the month you have paid for and then stops. We do not refund part months, except as below.
• Fourteen day guarantee. If you cancel within 14 days of your first ever subscription, email us and we refund that first payment in full.
• Failed payments. If a payment fails, Stripe retries for a short period. If it still fails, your account returns to the free plan. Your page stays live.
• Price changes. We may change the price of a paid plan by emailing you at least 30 days before it applies to you. The new price applies from your next renewal after that date. If you do not want it, cancel before then.
• Nothing you get from a plan makes us responsible for the work you do or the customers you get.

A customer’s name, address, postcode, phone number and anything else you learn through the site are given to you for one purpose: the cleaning you are discussing with them. You must keep them secure, must not share or sell them, must not use them for marketing, and must delete them when you no longer need them for that customer. You are responsible for your own compliance with data protection law in how you handle customers’ details. If a customer asks you what you hold about them, answer them.

We may restrict what your account can do, suspend it, hide your page, or close the account for the reasons in the terms of use, and in particular if:

• your page or your messages are untrue, misleading or break the guidelines;
• you contact customers outside the rules in section 4, or use their details for anything other than the job;
• a customer reports you and we reasonably believe the report;
• reviews about you appear to be fake, paid for or arranged;
• you attempt to get round application limits or other limits of the service;
• a legal obligation requires it.

Notice and reasons. If we restrict or suspend your account, we email you the reason at the time. If we close it, we email you the reason at least 30 days before, unless you have broken these terms repeatedly, the law requires immediate closure, or waiting would put someone at risk. In every case you can reply to that email and ask us to look again; a person will review it and answer within ten working days.

You may close your account at any time. A paid plan is cancelled at the same time and runs to the end of the period paid for. Conversations remain visible to the customers you spoke to, and reviews remain, because they are the record of jobs that happened.

We may change these terms. A change that affects you in a material way is announced by email at least 15 days before it takes effect, or longer where a change needs you to adapt how you work. If you do not accept a change you may close your account before it takes effect. Continuing to use the service after that date means you accept it. Where the law requires a change sooner, we tell you as soon as we can.

If you have a complaint about us, about a decision we made about your account, or about a customer, email support@maidmatcher.co.uk with the details. A person acknowledges it within five working days and answers within ten. We keep a record of complaints and what came of them. The guidelines describe how complaints about another user are handled.