Terms of Service

These terms are between you and OUTVALUE LTD, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 17145121, whose registered office is 5 Brayford Square, London E1 0SG (“OutValue”, “we”, “us”). You can reach us at support@outvalueapp.com.

OutValue runs an online marketplace. A customer (the “Customer”) posts a job with a guidance price, independent service businesses (each a “Service Provider”) send competing offers, and the Customer accepts and pays for one. Our role is to introduce the two of you and to run the booking and payment process set out below.

The contract for the work is made directly between the Customer and the Service Provider when the Customer accepts an offer and pays. OutValue is not a party to it. Service Providers are independent businesses, not our employees or agents: we do not set prices, do not choose who does the work, and do not supervise it.

We do not guarantee any work and give no warranty as to its quality, safety, legality or fitness for purpose. Our checks on a Service Provider are not a warranty that it is competent, insured or compliant. The Customer’s rights over the work, including under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, are against the Service Provider.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.

OutValue charges the Service Provider a fee of 12% of the accepted offer (the “Marketplace Fee”). The Customer pays the accepted offer and nothing more — the fee is never added to what the Customer pays. There is no joining fee, no subscription and no charge for leads, and nothing is payable on an offer that is not accepted.

Card processing is recharged to the Service Provider at cost, currently 1.5% of the payment plus £0.20, exactly as our payment provider charges it and with no mark-up. Both amounts come out of the money held for the job before the Service Provider is paid: on an accepted offer of £100.00 we keep £12.00 as the Marketplace Fee and £1.70 for card processing, and the Service Provider is paid £86.30.

OutValue’s turnover is below the UK VAT registration threshold and we are not registered for VAT, so no VAT is charged on the Marketplace Fee or on the card processing recharge. If we register, VAT will be charged on the fee from that date, shown separately, and our VAT number published on the platform.

VAT on the work itself belongs to the Service Provider, not to us. A Service Provider registered for VAT must price the VAT inside its offer, give us its VAT number so the VAT can be itemised on the Customer’s invoice, and account for that VAT to HMRC. A Service Provider that is not registered must not present any part of its offer as VAT. The Marketplace Fee is calculated on the whole accepted offer, including any VAT priced into it. We raise the Customer’s invoice on the Service Provider’s behalf from the information it gives us; the Service Provider is responsible for that information and for its own tax.

The Customer pays the accepted offer in full by card through Stripe at the moment of acceptance, and the booking is made only once that payment succeeds. Everything is in pounds sterling, and refunds go back to the card used.

The money is then held on OutValue’s own Stripe balance. It is not held in a separate client account, it is not client money, and it is not protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. “Escrow” describes how we administer the money; it is not a regulated protection.

We release the money to the Service Provider when the Customer approves the completion report, automatically 48 hours after a completion report if the Customer has by then neither approved it nor raised a dispute, or as the outcome of a dispute directs.

Automatic release is not approval. Doing nothing releases the money. A Customer who is not satisfied must raise a dispute inside that 48-hour window.

Release is final. Once the money has left our balance we cannot recall it or reverse the payment. After release the Customer’s remedy for the work is against the Service Provider — under the contract between them, under the Customer’s statutory rights, or with their card issuer — and not against OutValue.

After the deductions in clause 2, the balance is transferred to the Stripe account the Service Provider has connected. Until a Service Provider has completed Stripe onboarding the transfer cannot be made: the payout is held on our balance and retried once onboarding is finished. We pay out by no other route, and we do not control how quickly Stripe credits a bank account.

A Customer raises a dispute from the job’s completion screen, giving a reason and any details. It must be raised before the 48-hour automatic release has passed. Raising one stops that release, and no money moves to either party until the dispute is decided.

A dispute is decided by an OutValue administrator. This is an internal commercial decision. It is not independent alternative dispute resolution, it is not arbitration, and the person deciding is not independent of us: OutValue earns the Marketplace Fee when a payment is released and earns nothing when it is refunded in full, so we have a financial interest in the outcome. Please take that into account before using the process.

We aim to decide a dispute within 72 hours of it being raised. That is a service commitment we monitor, not a guarantee: missing it gives no right to compensation, and a dispute that needs more information from either party may take longer. It does not extend any of the 48-hour windows in these terms.

