Terms of use

1. Purpose and acceptance

These Terms set out the conditions for accessing and using the Pambe platform, available at pambe.be and through the Pambe mobile applications (the “Platform”).

Using the Platform, even without creating an account, constitutes acceptance of these Terms. Creating an account requires your express acceptance.

The privacy policy and the cookie policy form an integral part of these Terms. If you do not accept these conditions, you must refrain from using the Platform.

2. Definitions

• “Platform”: the website, the mobile applications and all online services published by Pambe.
• “User”: any person accessing the Platform, with or without an account.
• “Client”: a User who posts a request or looks for a provider.
• “Provider”: a User who publishes one or more services, on a professional basis.
• “Request”: the need described by a Client (title, description, location, photographs, indicative budget, urgency).
• “Service”: the offer published by a Provider (title, description, service area or remote delivery, photographs, accepted payment methods).
• “Matching”: the connection made by the Platform between a Request and one or more Services, and the exchanges that follow.
• “Content”: any item published by a User — text, photographs, videos, reviews, messages, contact details.

3. Pambe's role: an intermediary, not a party to the contract

Pambe provides a technical matching service. Pambe is neither the provider of the services offered, nor an employer, nor an agent, nor a guarantor of Users.

The contract covering the service itself — nature, price, timing, warranties, invoicing — is concluded directly between the Client and the Provider, outside the Platform. Pambe is not a party to it and does not take part in its performance.

Pambe collects no payment on behalf of Providers and offers no payment, escrow or insurance service. The payment methods shown on a service listing are declared by the Provider and are purely informational.

Pambe does not guarantee that a contract will be concluded, nor any volume of requests or clients, nor the quality, legality or conformity of the services performed.

The checks carried out by Pambe — verification of the email address and phone number, documentary review of certifications for at-risk trades — are trust-building measures. They constitute neither an approval, nor a certification, nor a guarantee of competence, and do not relieve the Client of their own checks.

4. Access to the Platform and user account

Account access is reserved for natural persons aged at least 18 and having legal capacity. The Platform is not intended for minors.

An account is created with an email address and password, or through a third-party identity provider (Google, Apple). Authentication is operated by our provider Auth0; your password is never stored in clear text.

You warrant the accuracy of the information you provide and undertake to keep it up to date. An account is strictly personal: creating multiple accounts, impersonation and sharing credentials are prohibited.

You are responsible for the confidentiality of your credentials and for all activity carried out from your account. Notify us without delay at info@pambe.be in the event of unauthorised use.

A single account may be used both as a Client and as a Provider. An onboarding flow may invite you to complete your profile: some steps are optional, others condition access to certain features.

5. Service listings from public sources

In order to offer a useful directory from the first visit, the Platform may publish service listings built from freely accessible professional information, in particular business listings published on online mapping services: trade name, business address, business phone number, website and public review rating.

These listings are identified as unclaimed. They only reproduce professional contact details that the professional has themselves made public for commercial prospecting purposes, to the exclusion of any data from the private sphere.

The professional concerned may at any time, free of charge and without having to create an account, claim the listing to take control of it, request its rectification, or request its permanent removal — using the link communicated to them or simply by email to info@pambe.be. A removal request does not need to be justified and is handled as soon as possible.

Pambe cannot be held liable for inaccuracies originating from the public source; any correction request is handled as soon as it is reported.

6. Provider obligations

The Provider acts on a professional basis. They declare and warrant that they:

• hold the authorisations, registrations and statuses required by their activity, in particular registration with the Belgian Crossroads Bank for Enterprises where mandatory, and are compliant in tax and social security matters;
• have taken out and maintain the insurance required by their activity, in particular professional liability insurance where the law or customary practice requires it;
• for trades presenting a particular risk — electricity, gas and heating, roofing, plumbing, air conditioning and appliances, locksmithing, chimney sweeping, asbestos removal — hold the legally required qualifications, approvals and certifications, and accept to evidence them to Pambe. The “Certified” badge is only awarded after a documentary check and may be withdrawn at any time;
• describe their services accurately, fairly and without misleading claims, and comply with the rules on pre-contractual consumer information, price display and advertising;
• respond to enquiries within a reasonable time and inform the Client as soon as they cannot follow up;
• perform their services under their sole responsibility, with the required skill and care, and bear alone the legal and contractual warranties owed to their client.

