Terms, privacy & cookies.

1. About RugWeather

RugWeather is a web application operated by RugWeather. RugWeather provides weather-based horse rugging recommendations using forecast information, the location you save and horse information you provide.

“RugWeather”, “we”, “us” and “our” refer to RugWeather. “You” means the person using the service.

2. Important equine welfare information

RugWeather is a decision-support tool only. It is not veterinary advice, professional equine-care advice, an emergency service or a substitute for physically checking your horse.

• Recommendations are automated estimates based on forecast data and the information available to RugWeather.
• Forecasts can be inaccurate, delayed, incomplete or unavailable.
• Rugging decisions depend on real-world factors RugWeather cannot fully know, including shelter, turnout, coat, clipping, age, body condition, breed/type, health, workload, wind exposure, bedding and individual behaviour.
• You remain responsible for checking your horse and deciding what is appropriate.
• If your horse is unwell, distressed, shivering, sweating, unusually cold/hot or otherwise uncomfortable, take appropriate action and seek veterinary or professional advice where necessary.

Do not rely on a RugWeather notification as an emergency warning. Notifications can be delayed, unavailable or not delivered.

3. Accounts

You must provide reasonably accurate information when creating and using an account. You are responsible for keeping your password confidential and for activity carried out through your account.

• You must not access another person's account, share your account where that would give another person access to paid or restricted features, or allow another person to use your credentials.
• You must not attempt to bypass account, horse or Premium limits, access controls or other technical restrictions.
• You must not scrape, crawl, systematically copy, extract, repackage or commercially exploit RugWeather data or functionality without our written permission, except where applicable law gives you a right to do so.
• You must not interfere with, overload, attack, probe, security-test or otherwise misuse the service or its infrastructure without our written permission.
• You must not upload malware, harmful code or material intended to compromise the service or another user's device or account.
• You must not use RugWeather to facilitate fraud, abuse, unlawful activity or infringement of another person's rights.
• We may restrict or suspend access where reasonably necessary to protect users, the service or our legal rights, subject to applicable law. Where reasonably practicable, we will explain the reason and what you can do to resolve the issue.

4. Horse profiles and uploaded images

You can store horse information and upload horse images. You are responsible for having the necessary rights to upload an image and for the information you provide.

• Do not upload unlawful, malicious, abusive or irrelevant material.
• You retain any rights you have in information and images you submit. You give RugWeather only the limited rights needed to store, process, resize, optimise and display that content as part of operating the service, and to maintain security and backups.
• We will not use your uploaded horse images for public advertising or publish them outside your account unless you ask us to or another lawful basis applies.
• We may resize and optimise uploaded images for security and performance.
• When an image is replaced or a horse/account is deleted, the active copy is removed where the service is designed to do so. Backups or infrastructure logs may persist for a limited period.

5. Free and Premium plans

RugWeather offers a free service and a paid Premium subscription. The features and price shown immediately before payment are the features and price applicable to that purchase.

Premium features include detailed horse recommendations, Plan Ahead and weather analytics. Plan Ahead uses the forecast for your saved yard and the return time you choose; the weather analytics page presents forecast-derived information for your use. These features are part of the RugWeather service and are not advertising or behavioural tracking analytics.

• Premium is currently £5 per month, as the total price shown at checkout, unless a different price is clearly shown before checkout.
• Premium is a recurring monthly subscription and renews automatically until cancelled.
• There is no fixed minimum term beyond the current paid billing period. A normal cancellation stops future renewals and Premium normally remains available until the end of the current paid period.
• Payments and billing administration are provided by Stripe.
• RugWeather does not store your full payment-card number.
• You can cancel future renewals through the Stripe Billing Portal from your account.
• Where you cancel a future renewal normally, Premium remains available until the end of the current paid period unless mandatory consumer law or the Stripe process provides otherwise.
• We may change features or prices for future purchases. A change to price or other material terms will not remove rights you have already acquired. Where notice is legally required, we will provide it.

6. Cancellation and refunds

You can cancel a Premium subscription at any time. To stop a future renewal, use the Stripe Billing Portal from your account. You can also contact support@rugweather.co.uk. A normal cancellation stops the next renewal and leaves Premium active until the end of the current paid period.

Payments already made for the current paid period are not refundable simply because you cancel a future renewal. RugWeather does not provide a separate money-back guarantee or voluntary refund policy. Where applicable consumer law requires a cancellation, refund, reduction or other remedy, those rights continue to apply.

