The agreement between you and us

1. Who you are agreeing with

BarkCheck is operated by WickedSelf LLC, 2810 N Church St #578615, Wilmington, DE 19802. In these terms “we” and “us” mean WickedSelf LLC, and “you” means the person using the app. Our privacy policy is part of this agreement.

2. What BarkCheck is, and what it is not

BarkCheck is a record-keeping tool. An owner writes a care plan, sends it to whoever is sitting, and every dose, meal and walk is signed by name as it happens. That record is the whole product.

Because of that, decisions about who to trust are yours. We show a sitter record honestly and we never block anybody from working. An owner decides who cares for their animal, and a sitter decides which jobs to take. You use BarkCheck, and you arrange and provide or receive care, at your own risk.

3. Not an emergency service, and not veterinary advice

Do not use BarkCheck to report an emergency. Messages and notifications can be delayed, undelivered or unread, and nobody is watching the app on your behalf. If an animal is hurt or unwell, call a vet or an emergency clinic. If a person is in danger, call 911.

Nothing in the app is veterinary or medical advice. Care plans, dose reminders and anything read off a medication label are your own information handled by software, and the person giving care is responsible for checking that it is right. Reading a label with software can get it wrong, so check the label.

4. Veterinary care and emergencies are arranged between you

A care plan can hold a vet name and phone number and an emergency contact. Storing them does not give anybody authority to use them. BarkCheck does not authorize veterinary treatment, does not contact a vet or an emergency contact on your behalf, and does not pay for care.

• If you are an owner and you want your sitter to be able to authorize treatment while you are away, agree that with the sitter directly and tell your vet. Put a spending limit in writing if you want one.
• Veterinary costs are the owner responsibility, whoever arranges the visit.
• Only enter an emergency contact or a vet who is expecting to be called.
• We strongly recommend pet insurance. There is no cover of any kind from us. See section 12.

5. Your account

• You must be at least 18 years old. BarkCheck is available in the United States only.
• Give accurate information and keep it up to date. Do not impersonate anybody, and do not keep more than one account.
• Sign for care under your own name, and only when you actually gave it.
• Your account is yours. Do not share your sign-in, and tell us promptly if somebody else is using it.
• A sitter link is a credential. Anybody it is forwarded to can see the sit it was made for, so send it only to the person doing the job. You can revoke a link at any time.

6. Following the law is your responsibility

By using BarkCheck you confirm that you follow the laws that apply to you. We do not check this and we are not responsible when somebody does not.

If you are an owner: keep your animals vaccinated, licensed, tagged or microchipped as your state and city require, and hold any insurance the law requires of you. Tell a sitter anything they need to keep themselves and your animal safe before the sit starts. That includes a history of biting or aggression, a medical condition, a medication that must not be missed, and anything a stranger in your home would need to know.

If you are a sitter: you are responsible for being legally allowed to do this work where you do it, for any business license, registration or permit you need, for your own insurance, and for following leash, waste and noise rules while you are working.

7. What you may not do

• Sign for care that did not happen, or ask somebody else to sign for you.
• Enter another person contact details without their agreement, or use anything you find here to contact somebody outside the app.
• Harass, threaten or abuse anybody, or send anything unlawful, sexual, or violent through the app.
• Send spam, or advertise other products and services in the app.
• Try to break, scrape or overload the service, or work around a limit.
• Upload malicious code.
• Use the app to break the law or somebody else rights.

We can suspend or close an account that does these things, or where we think it is necessary to protect somebody. Where we can, we will tell you why. Anything you already owe survives your account closing.

8. Messages, photos and moderation

Messages are checked before they are delivered. Contact details are removed mechanically, and an AI model checks for abuse. A message the model flags in certain categories is held until a person reviews it, and the sender is told. Anything reading as a medical problem, an injury, an emergency or a person in crisis is never held.

Review is done by a person and there is no promised response time. Do not rely on a held message reaching anybody quickly. This is another reason an emergency does not belong in the app.

We may remove content that breaks these terms. We are not obliged to monitor everything, and not acting on one thing does not stop us acting on another.

9. What you upload stays yours

You keep ownership of everything you write and upload. You give us permission to store it, show it to the other party on that sit, and keep it as part of the record for as long as section 11 says. That permission exists so the product can work, and it ends when the record is deleted.

When you upload something you confirm that it is yours to upload, that anybody appearing in it agreed to appear, and that it does not break the law or these terms.

10. Money

• Owners never pay. There is no charge to create care plans, run sits or read records.
• Sitters get 3 free sits, ever. A sit counts once both sides have accepted it. After that, working a new sit requires a subscription at $9.97 a month or $89.99 a year.
• The subscription is only ever checked when a sitter accepts a new sit. A sit already accepted keeps working, so nobody is locked out of a job they are in the middle of.
• Payments are taken by Stripe and are subject to Stripe own terms. Cancel any time from your profile. A canceled plan runs to the end of the period you paid for and is not refunded in part.
• Prices can change. We will tell you before a change affects what you are charged.
• We never handle money between an owner and a sitter. Sit fees and tips are arranged and paid by the two of you. If you show a Venmo or Zelle handle we display it and nothing more. We cannot see whether anything was paid, and we cannot help with a dispute about it.
• You are responsible for your own taxes on anything you earn. We do not report your earnings, because we never see them. A sitter can write down what they were paid for a sit, for their own records — that is a note they make about a payment that happened somewhere else, it is never shown to the owner, and it is not us observing the money.

