Pros on RecordHome-service contractors, from public records

Draft

Terms of use

This is a draft and is not in force. Counsel review is pending. The sections below are settled and the text under each describes what the site actually does today, so it can be checked against the site rather than taken on faith.

Each section carries two things: the drafted text, and the questions a counsel review has to answer before that text is final.

What this site is, and what it is not

A directory built from public records: open place data and state licensing files. It publishes no ratings, no reviews, and no endorsements, and it makes no claim about workmanship, insurance beyond what a state prints, or fitness for any job.

A license record shown here is a public record, not a recommendation. No state licensing board named on this site endorses, sponsors, or approves it, and the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation is named explicitly as not doing so, per its own attribution conditions.

Nothing here is legal advice, and nothing here is a guarantee that a contractor is currently licensed, bonded, or insured. The board's own record is the authority, and every license block on this site links to that board's public lookup so the record can be checked at the source. The link is to the board's search, not to a permanent URL for one license; most boards publish none.

For counsel review

  • Whether the non-endorsement wording satisfies each board's own attribution conditions as written.
  • Whether any statement on a profile could be read as a representation about a contractor's fitness rather than a report of a record.

Accuracy, and the limits of a public record

Every fact is printed with its source and the date of the file it came from. A source file can be wrong, stale, or incomplete, and this site copies it rather than correcting it. Where a value is computed rather than published by a source, the page says so beside it.

An absent license line means no accepted match between a place record and a license record. It does not mean a business holds no license, and this site never says otherwise. The measured precision and the known recall limits of that matching are published on the methodology page.

The correction process exists for exactly this reason, is open to anyone, and requires no claim.

For counsel review

  • The disclaimer wording for derived fields, in particular the Texas status field, which is derived from an expiration date rather than published as a status.
  • Whether the recall limitation on license matching needs a stronger statement on the profile itself rather than on the methodology page.

Acceptable use

The listings may be read, linked, and quoted with attribution. Bulk extraction of the site is not permitted, and neither is using anything found here to solicit a business at a phone number, mailing address, or email address published on it.

That second rule binds this site too, permanently and in every version: it never solicits a business at a dataset-sourced contact point. The single carve-out is a verification callback or postcard initiated by a claim, which is verification, is used for nothing else, and is logged.

The underlying place data is available under the Apache License, Version 2.0, from its own source. Anyone who wants the data should take it from there rather than from this site.

For counsel review

  • Whether an anti-scraping term is enforceable as drafted, and what it should say instead if it is not.
  • Whether restricting reuse of the site's presentation conflicts with the Apache 2.0 terms on the underlying data.

Claiming a listing

Claiming is free, open to every business, and cannot be purchased. It never changes ordering, in this version or any later one. A claim is verified by a callback to the phone on record, a postcard to the address on record, or an email at the business's own web domain.

A claim adds contractor-supplied fields to a listing: hours, services, service area, emergency availability, phone, and website. They are shown as provided by the contractor and are visually distinct from public-record facts. The contractor is responsible for their accuracy.

Takeover disputes and revocation have defined paths, and every claim is logged.

For counsel review

  • The takeover-dispute standard, and who bears the burden when two people claim the same listing.
  • What a contractor warrants about the fields they supply, and what happens when a supplied field is false.

Homeowner requests and routing

No request form is live in this release. When one ships: every homeowner is shown the same neutral contractor set, ordered by distance and trade match only, and a routed request reaches every qualifying contractor in that set free.

Nothing on this site is ordered or matched by any commercial relationship. Listed businesses may be, or may become, clients of the site owner's services business, and that never affects whether a business is listed, where it appears, or whether it is matched. A separate paid product books the appointment for contractors who buy it; selection never depends on who pays, and fulfillment after selection does.

A Florida roofing request is never routed, to anyone, regardless of relationship, under Florida Statute 489.147. Florida roofing contractors are told this at claim time rather than discovering it later. Florida roofing businesses are still listed and still carry their license facts.

License status is a safety gate on routing and never a sort key. A request is not routed to a business whose every linked license is non-active in a verified state.

For counsel review

  • The routing disclosure a homeowner sees before selecting contractors, including contact order and whether contact is simultaneous or cascades.
  • The full request terms, before any request form is live.
  • Whether the Florida roofing rule needs restating anywhere a Florida roofing contractor can reach before claiming.

Third-party data and license terms

Place data is used under the Apache License, Version 2.0, reproduced in full on the methodology page along with the Foursquare NOTICE and a statement of the modifications this site makes. State license data is reproduced under each board's own terms, which are summarized per state on the same page.

Utah is excluded from the verified layer because Utah Administrative Code R156-1-106 restricts use of its licensee list, so license verification is not offered here for Utah.

For counsel review

  • Confirmation that the modifications statement satisfies the Apache 2.0 requirement to state changes.
  • The two Texas statutes named on the methodology page, which currently constrain Texas to business-level records only.

Disclaimers and limitation of liability

To be drafted by counsel. The substance to be covered: the site is provided as is; the data is public-record data copied from sources that can be wrong; the site is not a party to any agreement between a homeowner and a contractor and takes no fee from one; and it makes no warranty about any contractor's work.

For counsel review

  • The full clause, including whether a liability cap is appropriate for a site that charges users nothing.
  • Whether the no-fee, no-lead-sale position changes the analysis relative to a lead-generation site.

Governing law and changes to these terms

To be drafted by counsel. The substance to be covered: which state's law governs, where disputes are heard, how a change to these terms is announced, and the effective date of each version.

For counsel review

  • Governing law and venue.
  • Whether an arbitration or class-action clause is wanted; the default position is no.
  • How a material change is announced to contractors who have claimed a listing.

Where the facts behind this document are

Every source, its cadence, its compliance tier, the screens and their measured precision, and the license texts reproduced in full are on the methodology page. The privacy policy is a draft on the same footing as this one.