Terms of Service
All governing documents: Terms of Service · Privacy Policy · Homeowner/Customer Terms · Contractor Agreement · Billing/Refund Terms · Founding Contractor Agreement · Non-Discrimination Policy
Effective Date: October 14, 2026 | Version 1.0
These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and HammerDuck LLC, a Georgia limited liability company with its principal office at PO Box 204031, 125 Commercial Blvd, Augusta, GA 30917 ("HammerDuck," "we," "us," or "our"). These Terms govern your access to and use of the HammerDuck website located at hammerduck.com (and any HammerDuck domain that redirects to it), the HammerDuck iOS and Android applications, and all related services (collectively, the "Platform"). These Terms incorporate by reference the HammerDuck Homeowner/Customer Terms, the HammerDuck Contractor Agreement, the HammerDuck Privacy Policy, and the HammerDuck Billing/Refund Terms, each of which forms part of your agreement with HammerDuck depending on your account type. If you create a Contractor account, the Contractor Agreement also applies to you and controls over these Terms on any point specific to your work as a Contractor. If a Founding Contractor offer applies to your account, the Founding Contractor Agreement also applies and controls over these Terms and the Contractor Agreement on the specific terms of that offer.
BY CREATING AN ACCOUNT, CHECKING THE ACCEPTANCE BOX AT SIGN-UP, OR OTHERWISE ACCESSING OR USING THE PLATFORM, YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THESE TERMS AND BY THE PRIVACY POLICY. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE, DO NOT CREATE AN ACCOUNT OR USE THE PLATFORM.
1. What HammerDuck Is — and Is Not
HammerDuck operates an online marketplace that connects homeowners and other customers seeking home-service work ("Customers") with independent home-service businesses ("Contractors," shown to Customers as "Home Service Pro" or "Pro"). HammerDuck hosts project listings, Contractor business profiles, bids, in-app messages, scheduling proposals, reviews, and photos, and it charges Contractors a membership fee through Stripe.
HammerDuck is a neutral venue, not a party to any job. HammerDuck is not a contractor, subcontractor, employer, joint employer, agent, broker, insurer, guarantor, or representative of any Contractor, and is not a party to, and does not supervise, direct, inspect, warrant, or guarantee, any work performed between a Customer and a Contractor. HammerDuck does not verify a Contractor’s licensing, insurance, identity, background, permits, or workmanship, and does not run background checks. Every statement a Contractor makes about their trades, license status, license number, insurance status, years in business, or references is self-reported by that Contractor and is not confirmed by HammerDuck.
HammerDuck does not hold, escrow, route, or take a commission on any payment between a Customer and a Contractor. All pricing, contracting, permitting, deposits, payment terms, and payment itself for the underlying home-service work are agreed to and exchanged directly between the Customer and the Contractor, off the Platform. HammerDuck’s only billing relationship is with Contractors, for the membership described in the Billing/Refund Terms; Customers are never charged by HammerDuck.
2. Eligibility and Accounts
You must be at least 18 years old to create an account. By creating an account you represent that you are 18 or older and that you have the legal capacity to enter into these Terms. HammerDuck is intended for adult use and is not directed to, and does not knowingly collect personal information from, anyone under 18.
Each person may hold one account and must register one mobile phone number per account. You must provide accurate registration information, including a working e-mail address, and confirm your e-mail before your account becomes active. You are responsible for safeguarding your password and for all activity under your account. A Customer account may be converted to a Contractor account one time; once converted, it cannot be converted back to a Customer-only account.
You agree not to share your login credentials, use another user’s account or data without authorization, scrape or use automated means to access the Platform, create fake accounts, fake projects, or fake or incentivized reviews, or attempt to circumvent the trial or membership rules described in the Billing/Refund Terms.
3. Customer Accounts and Contractor Accounts
Customers use the Platform under the Homeowner/Customer Terms, which are incorporated into these Terms and govern posting projects, reviewing bids, messaging, scheduling, and leaving reviews. Contractors use the Platform under the Contractor Agreement, which is incorporated into these Terms and governs business profiles, bidding, membership, contact with Customers, and the independent-business relationship between a Contractor and HammerDuck. Where the Homeowner/Customer Terms or the Contractor Agreement speaks specifically to a topic these Terms address generally, the more specific document controls.
