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1. These Terms

These Terms are a contract between you and Hampton Roads Home Services (“HRHS”, “we”, “us”; section 10 says who runs it). They apply when you use HRHS as a service professional, real estate agent or association board. Homeowners have their own terms.

Our Privacy Policy and our Community and Reporting Policy are part of this agreement.

Adults only: you must be 18 or older to use Hampton Roads Home Services.

2. What this service is

We publish listings for independent service professionals, let homeowners post jobs and receive bids, and provide messaging so the two can talk. We also run Connect, where homeowners in the same neighborhood can find each other and talk, and Manage, a set of tools an association board pays for to run its own portal. That is the whole of it. In particular:

• We do not perform home services.
• We do not employ, supervise, direct, schedule, train or control service professionals. They are independent businesses.
• We are not a party to any agreement you make with another member, and not your agent, broker or representative.
• We do not handle payment for the work. You pay the professional directly.
• We do not guarantee that any job will be bid on, awarded, or completed to any standard.

• We are not a neighborhood association, a property owners’ association, or a management company, and we do not run any association. Manage gives a board tools; the board runs the association.
• We do not confirm who lives where. Connect places you on a street by matching the address you give us to city records. Matching is not proof of residence, and a name on Connect is not a statement by us that the person lives there.

3. We do not vet anyone

We do not vet, screen, verify, endorse or recommend anyone listed on this site. We do not confirm licenses, insurance, bonding, certifications, qualifications, criminal history or references. We do not inspect work.

New listings are reviewed before they appear (section 8). Approval means the listing fits HRHS; it is not a check of licenses, insurance or background. We may decline, hide or suspend a listing or account that doesn’t follow these Terms. Where our site describes something as “verified”, that word refers only to the specific thing stated at that point: for example, that a review is attached to a job booked through this site. It is not a statement about a business, its licensing, or the quality of its work.

You are responsible for deciding who to hire. Before hiring, check the license with the Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, ask for proof of insurance, get scope and price in writing, and take the same care you would with any contractor you found any other way.

4. Creating an account

Hampton Roads Home Services is for adults only. You must be 18 or older and able to enter a binding contract to create an account or use the site. By creating an account, including by signing in with Google, you confirm that you are 18 or older. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we will close it.

When you register, you are asked to confirm that you accept these Terms, the Privacy Policy and the Community and Reporting Policy. That confirmation is required (you cannot create an account without it) and it forms a binding agreement between you and us. Ticking the box and pressing Agree is your electronic signature, and it has the same effect as signing on paper. We keep a record of each time you agree: the date and time, the version and the exact text you agreed to, how you agreed, the IP address your request came from, and what your browser reports about itself. The Privacy Policy says how long we keep it.

By registering you specifically confirm that you understand and accept:

• that we do not vet, verify or endorse any member, and that choosing who to hire or whose job to accept is your decision alone (section 3);
• that we are not a party to any agreement between members and take no part in payment for work (section 2);
• that any dispute about work, price, quality, damage, injury or non-payment is between you and the other member, not us (sections 13 and 15);
• that our liability to you is limited as described in section 14, including for loss of income, business or reputation;
• that reviews about you are not removed on request, and are removed only on the grounds listed in the Community Policy (section 6);
• that disputes with us go first to us, then to the courts in Norfolk, Virginia, and that a claim must be brought within 1 year (section 19);
• that we may suspend or remove your account for breaking these Terms or the Community Policy (section 18).

• that Connect and any association portal you join are governed by sections 8A and 8B and by the neighbor rules in the Community and Reporting Policy, and that we may remove you from Connect or a portal without closing your HRHS account (section 18).

You must give accurate information and keep it current. You are responsible for activity under your account and for keeping your password secure. Tell us promptly if you believe someone else has access to it.

One person or business, one account. You may hold both a homeowner and a service professional persona on a single account, and the same account is the one you use for Connect and for any association portal. You may close your account at any time; closing it does not remove content that forms part of the record of what happened here (section 7).

If we materially change these Terms, we will tell you and ask you to accept the new version the next time you sign in. Until you accept, you will not be able to use your account: no dashboard, no bids, no messages, no posting. You can still browse the public site, read the new Terms, and sign out.

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• misrepresent who you are, what business you own, or your qualifications;
• harass, threaten, abuse or intimidate anyone;
• discriminate against anyone on the basis of race, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability or family status;
• use the site to defraud anyone, or to solicit payment outside the terms agreed with the other member;
• collect other members’ information for any purpose other than the job at hand, or use it for marketing;
• scrape, crawl, copy or republish listings, reviews or member information;
• upload anything you do not have the right to upload, or anything unlawful, obscene or malicious;
• interfere with the site’s operation or security.

