Terms and Conditions

1. Who we are

barber.box is operated by, and you are contracting with:

Hugo Abreu, a private individual resident in Portugal. There is no company behind barber.box.

For anything at all, write to [email protected]. For personal data, [email protected].

2. What barber.box is

barber.box does two things: it publishes a directory of barbershops in Portugal, and it gives booking software to people who run one.

• On the website you find barbershops by city, see each one's page and reach its contact details.
• In the barber.box app you book a slot, with the barber and the service you choose.
• In the Studio app, a barbershop owner runs the schedule, the team, the services and the prices.

barber.box is not a barbershop. We do not cut hair, we do not employ barbers and we provide no grooming service of any kind. What we provide is the place where the booking happens.

3. Accounts

You need an account to book or to run a barbershop.

• You sign in with your Google account or your Apple account. There is no barber.box password.
• The first time you sign in is also your registration. There is no separate sign-up form.
• You must be at least 16 to use barber.box.
• The name, email and phone number you give must be correct and current. Barbershops rely on them to serve you.
• The account is yours and personal. You are responsible for who has access to the device you leave signed in.

If you stop being connected to the barbershop you run, write to [email protected] so we can remove the access.

4. Bookings are with the barbershop

When you book a slot, the agreement is between you and the barbershop. barber.box is not a party to it. We are the means by which the booking is made, and nothing more.

That holds for every barbershop, and there is one point worth understanding properly: the directory includes thousands of barbershops that never signed up to barber.box. Their pages were built from public establishment data. They are not our partners and we have never spoken to them.

• We do not select, assess or vet the barbershops listed.
• We do not employ or supervise barbers, and we train and instruct nobody.
• We do not control the price, the duration, the quality or the outcome of the service.
• We do not confirm licences, insurance or a barbershop's compliance with its legal duties.
• We do not guarantee that a barbershop keeps the booked time, that it is open, or that it still exists.

The barbershop answers for the service it provides and for any harm caused during it. If something goes wrong in the chair, it is the barbershop you take it up with. Tell us anyway, at [email protected]: we use that to correct or remove the listing.

5. If you book

Booking a slot is a commitment: the barbershop holds that time for you alone and cannot sell it to anyone else.

• Turn up at the time you booked. If you cannot make it, cancel in the app as early as you can.
• Missing a slot without warning takes work away from someone who was waiting for you. Repeated no-shows can cost you access to your account.
• Payment for the service is made at the barbershop, unless the booking itself says otherwise.
• Cancellation, lateness and deposit rules belong to the barbershop. Ask it if you are unsure.
• Treat the people serving you with respect.

Do not use barber.box for fake bookings, to hold slots you do not intend to use, or to harvest data from the site automatically.

6. If you run a barbershop

If you run your barbershop's page and schedule in the Studio app, this applies to you.

• You may only claim and run a barbershop that is yours, or that you are authorised to represent.
• Keep the opening hours, services, prices and contact details accurate. A wrong price on the page is your problem with the customer.
• Provide the service that was booked, at the time it was booked, or tell the customer in good time.
• You are responsible for the service, for its quality and for the safety of whoever sits in the chair.
• The tax, licensing, insurance, hygiene and employment duties of your business are yours. barber.box is not your employer and not your partner.
• Customer details that reach you through barber.box are there so you can serve those customers. Do not use them for anything else and do not pass them on.

You also answer for what your team does in the Studio app with the access you gave them.

7. Studio subscription

The Studio app is paid for by the barbershop owner. Booking costs the customer nothing.

Price

29 euros a month, per box, tax included. A box is one physical barbershop: two shops are two boxes and two subscriptions. An annual plan is also available.

First month

Free. Only the following period is charged.

Booking fees

None. The subscription is everything you pay barber.box.

Payment

Handled by Stripe, on a form they host. It takes card, MB WAY and Multibanco. We neither see nor store your card details.

Renewal

Automatic at the end of each period, at the price then in force. We tell you before any price change.

Cancellation

Whenever you want, in the Stripe billing portal reached from the Studio app. Access continues to the end of the period you already paid for, and we do not refund the unused part unless the law requires it.

Tax and invoice

The 29 euros a month, per box, is the final price. Nothing is added on top. Payment is handled by Stripe, which acts as merchant of record for the sale and issues the invoice. The invoice shows any tax that applies.

Unpaid subscription

If a payment fails, you get a 15 day grace period while we retry the charge. After that the Studio app goes read only: you still see the schedule and the whole history, but no new bookings come through barber.box and the shop's page stops taking bookings. Bookings customers have already made are never cancelled. We keep the data for 90 days and, once that runs out, the shop comes out of the listings. Pay and everything is restored.