4. Public and Private Information
Signed-in users can see every open project’s public fields (title, category, job type, city/area, county, budget range, description, dimensions, timeline, and number of bids). Contractors can additionally see project photos. Nothing about an open project is visible to a visitor who is not signed in.
A Customer’s street address, name, phone number, and e-mail address are kept private and are not shown to a Contractor just because that Contractor is viewing or has bid on the project. Those private details become visible to a specific Contractor only when one of three things happens: the Customer sends that Contractor a message, the Customer accepts that Contractor’s bid, or a site visit proposed by either party is confirmed. Each conversation displays a notice that the Contractor can see the Customer’s contact details because the Customer replied. HammerDuck does not mask phone numbers, record calls, or read the content of messages except where the founder, acting as administrator, investigates a reported violation of these Terms.
A Contractor’s business profile — business name, trades, counties served, years in business, website, bio, tagline, self-reported license status, self-reported insurance status, and, if linked, public Google Business rating — is visible to any signed-in user. A Contractor’s mobile phone number is never made public.
5. Posting Projects, Bidding, and Awarding Work
Posting a project is free for Customers and requires no payment card. Once any bid exists on a project, the project’s public fields are locked; a Customer who needs to change them must cancel and repost. Cancelling notifies every Contractor who had bid that the project is not going ahead; because bidding does not charge a Contractor anything, there is nothing to refund.
Projects that do not lead to a hire close automatically. If a Customer has not accepted a bid within 30 days after a project is posted, the Platform closes the project. Five days before that happens, HammerDuck notifies the Customer in the app and by e-mail, and the Customer may keep the project open for another 30 days, as many times as they wish. When a project closes, it leaves the open job board, every Contractor who bid on it is notified, and those bids stop counting toward each Contractor’s open-bid limit. A closed project cannot be reopened, but the Customer may post it again at no cost.
A Contractor may place one bid per project; a bid cannot be edited or withdrawn once placed, and bidding on each project is capped at five bids, first come, first served. A Contractor may instead submit a site-visit bid, proposing up to three visit times in place of a firm price; a site-visit bid counts the same as any other bid. A Contractor may hold at most ten open bids at a time across all projects. A bid is "open" while it is submitted or shortlisted and the project is still open; a bid stops counting toward this limit when the project is awarded, completed, cancelled, or closed, or when the bid is declined. The Platform will not accept an eleventh open bid from a Contractor until one of that Contractor’s open bids clears in one of these ways, and there is no monthly allowance of any kind. Bidding requires an active membership; the Platform will not accept a bid from a Contractor whose membership has lapsed.
When a Customer accepts a bid, that project becomes "awarded," every other bid on it is marked declined, and the chosen Contractor is notified to contact the Customer to arrange a start date. The chosen Contractor may mark the project "started"; only the Customer can mark it "completed," or either party consistent with these Terms can cancel it before that point. A completed or cancelled project cannot be reopened. HammerDuck plays no role in, and makes no promise about, the price, written contract, permits, deposits, payment schedule, or payment itself for the underlying work — those are matters exclusively between the Customer and the Contractor.
6. Scheduling
Once a bid exists on a project, either party may propose a site visit, a measuring visit, a start-of-work date, or another type of meeting, offering up to three time options and an optional note; only the other party can accept or decline, and either party may withdraw or cancel a pending proposal. Proposed times cannot be edited; a change is a new proposal. A confirmed visit unlocks the Customer’s address for that Contractor as described in Section 4. HammerDuck describes a confirmed visit as "confirmed with the Pro/homeowner," never as "booked": HammerDuck does not dispatch a Contractor, does not set the appointment time, and is not a party to the appointment.
7. Reviews
A Customer may leave a one-to-five-star rating and optional written review for a Contractor only after accepting that Contractor’s bid on the Customer’s project, limited to one review per project. The Customer may later edit their own rating and text. The Contractor who was reviewed may post one public reply and may not alter the review. Neither the Customer nor the Contractor can delete a review; HammerDuck, through the founder, can remove a review from the database in the circumstances described below. Reviews and the average rating are visible to any signed-in user. HammerDuck does not verify the content of a review, does not pay for or incentivize reviews, and does not write reviews of its own. A Contractor may not condition a review, a review’s removal, or a review’s content on any benefit to the Customer, and may not solicit fake or incentivized reviews. If a Customer shares a completed project as described in the Privacy Policy, that Customer’s own rating and review appear on the public shared page only when the Customer chooses to include them, and the Contractor’s business name appears on it; a Contractor who shares a completed project may not include the Customer’s rating, review, or any information about the Customer.