• use Connect or an association portal to advertise, offer services, gather leads, or send people to your business;
• join Connect for an address you do not live at, or hold more than one Connect membership;
• post another person’s address, phone number, license plate, photograph, or anything else about them that they did not share themselves;
• describe a person by race, ethnicity, religion, or how they look when reporting something you saw, rather than by what they did.

The full rules, the reasons a member can be reported, and what we do about violations are in the Community and Reporting Policy.

6. Reviews

Reviews may be written only by a member describing their own experience of work actually performed. You may not review your own business, have staff or relatives review it, review competitors, or offer anything of value in exchange for a review expressing a particular sentiment.

We do not remove reviews on request. A review is removed only if we determine it meets one of the grounds set out in the Community Policy, grounds we apply identically to positive and negative reviews. Being unfavourable is not a ground. You may report any review of your business that you believe meets one of those grounds, and a person will consider it.

Threatening a reviewer, or making a knowingly false public accusation against one, in order to have a review changed or removed, violates these Terms and may also violate federal law.

7. Your content

You keep ownership of what you post. You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, adapt for formatting, publish and display it in connection with operating and promoting the site.

For reviews, job records and messages, that license survives the closing of your account. These are the record of what happened between two members, and one party cannot erase a record that belongs to both.

You are responsible for holding the rights to everything you upload, including photographs of completed work.

You answer for what you post. Everything you post, upload or send through the site is your responsibility, not ours: its accuracy, and its being yours to share.

Photos. When you upload a photograph you confirm that you took it, or that its owner allowed you to post it here for this use, and that it shows nothing you have no right to show. We may remove any photograph, or anything else you post, that we believe does not meet that, or these Terms, without asking you first. Where we can, we will tell you what we removed and why.

Connect notices are different from reviews. A notice or reply on Connect is yours to delete at any time. If you leave Connect, everything of yours goes with you: your notices, your replies, your reactions, your points and badges, your messages in threads, your connections, your Helpers, the homes you watch and your Connect choices. Two things stay: a copy of anything that was reported while you were here, attached to the report (Community Policy), and your recommendations of pros, which stay on the pro’s count without your name unless you take them back first.

What is posted inside an association portal belongs to that association’s record. Board posts, documents, votes and announcements stay with the portal when a member leaves, because they are the association’s business, not any one member’s.

8. Additional terms for service professionals

Your listing is reviewed before it goes live. You build your listing in the app and press Send for review. Until we approve it, your listing does not show on the site, and you cannot see or bid on jobs or buy Premium. We may approve it, ask you for changes, or decline it. If we decline it, your service professional side is closed; your account, and any homeowner side, stay open. Approval means the listing fits HRHS. It is not a check of licenses, insurance or background (section 3).

By listing on this site you represent and warrant, on a continuing basis, that:

• you hold every license, registration, permit, bond and insurance policy required by Virginia and by your locality for the service categories you list, and you will maintain them;
• you are an independent business, and nothing here creates employment, agency, partnership or joint venture between us;
• you are solely responsible for the work you perform, for its safety, for your employees and subcontractors, for your taxes, and for your compliance with all applicable law;
• your listing is accurate and describes a business you own or are authorized to represent.

We make no promise of leads, bids, jobs, revenue or profit. Nothing on this site, on any pricing page, or in any communication from us is a guarantee of business outcomes.

Asking for reviews. You may ask for a review only from your own customers, for work you did for them, with the link or tool we give you. You may not write, edit, pay for or pick reviews. “Pick” means asking only the customers you expect to be happy, or offering anything for a good review (section 6).

Featured and sponsored placements are advertising. They are labeled, they do not affect ratings, and they are not an endorsement.

Recommendations from homeowners. Homeowners can recommend you on your page. You can’t remove a recommendation, but you can report one that breaks the rules, and a person will look at it.

8A. Connect, for neighbors

Joining. Connect is open to any homeowner member with a home address in the cities we serve. You join by turning Connect on for the address you have saved. You must live there. One person, one membership, one home. You can leave at any time from your Connect settings. To join an association portal as a resident, you join Connect first, for your own home. Leaving Connect later does not take you out of a portal.

Your neighborhood comes from city records. We match your address to the city’s own address and subdivision records to place you on your street and in your neighborhood. Those records are the city’s, not ours: a boundary can be wrong, a name can change, and we may move, split, merge or rename a neighborhood to follow them. We do not confirm who lives at an address, and nothing on Connect is a statement by us that a person lives where they say.

