Terms of Service

What Scout is

Scout is a marketplace that introduces horse owners to equine professionals such as grooms, farriers, physiotherapists and equine dentists. We provide the listings, booking and messaging tools. We do not provide equine services ourselves.

When a booking is accepted, the contract for that work is between you and the professional. Scout is not a party to it. Professionals are responsible for their own qualifications, insurance, and the work they carry out.

Using Scout means you accept these terms, our Privacy Policy and our Cookie Policy.

Your account

You can sign up with an email address and password, or with Google sign-in. Give accurate details, keep your password and sign-in to yourself, and tell us if you think someone else has got into your account. One account per person. You're responsible for what happens under yours.

Bookings and payments

Most bookings start as a request. The professional accepts or declines it - a request on its own is not a confirmed appointment. If they do neither, the request expires by itself 48 hours after you send it, or when the appointment was due to start if that comes sooner. Some professionals turn on instant booking for a service, in which case your booking is confirmed the moment you pay and nobody has to accept it. Either way, prices, services and coverage areas are set by the professional on their own listing.

You can ask the same professional for several services in one request. They are paid for as one payment and are accepted or declined as one: a professional cannot take part of your request and leave the rest.

Payments are processed by Stripe, and professionals are paid out through Stripe Connect. Scout never sees or stores your full card details. Everything on Scout is priced in pounds sterling.

What you pay

Before you pay we show you the professional's price for each service, a single Booking fee line, and the total. That total is the amount your card is charged. There is nothing added on afterwards, and we never charge you extra for paying by card.

The Booking fee is what Scout charges for running the platform. It is currently 5% of the first £300 of the service prices in your request and 3.5% of anything above that, with a minimum of £1.25, and it is charged once per request rather than once per service. So a £200 request carries a £10 fee, and an £800 one carries £32.50 rather than £40. A request that comes to £0 carries no Booking fee at all. We can change the fee, but the fee that applies to a booking is always the one shown to you before you pay.

The professional receives exactly the price they listed. The Booking fee sits on top of that and is not taken out of what they are paid.

The Booking fee comes back to you only when everything in that request is refunded in full. If any part of it is kept - a half refund after a late cancellation, or one service in a multi-service visit that still goes ahead - the fee is not refunded.

When your card is charged, and when the professional is paid

When you send a request we place a hold on your card for the total. No money leaves your account at that point. If the professional declines, or the request expires, or you cancel before they have answered, the hold is released and nothing is ever taken. If you start a booking and do not finish paying, the request is cancelled after an hour and the hold goes with it.

When the professional accepts, the total is charged to your card. On an instant booking there is nothing to accept, so the total is charged straight away. Either way Scout holds that money - the professional is not paid at the point your booking is confirmed.

Once the appointment's end time has passed you have 48 hours to confirm it went ahead or to report a problem. If you confirm, the professional is paid. If you do nothing, the booking confirms itself when that window closes and the professional is paid then. If you report a problem, the money stays with Scout until the report is settled.

Professionals ask us to collect their money for them, so paying Scout for a booking counts as paying the professional. Once your card has been charged you have paid for that booking, and the professional cannot come back to you for the same money, whether or not we have passed it on to them yet. If we are late paying them, or do not pay them, that is between them and us and not something you settle twice.

How long we hold the money

Between your card being charged and the professional being paid, the money sits with Scout. It sits in Scout's own balance with our payment provider. It is not in an account in your name or in the professional's, neither of you can draw on it, and it earns no interest for anyone. Scout is not a bank, and we are not holding it in escrow or in trust for either of you. Making or accepting a booking means you both agree to us holding it this way.

How long we hold it depends on when the appointment is, because we charge when the booking is confirmed and pay out only after the appointment has been and gone. Professionals decide how far ahead they will take bookings, and that can be as much as two years. A visit booked for next week means we hold the money for days. A visit booked for next spring means we hold it for months. There is no shorter route to the professional: the money moves when the appointment has passed, not when the booking is made.

Two things keep money with us for longer, and both are described elsewhere on this page: a cancellation charge waits 7 days so the professional has the chance to waive it, and an open chargeback freezes everything still held for that request until the card network has finished with it.

Holding the money is what makes the rest of this work. The professional knows the visit is paid for before they set out, you are not out of pocket if it does not happen, and there is something to hold on to if either of you reports a problem.

Cancellations and refunds

Every professional picks one of four cancellation policies. Whichever one is on their listing when you book is attached to your booking and is the one that applies, even if they change their policy afterwards. It is shown to you before you pay, and confirming the booking means you accept it:

• Free cancellation - cancel at any time before the appointment and the whole service price is refunded.
• Flexible - cancel at least 24 hours before the start time and the whole service price is refunded. Inside 24 hours, half the service price is refunded to you and half goes to the professional.
• Moderate - cancel at least 48 hours before the start time and the whole service price is refunded. Inside 48 hours, half the service price is refunded to you and half goes to the professional.
• Firm - cancel at least 48 hours before the start time and the whole service price is refunded. Between 48 and 24 hours before, half is refunded to you and half goes to the professional. Inside 24 hours, nothing is refunded and the whole service price goes to the professional.

Scout works these refunds out and issues them automatically when you cancel. You do not need to agree them with the professional first, and they are not open to negotiation after the event. Do talk to each other about timing, access and rearranging - that is what the booking messages are for - but the money follows the policy attached to the booking.

You cannot cancel through Scout once the appointment's start time has passed. After that point the confirmation window above is the route: confirm it, or report a problem.