There are three possible outcomes. On a release, the payment goes to the Service Provider with the ordinary deductions in clause 2. On a partial refund, a stated percentage of what the Customer paid is returned and the Marketplace Fee and card processing are recalculated on the part the Service Provider keeps. On a full refund, the Customer gets back everything they paid, the Service Provider receives nothing, no Marketplace Fee is charged, and OutValue bears the processing cost Stripe does not return.

A Service Provider may appeal a full or partial refund once, in writing, within 48 hours of the decision. An appeal that is upheld does not by itself move any money and does not reverse the refund: it is recorded and we will contact the Service Provider. There is no appeal for a Customer against a release. Neither party has to use this process before going to court, and it does not affect the Customer’s statutory rights against the Service Provider.

A Customer may cancel through the platform while the job is still accepted and paid for — that is, after accepting an offer but before the Service Provider marks the work as started. Cancelling then refunds the full amount paid, to the card used, with nothing deducted.

It is the Service Provider that ends that window by starting work, not OutValue and not any fixed period. Once work has started the cancellation function is no longer available, and the Customer’s route is the dispute process in clause 4 after a completion report.

There is no cancellation function for a Service Provider. A Service Provider that cannot carry out an accepted job must tell the Customer without delay and contact us at the address in clause 9.

Separately, a Customer who books as a consumer has a statutory right to cancel the contract for the work within 14 days, under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. That right is exercised against the Service Provider, which must give the Customer the information those Regulations require. OutValue is not a party to that contract and cannot cancel, refund or waive it. Where the Customer asked for the work to start inside those 14 days and then cancels, the Service Provider may be entitled to be paid for what it has already supplied.

A Service Provider must be legally entitled to trade in the United Kingdom and to carry out the work it offers, and must hold every licence, registration, certification or competent-person status the law requires for that work.

A Service Provider must hold public liability insurance of not less than £1 million, must keep it in force for as long as it uses the platform, and must produce evidence of it to OutValue or to a Customer on request. A Service Provider whose cover has lapsed must not submit offers.

OutValue records only the expiry date a Service Provider gives us. We do not verify that a policy exists, what it covers, or that it remains in force, and a Service Provider’s presence on the platform is not a warranty by us of insurance cover or of competence.

A Service Provider must keep its profile, service areas and pricing accurate, must complete Stripe onboarding in order to be paid, and must carry out each accepted job lawfully, with reasonable care and skill, and to the standard described in its accepted offer. It remains responsible for the work and for anyone it allows to carry it out.

You must be at least 18 and able to enter into a contract. We do not collect a date of birth and do not verify age, so by registering you confirm that you meet this. Keep your details accurate and your login secure: you are responsible for everything done through your account. Where these terms refer to a consumer they mean a Customer acting wholly or mainly outside a business; a Service Provider, and a Customer booking for business purposes, is not a consumer under these terms.

Use the platform lawfully and honestly. Do not post false, misleading or fraudulent information, impersonate anyone, misrepresent your qualifications or insurance, send abusive, threatening, obscene or unsolicited content, use someone else’s payment details, manipulate ratings, or scrape, disrupt or reverse engineer the platform. We may remove content that breaks this clause, and you can report conduct that does.

Do not take a job off the platform to avoid the Marketplace Fee. A Service Provider introduced through OutValue must not ask a Customer to cancel in order to pay directly, offer an inducement to pay off-platform, or put contact details or an invitation to transact elsewhere into an offer, a message or an uploaded document. Each confirmed report of this is recorded as a strike against the Service Provider’s account, and three mean a permanent ban and deactivation of the business profile. This clause binds Service Providers only: a Customer is free to engage whoever they choose, and it does not apply to a Customer a Service Provider can show it was already working with before the introduction.

We may suspend or close an account, or remove a listing, where we reasonably believe there has been a breach of these terms, unlawful conduct, a risk of harm to another user, or a problem with a payment. Two suspensions also happen automatically, with no prior notice and no human review: a Service Provider is deactivated once the public liability insurance expiry date we hold for it has passed, and is notified when that happens; and a Service Provider is deactivated, without notification, where its recorded offer rejection rate reaches 80% across at least 10 offers, or its recorded completion rate falls below 50% across at least 5 accepted jobs. A Service Provider may ask us to review any of these actions by writing to the address in clause 9.

