Terms of service

What Night Nanny is

Night Nanny is a directory. It lets families and independent caregivers find each other and send each other messages. It also keeps the record of each care request: the request a family sends, whether the caregiver accepts or declines it, any cancellation and the reason given for it, and any report that booked care did not happen. For an accepted booking it sends both people a reminder the evening before and offers each of them a calendar file, and after care it shows the reviews each writes of the other. It is not an agency, not an employer and not a nanny service, and it does not introduce, recommend, select, assign or place anybody.

Caregivers listed here are independent. They are not employees, workers, contractors, agents or representatives of Night Nanny. They set their own rates, choose their own hours, decide for themselves which families to answer, and are responsible for their own tax, insurance and any registration or licence their work requires where they live.

We are not part of what you agree

Whatever you and a caregiver agree — the nights, the hours, the fee, the notice, what happens if somebody is ill — is between the two of you. Night Nanny is not a party to it, does not supervise or direct the care, and has no say in how it is carried out.

Whether the arrangement you reach makes the caregiver your employee or leaves her self-employed is a question about your household and hers. It depends on where you live and on what you actually agree, and nobody here can answer it for you. If the answer matters to you — and for tax, payroll, insurance and notice it usually does — take advice on it before the first night rather than after it.

Care fees are paid by the family to the caregiver. Night Nanny does not collect them, hold them, or take a share of them, and it is not responsible for a fee that goes unpaid in either direction.

Nobody here is checked, and the diligence is yours

FindNightNanny does not conduct identity verification, criminal background checks, reference checks, credential verification, or any other screening of caregivers. Email verification only confirms access to the email address associated with the account and should not be considered an endorsement, recommendation, or determination that a caregiver is qualified, trustworthy, suitable, or safe. Parents are responsible for conducting their own due diligence before hiring any caregiver.

Specifically, Night Nanny does not:

• Confirm that a caregiver is who she says she is.
• Run a criminal record check or a police check of any kind.
• Contact, call or write to a caregiver's references.
• Confirm a certificate, a qualification or a training course with the body that issued it.
• Interview, assess or meet a caregiver.
• Decide whether a caregiver is qualified, suitable or safe for your family.

Everything a caregiver’s profile says about her training, her experience, her certificates and her checks was typed by her. It is published as her statement and nothing more. Searching or filtering on one of those claims searches on what she typed, and a profile that appears in your results has met no standard by appearing there.

Before anybody stays a night in your home you are responsible for satisfying yourself about them: identification, certificates confirmed with the bodies that issued them, a recent police or vulnerable sector check you have read, references you have called, and meeting her yourself. Night Nanny has done none of this and will not do any of it.

Being listed and being found

A caregiver appears in search once she has confirmed the email address on her account and her listing is complete. Confirming an email address establishes that somebody can open that inbox. It is not a check on a person and must not be read as one.

Being listed costs nothing. A caregiver may also buy Featured, set out below. It changes the order profiles are shown in, and never whether a profile is listed.

Memberships

There are two kinds of membership, and each is set out below: a family membership, which a family needs to contact caregivers while Night Nanny offers one, and Featured, which a caregiver may buy for their profile. Neither is needed to search, to see the map or to read a profile, which are free for everyone.

Family membership

While Night Nanny offers family memberships, a family needs a family membership, a trial or a free pass to contact a caregiver: to start a new conversation with them, or to send them a new care request. Everything else stays free without one, including every conversation and care request the family already has, and answering a caregiver who wrote to them first.

A family membership is a flat monthly fee for contacting caregivers through Night Nanny. It is not a fee for any one introduction or booking, it does not select or recommend anybody, and it is not a share of anything a family pays for care.

Trials and free passes

Night Nanny may, at its discretion, give a family a trial, through a trial link, or a free pass. Either lets the family contact caregivers until the date it ends, as a family membership does. Neither needs a card, and nothing is charged when it ends or because of it. When it ends, the family needs a family membership to go on contacting caregivers; the conversations and care requests they already have keep working. Night Nanny may end a trial or a free pass before its date.

A trial link for caregivers makes a caregiver’s profile Featured, without payment, for the number of days it gives. A trial link works only until it expires, has been used as many times as it allows, or is withdrawn, and each person can use one trial link, only once. Somebody who has used a trial link is not given an extra free trial when they later buy a membership.

Featured, for caregivers

A caregiver may buy Featured, a membership which makes her profile Featured. A Featured profile is listed ahead of the others in search results and at the front of the profiles shown on the home page, and it carries a Featured badge. That is the whole of what a Featured membership buys. It is not a fee for an introduction, not a fee for finding her a family, and not a share of anything a family pays her. A paid position is not a recommendation, and the badge is not a rating, a recommendation or a check of any kind. Night Nanny can also make a profile Featured without payment, for a limited time, including through a trial link for caregivers.

Paying for a membership

The rest of this section is for anybody who buys either membership. Before you pay, you are shown the price of the membership and the currency it is charged in: Canadian dollars, or US dollars if the address on your profile is in the United States. If a membership begins with a free trial, you are shown that too, and the first payment is taken when the trial ends unless you have cancelled by then. A family who subscribes while a trial or a free pass still has time to run may have their first payment put off until the day it ends, so they do not pay for days they already have; if so, they are shown that before they pay.

A membership is paid monthly, in advance, and renews automatically every month until you cancel it. You can cancel at any time with Manage billing on your membership page. Cancelling stops the renewal: your membership runs to the end of the month you have already paid for, and nothing more is charged.

A membership month that has begun is not refunded, in whole or in part — whether you cancel part-way through it, delete your account, or your account is suspended — except where the law requires a refund, or where Night Nanny chooses to make one at its discretion.

If a renewal payment fails, or needs you to confirm it with your bank, we will email you, and your membership goes on working for a grace period while the payment is tried again: a Featured profile stays Featured, and a family can go on contacting caregivers. If it has not gone through by the end of that period, that stops until it does. If it still cannot be taken, the membership may be cancelled.

If you delete your account, your membership is cancelled at the same time and nothing more is charged. If your account is suspended, your membership is set to end at the close of the month already paid for, and nothing more is charged after that.

If you dispute a membership payment with your bank or card issuer, your membership stops renewing: it ends at the close of the month already paid for and is not charged again. If a charge looks wrong to you, please write to us at info@findnightnanny.com.

If the price of a membership changes, the new price applies only to memberships bought after the change. A membership you already have keeps the price you bought it at until you cancel it.

Membership payments are processed by Stripe. You pay, and manage your card and your invoices, on pages Stripe runs, and your card details go to Stripe without ever reaching Night Nanny.

What we can do when something goes wrong

You can block anybody, and you can report a profile, a message or a review. A report goes into a queue for our administrators, who may or may not act on it, and there is no set time for them to do so. An administrator can suspend an account, take a message down or close a conversation. Those are the limits of it: Night Nanny cannot supervise care, cannot be present, cannot intervene in your home, and does not stand behind, insure or vouch for anybody listed here or for anything that happens between you.

Your information

What is stored, who can read your messages, where your street address goes and what survives the deletion of your account are set out in the privacy policy, which forms part of these terms.

When a new version of these terms comes into force, you will be asked to accept it before you go on using your account. Questions about them: info@findnightnanny.com.