What we each agree to.

Who you are dealing with

Dapple is operated by Alistair MacLeod, a sole trader trading as Dapple Pet Care, of 3 St Pauls Court, York, YO26 4TP, United Kingdom. Dapple is not a company and has no company number. Email [email protected], which is Dapple’s own address rather than the founding provider’s.

What Dapple does

Dapple gives you an account, takes your request for care and takes it to a care provider to ask, holds the booking once it is agreed, takes the payment, passes the money on to the provider, and helps when something about the account, the booking or the payment goes wrong. Asking a provider is Dapple contacting them; it does not hand them your details, and the privacy notice sets out exactly when it does.

Dapple does not look after your animals. The provider does that, under their own agreement with you, described in the second half of this page.

What Dapple has not checked

Dapple does not currently verify a provider’s credentials, cover, registrations or background, and does not claim to. There is no vetting scheme, no approval badge and no protection scheme behind a booking beyond what this page says. Providers are added by hand, one at a time; there is no public sign-up for care providers and none is open. If any of that changes, this page changes with it.

A request is not a booking

Four different things can be true, and they are kept apart on purpose.

• A general request says what care you need. It names nobody.
• A request for a named provider says who you would like. It stays that provider’s request and cannot be quietly handed to somebody else.
• Dapple placing a request means Dapple has taken it to a provider to ask. It is not that provider agreeing, and it is not your choice being recorded as something you did not say.
• A confirmed booking names a real provider, real dates and a real price. It is the final state: the point at which the arrangement is in the diary, after whatever acceptance and payment the route required.

Confirmation is not necessarily the first moment either of you agrees to anything. Where a provider offers you a booking directly, you are asked to accept the care, the dates, the animals and the price before any of the rest happens, and that acceptance is recorded. This page does not try to tell you the exact instant a contract is formed on each route — that is being looked at properly rather than guessed at here. What is true on every route is that nothing is charged until you have been shown what you are paying for, and that if no provider can take the work you are told; Dapple does not promise to find you somebody.

Paying through Dapple

Payments are made on this website, on your own booking page, and Dapple takes them. A card statement will read Dapple Pet Care; the provider doing the work is named separately on the booking, because the two are different facts and running them together would suggest one business where there are two.

When the payment is due depends on how close the stay is: more than a month away and the deposit is asked for nearer the time; between a week and a month away and the deposit is due now; a week or less and the whole amount is due now. The deposit secures the booking and the balance is asked for on its own date, which is shown on your booking page from the start. Your card number is entered into Stripe’s own form and never reaches Dapple.

Refunds are made by Dapple to the card that paid, because Dapple took the money. That is an administrative fact about where the money sits, and it does not make Dapple the party that agreed to look after your animals.

Cancelling

Your legal rights come first, and this page cannot cut them down. Some consumer contracts made at a distance or away from a trader’s premises carry a statutory right to cancel within 14 days under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, and the Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives you rights about how a service is carried out. Whether the 14-day right applies to pet and house sitting is being checked with a specialist, and this page will not tell you it does or does not until that is answered. If it applies to your booking it applies whatever the policy below says, and where the two conflict the law wins. Ask and you will be told where that has got to.

The cancellation policy itself is the provider’s. It belongs to your agreement for the care rather than to your agreement with Dapple, so it is set out in Tamara’s Home & Hound’s own section below — and before you accept care from any provider, the terms you are shown on that page are that provider’s own. Dapple’s part in it is the money: a refund due under it is made by Dapple to the card that paid, as above.

The deposit figure for your booking is shown on your booking page before you pay anything. Where a booking was cancelled on the business side, the record shows that it was cancelled; for older bookings it does not record whether Dapple or the provider acted, and nobody will tell you it does.

Complaints

If something about the account, the booking, a payment or a refund goes wrong, email [email protected] or use the enquiry form. If it is about the care itself, the provider is the right first port of call, and Dapple will help if that does not get anywhere. Nothing on this page affects your statutory rights, including those under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

This half is Tamara’s own agreement with you, in her own words. It applies to care she does. Another provider on Dapple has their own service, their own prices and their own terms, and nothing in this section is a statement about them.

Who you are dealing with

Tamara’s Home & Hound is a sole trader based in York. There is no agency and no staff. The person who meets you is the person who does the sit, and I do not send anyone else in my place.

