PamperHive — Terms of Use

What this is: the agreement between you and PamperHive when you use the PamperHive Android app. Plain English, because a term you cannot read is a term you have not agreed to.

Last checked against the code: 9 August 2026, against V1__init.sql, server/src/main/kotlin/** and feature/**. Every rule about timing, cancellation, reviews and no-shows below is a rule the software actually enforces, not an aspiration.

Effective from: ⚠ [[PLACEHOLDER: publication date]]

Operated by ⚠ [[PLACEHOLDER: registered legal entity name]], ⚠ [[PLACEHOLDER: registered address in India]]. Contact: aswincodename47@gmail.com.

1. What PamperHive is, and what it is not

PamperHive is a booking platform. We list barbershops, show you when their barbers are free, and hold your appointment.

We are not the barbershop. The haircut is a contract between you and the shop. We do not employ the barbers, we do not set the prices, we do not train anyone, and we do not stand behind the result.

We do not guarantee the haircut. If you do not like it, that is between you and the shop — take it up with them, and, if you want, say so in your review. The review system exists precisely because we cannot vouch for the work.

No money passes through the app. There are no payments, no deposits, no refunds and no wallet. You pay the shop in cash, at the shop, after the service. Any price shown in the app is the price the shop had listed at the moment you booked; it is information, not a payment we have taken.

2. Your account

• You sign in with your phone number and a code we send by SMS. There is no password.
• One account per number. The number must be one you actually control.
• You are responsible for what happens on your account. If you lose the phone, delete the account or tell us.
• We create your account the first time a number verifies successfully. There is no separate signup step.
• You must be 18 or older.

You can delete your account at any time from Account → Delete my account. What deletion does and does not remove is set out in the Privacy Policy and restated in section 7 below.

3. Booking, cancelling, and not turning up

These are the actual rules the server enforces. They are checked on the server's clock, not your phone's — changing your phone's time changes nothing.

Booking

• A booking is always for one named barber, at one shop, for one service, at one time. There is no "any barber" booking held open; if you choose "first available", the server picks someone the moment you confirm and tells you who.
• Shops keep the next couple of hours for walk-ins, so the app will not offer you a slot that starts too soon. Each shop sets that window itself.
• Booking the same slot twice is impossible. If someone confirms a slot a second before you do, you get told the slot is taken. This is decided by the database, not by the app.

Cancelling

• More than 2 hours before your appointment: cancel freely, for nothing.
• Inside the last 2 hours, but before the start time: you can still cancel. It is recorded as a late cancellation. There is no penalty and no charge — cancelling late is far better than simply not appearing, because it frees the chair for somebody else.
• After the start time: nobody can cancel. Not you, not the shop, not us.

That last rule exists for one reason and it is worth stating openly: without it, a shop could cancel a bad haircut after the fact and make the review disappear. It is not a technicality; it is the thing that makes the reviews worth reading.

If you cancel, you cannot review

Either kind of cancellation locks the review for that booking. Someone who did not attend does not get to rate the visit.

Not turning up

• If you do not appear, the shop can mark you absent. They can only do that between your start time and the moment your review would have opened — not before, and not after.
• If you were there and they marked you absent anyway, tap "I was there" in the app. That opens a dispute, an administrator looks at it, and it also unlocks your review immediately — making you wait after a false accusation would be the same suppression the rules above exist to prevent.
• No-shows carry no penalty today. They are counted, and the counting is visible only to us. If that ever changes we will tell you before it does.

If the shop lets you down

• A shop can cancel your booking. You are told, and you can book elsewhere. You are owed nothing because nothing was paid — this is the honest consequence of having no deposits.
• A shop can tell you it is running late. Your booking holds.
• Neither of those moves when your review opens. A shop cannot delay a review by declaring itself late, and the software will not let it.
• Shops that cancel, run late, or falsely mark customers absent rank lower in search. With no money in the system, search position is the only lever anyone has, and it is pointed at the shop as well as at you.

4. Reviews

Reviews are the point of the product, so the rules are strict on all sides.

When you can review. One review per booking, and only after the visit is over. It opens either when the shop taps Done, or automatically a short time after your appointment was due to end — whichever comes first. Nothing a shop does can push that moment later.

Verified visits. If the shop tapped Done, your review is marked as a verified visit and shown first. If it opened automatically, it is a real review without that badge.

24 hours to edit, then it locks. You can change your rating, comment or photos for 24 hours. After that they are fixed. This stops "I will change it to one star unless you refund me".

Your name. Reviews are public and are signed with your first name and last initial — "Amit D." A single-word name is shown as it is. If you delete your account, your review stays and your name comes off entirely.

Photos. Up to three, and only if you tick the consent box first. The box tells you which shop page they will appear on and what name they will appear under. These are photographs of people's heads and faces, so:

• do not upload a photo of someone who has not agreed to it;
• do not upload anything that is not about the visit;
• do not upload other people's photographs.