HammerDuck may remove a review, at the founder’s discretion, if it was not left by a Customer who actually engaged the reviewed Contractor through the Platform, if it contains content prohibited under Section 11, or if it asserts a specific, objectively false statement of fact that the Contractor disputes in writing and HammerDuck is able to confirm is false. A review reflecting the Customer’s genuine opinion or subjective experience is not removed merely because the Contractor disagrees with it.
If a Contractor links a Google Business Profile, HammerDuck displays that Contractor’s public Google star rating and review count, fetched through the Google Places API and labeled as Google’s own rating, with a disclaimer that third-party information may be incomplete or inaccurate. HammerDuck does not control, verify, or moderate Google-sourced ratings.
8. User Content and Prohibited Conduct
"User Content" means anything you submit to the Platform, including project listings and descriptions, business profiles, bios and taglines, portfolio photos, references, bid messages, private messages, reviews and replies, and visit notes. By submitting User Content you grant HammerDuck a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, display, and transmit that content to the audience the Platform’s design makes it visible to (for example, a project photo to signed-in Contractors in the relevant trade and county, or a review to any signed-in user), and to back it up and moderate it as described in these Terms. You represent that you own or have the rights necessary to submit your User Content and, for any photo of a home or a person other than yourself, that you have the consent of the property owner and of any identifiable person shown, and that no photo shows a child’s face without a parent or guardian’s consent. HammerDuck does not pre-screen User Content before it is posted.
You agree not to: obtain a Customer’s private contact details without a valid bid or message exchange as described in Section 4 and then use those details for any purpose unrelated to the specific project; share your login or allow another person to use your account; scrape the Platform or access it through automated means; post fake projects or fake bids; post or solicit fake or incentivized reviews; harass, threaten, or discriminate against another user on a basis described in Section 9’s non-discrimination standard; misrepresent your identity, licensing, insurance, or qualifications; upload content that infringes another person’s intellectual property or privacy rights, or that is unlawful, defamatory, obscene, or otherwise objectionable; or attempt to circumvent the trial, membership, or account rules described in these Terms and the Billing/Refund Terms.
9. Community Standards and Enforcement
These community standards apply to every message, review, photo, and profile on the Platform. HammerDuck does not tolerate harassment, threats, or discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law, and every reference in these Terms, the Contractor Agreement, or the Founding Contractor Agreement to HammerDuck’s non-discrimination standard means this standard. HammerDuck currently reviews reports by e-mail to customerservice@hammerduck.com and acts directly in the Platform’s database; in-app reporting and blocking tools, and automated content screening, are planned but not yet built. If you believe another user has violated these Terms, e-mail customerservice@hammerduck.com with the project or conversation in question; HammerDuck aims to acknowledge reports within one business day.
HammerDuck may warn, suspend, or terminate an account for violating these Terms, subject to the notice-and-cure process described in the Contractor Agreement for Contractor accounts. HammerDuck may act immediately, without advance notice, where HammerDuck reasonably believes the conduct involves fraud, a safety threat, or illegal activity, pending investigation.
10. Copyright — DMCA Notice and Takedown
HammerDuck respects intellectual property rights and responds to properly submitted notices of alleged copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If you believe your copyrighted work has been posted on the Platform without authorization, send a written notice to HammerDuck’s designated agent at customerservice@hammerduck.com (HammerDuck intends to register a designated agent with the U.S. Copyright Office’s DMCA Designated Agent Directory, and will update this Section with that registration’s reference once complete) that includes: a physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or a person authorized to act on their behalf; identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed; identification of the material claimed to be infringing and information reasonably sufficient to locate it on the Platform; your contact information; a statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the owner’s behalf.
Upon receiving a compliant notice, HammerDuck will remove or disable access to the identified material and notify the user who posted it, who may submit a counter-notice as provided under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g). HammerDuck maintains a repeat-infringer policy and will terminate, in appropriate circumstances, the account of a user who is the subject of three or more valid infringement notices.
