Terms and conditions

The agreement between your business and ours for using Bottle. It covers what you pay, how either side ends it, and what happens to your data.

Who this agreement is between

Bottle is provided by Sorteo Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, number 16426798, with its registered office at 2nd Floor, 1 Church Square, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, LU7 1AE. Where this page says we or us, it means Sorteo Ltd. Where it says you, it means the business that holds the account.

This is an agreement between two businesses. Bottle is sold to companies and sole traders for their work, not to people buying for themselves, so the rules that protect consumers do not apply to it. The person who sets up the account is agreeing on behalf of their business and needs the authority to do that.

Your account, and who may use it

You give us accurate details when you sign up, and keep them up to date. Your bills, your delivery notices to your own customers and our messages to you all depend on them being right.

You are responsible for what happens in your account. That means keeping sign-in details private, using two-step sign-in where it is offered, removing people who leave, and accepting that anything done by somebody you invited is done by you as far as this agreement is concerned. Tell us as soon as you think somebody has got into your account who should not have.

Everyone you give access to has to use Bottle in line with this agreement, and making sure they do is down to you.

Where we need something from you to sort a problem out, such as an explanation of what happened or an answer to a question, we ask you to help us within a reasonable time. We cannot fix what we cannot see.

You decide what goes into Bottle and what it is used for, which makes your business the data controller for the customer records, delivery addresses, orders and staff details you put in. We handle that information on your instructions. Our privacy policy sets out how, and our third parties page names every company involved.

The free trial

A new business gets 30 days to use Bottle without paying. The trial gives you the full self-serve product rather than a cut-down version, because deciding on a smaller version tells you little about the one you would buy.

No card is needed to start a trial and nothing is charged during it. Nothing is set up with our payment company either, so a business that signs up, looks around and never comes back leaves no payment record anywhere.

When the 30 days end, the office side of Bottle stops accepting new work until you subscribe. You can still sign in, still see everything you have put in, and still take it out. Nothing is deleted because a trial ran out.

What a subscription buys

Bottle is priced by vehicle, not by person. Each plan allows a number of vehicles, and you can put as many owners, office staff and drivers on the account as you need without paying more for them. A business that has to ration who may look at its own customer book is being charged the wrong way.

The plans, what each one allows and what each one costs are shown when you subscribe and on the billing page inside Bottle. Prices are in pounds sterling and are shown before VAT, which is added at checkout.

Some businesses have a price agreed with us directly rather than one of the published plans. Where that happens, the agreed price and the reason for it are recorded against the account.

Paying

Payment is taken by Stripe, who handle the card details, the receipts and the VAT. Card numbers are typed on Stripe's own pages and never reach our servers. You can change your card, download your invoices and update your billing address and VAT number from the billing page at any time.

A subscription renews automatically at the end of each billing period until you cancel it.

If a payment fails

Deliveries are somebody's livelihood, so a failed payment never stops a driver. What stops is new office work, and it stops in stages.

While the payment is being retried. Our payment company tries the card again over the following couple of weeks and emails you each time it fails. Nothing changes in Bottle during this period. Rounds run, orders are taken, invoices go out.

Once the payment has not been collected. When the retries are exhausted, the office side stops accepting new work. You cannot plan or issue new rounds, add customers, take new orders, raise invoices, invite people or connect other software. Drivers carry on with rounds already issued: they can record deliveries, capture proof, take cash at the door and hand it in. Everybody can still read everything in the account and take a copy of it.

If it stays unpaid. After that, we may suspend the account completely, so that nobody can sign in. This step is a decision we take rather than something that happens on its own, and we will have emailed you before we take it.

None of these steps deletes anything. Your data is still there when the payment is sorted out, and paying brings the account straight back.

Moving between plans

Moving to a larger plan takes effect straight away, and you are charged for the rest of the current period at the difference between the two prices.

Moving to a smaller plan takes effect at your next renewal. You keep what you have already paid for until then, rather than being moved down in the middle of a period.

