Terms of Service

1. Acceptance

By accessing or using HotSeat (“the Service”, “Platform”), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service (“Terms”). If you do not agree, do not use HotSeat.

HotSeat accounts belong to businesses, and the business is the party to these Terms. It accepts them once, through the Owner or Admin who first accepts them for it — usually the person who creates its account, or who takes over a shop HotSeat set up for it. That person confirms they have authority to bind the business. The business is responsible for how its Owners, Admins and Staff use HotSeat; they do not accept these Terms separately.

If you book an appointment through a shop's booking page, the appointment is between you and that shop. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle your information.

2. The service

HotSeat provides appointment scheduling, customer management, and business automation tools for service businesses. We reserve the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Service at any time with reasonable notice. We will not be liable to you for any modification, suspension, or discontinuation.

3. Account eligibility and responsibilities

• You must be at least 18 years old and have authority to operate the business you register.
• You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials. Notify us immediately at info@hotseatbooking.ca if you suspect unauthorised access.
• You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your account.
• You may not share your account with third parties or create accounts on behalf of others without their consent.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Use the Service for any unlawful purpose or in violation of any applicable law or regulation
• Use HotSeat to send unsolicited communications (spam) to customers
• Reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract the source code of the Platform
• Use automated scripts to scrape, crawl, or collect data from the Service without our written consent
• Impersonate any person or entity, or misrepresent your affiliation
• Interfere with the integrity or performance of the Service or its underlying infrastructure
• Use intake forms to collect health, medical, or other sensitive personal information from your customers — including medical history, conditions, injuries, symptoms, medications, or treatment records

Intake forms are for preparing an appointment, not for clinical intake. You write your own questions, so you are responsible for what your form asks and for the personal information your customers give you in reply. If a question would collect health or other sensitive information, do not ask it on HotSeat. We may turn off intake forms for a shop, or suspend its account, if it does.

5. Payments and billing

HotSeat charges a monthly subscription fee, as described on our Pricing page. Your plan is set by the size of your team, and a larger plan is priced as a base plus an amount for each specialist beyond those the base includes. All fees are in Canadian dollars (CAD) and are exclusive of applicable taxes.

• Subscription payments are processed by Stripe, our third-party payment processor. You enter your payment details on Stripe’s hosted checkout page; HotSeat never receives or stores your full card number. Your use of that checkout is also subject to Stripe’s own terms and privacy policy, and the billing information Stripe handles on our behalf is described in our Privacy Policy.
• Free trial. Unless we agree otherwise in writing, or a promotion in section 14 gives you a longer free period, every new shop starts with a 30-day free trial, and no payment method is needed. The trial starts when the shop is created, or when HotSeat hands over a shop it set up for you. Subscribing during the trial does not start billing early: your first charge is taken when the trial ends, or straight away if you subscribe in its last 30 minutes. While no payment method is on file, we email the shop's Owners and Admins several times as the end approaches, starting about a week before, and once more when the trial ends. During the trial, its end date is shown in Settings > Billing.
• Subscriptions are billed monthly in advance and renew automatically each month until cancelled (see section 11). Fees already paid are non-refundable except as required by law. If you change your team size part-way through a month, the difference is prorated on your next invoice.
• Duplicate charges. If you are ever charged twice for the same subscription by mistake, we credit the extra payment to your next invoice automatically and email you. If you would rather have it back on your card, email us at info@hotseatbooking.ca and we will refund whatever part of the credit has not already been used.
• Where HotSeat is required to collect GST/HST or another sales tax on your subscription, that tax is calculated at checkout from the billing address you provide, added to the amount charged, and itemised on your invoice. Prices shown on our Pricing page and in your dashboard do not include it.
• HotSeat does not process payments between you and your customers; any deposit, tax, or tip amounts shown on your booking page are informational and are collected by you in person.
• We reserve the right to change our pricing with 30 days' written notice by email. A price increase applies to your subscription only after that notice period; a decrease can apply straight away. A shop that has not yet subscribed pays the price on sale when it subscribes. Continued use after a price change takes effect constitutes acceptance.
• Who can manage billing. A shop's Owner and any Admin can pay, change the team size, update the payment method, cancel, and restart the subscription on the shop's behalf. Staff cannot.

