For Customers

Placing a request on Bark as a customer is 100% free.

We charge professionals a small, one-off fee to contact the customers of their choice.

It is free to place a request on Bark as a customer.

It is entirely up to you as the customer to decide who you hire based on your own individual requirements.

However, before hiring a professional, we’d always recommend the following:

• Read their reviews
• Ask for examples of previous work
• Check out their website and social media sites
• Make sure you ask them all related questions
• Be fully comfortable before entering into a contract/agreement with any professional

Bark is an online services marketplace with professionals in over 2000 different service types contacting customers every day through our website.

Hiring a professional you meet through Bark is much like hiring a professional through Google or a newspaper advert. We do not vet the professionals who use Bark and we do not vouch for any professional ourselves, however we do operate a reviews system which helps customers make an informed decision about who they hire.

Any potential arrangement or agreement is ultimately between yourself and any prospective professional that you choose to hire. When a professional responds to you, we will send you all their details, including reviews, website links and their Bark profile.

We would always recommend undertaking any due diligence as you see fit prior to hiring a professional you meet through Bark or anywhere else.

The overwhelming majority of customers experiences on Bark are positive, and our professionals usually do an excellent job. That said, we recognise that with such a large volume of jobs being agreed on our platform, problems may arise on very rare occasions.

Any agreement you have is between yourself and the professional concerned. Our role is simply to put you in touch with a professional in much the same way the Yellow Pages, Google or an advert in the paper would do.

In general, the majority of problems can be resolved by talking directly with the professional concerned. As we’re not party to the eventual contract between you and your chosen professional, we’re unable to directly assist in resolving any issues.

We will, of course, provide you with any messages exchanged between you and the Bark professional in question if you need them for any reason, and will happily supply their registered contact details if you no longer have them.

We do want to be notified of complaints so that we can warn and if necessary remove the professional concerned from our service. To contact us regarding a complaint, please email team@bark.com.

The overwhelming majority of customers’ experiences on Bark are positive, and our professionals usually do an excellent job.

That said, we recognise that with such a large volume of jobs being agreed on our platform, problems may arise on rare occasions.

These are the steps we follow when we receive a complaint against a professional on Bark:

• Inform the professional when they receive a complaint (unless the customer requests confidentiality) and give them the chance to rectify any issues.
• If multiple complaints of the same nature against a professional/business are received, we may suspend or remove a professional. 
• If serious complaints are received we may remove a professional immediately.
• Where criminal activity is alleged, we would recommend the customer inform us immediately and report this to the police to be properly investigated.
• We will always assist a customer by providing any details we have about their dealings with a professional on our platform and also any information we hold that the professional has made public.

As we’re not party to the eventual contract between you and your chosen professional, we’re unable to directly assist in resolving any disputes beyond these steps, but we can provide some guidance you may find useful:

• In general the majority of these cases can be resolved by talking through with the professional concerned.
• If this doesn’t work then Citizens Advice has some guidance on what to do here: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/somethings-gone-wrong-with-a-purchase/complain-about-a-service/
• Trading standards may also be able to take further action.
  • Where poor workmanship is alleged, trading standards are best placed to assist.
  • We have a robust process in place to deal promptly with any enquiries received from these types of agencies.

We always want to be notified of complaints so that we can warn and if necessary remove the professional concerned from our platform. To contact us regarding a complaint, please email team@bark.com.