11. AI Writing Assistant
The Platform offers an optional AI assistant that helps a Customer describe a project. The assistant is available to Customers only; there is no Contractor bid-writing assistant. Text you type, together with the relevant project category, is sent to a third-party AI provider through a HammerDuck server function; usage is logged by user and usage volume, subject to a daily limit per user. Every AI-generated suggestion is offered as a suggestion only, is not legal, financial, or professional advice, and you are solely responsible for anything you submit to the Platform, whether or not you used the assistant to help write it.
12. Fees and Membership
Contractor membership fees, free-period terms, billing intervals, cancellation, lapse, failed payments, and refunds are governed by the Billing/Refund Terms, which are incorporated into these Terms. Customers are never charged a fee by HammerDuck for posting projects, messaging, scheduling, or leaving reviews.
13. Disclaimers
THE PLATFORM AND ALL CONTENT ON IT ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. HAMMERDUCK DOES NOT WARRANT THAT ANY CONTRACTOR IS LICENSED, INSURED, QUALIFIED, OR WILL PERFORM WORK SAFELY, COMPETENTLY, OR AT ALL, AND DOES NOT WARRANT THAT ANY CUSTOMER WILL PAY FOR WORK PERFORMED. YOU ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR EVALUATING ANY CONTRACTOR OR CUSTOMER YOU DEAL WITH THROUGH THE PLATFORM, INCLUDING VERIFYING LICENSING, INSURANCE, PERMITS, AND REFERENCES BEFORE ENTERING INTO ANY AGREEMENT OR ALLOWING ANYONE ONTO YOUR PROPERTY.
14. Limitation of Liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, HAMMERDUCK AND ITS OWNER, OFFICERS, AND CONTRACTORS PROVIDING SERVICES TO HAMMERDUCK WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, OR GOODWILL, ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO YOUR USE OF THE PLATFORM, ANY PROJECT, OR ANY INTERACTION BETWEEN A CUSTOMER AND A CONTRACTOR, EVEN IF HAMMERDUCK HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. HAMMERDUCK’S TOTAL LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE PLATFORM OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID TO HAMMERDUCK IN THE SIX MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM AROSE, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS ($100). BECAUSE HAMMERDUCK DOES NOT HOLD, ROUTE, OR GUARANTEE ANY PAYMENT BETWEEN A CUSTOMER AND A CONTRACTOR FOR THE UNDERLYING WORK, HAMMERDUCK BEARS NO LIABILITY FOR A PAYMENT DISPUTE, NON-PAYMENT, OR PAYMENT-RELATED FRAUD BETWEEN USERS; THAT RISK IS ALLOCATED ENTIRELY BETWEEN THE CUSTOMER AND THE CONTRACTOR. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations of liability, so some of the above limitations may not apply to you.
15. Indemnification
You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless HammerDuck and its owner from any claim, loss, liability, damage, and expense (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of: your use of the Platform; your User Content; your violation of these Terms; your violation of any law or of any third party’s rights; and, for Contractors, the work you perform or agree to perform for any Customer, including any claim relating to workmanship, licensing, insurance, permits, or your relationship with your own employees, subcontractors, or helpers.
16. Electronic Communications
By creating an account, you consent to receive communications from HammerDuck electronically, and you agree that these communications satisfy any legal requirement that such communications be in writing. HammerDuck communicates with you through in-app notifications, which are always on and are not a feature you enable, and through e-mail; push notifications through the HammerDuck phone apps are planned and, when available, will be governed by your phone’s own notification permission.
In-app notifications (the bell) cover, among other things: a new job posted in a Contractor’s trades and counties; a new bid on a project; a new message; a site visit proposed, accepted, declined, or cancelled; a bid chosen or not chosen; a project cancelled, about to close, or closed without a hire; and a failed payment, an unpaid grace period ending, or a payment recovered, each as described in the Billing/Refund Terms.
If a notification described above is still unread in the app three minutes after it was created, HammerDuck sends you an e-mail copy of it, so you are not e-mailed about anything you have already seen in the app. Several notifications may be combined into a single e-mail, HammerDuck sends no more than one such e-mail to a given person every five minutes, and a new-job alert is never e-mailed once the project has stopped accepting bids or is more than a day old. These notification e-mails, like the in-app notifications they mirror, are service messages about activity on your own account — your own projects, bids, and conversations — not marketing or promotional e-mail, and every one of them carries a one-click unsubscribe link, the List-Unsubscribe headers used by major e-mail providers, and HammerDuck’s postal address.