If we change our prices

We give at least 30 days' notice in writing before any price rise affects you, and we aim to give 60. Where the increase is more than 10% of what you currently pay, we give at least 90 days. Notice goes to the email address on the account.

A rise never applies to a period you have already paid for.

If you do not want to pay the new price, cancel before it takes effect. The period you are in runs out as normal and you are not charged at the new price.

If you think a charge is wrong

Email hello@getbottle.app with the invoice number and what looks wrong, within 90 days of the charge appearing. We will look into it and come back to you.

After 90 days a charge is treated as accepted, so tell us while the paperwork is still fresh rather than at the year end.

Cancelling

You can cancel at any time from the billing page, up to the last day of your current billing period. There is no minimum term and no notice period beyond the period you are already in.

Cancelling stops the next payment. It does not refund the period you are in, and there are no part refunds for time you did not use. You keep Bottle until the end of the period you have paid for, and it stops at the end of that period.

If you forget to cancel before a period ends, the next period is charged and runs its course. You can cancel during it, and it will not renew again.

When we would end an account

We can suspend or close an account that is being used for something illegal, or for something we judge to be seriously wrong. That covers using Bottle to break the law, to harass or intimidate somebody, to handle goods that should not be handled, to work around safety rules that exist to keep people alive, to send messages to people who never asked to hear from you, to deliberately mislead your own customers, or to attack or break into our systems or anyone else's.

It also covers not paying, and it covers behaviour towards us that no small company should have to absorb.

We will tell you why, unless the law stops us saying. Where the problem can be put right, we will say what needs to change and give you a fair chance to do it, rather than closing an account without warning over something fixable. Where somebody is in danger or a crime is being committed, we will act first.

If we close your account, you can still ask for a copy of your data, and we will give you a reasonable period to collect it before it is removed. We do not refund the period you are in.

Your data, and what happens when you leave

What you put into Bottle stays yours. Our privacy policy explains what is collected, why, and how long it is kept, including the settings you control over how long customer records live.

You can take your data out at any time while the account is open, and you can keep doing so after a subscription ends, because reading is never blocked for a billing reason.

Cancelling does not delete anything by itself. Your data stays with us until you ask us to remove it, which you can do by emailing privacy@getbottle.app. Records we have to keep for tax purposes, such as invoices for what you paid us, are kept for as long as the law requires whatever else is removed.

What we promise, and what we do not

We will provide Bottle with reasonable skill and care, keep it running as well as we sensibly can, and tell customers when something has gone wrong rather than leaving them to notice.

Bottle is sold as it is at the time you subscribe. Features change as it is developed, and we will not remove something you depend on without telling you.

There is no contractual response time for support. We answer as quickly as we can during working hours.

Bottle depends on other services to work, including the company that takes payments and the services that deliver notifications to phones. Those are named on our third parties page.

How much of the time Bottle should be available

We aim for Bottle to be available 99% of the time each calendar month.

Three things are left out of that measurement. Planned maintenance, meaning work we told you about at least 24 hours beforehand. Anything caused by you, or by the equipment and connections at your end. And failures in services outside our control, such as your internet connection or our payment company.

If we miss it

If availability in a month falls below the figure above, you get a credit against a future invoice:

• Below 99%, a credit of 10% of that month's fee.
• Below 97%, a credit of 25% of that month's fee.
• Below 95%, a credit of 50% of that month's fee.

Credits are not applied automatically. To claim one, email hello@getbottle.app within 30 days of the end of the month you are claiming for, saying when Bottle was unavailable. We will check our records and apply the credit if the month fell below the figure above. After those 30 days the month is closed.

Only one credit applies in a month: the bands do not add together. Credits are applied to a future invoice rather than paid out in cash.

These credits are the only remedy for Bottle being unavailable.

Maintenance

From time to time Bottle will be unavailable while it is updated or repaired.

Where the work is planned, we tell you at least 24 hours beforehand and we do not do it during delivery hours. We treat delivery hours as 6am to 6pm, Monday to Saturday. Planned work happens at night or on a Sunday, and the only reason we would ever put it in the middle of a working day is if leaving it there was the greater risk to you. Time lost to planned maintenance does not count against the availability figure above, and does not earn a credit.

