Terms of Service

Please read this first. This is a starting draft, written from what the Aster software actually does. A lawyer has not reviewed it yet, and that review needs to happen before Aster is generally available. If anything here matters to a decision you’re making, get in touch and ask.

These terms cover your use of Aster — the website at asterbooking.com, the public booking pages it hosts, and the Aster iPhone app. By making a booking or by using an Aster account, you agree to them.

Who these terms are for

Two different people use Aster, and the terms apply a little differently to each.

• Providers — independent beauty and wellness professionals who create an Aster account and use it to run their appointments and take payment.
• Clients — people who book an appointment with a provider through that provider’s Aster booking page, or who are booked in by their provider.

Aster is a tool, not the practitioner

Aster is software a provider uses to run their own business. When you book an appointment, the appointment is between you and that provider. Aster does not employ providers, does not supervise them, does not set their prices, and is not a party to the service you receive.

That means questions about the treatment itself — what it involves, how it went, how much it cost, whether a fee was fair — are between you and the provider. Aster shows you what the provider configured; it does not vouch for it.

Provider accounts

• You need to be at least 18 and legally able to run your business where you operate. Aster is built for the United States and is not offered elsewhere.
• An account is one email address and one password. Keep the password to yourself; you are responsible for what happens under your account.
• Your client list is yours, and it is your responsibility. When you add a client by hand or import a list you already hold, you are confirming you have the right to hold and use those details, that the people on it agreed to hear from your business, and that you will tell your clients how you use their information. Aster records that confirmation against each imported client. It stores and processes the list for you — it does not become Aster’s to use.
• You choose your services, prices, hours, deposit amounts, cancellation window and no-show fee. Set them accurately: your clients see and rely on them.

Bookings

A booking made through a provider’s page reserves that time with that provider. If a deposit is required, the time is held while payment is being taken and is released again if the payment is not completed.

Aster limits how many upcoming appointments one person can hold through the public booking page at a time, and how far ahead bookings can be made. These limits keep a shared calendar usable; if you need more, ask your provider to book you in directly.

Payments

Payments run through Stripe. Every charge is made directly on the provider’s own Stripe account, which the provider sets up and controls. The money goes to the provider. Aster never holds your funds and never has possession of them.

• Card details are entered into Stripe’s own payment form, or read by the payment hardware in the provider’s iPhone. Card numbers do not pass through and are not stored on Aster’s servers.
• Providers taking payment through Aster are also bound by Stripe’s Connected Account Agreement and need to complete Stripe’s identity checks before they can be paid.
• Aster does not currently take a percentage of payments taken through it. If that changes, providers will be told before it applies to them.

Deposits, cancellations and no-show fees

The cancellation window, the deposit and the no-show fee are set by each provider, not by Aster. Whatever is shown on that provider’s booking page is what applies.

• You can cancel online from the link in your confirmation message — it is in every reminder too — as long as the appointment is still outside your provider’s cancellation window. The link belongs to that one appointment, needs no account, and stops working about a month after it.
• Inside that window, online cancellation is turned off — contact the provider directly.
• If you cancel online and had paid a deposit, that deposit is refunded automatically. Any other charge is for the provider to refund at their discretion.
• A no-show fee is charged by the provider, using the card you saved when you booked. It is the provider’s decision, and any dispute about one is between you and them.

Messages we send

Aster sends booking confirmations, reminders, cancellation notices and payment receipts by text message and email, on the provider’s behalf. These are about your appointment — they are not marketing, and Aster does not use your contact details to advertise anything. Standard message and data rates from your carrier may apply.

Reply STOP to any text and we stop texting that number, straight away; reply START to begin again, or HELP for our contact details. STOP applies to the number itself rather than to one business, so if you see more than one practitioner who uses Aster it stops all of them. Email has no equivalent: to stop those, tell your provider — reminders can be turned off for the business, and your provider can remove your phone number or email from your record — or write to us and we will see to it.

Using Aster fairly

Don’t use Aster to:

• book appointments in someone else’s name, or enter contact details that aren’t yours to give;
• make bookings you have no intention of keeping, or otherwise waste a practitioner’s time;
• probe, scrape or enumerate booking pages, work around rate limits, or try to reach data belonging to another business or another client;
• send anything unlawful, threatening or harassing through the notes, names or message fields;
• copy, resell, or reverse engineer the software.

Aster applies limits — on bookings, on messages, on request rates — to keep the service working for everyone. We may slow down or refuse activity that trips them.

Availability

Aster is early software and is provided as it is, without a guarantee of uptime or of being error-free. We may change, suspend or discontinue features. We will try not to surprise you with anything that affects appointments already booked.

Liability

To the extent the law allows, Aster is not liable for the service a provider gives you, for an appointment that is missed, changed or cancelled, for fees a provider charges, or for indirect or consequential losses such as lost income or lost bookings. Nothing here limits liability that cannot legally be limited, including for fraud, or the rights the consumer law where you live gives you.

Ending it

A provider can stop using Aster at any time and ask us to close their account. We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms, that puts other users or the service at risk, or where we are required to. If your account is closed, ask us about your data — the Privacy Policy explains what we hold and how to have it removed.

Changes

We may update these terms. If a change is significant, we’ll say so in the app or by email before it takes effect, and the date at the top of this page will change.

Governing law, and where a dispute goes

Aster is operated by Innovative Studios LLC, a California company, and is offered in the United States only. These terms are governed by the law of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. If something between us has to go to court, it goes to a state or federal court sitting in California, and we each agree those courts may hear it.

Two things that paragraph does not do, which are worth saying plainly:

• It does not take away the protection your own state gives you. Consumer protection law generally cannot be signed away in a form like this one, and we are not trying to. Where the law where you live gives you a right this page appears to remove, that law wins — including any right it gives you to bring a claim closer to home.
• Small claims court stays open. Either of us can bring a claim that fits there, in the court that would ordinarily hear it. Nothing on this page asks you to travel across a state for a small dispute.

Write to us first, though. Nearly everything that starts out looking like a dispute is a booking, a charge or a message that went wrong, and one email to [email protected] settles it faster than anything else described here.

Contact

Questions about these terms: [email protected]. For anything about your personal information, see the Privacy Policy.