Client Terms of Business

We're Handpicked Home Services, a domestic cleaning introduction agency for Winchester and Hampshire. Our job is to find you a genuinely good cleaner and then look after the arrangement for as long as you want it. We also offer one-off cleans, such as a spring or deep clean, on these same terms.

• We find and check your cleaner. We interview every cleaner in person, check their identity and DBS certificate, take up references, verify their public liability insurance, including cover for damage to what they're cleaning, and have them complete a paid trial clean. We re-check the insurance every year and the DBS every 3 years. If we ever learn something that changes our view of a cleaner's suitability, we'll tell you without delay.
• We match them to you. Your home, your preferences, and the cleaner's availability and area.
• We look after the arrangement. We handle payment (section 6), arrange cover when your cleaner is away, find you a replacement if they stop working with you, and act as your point of contact whenever something needs sorting.

What we say in our marketing about vetting is exactly what we promise here, and section 11 sets out what we're responsible for.

That's deliberate, because it gives you both the best outcome. The cleaners we introduce work for themselves. They keep the whole of their rate, we keep their diary full, and you get a vetted, dedicated cleaner (section 1) at a fair price. What that means in practice:

• The cleaning itself is an arrangement directly between you and your cleaner. It stays simple - for most clients it's no more than the agreed visits and a monthly standing order. These terms cover everything we do around it: the finding, checking, matching, cover and support.
• You set what matters. We gather it at your home visit and hand it to your cleaner as their brief, and you can add to it or change it with them any time. What a standard clean covers is set out on our website. It describes the scope your cleaner delivers, and it's the standard we measure a clean against when we put one right (section 11). Your cleaner brings their own experience to how the work gets done, and we don't direct or supervise it.
• You pay them directly (section 6), and they handle their own tax, National Insurance and insurance.
• When they're away, we'll help arrange cover from our network of vetted cleaners, or they may send a suitable substitute (section 7).

Your cleaner is insured, we cover the excess, and if a clean falls short we put it right. Section 11 has the detail.

Asking us for a quote. You can ask for a quote online (our instant quote), by phone, or by email. A quote is valid for 30 days unless we withdraw it sooner. Asking for a quote, or booking a home visit, doesn't create a contract or commit either of us to anything.

The home visit. Before your first clean we visit your home (or, if you prefer, take a video walkthrough) to confirm what you'd like done, the hours, and your final price. Your booking confirmation records these; section 6 explains your price.

When the agreement starts. Our agreement with you is formed when we confirm your booking in writing after your home visit. You set up your Direct Debit at or after confirmation, and your 14-day right to change your mind (section 4) runs from the day we confirm.

Our decision. Occasionally we may decide not to take you on. If so, we'll tell you promptly, and anything you've paid us comes straight back.

You have a legal right to cancel this agreement within 14 days of the day we confirm your booking, without giving a reason and without any notice period.

• If you'd like your cleaning to start within those 14 days, we'll ask you to sign an express request - on paper or on screen - and we'll email you a copy. You keep your right to cancel, but if you cancel after cleaning has started, you pay for the cleaning and services received up to that point.
• If you'd rather wait, your service starts after the 14 days and cancelling within them costs you nothing.
• To cancel, just tell us - email is easiest. We'll confirm receipt and, within 14 days, refund anything you've paid beyond the cleaning and services you've received. A cancellation form is attached (Schedule 2) - you can use it, but any clear statement works.

Before the first clean we'll have matched you with a cleaner you're happy to go ahead with. If you're ever not happy - at the start or at any point after - tell us and we'll put it right, or introduce you to a different cleaner.

What "introduced" means. We've introduced a cleaner to you once we've given you their details, or arranged or carried out any clean - regular or one-off - between you and that cleaner through Handpicked. That definition matters for section 9 (the Direct Hire Fee).

