Terms of Service

1. What BuildSource is

• Homeowner referrals — a homeowner submits a request on their own phone, choosing the service they want and how many contractors may contact them. Contractors covering that area claim that request in the BuildSource app and reach the homeowner through a BuildSource number. Neither the contractor nor the homeowner sees the other's phone number. People who introduce a homeowner to BuildSource ("connectors") earn a referral fee, paid by the contractor, when a referred job is signed and the work goes ahead (see section 5).
• BuildSource Verified — for contractors who ask, we confirm specific facts (completed projects, references, insurance, memberships) as of a date. The mark reads exactly "BuildSource Verified · facts confirmed". It is not an endorsement, a ranking, or a warranty of workmanship.

2. Accounts

Contractors and connectors hold accounts and must provide accurate information; you are responsible for activity under your login. Contractors sign in with the email used at checkout; connectors sign in with a verified mobile number and a one-time code. Homeowners do not hold an account — a homeowner uses BuildSource for a single request. Tell us at [email protected] if you believe your account has been used without permission.

3. Subscriptions, billing and cancellation

• Homeowner-referral charges are billed per claim, as set out below. Prices exclude any applicable taxes.
• Homeowner referrals: signing up is free and there is no free trial period. You may view requests in your area without paying. You are charged per claim, at the rate published for that job category, beginning with your first claim — $25 for fencing and painting, $50 for landscaping, roofing, outdoor kitchens and foundation repair, $100 for pools, remodeling, solar and additions. Claim charges are capped at $500 in any billing month (your billing month runs from the date of your first claim), and further claims in that month are not charged. There is no monthly fee for the referral service of any kind. A month in which you claim nothing carries no claim charges. Claim charges depend only on the claims you make, never on the outcome you report. A signed job that came to BuildSource without a connector also owes BuildSource a fee, as set out in section 4. Until your first claim you are not charged and cannot claim requests.
• There is nothing to cancel. Claim charges are taken only when you claim a request, and a month in which you claim nothing carries no claim charges. Referral claim charges are for the claim you made and end when you stop claiming. If you call the homeowner through the BuildSource number three times within 24 hours of your claim, at least an hour apart and between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. in the homeowner's time zone, and none of those calls reaches the homeowner, the claim charge is refunded in full automatically. A call reaches the homeowner when a person answers or you leave a voicemail message. If the homeowner calls you back, they have been reached. Other fees already paid are not refunded except as these terms state or where the law requires.
• Verification is optional. The Verified mark is issued only on completing the verification process — it is not included with any subscription and cannot be bought.

4. Contractor obligations (referral service)

• Fairness runs both ways here. You are never charged a referral fee for work that did not go ahead. In return, the outcome you report — won, lost, cancelled, and the signed value — is checked independently, and accounts that misreport are suspended.
• Contact a homeowner only through the BuildSource number provided in the app, only about the request you claimed, and only within the number of contractors the homeowner agreed to. Do not attempt to obtain, capture, store or dial the homeowner's underlying number.
• Report the outcome of every claimed request honestly — whether the job was won, lost, or cancelled, and the signed value band. Misreporting a value to reduce a referral fee results in a corrected fee, a strike on your account, and suspension on a second strike.
• Pay connector referral fees directly and when due, as set out in section 5. Where a signed job came to BuildSource without a connector, its fee is charged to your card on file when it falls due. On the day a connector's fee falls due we notify you and the connector at the same time that it is due and what it is. Nothing is asked of you before that date.
• If the connector reports that a fee has not been paid, we ask again at seven, fourteen and twenty-one days after the due date, and both you and the connector are contacted each time. At twenty-one days we tell you the date your account will be cancelled, so the deadline is never a surprise. If the fee is still unpaid twenty-eight days after it fell due, your account is cancelled — not suspended — and there is no automatic reinstatement. Cancellation does not discharge the fee: it remains owed to the connector. Deleting your account in the app closes it at once and does not discharge a fee you owe. A closed account cannot sign in; to settle a fee, email [email protected].
• If you believe a fee shown as unpaid has in fact been paid, send proof of payment to [email protected] before the cancellation date and we will review it before anything happens to your account. A dispute is always read by a person. Silence is not a dispute: if no proof reaches us, the cancellation stands.
• We never cancel an account we could not reach. Cancellation at twenty-eight days follows silence from someone we know received every notice. If we could not reach you — because the email address on your account no longer accepts mail, for example — a person reviews your account before anything happens to it, and we will have a record of what we attempted and when. Equally, if a notice failed to reach you because of a fault on our side, the clock waits. Keeping a working email address on your account is your obligation, and an unpaid fee does not expire while we are unable to reach you.
• Homeowner feedback about contact, punctuality and professionalism is recorded. Repeated poor feedback may lead us to end our relationship with you.
• Do not use information you obtain through BuildSource about a homeowner for anything other than quoting the requested work, and do not resell or share it. Information a homeowner gives you directly, outside BuildSource, is between you and that homeowner and is governed by your own obligations, not these terms.
• You are an independent business. You are responsible for holding every license, registration and insurance your trade and jurisdiction require, and for your own compliance with laws governing calls and messages to consumers.
• A signed job that came to BuildSource without a connector owes BuildSource half the published referral fee for its category and value band, on the same terms: locked at signing, voided if the job is cancelled before work begins, and due 30 days after signing or seven days after the work is completed, if that is sooner. On the due date we email you and charge the card on file, and we send a receipt. If the charge fails it is retried daily, and you cannot claim new requests until it is paid. This fee is not part of the $500 monthly limit on claim charges.