7. Client obligations

• describe their need honestly and with sufficient precision, and provide the information needed for a correct assessment (location, constraints, photographs where relevant);
• refrain from posting fictitious or promotional requests, or requests intended to collect contact details for other purposes;
• treat Providers with respect, honour agreed appointments or give notice within a reasonable time;
• verify, before making any commitment, that the Provider holds the required qualifications, insurance and authorisations, in particular for at-risk trades;
• agree the financial terms and performance arrangements directly with the Provider; these fall exclusively within their relationship.

8. Content published by Users

You retain ownership of the rights in the Content you publish.

You grant Pambe, for the duration of its publication and solely for the purposes of operating and promoting the Platform, a non-exclusive, royalty-free and worldwide licence to reproduce, display, technically adapt (resizing, cropping, compression, machine translation) and distribute that Content, including to search engines and on Pambe's social accounts. This licence ends when you remove the Content, subject to technical and backup copies in the course of expiring.

You warrant that you hold the necessary rights in the Content published, in particular in photographs, and that you have obtained the consent of identifiable persons appearing in them.

Published listings and profiles are public: they are accessible without an account and may be indexed by search engines. Do not publish information you do not wish to make public. Your requests, by contrast, are not published in the directory: they are communicated to the providers approached to respond to them.

Pambe may remove or make inaccessible any Content that breaches these Terms or the law, following the procedure described in article 12.

• The following are prohibited in particular: unlawful, defamatory, hateful, discriminatory, violent or pornographic content, or content infringing the privacy of others;
• false information about identity, qualifications, approvals or insurance;
• offers relating to illegal activities, undeclared work, or services subject to authorisation without holding it;
• mass solicitation, spam, fraudulent links and phishing attempts;
• content infringing third-party intellectual property rights.

9. Automated features and artificial intelligence

Matching relies on automated processing: semantic analysis of Requests and Services, computation of vector representations, categorisation, geographic filtering and relevance ranking. The result is a suggestion: it constitutes neither advice, nor a recommendation, nor a guarantee of quality.

The Platform may offer assistance in drafting service descriptions and machine translation of content and messages into your correspondent's display language. Generated or translated text remains your responsibility: review it before publishing or sending.

This processing produces no decision having legal effects concerning you. Any moderation decision liable to restrict your account is taken or reviewed by a person.

Ranking of results is based primarily on semantic relevance between the need expressed and the offer published, on geographic distance and on declared availability. No ranking position is sold or granted in return for any direct or indirect payment.

10. Messaging and exchanges

The built-in messaging allows matched Users to communicate. Messages and their attachments are encrypted at rest on our servers.

It is prohibited to use messaging for solicitation unrelated to the Request, to distribute unlawful content, or to request payments by fraudulent means.

Pambe does not access conversation content systematically. Targeted access may occur, strictly to the extent necessary, to handle a report, prevent fraud or respond to a request from a competent authority.

You remain free to continue your exchanges through any other channel: Pambe imposes no exclusivity and takes no commission on the services agreed.

11. Reviews and ratings

Following a match, the Client and the Provider may each leave a review of the other. Only Users actually matched by the Platform may leave a review: no review is bought, solicited for payment, or written by Pambe.

Reviews must be honest, factual and relate to the experience actually had. Insulting, discriminatory or defamatory remarks, or remarks unrelated to the service, are prohibited.

Pambe does not alter the content of reviews. A review may be removed if it breaches these Terms or the law; its author is informed and may challenge the decision under article 12.

Some listings also display a public rating from a third-party source. Its origin is indicated and it is presented separately from reviews left on Pambe.

12. Reporting, moderation and redress

Any User, and more broadly any person, may report a profile, a listing, a review or a message using the “Report” button on the Platform, or by email to info@pambe.be, stating the reason — inappropriate behaviour, scam, offensive content, spam, or other — and a description of the facts.