Your Account card has two notification e-mail switches, both on by default: one lets a Contractor turn off e-mail about a new job posted in that Contractor’s trades and counties; the other lets any user turn off e-mail about bids, messages, visits, and other job updates. Turning either off stops only the e-mail copy — the in-app notification itself is unaffected — and you may turn a switch back on at any time from the Account card.
Separately from the notification e-mails described above, HammerDuck always sends certain account and billing e-mail that cannot be turned off, because it is necessary to operate your account: account confirmation, password reset, e-mail-change confirmation, the Founding Contractor welcome e-mail, the renewal notice required by Georgia law and described in the Billing/Refund Terms, the failed-payment and grace-period notices described in the Billing/Refund Terms, account-deletion confirmation, and Stripe’s own billing e-mail. These transactional and account-activity e-mails, and the notification e-mails described above, are sent as part of operating your account and are not marketing e-mail; HammerDuck does not send marketing e-mail or SMS today, and if it does in the future, it will ask for your separate, affirmative consent before sending marketing e-mail or SMS and will honor an opt-out.
A notification e-mail contains only what the in-app notification itself shows: a new-job alert states the project’s public fields (title, trade, county, city or area) and never the Customer’s name, address, phone number, or e-mail; a message alert states that a message is waiting and names the project, not its text; and a bid alert names the Contractor’s business (already public) and the project, not the bid amount.
The HammerDuck contact form does not send you an automatic receipt; your message goes to customerservice@hammerduck.com with your e-mail address as the reply-to, and HammerDuck responds by hand.
17. Mobile Applications
The HammerDuck iOS and Android apps present the same Platform, rules, and legal pages as the website. If you download the app through the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, you acknowledge that the applicable store operator is not responsible for the app and is a third-party beneficiary of these Terms with the right to enforce them against you. You can delete your account yourself from the Account card or at hammerduck.com/delete-account; in-app tools to report objectionable content and block another user are still planned, and until they are built, use the e-mail channels described in these Terms and the Privacy Policy. If in-app purchases become available through the App Store or Google Play, HammerDuck may adjust how membership is purchased within the app to comply with that store’s then-current policies, and where a conflict exists, the applicable store’s policies control for a purchase made through the app.
18. Language
These Terms and the Privacy Policy are written and controlling in English. The Platform offers a machine-translated Spanish ("Español") display as a convenience; a machine translation, including of these Terms, is not an official or certified translation, and if any conflict or ambiguity exists between the English version and a translated version, the English version controls. E-mail and other messages HammerDuck sends you are in English even if you have chosen the Spanish display: the on-screen text of an in-app notification is machine-translated along with the rest of the app, but the e-mail copy of that notification, and every other e-mail HammerDuck sends, is in English only.
19. Changes to These Terms
HammerDuck may update these Terms from time to time. HammerDuck records the version and date each user accepted and will re-prompt you to accept a new version when a material change is made. If you do not agree to a material change, you may close your account before the new version takes effect; continued use of the Platform after a new version takes effect is your acceptance of it.
20. Termination
You may close your account at any time, either yourself from the Account card or by e-mailing customerservice@hammerduck.com, subject to the cancellation and lapse mechanics described in the Billing/Refund Terms for a paying Contractor. HammerDuck may suspend or terminate your account as described in Section 9 above and, for Contractors, in the Contractor Agreement. Sections of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination — including Sections 13 through 16, 21, and 22 — survive.
21. Dispute Resolution; Governing Law; Venue
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Georgia, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Platform that cannot be resolved informally will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Columbia County, Georgia, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts. Before filing a claim, you agree to first contact HammerDuck at customerservice@hammerduck.com and allow thirty (30) days to attempt to resolve the dispute informally.
22. Miscellaneous
These Terms, together with the Homeowner/Customer Terms, the Contractor Agreement, the Founding Contractor Agreement (if applicable to you), the Privacy Policy, and the Billing/Refund Terms, are the entire agreement between you and HammerDuck regarding the Platform and supersede any prior agreement on that subject. If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force. HammerDuck’s failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of its right to do so later. You may not assign these Terms without HammerDuck’s written consent; HammerDuck may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of substantially all of its assets. Notices to HammerDuck should be sent to customerservice@hammerduck.com.
23. Contact
Questions about these Terms may be sent to customerservice@hammerduck.com. HammerDuck aims to respond to all inquiries within one business day.