Terms of service

01Who we are

Before You Pay ("we", "us", "our") is operated under the name Phillips Group and is available at beforeyoupay.uk. By using this website or buying a report, you agree to these terms in full.

02What Before You Pay does

Before You Pay gathers information. We retrieve data from publicly available sources, including Companies House, trade registers, review platforms and news indexes, and present it in one report. When preparing a report, we do not:

• Carry out investigations or physical checks
• Contact the tradesperson or anyone else on your behalf
• Give legal, financial, professional or regulatory advice
• Guarantee that any information we retrieve is accurate, complete or up to date
• Make binding statements about whether any person or business is legitimate, safe to hire or otherwise fit for purpose

03Not advice, for information only

Nothing in a Before You Pay report is legal advice, financial advice, professional advice or a regulated opinion of any kind. Reports reflect publicly available information at the time the report was run. That information may be out of date, incomplete or subject to change.

However a report summarises what it found, it does not mean a tradesperson is verified, recommended or endorsed by Before You Pay. Nor does it mean a tradesperson is dishonest, unqualified or unfit to be hired.

Every decision about whether to hire a tradesperson, pay a deposit or go ahead with any work is your own. Before You Pay accepts no responsibility for any decision made in reliance on a report.

04Your responsibility to verify

You accept that:

• Public records can be out of date, incomplete or inaccurate
• Trade register data comes from third parties and may not reflect the current status of an accreditation
• A report is a starting point for your own checks, not a substitute for them
• You should check independently any information that matters to your decision before you commit to work or payment
• Where large sums are involved, we recommend getting more than one quote and independent professional advice

05Payment and refunds

A report costs £2. Payment is processed securely by Stripe. Prices include VAT where applicable.

A report is a digital product delivered as soon as the check is complete, so we do not offer refunds once a report has been generated and delivered. This does not affect your statutory rights under UK consumer law.

If a report fails to generate because of a technical fault on our side, we will refund you in full or run the report again at no extra cost.

06Accuracy and limitation of liability

We retrieve data from third-party sources and present it as we find it. We make no warranty, express or implied, about the accuracy, reliability, timeliness or completeness of any information in a report.

To the fullest extent the law allows, Before You Pay is not liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential or special loss arising from:

• Reliance on any information in a report
• Decisions made before, during or after using our service
• Inaccurate, incomplete or out-of-date public records
• The conduct, qualifications or actions of any tradesperson

Our total liability to you for any claim will not exceed the amount you paid for the report in question (£2).

07Files you upload

Files uploaded for a report are used to prepare that report. Identity evidence, customer confirmation files, portfolio photos and customer-view evidence have different purposes and handling. Customer-view evidence stays private and is used to check the submission or a challenge, as described below. Our service providers process relevant files to operate the service. See our privacy policy for the applicable retention and disclosure information.

08Acceptable use

You agree not to use Before You Pay to:

• Look into people for any purpose other than your own checks before paying for work
• Harass or defame anyone, or publish false information about any person or business
• Resell, redistribute or commercially exploit report data without our written permission
• Scrape, reverse-engineer or automate access to the service

Check my quote

Check my quote is free. It gives general information about what a quote for a job usually covers. It is not legal advice and it does not say whether a price is fair.

When you use it, you confirm that you are allowed to share the quote with us, for example because it was given to you. You agree that we may keep the prices and priced lines from it, and any business details you enter, to build price guides and our directory, as our privacy policy explains. Please do not add other people’s personal details.

09Tradespeople and claimed profiles

If you claim a profile, the service areas, trades and credentials you list must be true. We may check the areas you say you cover, and any other details, from time to time. Misleading information may lead to your profile being changed or removed and your account being suspended.

Membership is billed monthly at the price shown when you join. You are charged only once your application is approved. Payments are taken by Stripe, on the same day each month as your first payment. You can cancel at any time, and your membership closes at the end of the period you have paid for. We do not refund part months. If a payment fails we will ask you to update your card, and we may suspend the membership benefits if it stays unpaid.

Information from public records stays on your profile whether or not you are a member. We do not remove, edit or rank public records, and your badge level is set by what you have proven, not by payment.

Before You Pay is a self-service platform. You can send feature feedback from your dashboard. You can also use our contact form for privacy requests, record corrections and customer-view enquiries.

Customer views

Customer views are published on business profiles after a person has checked the connection and evidence and the business has had its reply window. The opinion belongs to the customer; it is not a Before You Pay verdict or endorsement.

For customers sharing a view

Your view must describe your own experience as the customer or someone living at the property concerned. Give the correct business and honest job details, opinion and reported work status. A quote alone shows proposed work or contact, not payment or completion. Before You Pay checks evidence of the connection and whether the submission follows its rules, not who is right about the work. We are not responsible for the business's work and do not mediate job disputes.

Upload genuine documents relating to the job. You may cover unrelated private information, including other transactions and full account numbers, but must not alter anything in a misleading way. Do not submit unnecessary information about other people or use the service to harass anyone. Up to three PDF, JPEG, PNG or WebP files of up to 10MB each can be submitted as a quote, invoice or payment evidence.

“Too early to say” is available only for work in progress or not started. Happy customers are not asked whether they want to discuss the matter. The private note remains optional for everyone, and the confirmation screen summarises the questions actually asked.

Give the business name, phone number and email address as you have them, so we can check the match and tell the business about the view. These details are not published. If the notice bounces, publication is blocked until we have reached the business another way. Your email is verified. The limits are one view per homeowner email address per business and up to five different businesses a month. Contact us about a repeat job or household duplicate rather than submitting it again.