What neighbors see. Your first name and last initial, the way the site shows a homeowner everywhere. Beyond that, you choose: your street, your house number, your phone. You can change those choices at any time, and the screen shows you what the choice looks like. Neighbors in a notice’s reach can see it and what you reply to it.

Who is near you. Connect lists the neighbors closest to your home first, by distance from the point the city lists for your address, and that group can reach across a neighborhood line to the house behind you. If you hide your street, you are listed with your neighborhood by name only and never as anyone’s closest neighbor. What you choose to show changes what neighbors see; it never changes where you are: your notices go out from the neighborhood your address is in, and nothing you hide moves them.

Connections and messages. You can send a connection request to a neighbor, and accept or ignore theirs. Only neighbors who have both agreed can message each other. A group thread holds up to five people. You can end a connection at any time, and the other person is not told why. Messages are private between the people in the thread; we read a thread only when someone in it reports it.

The neighbor rules apply. They are in the Community and Reporting Policy and they are part of this agreement. In brief: be a neighbor; no business in notices; no politics; respect other people’s privacy; describe what someone did, not what they look like.

Service professionals on Connect. A pro who lives in a neighborhood may join Connect as a neighbor. They may not post about their business there: no listing, no offers, no “message me for a quote,” no asking for recommendations for themselves. A neighbor may name any HRHS listing in a recommendation, and the site may show that listing’s public card. Connect refuses a phone number, a link or a price from a member who holds a listing, before anyone has to report it. Using Connect to find work is a violation of these Terms on both sides of the site, and may cost a pro their listing as well as their place on Connect. A pro may not ask for recommendations, offer anything for one, or recommend their own business, and recommendations never change where a pro appears. A pro whose recommendations come from breaking this rule may lose them, and may lose their listing.

Notices. What you post to your neighborhood is a notice. Every notice has a topic, and the topic decides three things: who sees it, whether it can alert neighbors, and how long it stays. A notice can reach your street (the neighbors closest to your home, about 600 feet), your neighborhood, or nearby (members within about 1 mile of your home, which can include other neighborhoods). You can make a notice’s reach smaller, never bigger. Notices leave on their own when their time is up. You can close or delete yours at any time. Buying, selling and giving things away are not topics, and general chat belongs in messages.

Alerts. Some topics, such as an outage, flooding or a safety concern, let you say something is happening now. That notice can alert neighbors in its reach by an app alert or an email. You can send one alert a day. Alerts are neighbors telling neighbors. We do not check them before they go out. Neighbors can say they see it too, or that it’s over, and an alert closes when three households say it’s over.

Wrong topic. A neighbor can mark a notice as the wrong topic. That is not a report and it does not come to us. When three households mark one, it folds and you are asked to pick a better topic or send a message instead. If five of your notices fold this way in 30 days, you can’t post notices for 7 days.

Recommendations. You may recommend a pro you hired through the site or used before, from the pro’s page or by naming them when a neighbor asks. One recommendation per home for each pro. Neighbors on Connect in your neighborhood see your first name and last initial with it; everyone else sees only how many homeowners recommend that pro. A recommendation is your opinion, not ours: we do not vet, verify or recommend anyone, and recommendations never change where a pro appears on the site. Do not recommend a business you own or work for, and do not accept anything for a recommendation. You can take a recommendation back at any time. We may remove recommendations that break these rules.

Your neighborhood’s guide. Pros neighbors recommend, and answers a neighbor marked helpful, are kept in a guide for your neighborhood after the notice leaves. An answer in the guide shows your first name and last initial. You can remove your answer from the guide at any time.

Recognition. You earn points when a neighbor confirms you helped, and points lead to levels, badges and monthly honors. They have no cash value, can’t be traded or sold, and may change. We may take back points earned by breaking these Terms. Neighbors see your level and any honor next to your name unless you turn that off in your Neighborhood settings.

Helpers. You can ask someone you trust, like a family member or a neighbor, to be your Helper. With your yes, a Helper can change your Neighborhood settings, get alerts for your home and post notices for you. A notice a Helper posts says it was posted by them for you. A Helper can’t read your private messages. You can remove your Helper at any time.

Check on me. If you turn on Check on me, your connected neighbors and your Helper are asked to check on you after an alert in your area. They see that you asked and how you answer. Check on me is a neighborly nudge, not a safety, medical or monitoring service. In an emergency, call 911.

Watch a home. You can get alerts for a home you don’t live in if it is a home on your account, or if someone who lives there invites you. You get its area’s alerts only. You can’t post there or see its neighbors. The person who invited you can end it at any time.