Sometimes something has to be fixed at once, to keep Bottle secure or to stop a fault getting worse. We may do that without notice. We tell you as soon as we reasonably can, and that time does count against the availability figure.

Who owns what

We own Bottle. That covers the software, the way it looks and works, the documentation and help guides, the name Bottle, the flame mark and everything else we have built or will build. Nothing in this agreement transfers any of it to you.

What your subscription lets you do

While you are paying for Bottle, your business has permission to use it for your own work. That permission is not exclusive, cannot be transferred to anyone else, and ends when your subscription ends.

What it does not let you do

• Copy any part of Bottle, or let somebody else copy it.
• Take it apart, decompile it or reverse engineer it, except where the law says you may whatever this agreement says.
• Scrape it, or pull data out of it by automated means other than the ways we provide.
• Test it against other products and publish the results.
• Build a competing product from it, or help anybody else build one.
• Use it, or anything in it, to train a machine learning model.
• Remove or obscure any notice of ownership.
• Resell it, sublicense it, rent it out, or let another business work from your account.

Your data

What you put into Bottle stays yours. You give us permission to hold it, process it and show it back to you so that Bottle can do its job, and to pass the parts that are necessary to the services named on our third parties page. That permission goes no further than running the service for you, and it ends when your data is removed.

Ideas and suggestions

If you tell us how Bottle could be better, we can act on it freely and own whatever we build as a result, without owing you anything for it. This does not give us any right to the data in your account.

Liability

Some things cannot be limited and we do not try to. Neither of us excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that the law does not allow to be limited.

What we are not liable for

We are not liable for any of the following, whether the claim is brought in contract, in negligence or in any other way, and whether or not we were told it might happen:

• Loss of profit, revenue, business, contracts, goodwill or reputation.
• Loss or corruption of data, beyond the duties we take on in our privacy policy.
• Deliveries that were missed, late or not completed.
• A round that did not run, or that ran wrongly.
• Fuel, labour or vehicle costs.
• Fines or penalties imposed by anyone else.
• Loss arising from a security incident, unless it was caused by our own deliberate wrongdoing.
• Loss arising from Bottle being unavailable or interrupted.
• Any loss that is indirect or consequential, however it arises.

The limit on everything else

For everything not listed above, our total liability to you for all claims arising out of this agreement is limited to the greater of the fees you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose, or £5,000.

Nothing here limits what you owe us for a subscription you have used.

Keeping your business running

You are delivering gas and we are software. Bottle will at some point be unavailable, whether for maintenance, a fault or something outside our control, and you need a way to keep working when it is. Having that arrangement, and being able to fall back on it, is your responsibility rather than ours.

Claims from your side of the business

You will cover us against any claim, demand, loss, damage, cost or expense, including reasonable legal costs, that comes from:

• What you or your people put into Bottle, including anything unlawful about it and anything that infringes somebody else's rights.
• What the people you gave access to do with the account.
• Your use of Bottle in breach of this agreement.
• Any claim brought by one of your own customers about a delivery, an invoice, a payment or the service you provided them.

We will tell you promptly about any such claim, let you take over dealing with it if you want to, and not settle it without asking you first.

Changes to these terms

These terms will change as Bottle changes. Where a change materially affects what you get or what you pay, we will tell you by email at least 30 days beforehand, and you can cancel before it takes effect if you do not want to accept it. Smaller corrections are made on this page with the date updated at the bottom.

General

If any part of this agreement turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still applies.

You cannot transfer this agreement to another business without our agreement in writing, which we will not refuse without good reason. We can transfer it if our company is sold or reorganised, and we will tell you if that happens.

Nobody other than you and us has any rights under this agreement.

If we do not enforce something straight away, we have not given up the right to enforce it later.

Law and courts

This agreement is governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales deal with any dispute about it.

Getting in touch

For anything about this agreement, your subscription or your account, email hello@getbottle.app. For anything about data protection, email privacy@getbottle.app.