The price. You pay a single hourly price, weekly or fortnightly, at the rate on our published price list when you sign up, recorded in your booking confirmation. A one-off clean is quoted individually, at the hourly rate we confirm at your home visit and record in your booking confirmation. Each visit is a fixed length, agreed with you up front, and a regular visit is at least 90 minutes whether you book weekly or fortnightly. The price has two parts - your cleaner's rate and our service fee rate ('we' and 'our' always mean Handpicked) - and your booking confirmation shows both, side by side:

• Most of it is your cleaner's money, at your cleaner's rate in your booking confirmation. You pay it directly to them. We never hold it or take a cut of it.
• The rest is ours, at our service fee rate in your booking confirmation. It pays for the finding, checking, cover, replacement and support in section 1.

Getting the hours right. We'll suggest the visit length at your home visit and confirm it with you after your second clean - first cleans always run long. For a one-off clean, the hours are fixed at your home visit. If your home needs more time than we've booked, we'll agree new hours with you. We never ask your cleaner to absorb extra time unpaid.

How payment works. At or shortly after your home visit you set up a Direct Debit. We collect on the 1st of each month for the cleans you had in the month just gone - the hours of each visit that took place, times our service fee rate - and we email you the amount before every collection. Your first collection is on the 1st after your first clean. You pay your cleaner directly, in the way you and they agree. If a clean doesn't happen, there is nothing to pay us for it.

One-off cleans. A one-off clean, such as a spring or deep clean, works the same way, except that there's no Direct Debit. Our service fee for the clean is your booked hours times our service fee rate, and you pay it once, by bank transfer to the account in your booking confirmation, within 7 days of the clean. You pay your cleaner directly, at their rate, once the clean is done. If the clean doesn't happen, there's nothing to pay us. If on the day your home needs more time than we booked, your cleaner will agree the extra hours with you before carrying on, never afterwards. You pay your cleaner for those hours directly, and our service fee on them is added to the same transfer.

Not happy with a clean? Tell us within 48 hours. We'll put it right, and we waive our service fee for that clean.

Recommending a friend. Once you've had two cleans on a regular plan, your Handpicked app gives you your own link to share. If a friend books through it and starts regular cleans with us, we say thank you once their first full month of our service fee is paid: we take a month of our service fee at your friend's plan off your next fee, up to your own whole month. The thank-you comes out of our fee. Your friend pays the usual price, your cleaner's pay never changes, and we never tell you what your friend pays. There's one thank-you per friend, and a one-off clean doesn't count. We may change or end the scheme for new friends with 30 days' notice, and a thank-you you've already earned is always kept.

If a payment fails or is late, we'll tell you and retry. We may pause cleans until it's sorted, and we may charge interest on overdue amounts at 2% a year above the Bank of England base rate. Please talk to us early if something's gone wrong.

Price changes. We give at least 30 days' notice. You can give notice to end the service before a change takes effect, and a change you've rejected that way never applies during your notice.

Cancelling or moving a clean. Just tell us:

• More than 24 hours before the clean: free.
• Within 24 hours, or a lockout on arrival: the late-cancellation fee is your cleaner's full rate for the booked visit (their hourly rate times the booked hours). You owe it to your cleaner directly, under your cleaning arrangement with them. They invoice it, you pay them, and it never comes to us. We drop our own service fee for that visit, or credit it back if you've already paid it. It's their money, and only they can choose to waive it.
• Contagious illness at home: we'll reschedule free of charge - your cleaner keeps the work on a new date. Cancelling outright instead falls under the normal rule.
• Something genuinely out of your control? Talk to us. The fee is your cleaner's to waive, and we'll put the circumstances to them.

When your cleaner is ill or away, you choose: cover from our vetted network (or a suitable substitute your cleaner arranges), or skip the visit and pay nothing.

If your cleaner stops working with you, we'll find you a replacement, and you pay nothing while you're without one - service fees already collected for missed cleans credit back automatically. We promise real effort to find one, though we can't guarantee a date, and a client without a cleaner is our most urgent job.

Pausing. Pause the service any time - just tell us, and we'll restart when you're ready.