The price that applies is the one shown on the pricing page at the moment you subscribe.

8. Right of withdrawal

For someone contracting at a distance as a consumer, Decree-Law 24/2014 gives 14 days to withdraw from the contract, with no reason required. A consumer, in the definition Law 24/96 gives, is someone acquiring goods or services for non-professional use.

Anyone subscribing to the Studio app does it for their barbershop, which is to say in the course of their professional activity. That holds even when the business is a sole trader. So this contract is not covered by that right.

We give you the same protection anyway. Cancel the subscription within 14 days of the first charge you actually pay and we refund it in full. Write to [email protected]. This is a commercial guarantee we choose to give, not a right the law gives you here.

This concerns the Studio subscription. A booking at a barbershop is not a contract with us and costs you nothing: you cancel it in the app, within the barbershop's own rules.

9. Directory listings

The site publishes a page for every barbershop in Portugal, including shops that never signed up to barber.box. That data came from publicly available sources of business information.

• We publish establishment facts only: name, address, location, opening hours, phone number and business category.
• We do not republish reviews, ratings or photos from those sources.
• On an unclaimed page we invent no services and no prices. With no prices entered by the owner, no price list appears at all.
• The phone number is shown only after you click to reveal it.

If the barbershop is yours, you can claim the page in the Studio app and take control of it. From then on, what is published there is your responsibility.

If you do not want it listed, write to [email protected] with the establishment's name and address and we take the page down. We also correct anything wrong, or remove just the phone number, if you prefer. We ask for no justification and you need no account.

We may correct, update or remove any listing, including those for shops that have closed, duplicates, and listings that turn out to be wrong.

10. Reviews

Reviews on barber.box come from people who were actually there.

• Only the customer of a booking can review it, and only once.
• A review is a rating from 1 to 5, with an optional comment.
• It is published on the barbershop's page, with your first name.

Write honestly about what you experienced. We remove reviews that are false, reviews with nothing to do with the service provided, insults, hate speech, other people's personal data, and anything posted in exchange for something.

A review is your opinion, not ours. By publishing it, you allow us to show it on the barbershop's page and in the site's results. You can ask for yours to be removed whenever you want.

We do not remove a negative review because the barbershop dislikes it. If you believe a review is false, write to [email protected] and we look into it.

11. Our liability

The service is provided as it is and as it is available.

• We do not guarantee that the site and the apps are always available, or free of errors and interruptions.
• We do not guarantee that directory information is accurate or current. Much of it came from external sources, and barbershops change their hours, their address and their owner.
• We do not answer for the service barbershops provide, for what they write on their pages, or for what users write in reviews.
• We do not answer for failures of the third parties we depend on, such as payment at Stripe or notification delivery.

Nothing in these terms excludes liability the law does not allow to be excluded, in particular for intent or gross negligence, for harm to life or health, and the rights Portuguese law gives consumers.

Beyond those cases, and for anyone subscribing to the Studio app in a professional capacity, our total liability is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event that caused it.

12. Suspension and closure

You can close your account whenever you want. Ask for closure at barber.box/en/data-request and we delete your data, except the records the law requires us to keep. If you have an active subscription, cancel it first so you are not charged again.

We may suspend or close access to an account when:

• barber.box is used against these terms or against the law.
• There are fake bookings, repeated no-shows without warning, or abuse of the people working at a barbershop.
• There are paid-for reviews, reviews written by someone who was not a customer, or reviews posted to damage a competitor.
• Someone claims a barbershop that is not theirs.
• There is automated data harvesting, an attempt to get around technical limits, or an attack on the service.

Whenever we can, we warn you first and explain why. In serious cases we suspend first and explain after. You can contest the decision at [email protected].

We may also discontinue barber.box. If that happens, we give notice in advance and refund the part of the subscription already paid for and not yet used.

13. Governing law

These terms are governed by Portuguese law.

The Portuguese courts are competent for any dispute. If you are a consumer and we do not reach agreement, you can go to the Centro Nacional de Informação e Arbitragem de Conflitos de Consumo (CNIACC), which holds residual competence across the country: www.cniacc.pt. That is the consumer alternative dispute resolution entity we name, as Law 144/2015 requires.

If you are a consumer, you keep the protection the law of your country of residence in the European Union gives you, and you can always go to the courts where you live.

14. Changes

We may change these terms, for instance when the service changes or when the law changes.

When a change is material, we announce it in the app and by email before it takes effect, giving at least 30 days' notice to anyone with an active subscription. If you disagree, you can cancel before the change applies.

The update date shown at the top of this page is the one that counts: if it moved, the terms moved. You can ask us by email for the previous version.