Terms of use

About these terms

These terms apply when you use Stop The Mould: when you visit the site, run the Free Case Check, buy the Evidence Pack or the Reviewed Report, hold an account, respond to a case a resident has shared with you, or subscribe to the Landlord Workspace. The service is provided by Stop The Mould Ltd, company number 17316399, registered office 66 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NA. Stop The Mould is run by one founder. Questions go to hello@stopthemould.com.

The privacy policy explains what we do with your data, the cookies page what is stored in your browser, and the complaints procedure what happens if something goes wrong. If you are a consumer, nothing in these terms takes away rights the law gives you.

What the service is

Stop The Mould is an evidence and case-management service for damp and mould in UK homes. It records photographs, answers, dates and messages; produces an automated first assessment of what the photographs show; and keeps that record in one case you can add to and share. The Reviewed Report adds a check of that assessment by a person.

It is not a building survey, a report by a chartered surveyor, legal advice, a medical opinion, an official hazard rating under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System, or a mould-removal service, and it does not sell remediation. The assessment is based only on what you supply. Where the photographs suggest a person needs to inspect, the assessment says so.

The products

Prices are in pounds sterling. Any tax due is shown at checkout before you pay, and your Stripe receipt states what was charged. Both paid consumer products are one-off purchases; there is no consumer subscription. A shared case can be read without an account or charge. An approved landlord or housing-provider account can attach a resident-shared case and respond without starting a portfolio subscription.

"Working days" means Monday to Friday, excluding UK bank holidays.

Ordering and payment

• Payment is taken through Stripe's checkout form, shown inside our page. Card details go to Stripe only; we never see them.
• Completing checkout is your order. The contract is made when Stripe confirms your payment. Stripe shows you a confirmation when payment succeeds; we use the email address you gave at checkout for everything about that purchase.
• The page you return to after checkout checks the payment with our server and tells you whether it was confirmed; it never assumes success. If a payment fails, nothing is supplied and nothing is owed.
• We can decline an order before we start work, for example if no readable photographs were supplied. If we decline, we refund anything paid in full.

When you get what you paid for

• Evidence Pack. Once our server confirms your payment, your case is created from your free check and we email a sign-in link to the address you used at checkout. Your order carries the reference of your free check, so we know which check it belongs to.
• Reviewed Report. The reviewed report is released into your case, and you are emailed, normally within two working days of your payment being confirmed. If we need something from you first, for example a clearer photograph, we email you and the two working days run from when we have it. If the review is later than that, tell us and we will agree a refund or a new date.

Cancellation and refunds

In two lines: if we cannot produce what you paid for from what you supplied, we refund in full. If the Reviewed Report is late, tell us and we will agree a refund or a new date.

Your 14-day right to cancel

Because you buy at a distance, the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 give you, as a consumer, 14 days from the day the contract is made to cancel without giving a reason.

What you agree at checkout

Both products are supplied straight away. The checkout page states, above the payment form, that by paying you ask us to start straight away and understand the two consequences below:

• Digital content (the dated PDF report): once supply begins, which happens as soon as payment is confirmed, you lose the right to cancel that part.
• Services (the case, the share link, the landlord message, follow-up tracking, and the founder's review): if you cancel within the 14 days after we have started, you pay a proportionate amount for what was done up to the moment you told us, and we refund the rest.

In practice: if you cancel a Reviewed Report before the founder has started reading, we refund the £79 in full. If the review has been started, we refund the part not yet done.

Beyond your legal rights

• If we cannot produce the Evidence Pack or the Reviewed Report from what you supplied, we refund the payment in full.
• If the Reviewed Report is late, tell us and we will agree a refund or a new date.
• If there is a clear error in a report, tell us and we correct it. If we cannot correct it, we refund it.
• A refund is not given because you disagree with the likely pattern or the level of confidence. The assessment is evidence-led guidance, not a diagnosis, and it says what it cannot establish.

How to cancel or ask for a refund

Email hello@stopthemould.com with your case reference and say that you are cancelling, or use the form below. We refund by the payment method you used, without undue delay and within 14 days of your cancellation. Your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, including the right to a service performed with reasonable care and skill, are not affected.

Model cancellation form

This is the form set out in Schedule 3 to the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013. You do not have to use it.

Complete and return this form only if you wish to withdraw from the contract.

To Stop The Mould Ltd, 66 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NA, hello@stopthemould.com:

I/We [*] hereby give notice that I/We [*] cancel my/our [*] contract of sale of the following goods [*]/for the supply of the following service [*],

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.