What the service is

Overnight house and pet sitting in your home, and drop-in pet visits of thirty or sixty minutes in your home. I do not board animals at my house, I do not run daycare, and I do not offer dog walking as a standalone service.

How a booking is made

You send a request, we talk it through, and I come to your house for an introductory visit. That visit is free and carries no obligation on either side, and nothing is held or confirmed until after it. If we both want to go ahead, you pay securely through Dapple, the platform this business works through, and the agreed deposit secures the booking.

Prices

£50 a night for overnight sitting, £22 for a sixty-minute visit and £15 for a thirty-minute visit.

The overnight rate covers one pet. Each additional pet is £25 per night, so a household of 1 pet is £50 a night, 2 pets is £75 a night, 3 pets is £100 a night. For drop-in visits, additional pets or more involved care are discussed and quoted before the booking.

Bank-holiday rates apply on official bank holidays in England. Bank holiday nights start at £60, with the same £25 per additional pet per night. When I quote I will tell you which of your nights I am treating as a bank holiday.

Drop-in visits run within about five miles of York and overnight stays within about fifteen miles. There is no travel surcharge. Beyond those distances, ask anyway — whether I can take the booking is a question of what else is in the diary, and I will tell you straight away.

Cancelling a booking

The cancellation policy. This is what Tamara’s Home & Hound operates, and it is what applies to the extent that no statutory right gives you more:

• Cancel more than two days before the booking starts and there is nothing to pay. A deposit already paid comes back.
• Cancel within two days of the start and the deposit is what you lose. That is the whole of it; the rest of the booking is not charged as a cancellation fee.
• If the provider has to cancel, everything you have paid comes back in full.

Access, keys and your home

How I get into your home, and how that access comes back to you afterwards, is agreed with you before the booking and recorded in the care notes. Your keys and your home are treated securely while I have them. I will treat your home as I would want mine treated, and I will tell you if something breaks.

Please tell me before the booking if there are cameras in the house, if anyone else has a key, or if anyone else is expected to come in while I am there.

Your animals’ health

You need to tell me honestly about your animal’s health, medication, and behaviour, including any history of biting or of reacting badly to strangers or other animals. I can only look after an animal properly if I know what I am looking after.

Your vet’s details, your emergency contact and who can authorise treatment, and up to what cost, are agreed in writing in the care notes before your first night. If your animal becomes ill or is injured I follow those arrangements and get hold of you or your nominated contact, so that decision is never being made from an airport. Veterinary fees are yours.

Please make sure vaccinations and any flea and worm treatment are up to date before the booking.

I can give routine medication, including injections such as insulin, where you provide clear written instructions and we have gone through them together before the booking. I am not a vet, and I will say so if a particular medical routine is beyond what I can take on.

When I might have to say no

I may decline or end a booking if an animal turns out to be a genuine danger to me or to others, if the information I was given was materially wrong, or if the home is not safe to stay in. I will always tell you why, and I will not simply stop turning up.

What else you are entitled to before you agree, and how to get it

The agreement for the care is with the provider, not with Dapple, and consumer law entitles you to know who that trader is before you commit — the name of the person or business you are contracting with, a postal address for them, and a way to contact them — and to be given the terms of that agreement in a form you can keep.

You are given all of it on the page where you accept, before you accept. When a provider proposes care for you, that page shows the business you would be contracting with, a postal address for them, how to contact them, and their own terms at a stated version — and what you accepted is recorded as that version, so there is no question afterwards about which terms you agreed to.

And where a provider has not supplied those details, you cannot accept anything from them. The option is not offered, and it is not a matter of us asking you to chase it: it is not your job to go and get the information the law says you should have been given. Nothing is booked and nothing is charged in the meantime, and the invitation keeps waiting.

One thing this deliberately does not do is publish a provider’s private home address on a public page. That is about their personal safety, and it does not take anything away from you: before you accept, you are given the geographical business address and contact details required for that provider’s contract, and acceptance is not offered until the address recorded for them has been confirmed suitable. What you are given is a real address at which they can be reached about your agreement — not a category of address chosen for convenience.

If anything here is unclear, or you would like the details and terms sent to you separately, email [email protected].