After checking the submission, we tell the business the job details, opinion, reported work status and types of evidence checked. We do not provide your email address or evidence files through its customer-view display. We may pass on your optional private note after checking it. The business may recognise the job, so anonymity cannot be guaranteed. We tell the business whether you are open to discussing the matter or have asked for no further contact. This preference is not shown publicly and does not stop the business using contact details it already holds.

To request a change or withdrawal, use our contact form with the email address used for the submission. There is no customer self-service editing or withdrawal tool at present. We may need to confirm your identity. Withdrawal does not automatically erase every associated record; see our privacy policy.

What you confirm before sending (version 2026-10-v2)

1. This is my own experience of a job with this business, and I am the customer or live at the property.
2. The documents I upload are genuine and relate to this job. I have only covered details that have nothing to do with it, such as other payments or account numbers.
3. I understand Before You Pay checks the connection, not who is right, and tells the business about my view. The business sees the job details, which may let it recognise me. Before You Pay never shows it or the public my email or documents.
4. I understand that once checked, my view may be published on the business's profile, and I can ask Before You Pay to update or withdraw it at any time.

For businesses receiving a view

We notify the business only after checking the customer's connection. A business disagreeing with an opinion is not, by itself, a reason to remove it. Paying membership does not affect how we check or treat a view.

To reply or challenge through an account, claim the business profile for free and have the claim approved by a person, with the relevant company director or sole trader details, photo ID and proof of address. No card is needed for a free claim. A free account has a basic claimed profile with public records and customer views, without business-added details, a level or badge. Paid membership costs £5 a month and adds profile content and photos, customer-confirmation invitations, a link to invite customer views and earned badge levels. A card is saved when applying for membership and the first membership payment is taken at approval. Lapsed membership returns to a free account. Paying membership does not buy a different moderation standard or a higher earned level.

Every business has a 14-day reply window, whether unclaimed, free or paid, and every opinion is treated equally. An emailed notice starts the window only after the email has been accepted for sending. If we learn it bounced, the view is not published until the business is reached another way and a fresh window starts. A notice delivered another way is recorded by Before You Pay.

The window pauses while an email-confirmed claim is awaiting our decision, for up to 30 days. When the claim is approved or rejected, paused time is added back to the deadline. Once the window has ended and is not paused, and the notice has not bounced, scheduled processing publishes the checked view and any business reply automatically. There is no separate Publish decision. Contact us if you need to report a concern after publication.

The questions offered to the business depend on the customer's opinion and contact preference. Agree or disagree is available for Neutral and Unhappy views, not Happy or Too early to say views. Happy views need no ordinary reply. The business can record its willingness to discuss the matter for other views unless the customer asked for no further contact. A resolution question is offered for Unhappy views or once discussions have started. A challenge remains available regardless of the customer's opinion, subject to the pre-publication and post-publication routes below. These options do not change the customer's opinion.

The business can say “We are in talks with this customer” only if the customer said they were open to talking. It is displayed as the business's own statement, not as confirmation by the customer. It stays until we ask about resolution: when the business marks the matter resolved, or after 30 days of being in talks. At the 30-day point, we email both sides to ask whether the matter is resolved and remove the in-talks statement.

Resolution statements are attributed to whoever makes them. If both sides say resolved, we show “Both sides consider this resolved”. If the customer says resolved and the business has not answered, we show “Customer considers this resolved”. If only the business says resolved, we ask the customer; after 14 days without a response, we show “Business considers this resolved” with a “No response from customer” label. Silence is not agreement. If neither side answers the check-in, no resolution is shown and the in-talks statement stays off. A customer can answer later or change their answer, and their original opinion does not change automatically. Neither resolution nor willingness to talk is a condition of publication.

If the customer later changes their opinion through Before You Pay, the questions and public reply display change accordingly. Earlier business answers may be retained, but an answer that no longer applies is not shown publicly.

A business may privately challenge a view because it concerns no genuine job connection, a different business, apparently altered documents, harassment or another person's private information. A challenge can include a reason, a note up to 1,000 characters and up to five supporting files. Supply only information needed for the check. Business evidence stays private. Replies pause while we check a pre-publication challenge. After publication, the business can change its reply and report a problem for Before You Pay to check, but cannot make a published view disappear by challenging it.

Checks and removal

We may reject or remove a submission where the connection cannot be checked, documents appear altered or not genuine, the wrong business or person is involved, the conduct or privacy rules are broken, or a household job is duplicated. We apply the same checks regardless of the opinion. A challenge does not make us the adjudicator of the underlying job dispute. You can contact us about a mistaken match, correction or privacy concern without buying membership.

A checked view is not withheld because the business disagrees, and publication does not depend on resolution. A published view remains while the profile exists unless withdrawn or removed under these rules. A business closing or changing name does not establish a new identity for the underlying job; contact us about corrections or mistaken matches. Nothing in this section limits rights that cannot lawfully be excluded.

10Intellectual property

The Before You Pay website, brand, software and report format are our intellectual property. Public records data in reports is Crown copyright or third-party copyright, used under the relevant open data licences. You may use your own report for personal reference only.

11Third-party sources

Our service relies on third-party data sources, including Companies House, Gas Safe Register, NICEIC and others. We have no control over whether those services are available, accurate or continue to exist, and we are not responsible for any interruption or inaccuracy they cause.

12Changes to these terms

We may update these terms at any time. The current version is always at beforeyoupay.uk/terms. If you keep using the service after an update, you accept the revised terms.

13Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Any dispute is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.