The Reviewed Report review

The review is carried out by the founder of Stop The Mould. A person checks the automated assessment, the completeness of the evidence, the internal consistency of the result and the wording of the report before it is released, and corrects what needs correcting. In practice the reviewer:

• checks the automated assessment against your photographs, your answers and your evidence register, and corrects anything the evidence does not support, saying why;
• checks that the evidence is complete, that the result is internally consistent (for example that the stated confidence matches the evidence quality) and that the wording of the report is right, and corrects what needs correcting;
• adds evidence notes: what each photograph shows, what it does not show, and what would strengthen the record;
• answers one follow-up question sent by email after you receive the review.

The reviewed report is added to your case as a dated "Reviewed report" section under the automated assessment, and you are emailed the same text when it is released. If nothing needed correcting, the section says so.

Not an in-person damp survey, a legal opinion or a medical assessment. The reviewer is not a chartered surveyor, a lawyer or a clinician, and the review is not a hazard rating. It does not guarantee that a landlord, council or anyone else will act. Where the reviewer cannot form a view from what you supplied, the review says so, and if nothing useful can be said we refund the £79.

Landlord Workspace (beta)

The Landlord Workspace is portfolio software for landlords and agents handling several cases. It is offered separately from the consumer products at /pricing/portal, and it is intended for business buyers.

• Plans are monthly or yearly subscriptions, paid through Stripe. Prices are in pounds sterling; any tax due is shown at checkout.
• A first-time subscriber gets a 7-day free trial. A card is required to start it, and the first payment is taken when the trial ends unless you cancel before then.
• Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each period until cancelled.
• Cancel from the billing portal in your account. Access continues to the end of the period you have paid for.
• The workspace is in beta. Features and prices may change before general release; subscribers are told by email before anything changes for them.
• If you subscribe as a consumer rather than for business purposes, you have the 14-day right to cancel described above, and if you asked us to start within that period you pay a proportionate charge for the time used.

Sharing a case, and responding to one

• A share link lets anyone who has it view the case, read-only, until it expires 30 days after it was created. You choose who to send it to. The current product does not provide early revocation, so treat the link like a password and do not send it to someone who should not see the case.
• Sending the report to a landlord from the site emails the assessment and links to the first five photographs; those links work for seven days.
• A landlord, agent or adviser who is sent a link may open and read the case without paying. Writing into the case is separate: an approved landlord or housing-provider account must attach the case using the resident's still-valid share link before adding a response. They may use the case only for dealing with the problem it reports.

Acceptable use

• Use the service honestly and lawfully, and only for a home you live in, own, manage or are helping someone with.
• Upload only photographs and information you have the right to share. Do not upload images of people who have not agreed to it.
• Do not try to get round the rate limits, or any bot check we switch on, on the free check, to access a case that is not yours or has not been shared with you, or to scrape the site.
• We may suspend or close an account, and decline to supply the free check, where these rules are broken. Where the law requires it we remove content.

Your content

You keep ownership of your photographs, answers and notes. You give us permission to store them, to process them to provide the service (including sending photographs and answers to our assessment provider, as the privacy policy describes), to show them to the people you share the case with, and to include them in your report. You may use your report and your case for your own housing matter, including a complaint to a landlord, council or ombudsman or in court, without restriction. The site's own text, guides, templates and the format of the assessment belong to us.

Our responsibility and its limits

• We supply the products described above with reasonable care and skill. If we do not, you have the remedies the Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives you, in addition to the refund rules on this page.
• The assessment and the review reflect only what you supplied and are general information about damp and mould, not advice on your specific legal, medical or structural position.
• We are responsible for loss you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breaking these terms or failing to use reasonable care. We are not responsible for loss that was not foreseeable, for business losses where you buy as a consumer, or for what a landlord, agent, council, contractor or any other third party does or fails to do.
• Nothing in these terms limits our responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow us to limit.
• The service depends on providers we do not control. We do not promise it will be available at all times, and features marked as beta may change.

Complaints

Email hello@stopthemould.com with "Complaint" in the subject line. The complaints procedure sets out the response times and how to escalate. Complaints about personal data can also go to the Information Commissioner's Office. We have not nominated an alternative dispute resolution body; if a complaint cannot be resolved, our final response will tell you which certified provider could consider it and whether we are willing to use it.

Changes to these terms

The date of the last change is shown at the top of this page. The terms in force when you bought a product apply to that purchase. If we change the terms in a way that affects account holders or subscribers, we tell them by email before the change takes effect.

Law and disputes

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland you may also rely on the mandatory consumer protections of your own law and bring proceedings in your local courts.