The Good Client Charter (Schedule 1) is part of these terms. It covers safe access to your home and never how the cleaning is done. If a breach of it means a clean can't safely or reasonably go ahead when your cleaner arrives, we treat it as a late cancellation (section 7).

You can take your cleaner on directly. We introduced them to you, so if you do it during the restricted period a one-off Direct Hire Fee applies. This is how it works.

Some words we use here. Your cleaner means any cleaner we've introduced to you (section 5 says when a cleaner counts as introduced). To take your cleaner on directly means to employ, pay, book or arrange cleaning with them in any way other than through Handpicked - yourself or through anyone in your household (anyone living at your address), or through any other person, business or agency, whether you pay in cash or any other way. The restricted period means the whole time you're our client for that cleaner, plus 12 months from our introduction or your last Handpicked clean with them, whichever is later.

1. The restriction. During the restricted period, you must not take your cleaner on directly unless you've first paid us the Direct Hire Fee.

2. When it becomes payable. If you, or anyone in your household, take your cleaner on directly during the restricted period, the full fee becomes immediately payable, whether or not we've asked for it.

3. How we work it out. While you're our client, the Direct Hire Fee is 12 times your average monthly service fee, worked out from the three months of cleaning before you took your cleaner on directly, or your whole time as our client if that was shorter. If you took your cleaner on directly after a one-off clean, the fee depends on what you take them on for. For regular cleaning, it's 12 times the monthly service fee your new regular pattern would cost at our published service-fee rate. For another one-off clean, it's 10 times our service fee for that clean. After your service ends, the fee reduces by one-twelfth for each complete month since your last Handpicked clean with that cleaner, reaching nothing at the end of the restricted period. We'll set out the exact amount, and how we reached it, in a written invoice. Worked example, at our launch rates: 2.5 hours a week at a £5-an-hour service fee is £54.17 a month, so the fee is 12 × £54.17 = £650 while you're our client. If you instead took the same cleaner on five complete months after your last clean, it would be 7/12 of that, £379.17.

4. Paying it. The fee is due within 14 days of our invoice. Unpaid, it's a debt we may recover through the courts, with interest at 2% a year above the Bank of England base rate together with our reasonable costs of recovery.

5. What the fee is for. It recovers the service fees we'd otherwise have earned in the future for finding, checking and supporting your cleaner. When you take your cleaner on directly, we lose that future income. That's why the fee doesn't shrink while you're our client, and does shrink month by month once your service has ended. It's a genuine estimate of our loss, agreed in advance, and it isn't a penalty.

6. A cleaner you already knew. If you'd already used or arranged cleaning with a cleaner before we introduced them, tell us in writing when we introduce them and this section doesn't apply to that cleaner. If you don't tell us, it applies in full.

7. What this doesn't do. Ending your Handpicked service, on its own, costs you nothing beyond your notice (section 15). Once the restricted period ends, you can take your cleaner on directly with no fee. Nothing in this section affects your statutory rights as a consumer.

8. This section survives. Taking your cleaner on directly triggers it, and it continues for the whole restricted period however these terms end. If you cancel this agreement during your 14-day cooling-off period (section 4), this section won't restrict anything you do after cancellation.

Keys pass directly between you and your cleaner; we never hold them. Your key carries a code, never your name or address. We store alarm codes and access notes encrypted, show them only to your cleaner, and delete them when your service ends. When your arrangement with a cleaner ends, your key comes back straight away - by hand, never by post. If a key is ever lost, your cleaner tells you and us immediately and we'll help you sort it, including the cost of replacement locks where the loss was your cleaner's fault (covered by their insurance, section 11).

Accidents happen, and you're covered:

• Every cleaner in our network carries their own public liability insurance of at least £2 million, verified before we introduce them and re-checked every year.
• We pay the excess (up to £250 per incident) for genuine accidental damage during a Handpicked clean that you tell us about promptly, so a small breakage gets sorted quickly.
• That includes damage from the products and equipment your cleaner brings. Choosing the right product for each surface is part of your cleaner's job.
• Tell us within 7 days and keep the damaged item - insurers usually need to see it.