6. Your data

You retain ownership of all customer and business data you input into HotSeat. You grant us a limited, non-exclusive licence to store and process this data solely to provide the Service, apart from the sharing licence in section 14, which applies only if you claim a promotion that includes one. We will not access, use, or share your data except as described in our Privacy Policy, as described in section 14, or as required by law. A shop's Owner can ask for a copy of the shop's data — its customer list, booking history, and revenue summary — using “Request my data” in Settings, or, if Settings is not available to them, by emailing info@hotseatbooking.ca. We email the export within 30 days.

7. Intellectual property

The HotSeat name, logo, product design, and all software are the intellectual property of HotSeat and its licensors. Nothing in these Terms transfers ownership of any intellectual property to you. You may not use our trademarks or branding without our prior written consent.

8. Disclaimer of warranties

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of viruses.

9. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, HotSeat shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages — including lost profits, lost bookings, or data loss — arising out of or related to your use of the Service, even if advised of the possibility of such damages. Our total liability to you shall not exceed the amount you paid to HotSeat in the 3 months preceding the claim.

10. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless HotSeat and its officers, directors, employees, and agents from any claims, liabilities, damages, or costs (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your use of the Service, your breach of these Terms, or your violation of any third-party rights.

11. Cancellation, non-payment and termination

Cancelling. A shop's Owner or an Admin can cancel the subscription at any time from Settings > Billing. Cancelling takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for, and the shop keeps full service until then. You can undo a cancellation at any time before that date. Nothing is refunded for the rest of the paid period. A shop on a free trial with no payment method does not need to cancel: if it does not subscribe, the trial ends. Cancelling the subscription does not close the shop; to close it, email us at info@hotseatbooking.ca.

If a payment is missed. If a trial ends without a payment method, the shop keeps full service for 48 hours. If a subscription payment fails, the shop keeps full service for up to 7 days from the first failed payment while the payment is retried, and we email its Owners and Admins the date service will stop. That period can end sooner if Stripe ends the subscription after its retries, and we may extend a grace period or end it early. A subscription cancelled at the end of its paid period has no grace period.

When service stops. When a grace period ends, or a cancelled subscription reaches the end of its paid period, the shop is locked until it subscribes again:

• its booking page stays online but shows the shop as unavailable, with its name and contact details, and takes no bookings;
• online rescheduling, online quote acceptance, appointment reminders and thank-you messages to its customers stop;
• appointments already booked are not cancelled, and customers can still cancel them from the link in their confirmation email, subject to the shop's cancellation policy, and are emailed a confirmation when they do;
• Owners and Admins can still sign in to reach Billing and a list of upcoming appointments. The rest of the dashboard, including past records, is unavailable until the shop subscribes again. Staff cannot use the dashboard;
• the shop's data is kept, as our Privacy Policy describes.

Subscribing again. An Owner or Admin can restart the subscription from Settings > Billing at any time after it has ended. The first payment is taken straight away at the current price, and there is no new free trial. If we closed the shop, or it cannot restart from Settings, email us.

Suspension and closure by us. We may suspend or close a shop's account if it breaches these Terms. Suspension takes the shop's booking page down, blocks the Owner's sign-in and pauses billing until we lift it. Closure takes the booking page down and ends the subscription straight away. Neither refunds the unused part of a paid period.

12. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario, Canada, without regard to conflict of law principles. Any disputes shall be resolved in the courts of Ontario.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by email at least 14 days before they take effect; the notice goes to each Owner and Admin of your shop. Continued use of HotSeat after the effective date constitutes acceptance. A new version applies straight away to a business that signs up after it is published, and to every other business from its effective date. Previous versions are available on request.

15. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email us at info@hotseatbooking.ca.