Suspension does not affect a job that has already been accepted and paid for: the money is still released, refunded or disputed under clauses 3 and 4, and the Service Provider remains responsible to the Customer for work it agreed to carry out. You may close your account at any time. We may end these terms by giving you 30 days’ notice, or immediately where this clause applies. Rights and liabilities that have already accrued survive.

After a job completed through the platform, the Customer and the Service Provider may each leave the other one rating from 1 to 5 and a written comment. Only the parties to that job may review it, one review each, and a review cannot be edited or deleted once it has been submitted. A review must be your genuine experience of that job: it must not be false, unlawful, abusive or defamatory, or contain someone else’s personal information, and nothing may be offered, requested or accepted in exchange for a review or for its removal. We do not check reviews before they are published — a review is the writer’s opinion, not ours — but we may remove one that breaks these terms or the law. Reviews of a Service Provider appear on its public profile, which anyone can read, and reviews left from an account that is later deleted stay published with the reviewer’s name removed, because taking them down would distort the other party’s rating.

You keep ownership of the photographs, job descriptions, offers, completion reports, reviews and messages you upload. You give OutValue a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, copy and display them only so far as running the platform requires: showing a job to Service Providers considering an offer, showing a completion report to the Customer, showing both to an administrator deciding a dispute, publishing reviews, delivering messages, and keeping the records we need for tax, accounting or defending a claim. The licence does not cover marketing or promotional use and cannot be sub-licensed, except to the hosting and payment providers that run the platform on our instructions, and it ends when the content is deleted, apart from reviews and records kept as described in the Privacy Policy. You confirm that you have the right to upload everything you post.

Nothing in this clause limits the liabilities in clause 1.5, which can never be excluded or limited.

OutValue is not liable for what a Customer or Service Provider does or fails to do, for the quality, timing, safety or legality of any work, for loss or damage caused in carrying it out, or for any obligation under the contract between them. The Service Provider remains fully liable to the Customer for the work.

We do not warrant that the platform will be available without interruption or free from error, and we are not liable for loss caused by an interruption, by the failure of a third-party service such as Stripe, or by anything outside our reasonable control.

Otherwise, and so far as the law allows, OutValue’s total liability for all claims connected with a job is limited to the Marketplace Fee we charged on that job. This limit does not cap the Customer’s claims against the Service Provider, and does not affect a consumer’s statutory rights, including under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

OutValue is not liable to a Service Provider for loss of profit, business, contracts, opportunity, goodwill or anticipated savings, or for any indirect or consequential loss, however caused. This clause does not apply to a Customer acting as a consumer.

We may change these terms to reflect a change in the law, a change in how the platform works, or a new feature. A change is made by publishing the amended terms on this page with a revised “last updated” date. A change that materially affects your rights — including a change to the Marketplace Fee or to the card processing recharge — takes effect not less than 30 days after it is published, unless the law or a security, fraud or legal risk requires it sooner, and a fee change applies only to offers accepted after it takes effect.

Continuing to use the platform after a change has taken effect is acceptance of it; if you do not accept it, close your account. A change never applies to a job that has already been accepted and paid for, which continues under the terms in force when the offer was accepted.

A complaint about the work should go to the Service Provider, which supplies the services and against which the Customer’s statutory rights are exercisable. We can only deal with a complaint about the work through the dispute process in clause 4, and only inside the window that clause allows.

A complaint about OutValue’s own service — a fee, a payment, a payout, a dispute decision, an account suspension, or the platform itself — should go to support@outvalueapp.com or the contact form at https://www.outvalueapp.com/contact, or in writing to OUTVALUE LTD, 5 Brayford Square, London E1 0SG. Please include your account details, the job reference and what you would like us to do.

OutValue does not currently participate in any alternative dispute resolution or ombudsman scheme, and the dispute process in clause 4 is not such a scheme. Nothing in these terms prevents either party from bringing court proceedings.

These terms, and any dispute arising out of them, are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction — except that a Customer resident in Scotland or Northern Ireland may also bring proceedings in the courts of the part of the United Kingdom where they live. These terms govern use of the platform only: they do not form part of, and do not change, the contract between a Customer and a Service Provider.