Where a cancellation leaves money owed to the professional, Scout holds it for 7 days from the moment you cancel before paying it over. During those 7 days the professional can waive it as a goodwill gesture, in which case the whole amount is refunded to you. Waiving is all or nothing and is entirely their decision - Scout cannot make them do it, we do not waive charges on their behalf, and once the 7 days are up the money goes to them.

If the professional cancels, or tells us the appointment did not go ahead, the whole service price for that booking is refunded to you however close to the appointment they do it. The four policies above govern your cancellations, not theirs. And if we had not charged your card yet, nothing is taken in the first place.

If something goes wrong

If a booking didn't happen, wasn't what was agreed, or the other side didn't turn up, report it through that booking in the app so there is a record attached to it. Customers report during the 48-hour confirmation window after the appointment's end time.

A professional reporting that the appointment did not go ahead is telling us not to pay them. That cancels the booking and refunds the whole service price to the customer straight away, with nobody at Scout needing to decide anything.

Any other report - anything a customer reports, or a professional reporting a different kind of problem - marks the booking as disputed and freezes the money with Scout. Neither of you can lift that yourselves. Someone at Scout decides where the held money goes: it is either released to the professional or refunded in full to the customer. A report with no money held behind it can simply be closed instead. We will not close a report and leave the money frozen. Where a visit covers several services, each one is decided on its own, so the outcome can differ between them.

We look at what both of you have told us and at the record on the booking. Scout is not a court and not your insurer: deciding where the held money goes is not a ruling on who was at fault, and it does not stop either of you taking the matter up with the other, or with us, by any other route open to you.

Chargebacks

Asking your bank or card issuer to reverse a payment is a chargeback, and it runs through the card network rather than through Scout. Scout is the merchant of record for your payment, so the chargeback is raised against us and we are the ones who answer it.

While a chargeback is open we freeze every payment still held for that request - including payments for other services in the same request, and including money we had already decided to move. Nothing is paid out and no refund is issued while it is open, because the card network may still take the money back. If it is decided in our favour, the freeze lifts and the booking picks up where it left off. If it is decided in your favour, your bank has already returned the money to you and we do not return it a second time.

Please report a problem to us before going to your bank. A chargeback blocks the very process that could have sorted it out sooner, and we may suspend an account that repeatedly charges back bookings that went ahead.

If you offer services on Scout

You set your own prices and choose your own cancellation policy, and you receive exactly the price you listed - the Booking fee is charged to the customer on top and is not deducted from your payment.

You can add services to your listing freely. Before you can price a service above £0 you need to complete payout setup. Payouts reach you through a Stripe connected account in your own name. You accept Stripe's own terms for that account alongside these, you give Stripe the identity and bank details it asks you for, and if Stripe restricts or closes that account we cannot pay you until you have sorted it out with them.

You are paid once the customer confirms the appointment went ahead, or when their confirmation window closes if they do nothing - not at the point you accept a booking. Cancelling a booking, or telling us it did not go ahead, refunds the customer in full. Your cancellation policy applies to the bookings you already hold as it stood when each of them was made, so changing it only affects new ones.

How we collect payments for you

Customers pay Scout rather than paying you directly, and we pay you afterwards. Listing on Scout appoints us as your agent for that one job: collecting payments from your customers on your behalf for bookings made through Scout, then holding and paying that money over on the terms set out on this page.

That appointment covers the money and nothing else. It does not make us your agent for the work itself. It does not let us set or negotiate your prices, discount your services, or commit you to a booking you have not agreed to take - where you have switched instant booking on, that setting is your agreement. And it does not make Scout a party to the contract between you and your customer, which stays yours.

Because we collect for you, a customer who has paid Scout for a booking has paid you. What they owe you for that booking is settled at the point the money reaches us, whether or not it has reached you yet, so you must not invoice or chase a customer for money they have already paid through Scout. Getting that money to you is then a matter between you and us.

What we owe you is the price you listed, paid over once the customer confirms the visit went ahead or their confirmation window closes without them doing anything. Until then it sits with us, for as long as this page describes. It can also be reduced, or go back to the customer instead, under the cancellation policy you chose, a problem report, or a chargeback - in each case in the way this page already sets out.

Card payments are taken by Scout, so a customer who disputes one with their bank disputes it with us, and we are the ones who answer it. While a dispute is open, anything we are still holding for that request stays frozen and cannot be paid to you until it is over.

Reviews

You can only review after a completed booking, and only within 14 days of it completing - after that the booking can no longer be reviewed. Reviews are published without reviewer names, and dates show at month level only. Because a review is tied to one completed booking, the business you booked with can usually tell which booking it came from - not showing names protects you from other users, not from the business you reviewed. Every review is automatically screened and can be checked by a person under our review guidelines. By submitting a review you give Scout permission to publish and display it on the site.

Acceptable use

Don't use Scout for anything unlawful, abusive or fraudulent. That includes fake bookings, fake or paid-for reviews, harassing other users, impersonating someone else, listing services you are not able or entitled to provide, and scraping or misusing other people's details. We can remove content and suspend or close accounts that break these terms.

Liability

Scout is provided "as is". We can't promise the site will always be available or error-free, and we don't vet, guarantee or take responsibility for the services professionals provide or the accuracy of what users put on the site.

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes any liability that cannot be limited or excluded by law - including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. If you are a consumer, your statutory rights are not affected.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as Scout changes. The date at the top of this page shows when they last changed, and continuing to use Scout after an update means you accept the new version.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and disputes are subject to the courts of England and Wales.

Contact

Questions about these terms: email help@scoutequine.com.