What you may not post. Abuse, threats, slurs, other people's personal details, anything unlawful, anything untrue about a shop you did not visit, and anything posted in exchange for a payment or a discount from anyone.

Reporting and removal. Every review has a Report button. Reports go to a human moderation queue. We can hide a review that breaks these rules — and note that our moderation still works after your 24-hour edit window closes, or an abusive review would become permanent the day after it appeared.

What we will not do: remove a review because a shop asked us to, or because it is unflattering. Shops have no power over their own reviews, deliberately.

Your content stays yours. By posting a review you give us permission to show it — text and photos — in the app, on our website and in the admin tools, for as long as the review exists. You are not giving it to us to sell or to use in advertising.

5. If you run a shop on PamperHive

Extra terms if you list a shop.

• You must be entitled to act for the shop. Listing someone else's business is grounds for immediate removal.
• Your listing goes to a human for approval before it is visible. We can reject it, and we tell you why. We can suspend a listing later.
• Everything you publish must be true — the address, the pin on the map, the prices, the hours, the photographs, and your staff list.
• Your staff are people. Their names and photographs are personal data you are handing us about someone else. You must have their agreement before you enter them, and you must tell them their name and photograph will be shown publicly and attached to ratings of their work.
• Honour your bookings. Cancelling, running late and marking honest customers absent all count against your position in search.
• Customer details are for the appointment. You get a customer's name and phone number so you can run the appointment and reach them about it. Using them for marketing, adding them to a broadcast list, or passing them to anyone else is a breach of these terms and, separately, of Indian data protection law.
• You do not control your reviews. You cannot edit them, hide them, or have them removed for being negative. You can report one that breaks the rules in section 4.
• Staff and services are retired, not deleted. When a barber leaves, their record stays so that past visits and reviews still make sense.
• Cash only, at the shop. You may not use PamperHive to take deposits or advance payments; the app has no way to do it and no way to refund it.

6. Things you may not do

• Sign in with a number that is not yours, or try to.
• Request login codes in bulk, or automate the sign-in flow.
• Scrape the app or the API, or resell anything from it.
• Post fake reviews, buy reviews, sell reviews, or arrange them.
• Interfere with the service, probe it for weaknesses without permission, or try to get at other people's data.
• Use the app to harass a barber, a shop, or another customer.

We can suspend or close an account that does any of this. Where the behaviour is serious we will say so; for obvious abuse we may act first.

7. Deleting your account

From Account → Delete my account. It takes effect immediately: your sessions end everywhere and your number is freed for a fresh account.

Two things do not go away, and the app tells you both before you confirm:

1. Reviews you have written stay up, with your name removed. They belong to the shop's record.
2. Bookings you have already made are not cancelled. If you are not going, ring the shop.

A deletion route that works without the app is required by Google Play and will be at https://api-production-a07b.up.railway.app/delete-account.html. Until that exists, write to aswincodename47@gmail.com from the number on the account.

8. Availability of the service

We try to keep the app working. We do not promise it always will be.

We may change features, add them, or switch them off — including remotely, without an app update, because that is the only way we can fix a problem quickly on a platform with no over-the-air updates.

We may stop the service. If we do, we will give reasonable notice where we can.

9. Our responsibility, and its limits

What we are responsible for: running the platform honestly, holding your booking, applying the rules above evenly to customers and shops, protecting your data as described in the Privacy Policy, and not interfering with reviews.

What we are not responsible for:

• the quality of any service performed at a shop;
• anything a shop does or fails to do, including cancelling on you, opening late, closing unexpectedly, or charging a different price from the one listed;
• injury, allergic reaction, or damage arising from a service;
• anything a shop, a barber or another user writes;
• your time or travel wasted.

Since you pay us nothing and we take no money for any booking, our total liability to you in connection with the app is limited to the amount you have paid us — which is nothing — except where Indian law does not allow that limit, in which case the law wins. Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud.

10. Changes to these terms

We will post an updated version at https://api-production-a07b.up.railway.app/terms.html with a new date at the top. Where a change matters to you, we will tell you in the app. Continuing to use PamperHive after a change means you accept it.

11. Complaints, law, and courts

Complain to us first: aswincodename47@gmail.com, or the WhatsApp number shown in the app.

Grievance Officer: Aswin A S, aswincodename47@gmail.com, ⚠ [[PLACEHOLDER: grievance officer postal address]].

These terms are governed by the laws of India, and the courts at Alappuzha have jurisdiction. This does not take away any right you have to complain to a consumer forum where you live.

Placeholders to fill before this is published

Statements that must be re-checked before publication

• "No-shows carry no penalty today" — the enforcement ladder exists in the database and ships switched off behind the no_show_enforcement flag. The day that flag is turned on, this sentence is false and these terms must change before the switch is flipped.
• "Photos … up to three" — the upload path is written but the storage account is not connected. It becomes live with a server configuration change and no app release.
• "we send by SMS" — no SMS is actually being delivered until TRAI DLT registration clears.
• "the WhatsApp number shown in the app" — the number in the feature flag is currently the placeholder +910000000000.