11. The BarkCheck Score

A sitter score is worked out from their own record: tasks signed against tasks decided, plus the ratings owners leave. It is shown to owners and to the sitter in the same words, and a sitter can see exactly how it was reached.

• A sitter with fewer than 3 sits has no score yet. Owners see the counts instead.
• Below 90 the sitter is told, and owners are not prompted to tip. A score that stays below 78 for 28 days locks the account: no new sits, and the page comes off the directory. Nothing is deleted, the sitter can still sign in and read everything, and every sit already under way carries on to its end. We warn before it happens and say exactly what will happen.
• An explanation on a missed task is shown to the owner and does not move the number, and a missed task stays missed. Two things outside a sit do move it: not turning up to a meet and greet, and a message a person on our side reviews and upholds as abusive. Both are told to the sitter at the time, with the reason. Points from either roll out of the score on the same window as everything else, after 200 scored tasks, though the record of them stays.
• Ratings and notes are written by owners, not by us. We do not check whether a rating is fair, and we do not endorse it.
• If you think your record is wrong, write to support@wickedself.com.

12. There is no guarantee, protection plan or insurance

Other companies in this trade offer a guarantee, a reimbursement scheme or insurance cover. BarkCheck does not, and nothing here should be read as cover of any kind. We do not reimburse veterinary bills, property damage, canceled work, unpaid fees or anything else. If you want cover, buy pet insurance or liability insurance.

13. Keeping and deleting records

A finished sit is kept for 7 years and then deleted. We keep it because it is evidence for both people, and the argument about a sit usually happens long after the sit did.

You can delete your account at any time. Your name, email address, phone number and profile are erased. Your profile photo, home and page photos and library come off BarkCheck, and we keep the files in private storage. The care records you were part of remain, without your name on them, until the period above runs out. We cannot delete the other person copy of a shared record on your behalf, and we would not, because it is their proof as much as yours. See deleting your account.

14. Availability

We try to keep the app running and we do not promise that it always will be. It can be down, slow, or interrupted, and notifications can fail to arrive. Do not depend on it as the only way an animal gets cared for.

15. Other companies we rely on

The app uses services from other companies, including sign-in, hosting, payments, email, notifications and map tiles. Those parts are theirs, not ours, and their terms apply to them. Links in the app to other websites are not an endorsement, and what happens on those sites is between you and them. The privacy policy names each company and what it handles.

16. Our software and our name

WickedSelf LLC owns BarkCheck, the software behind it, and the BarkCheck name and logo. Using the app does not give you any rights in them. Do not use our name or logo to suggest we endorse you or your work.

If you send us an idea or a suggestion, we can use it without owing you anything.

17. Copyright complaints

If you believe something on BarkCheck infringes your copyright, write to support@wickedself.com with a description of the work, where the material is, your contact details, a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorized, a statement under penalty of perjury that your notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorized to act for them, and your signature. We remove infringing material and we close the accounts of people who repeatedly infringe.

18. Messages we send you

Using BarkCheck means we can send you service messages: alerts about your sits, reminders, security notices and support replies. These arrive by push notification, email and in the app, and you can turn any type off in your notification settings. We do not send marketing text messages, and we do not make automated calls. You agree to receive agreements, notices and disclosures from us electronically.

19. Disclaimers

BarkCheck is provided as it is, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error free, or that any record, reminder or notification will be accurate or delivered.

We are not responsible for what happens between an owner and a sitter or for what happens to an animal. That includes injury, illness, death, escape, damage to property, theft, a dose that was missed or given wrongly, a message that did not arrive or was not read, and anything either party says or does. Those are between the people involved.

20. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, WickedSelf LLC is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or veterinary or medical costs, however caused and on any theory of liability.

To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability for all claims relating to BarkCheck is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or one hundred US dollars. Since owners pay nothing, for most owners that figure is one hundred US dollars.

Some states do not allow some of these limits. Where that is true, they apply to you only as far as that state allows.

21. Indemnity

You agree to cover our costs, including reasonable legal fees, for claims brought by somebody else that arise from your use of BarkCheck, from what you upload or write, from your arrangement with an owner or a sitter, from injury or damage caused by your animal or an animal in your care, or from your breach of these terms or of the law. We can take over the defense of any such claim, and you will not settle one without asking us first.

22. Ending it

You can stop using BarkCheck at any time and delete your account from your profile. We can suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, or stop offering the service. Sections 9, 13, 16 and 19 through 24 survive the end of this agreement.

23. Governing law and where disputes are heard

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Arizona, without regard to its conflict of law rules. Any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Maricopa County, Arizona, and both of us agree to the jurisdiction of those courts.

24. The rest

• These terms and the privacy policy are the whole agreement between us about BarkCheck.
• If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still applies.
• If we do not enforce something straight away, we have not given up the right to enforce it later.
• You cannot transfer this agreement to somebody else. We can transfer it to a company that buys or merges with our business.
• Nobody outside this agreement gets rights under it.
• Notices to you go to the email address on your account. Notices to us go to support@wickedself.com or to the address below.
• Neither of us is responsible for a failure caused by something outside our reasonable control.

25. Changes

We can update these terms. The date at the top of this page shows when the current version took effect, and we will tell you in the app if a change is significant. Using BarkCheck after a change means you accept it.

26. Contact

WickedSelf LLC, 2810 N Church St #578615, Wilmington, DE 19802. support@wickedself.com. See also our privacy policy.