Every report is examined diligently, objectively and non-arbitrarily. Depending on severity, the measures that may be taken are: a warning, removal or hiding of Content, restriction of certain features, temporary suspension or permanent closure of the account.

Any restrictive measure is reasoned and notified to the User concerned, stating the facts alleged, the basis of the decision and the available means of redress, except where the law prohibits it or in the event of an order from an authority.

You may challenge a moderation decision by writing to info@pambe.be within six months of its notification. The complaint is handled free of charge, within a reasonable time, by a person who did not take the original decision. Judicial remedies and the mediation described in the legal notice remain open in any event.

A suspension or termination affecting a Provider is notified and reasoned and, save for serious breach, legal obligation or fraud risk, accompanied by reasonable notice in line with the regulation applicable to online intermediation services.

13. Availability, changes and free access

The Platform is available continuously, subject to maintenance operations, technical incidents and force majeure. Pambe endeavours to announce scheduled interruptions.

Pambe may develop, modify or remove all or part of the features. A substantially unfavourable change is announced within a reasonable time.

Use of the Platform is currently free of charge, for Clients and Providers alike. Pambe reserves the right to introduce paid features; their conditions and prices would then be brought to your attention before any subscription, and no feature you currently enjoy free of charge would become chargeable without your express agreement.

14. Liability

Pambe is bound by a best-efforts obligation as regards the operation of the Platform.

Pambe is not liable for the contractual relationships formed between Users, nor for the non-performance, poor performance or delay of a service, nor for the resulting damage, nor for the accuracy of the information published by Users.

In its capacity as a hosting provider of User Content, Pambe is liable for such Content only if, having obtained actual knowledge of its unlawful nature, it failed to act expeditiously to remove it or disable access to it.

Pambe is not liable for indirect damage, such as loss of revenue, loss of clientele, reputational harm or loss of data attributable to the User.

Nothing in these Terms limits Pambe's liability in the event of fraud, gross negligence, or harm to a person's life or physical integrity, nor deprives a consumer of the mandatory rights granted to them by law.

15. Intellectual property in the Platform

The “Pambe” trade mark, the logo, the visual identity, the editorial texts, the site architecture, the databases and the software developments are protected by intellectual property law and remain the exclusive property of Pambe or its licensors. No licence is granted to the User beyond the personal right of use necessary to use the service.

• the extraction or re-utilisation, qualitatively or quantitatively substantial, of the content of the Platform's database, including by automated scraping or unauthorised indexing robots;
• the use of Platform Content to build a dataset or train an artificial intelligence system;
• reverse engineering, decompilation and circumvention of technical protection measures;
• any use liable to disrupt, overload or degrade the operation of the Platform.

16. Duration, account closure and fate of content

These Terms apply for as long as you hold an account or use the Platform.

You may close your account at any time from your profile, without reason and free of charge. Closure results in the erasure or anonymisation of your data according to the periods set out in the privacy policy.

Closing the account affects neither contracts already concluded with other Users, nor obligations arising before it.

Reviews you have left may be retained in anonymised form, in order to preserve the reliability of collective information for the benefit of other Users.

17. Changes to the Terms

Pambe may amend these Terms, in particular to reflect legal, technical or functional developments.

Any substantial change is notified to Users holding an account at least fifteen days before it takes effect. Continuing to use the Platform after that date constitutes acceptance of the new version; failing that, you may close your account free of charge.

The date of the last update appears at the top of this document.

18. Miscellaneous

If a provision of these Terms is held void or unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force.

Pambe's failure to exercise a right under these Terms does not constitute a waiver of that right.

You may not assign your rights and obligations under these Terms without Pambe's prior written consent.

19. Governing law and dispute resolution

These Terms are governed by Belgian law.

Any complaint must first be addressed to info@pambe.be. We undertake to reply as soon as possible.

A consumer who does not obtain satisfaction may refer the matter free of charge to the Consumer Mediation Service, boulevard du Roi Albert II 8 box 1, 1000 Brussels (consumerombudsman.be).

Failing an amicable settlement, the Belgian courts have jurisdiction. Consumers retain the benefit of the protective jurisdiction rules of their place of residence.