From HRHS notices. We post some notices ourselves, such as weather alerts from the National Weather Service. We pass them on as we receive them, and they can be late or wrong. Follow official instructions.

Connect is not a watch program and not an emergency service. We do not read posts as they are made. If you are in danger or see a crime, call 911 first.

8B. Manage, for association boards

Who may subscribe. Any member may claim a neighborhood from our list and start a Manage portal for it, and more than one portal may exist for the same neighborhood. We do not check who runs an association. The people you invite decide whether to join your portal; that is the whole of its standing. By starting a portal you confirm that the name you give it and what you say about who runs it are true. Calling a portal an association’s board, or using its name, when you are not on that board is impersonation under the Community and Reporting Policy, and we remove portals for it. The person who subscribes is responsible for the plan, for the admins they appoint, and for what those admins do in the portal.

What Manage is. A portal for your association: a roster of its homes, a forum its members are in, documents, events, polls and announcements, and the ability to invite residents. Which features, how many homes, and how much storage come with a plan are shown at the point of purchase. We may add to, change or retire features, and we will tell you when we do.

What Manage is not. We are not a party to your association’s governing documents, we do not enforce its rules, collect its dues, keep its books, or decide its disputes. Whether a vote, notice or record kept in the portal counts as an official act of the association is a question for your governing documents and Virginia law, and for your board to answer; the portal is a tool, not a ruling.

Residents and their information. A board enters the names, addresses and email addresses of the association’s households, and invites people by email. By entering that information you confirm that the association holds it lawfully and may use it to run the association, and that you may share it with us for that purpose. A resident who accepts an invitation creates their own HRHS account under these Terms; from then on their account, their Connect choices and their messages are theirs, not the board’s. Admins see the household details the board entered and whether each person has joined; they do not see a resident’s private messages or marketplace activity.

Admins. The plan’s owner may appoint admins and hand ownership to another member. Admins act for the association inside the portal, including removing posts and members from it under the Community and Reporting Policy. If the owner leaves the board, they must transfer ownership to someone who is on it. On a written request from an association’s officers, we may transfer ownership of a portal ourselves.

Plans, lapses and what happens to the portal. Manage plans are priced by the number of homes and renew as described in section 9. If a plan lapses, the portal stays open for fourteen days while we tell the owner, and then locks: members can see that it exists and nothing else, the owner sees billing, and nothing is deleted, ever. Paying unlocks it as it was. A locked portal can be claimed by any of its members: whoever starts a plan for it becomes its owner, and the previous owner becomes a member. Residents are never charged, and a resident’s HRHS account and Connect membership are unaffected by what happens to a portal.

9. Paid subscriptions

Some features require a paid subscription. Price, billing period and inclusions are shown at the point of purchase.

Manage plans are bought for an association by the person who subscribes (section 8B). Whether that person pays personally or is reimbursed by the association is between them and the association; our agreement is with the subscriber.

Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period at the then-current price, until canceled. You may cancel at any time from your account; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current period. Unless stated otherwise or required by law, fees already paid are not refunded, and you keep paid features until the period ends.

We may change prices. Changes apply to the next billing period after we notify you, and you may cancel before then.

If we suspend or remove your account for violating these Terms, paid features end with it. We will stop billing you; whether a refund is due depends on the circumstances.

Payments are processed by a third-party payment processor. We do not store your card details.

Our Refund Policy sets out in full when a subscription fee is refunded and when it is not.

10. Who runs HRHS

Hampton Roads Home Services is a trading name of AF Digital Native, LLC, a Virginia limited liability company. It is not a separate legal entity. When these Terms say “HRHS”, “we” or “us”, they mean AF Digital Native, LLC, and your agreement under these Terms is with it. Its officers, members, employees and agents are covered by sections 14 and 16 in the same way HRHS is.

11. Communications

By creating an account you agree to receive service messages about your account, your jobs and your bids. These are part of the service and cannot be switched off while your account is open.

Marketing and digest emails can be switched off from your email preferences or by using the unsubscribe link. If we introduce text messages, we will ask for your consent separately first.

If you are on Connect, we email you when a neighbor asks to connect, says yes, writes to you or adds you to a thread, and, if you choose, when an alert goes out in your area and with a summary of notices. You can turn each of those off on your Email notifications page or in your Neighborhood settings, and choose app alerts, email or both for each kind of alert. Email a board sends through its portal is sent by the board. We carry it; the board is the sender, and questions about it go to the board.

Buttons in our emails. Some emails have buttons like Me too, Going or It’s back that work without signing in, and a link that signs you in. They only work for you and expire after a few days. Please don’t forward these emails.