What's not covered. There are four things.

• Theft by your cleaner. We don't insure or guarantee against theft committed by an independent cleaner just because we introduced them. Your remedy is against the cleaner and through the police, and we'll support you with both.
• Damage from products or equipment you supplied that turned out to be faulty, or that you asked your cleaner to use after they or we advised against it.
• Damage from ironing. Your cleaner can iron for you if you both agree, but cleaners' insurance usually doesn't cover ironing and our excess promise doesn't either, so anything you ask them to iron is at your own risk. That matters most for delicate items and anything labelled dry clean only. Your cleaner can turn down any item.
• Pre-existing damage, or fair wear and tear.

None of these limits our responsibility for loss caused by our own failure to carry out the identity, reference, DBS, insurance or other vetting promised in these terms with reasonable care and skill.

If a clean falls short, we put it right. Tell us and we'll arrange for it to be sorted with your cleaner, or find you a different cleaner (section 13). That's our promise on standards, and "falls short" means short of what a standard clean covers on our website and the priorities on your page in the app. The clean itself is your cleaner's work, so it's their insurance that covers damage, and we pay the excess.

What we're responsible for. Carrying out our own services - finding, checking, matching and supporting - with reasonable care and skill. If we fail to do that and you lose out as a result, we're responsible for losses that were a foreseeable result of our failure.

What we're not responsible for. There are two things.

• Loss or damage caused by your cleaner's own acts or omissions - that's what their insurance covers, and we pay the excess.
• Losses that weren't a foreseeable result of anything we did wrong.

What you're responsible for. There are three things.

• The safety information you give us (Schedule 1).
• The materials and equipment you supply.
• Instructions you give your cleaner directly, beyond a normal domestic clean.

If someone makes a claim against us because of one of these, you're responsible for what it costs us - but only to the extent it was caused by your fault, and never to the extent it was caused by ours.

Our liability cap. If we break this agreement, our total liability to you is limited to the greater of the service fees you have paid us in the 12 months before the claim and £500. The cap does not apply to: your statutory rights to have our services carried out with reasonable care and skill; loss caused by our failure to carry out the vetting we've promised you; loss or misuse of your keys, codes or access information while in our hands; or our breach of data protection law.

What's never limited. Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law. Nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights as a consumer.

We hold what the service needs: your contact details, address, payment details (held by our payment providers, never by us), notes about your home and preferences, including the priorities and the notes for your cleaner on your page in the app, and your clean history. We share those priorities and notes with your cleaner, because they're what the brief is, and they're deleted with your access details when your service ends. We store anything sensitive about access to your home - keys, alarm codes, entry notes - encrypted, and share it only with your cleaner. We share information only with your cleaner and the providers who run our systems and payments, and we never sell it. The full detail, including your rights and how to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk), is in our privacy notice at handpickedhomeservices.co.uk/privacy.

Phone, email or a message all work. We'll acknowledge your complaint within 2 working days, investigate, and aim to give you a full answer within 14 days (if it needs longer, we'll tell you why and when). If something went wrong on a clean, the usual remedies are asking your cleaner to re-clean, a credit, or a different cleaner - whatever puts it right. Handpicked is run by its owners, and the person answering your complaint has the authority to fix it. If we can't sort a complaint between us, we're not members of an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) scheme and we're not obliged to use one. A certified ADR body able to deal with a dispute like ours is Consumer Arbitration, run by Consumer Dispute Resolution Ltd (consumerarbitration.co.uk); we'll tell you at the time whether we agree to use it for your dispute. For information-handling complaints you can go to the Information Commissioner's Office, and the courts always remain open to you.

We may update these terms - for example to reflect changes in how the service works, in pricing, or in the law. If a change matters to you, we'll give you at least 30 days' notice in writing. If you don't want to continue under the new terms, give notice before they take effect (section 15) and they never apply to you.