5. Connector obligations

• A connector is an introducer, not a collector. You show a homeowner the BuildSource code so that they can open BuildSource on their own phone and submit their own request. You must not collect, write down, enter, hold or pass on a homeowner's name, number, address or any other detail, and BuildSource will not accept a request submitted any other way.
• Background check. Every application includes an identity check through Stripe Identity, and it costs you nothing. Before a connector seat is confirmed, our vendor Certn runs a criminal background check. The $25 fee is mandatory and paid when you accept the offer. The $25 pays for the check. Once Certn has run it, it isn't refunded, whatever the result. If Certn hasn't run it within 48 hours of your payment, we refund the $25 and release the seat. If the seat is released earlier and Certn hasn't run the check, we refund the $25 then. If Certn cannot find you, we tell you your details may be wrong and offer you the choice to rerun the check with corrected details for another $25. If you decline, we release the seat and do not refund the first $25 because that check was run. There are no other fees to be a connector.
• Referral fees follow the published fee schedule for the job category and signed value band, are locked at signing, and are owed by the contractor who signed the job to the connector who referred it. A signed job on which work never starts owes no fee: the contractor may report, within 30 days of signing, that the job was cancelled before any work began, and the fee is voided. The fee falls due 30 days after signing (or seven days after the work is completed, if that is sooner), so a contractor is never asked to pay before that window has closed. Once work has started the fee stands. The contractor pays the connector directly. Money owed to a connector never passes through BuildSource — we do not collect, hold, or pay out any part of it; we record whether it has been paid and act on non-payment under section 4.
• You may contest a contractor's reported outcome or value through the app, with evidence. Contests are reviewed by BuildSource, whose determination is final for the purposes of the fee.
• On the day a fee falls due we tell you and the contractor at the same time, and we ask you whether it has arrived. If you tell us it has not, we ask again at seven, fourteen and twenty-one days, and the contractor is contacted every time you are. You will always know what we have said to the contractor about your fee, and they will always know what you have told us. Chasing an unpaid fee is our job, not yours.
• Once you have confirmed a fee as paid, that confirmation is final.
• Tell us promptly when a fee arrives. We act on what you tell us, and a contractor's account can be cancelled for non-payment — so a payment you receive and do not report can cost someone their business.
• Fabricated referrals, self-referrals, or referrals of the same homeowner more than once are grounds for removal and forfeiture of unpaid fees.

6. Homeowners

• The service is free to homeowners. Contractors who contact you are independent businesses; BuildSource is not a party to any contract between you and a contractor and does not guarantee their pricing, licensing, insurance or work. Verify these yourself before signing.
• Your phone number is never given to a contractor. Contractors reach you through a BuildSource number, and they see only the service you asked for and the property location. If you later give a contractor your number, address or other details yourself — on the call, or when you meet — that is between you and them, outside BuildSource, and our controls no longer apply.
• You control how many contractors may contact you.
• Stopping contact. Reply STOP to any BuildSource text and your request is closed: you receive one final message confirming it and no further texts, the BuildSource number that connected contractors to you is disconnected, and no further contractor can claim your request. You can also email [email protected]. We act immediately on receipt, and in every case within 10 business days.
• About 30 days after a contractor first reaches you (or after your request, if no call connected), we may send one short follow-up text asking whether the work went ahead and how the contractor performed. Answering is optional.

7. Text messages

BuildSource sends transactional and account-related text messages only, after showing you the consent wording, as described in our SMS terms. We never send marketing or promotional texts. A homeowner receives up to 3 messages per request, plus a fresh verification code if they ask us to resend one. Msg & data rates may apply. Reply STOP to opt out, HELP for help. Consent is not a condition of any purchase.

8. Acceptable use

Do not scrape, resell or redistribute homeowner data; do not attempt to bypass claim limits, the number-masking on calls, or fee reporting; do not use the service for anything unlawful. We may suspend or terminate accounts that breach these terms.

9. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

The service is provided "as is". To the fullest extent permitted by law, BuildSource disclaims all warranties, and our total liability to you for any claim arising from the service is limited to the amount you paid us in the three months before the claim. We are not liable for the acts or omissions of any contractor, connector or homeowner.

10. Governing law and changes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas. We may update these terms; the effective date above will change and continued use after that date is acceptance. Questions: [email protected].