12. Disclaimer of warranties

The site is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranty arising from course of dealing or usage of trade.

We do not warrant that the site will be uninterrupted, secure or error-free, that information on it is accurate or current, or that any listing, review, rating or member is accurate, honest, qualified, licensed, insured or suitable.

Ratings and reviews are the opinions of the members who wrote them. They are not our statements, and we do not adopt or endorse them.

13. What you are responsible for

You are responsible for your own decisions and agreements: choosing who to hire or whose job to accept, verifying licensing and insurance, agreeing scope and price, admitting people to your property, the quality and safety of work performed, and payment.

Disputes between members are between those members. We are not an adjudicator. We may, at our discretion, provide records of what happened on the site.

The same goes for neighbors and associations. A disagreement between neighbors on Connect, or between a resident and their association about dues, rules, violations or elections, is theirs. We are not an adjudicator for any of it, and nothing on this site is legal advice.

14. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law:

• We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, punitive or exemplary damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost business, lost opportunity, lost data, or harm to reputation or goodwill, arising out of or relating to the site or these Terms, whether or not we were advised such damages were possible.
• Our total liability to you for all claims arising out of or relating to the site or these Terms is limited to the greater of the total fees you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or one hundred dollars ($100).

This applies regardless of the legal theory, and regardless of whether a limited remedy fails of its essential purpose.

15. Claims arising from work

We are not responsible for the acts or omissions of any member, and specifically not for work performed or not performed, property damage, injury, non-payment, delay, theft, or anything a member does on your property or at their premises.

Any claim arising out of work arranged through the site is between you and the other member. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for death or personal injury caused by our own negligence, or for fraud.

16. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless HRHS and the company that runs it (section 10), together with its officers, members, employees and agents, from any claim, demand, loss, liability or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your use of the site, your content, your breach of these Terms, your agreements with other members, or work you performed or received.

17. Copyright

If you believe content on the site infringes your copyright, send a notice under the DMCA to our designated agent at support@hamptonroadshomeservices.com, including everything the DMCA requires. We will respond appropriately, which may include removing the content, and we terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

18. Suspension, removal, and changes

We may suspend or remove an account, remove content, or restrict features where we believe these Terms or the Community Policy have been violated, where the law requires it, or to protect members. Where practicable we will tell you what rule is at issue and you may contest it once.

Connect and portals have their own door. We may remove a post, mute a member, or remove a member from Connect or from a portal for breaking the neighbor rules, without closing their HRHS account. A board may remove a member from its own portal; that is the board’s decision, and it does not affect the member’s HRHS account or their place on Connect.

We may change, suspend or discontinue any part of the site, and we may change these Terms. Material changes will be announced on the site and you will be asked to accept them the next time you sign in (section 4). Smaller changes, such as wording that makes these Terms clearer, take effect when we post them with a new “Last updated” date.

19. Governing law and disputes

Please read this section. It says where disputes are decided, and that you must bring a claim within 1 year.

Talk to us first

If you have a dispute with us, you agree to send us a written notice first, by email to support@hamptonroadshomeservices.com or by mail to 440 Monticello Ave., Ste 1802 PMB 474253, Norfolk, Virginia 23510-2670. Tell us your name, how to reach you, what happened, and what you want.

We will try to work it out with you. Neither of us may start a court case until 60 days after the notice is received. If we have a dispute with you, we will send you a notice the same way, to the email on your account. The 1-year deadline below pauses during this 60-day period.

Where cases go

Any case between you and us may be brought only in:

• the Norfolk General District Court, including its Small Claims Division;
• the Circuit Court for the City of Norfolk; or
• the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Norfolk Division.

Either of us may bring an individual claim in the Small Claims Division of the Norfolk General District Court, as long as the claim fits that court’s limits. You and we agree to the personal jurisdiction of these courts, and give up any objection that they are an inconvenient place.

Virginia law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.

You have 1 year to bring a claim

To the extent the law allows, any claim arising out of or relating to these Terms, the site, the app or our services must be filed in one of the courts above within 1 year after the claim arises. If it is not, the claim is permanently barred. This applies to claims against us, and to claims we bring against you.

If part of this section can’t be enforced

If any part of this section is found unenforceable, the rest still applies. This section survives after your account is closed or these Terms end.

20. General

If any provision is unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. Our not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign this agreement; we may. These Terms, with the Privacy Policy and the Community and Reporting Policy, are the entire agreement between us about the site.

Notices to us: Hampton Roads Home Services, 440 Monticello Ave., Ste 1802 PMB 474253, Norfolk, Virginia 23510-2670, support@hamptonroadshomeservices.com.