Ending the service. Give us one month's notice, in writing. There's no minimum term and no cancellation fee. During your notice, cleans and the normal cancellation rules (section 7) continue. At the end of it you pay for cleaning delivered and nothing else, and we refund any unused advance fee to your bank. The Direct Hire Fee rules (section 9) continue for their restricted period, and ending the service itself never triggers that fee. A one-off clean needs no notice. The arrangement ends when the clean is done and paid for, and section 16 says which parts continue.

We can end the service too, on one month's notice - or sooner if payments repeatedly fail or you seriously or repeatedly break the Good Client Charter. We'll always tell you why.

Who we are. We are Handpicked Home Services Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 17380383, registered office 33 Boston Road South, Holbeach, Spalding, Lincolnshire, PE12 7LR. You can reach us at hello@handpickedhs.co.uk.

What kind of agency we are, in law. For the purposes of the Employment Agencies Act 1973, we act as an employment agency. We introduce self-employed cleaners to you, and we never employ them or supply them ourselves. Our professional indemnity and public liability insurance is underwritten by CFC Underwriting Ltd and covers the services we provide in the United Kingdom.

The whole agreement. These terms, together with your booking details and our privacy notice, are the agreement between you and us for our introduction and support services. (Your cleaning contract with your cleaner is separate - section 2.)

If part of these terms is invalid. If part of these terms turns out to be invalid, the rest stays in full force.

More than one of you. If more than one person signs up for the same household, each of you is responsible for the whole of what's owed, not a share of it.

Things outside anyone's control. Neither of us is responsible for a failure caused by events outside our reasonable control - severe weather, illness epidemics, or similar. Whoever is affected tells the other as soon as reasonably possible.

Notices. Notices go in writing to the contact details we each hold for the other, and count as received 24 hours after sending (or the next working day).

Only you and us. Only you and we can enforce these terms. No one else has rights under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.

What survives. Ending this agreement doesn't end the parts designed to outlast it: the Direct Hire Fee (section 9) for its restricted period, anything you still owe, our liability terms (section 11), and this section.

Governing law. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales will deal with any dispute. Nothing in this clause takes away protections you're entitled to as a consumer.

• Access. Make sure your cleaner can get in at the agreed time - be home, or arrange keys (section 10).
• A safe, workable home. Reasonable heating in winter, working lighting, and hot water. Tell us in advance about anything that could affect a cleaner's safety - a broken step, exposed wiring, a recent infestation, or anything similar.
• Equipment. Have a vacuum in the house, and a mop and bucket for hard floors. They need to be in working order and to suit your floors. If that doesn't work for your home, we can agree something different with you in writing (a message is fine), such as your cleaner bringing their own vacuum. Your cleaner brings the rest - cloths, wipes, dusters and sprays. If you'd rather they used a product of your own on a particular floor or surface, leave it out for them.
• Pets. Please secure any pet that might be anxious, aggressive or an escape risk while your cleaner works.
• Parking. If parking near your home is restricted, arrange a space or permit, or tell us so we can factor it in.
• Changes with notice. Give reasonable notice of changes (section 7); please avoid same-day changes to time or scope unless genuinely unavoidable.
• Respect. Treat your cleaner as the professional they are. We don't continue service for clients who are abusive or persistently unreasonable towards a cleaner.

Complete and return this form only if you wish to cancel this agreement within your 14-day cooling-off period. You don't have to use it - any clear statement works.

To: Handpicked Home Services Ltd, 33 Boston Road South, Holbeach, Spalding, Lincolnshire, PE12 7LR, hello@handpickedhs.co.uk:

I/We hereby give notice that I/We cancel my/our contract for the supply of the following service: Handpicked Home Services introduction and support services.

Ordered on (*)/received on (*):

Name of consumer(s):

Address of consumer(s):

Signature of consumer(s) (only if this form is notified on paper):

Date:

(*) Delete as appropriate