If you believe you were charged incorrectly, contact support@rugweather.co.uk with the account email and relevant payment date.

7. Ordering and contract information

Before a Premium purchase, RugWeather displays the key subscription information including the seller identity and contact details, price, recurring nature of the subscription, billing period and cancellation route. Stripe processes the payment and hosts the checkout and billing portal. We may also send account or service emails to the email address associated with your account.

The service is supplied online and is provided in English. We do not charge a separate delivery fee for Premium. The subscription renews monthly until cancelled. There is no fixed minimum term beyond the current paid billing period, subject to mandatory consumer rights.

8. Service availability and changes

We aim to keep RugWeather available but cannot guarantee uninterrupted availability. The service depends on third-party weather, hosting, database, email, anti-abuse and payment systems.

• Weather information may be unavailable or incomplete.
• We may carry out maintenance, security work and updates.
• Features may change as RugWeather develops.
• We will not use a change to these terms to remove rights that the law gives you.

9. Suspension, termination and payment problems

We may suspend or restrict an account where reasonably necessary because of a serious or repeated breach of these terms, suspected fraud or payment abuse, a material security risk, or a legal requirement. We will take reasonable steps to notify you and explain the issue where doing so is lawful and practical.

If a Premium payment fails, Stripe may retry the payment or ask you to update your payment method. RugWeather may suspend Premium access while a subscription is not in an active paid state. If payment is successfully recovered and Stripe reports the subscription as active, Premium access can be restored.

10. Acceptable use

You must not use RugWeather to:

• break the law;
• attack, overload, probe or disrupt the service;
• attempt unauthorised access;
• upload malware or files designed to harm the service;
• misuse payment, account or Premium functionality; or
• infringe another person's rights.

11. Intellectual property

RugWeather's software, design, text, branding and other service materials belong to RugWeather or the relevant licensors. You receive a limited right to use the service for its intended purpose. You must not copy, resell, reproduce or commercially exploit the service without permission, except where applicable law gives you a right to do so.

12. Liability and consumer rights

RugWeather is intended as a practical decision-support service. We are not responsible for a horse-care decision simply because a recommendation was displayed; you remain responsible for checking your horse and considering conditions that the service cannot observe.

This section does not exclude or restrict liability where doing so would be unlawful. In particular, nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any statutory consumer right or remedy that cannot lawfully be excluded or restricted.

Nothing in these terms is intended to exclude the statutory rights that apply to paid services or digital content, including requirements that a service is supplied with reasonable care and skill and remedies available where those rights are not met.

13. Privacy notice

Who controls your personal data?

The data controller is RugWeather. Contact: support@rugweather.co.uk. Our business/correspondence address is Lowestoft, Suffolk, England, NR33.

Personal data we collect

• Account data: name and email address.
• Authentication and security data: password hashes, password-reset token data, session/security information and information used for rate limiting and abuse prevention. IP address information may be processed for rate limiting and is passed to hCaptcha during registration verification.
• Horse data: horse name, age, breed, height, clipping status, fly sensitivity, rug preferences, rug inventory, recommendation feedback and uploaded horse images.
• Location data: the yard/location you save, including the latitude and longitude used to obtain local forecasts.
• Service preferences: saved Plan Ahead departure/return settings and related notification or planning preferences where you choose to use them.
• Premium and billing data: Stripe customer and subscription identifiers, subscription status and dates. Full payment-card details are handled by Stripe rather than stored by RugWeather.
• Notification data: notification preferences, push-subscription endpoint and keys, device/user-agent information, notification state and delivery logs where you enable Premium app notifications.
• Feedback and support data: feature suggestions and other information you choose to submit through the service.
• Operational data: timestamps, error information and other technical information generated while operating and securing the service.

Where the information comes from

Most personal data is provided directly by you or generated when you use RugWeather. We receive subscription and billing status from Stripe, security verification results from hCaptcha, and weather/geocoding information from OpenWeather based on the location information you provide. Technical and security information may also be generated by the service and its infrastructure when you use it.

Why we use it

• To create and operate your account and authenticate you.
• To obtain local weather data and generate automated horse-rugging recommendations.
• To store and display horse profiles, images and rug information.
• To provide Premium features, process payments and manage subscriptions.
• To send password-reset, account and other essential service emails.
• To send app notifications where you enable them and the feature is available.
• To process recommendation feedback and feature suggestions so we can respond to users and improve the service.
• To protect the service, prevent fraud and abuse, troubleshoot faults and maintain reliability.
• To comply with legal obligations and establish, exercise or defend legal claims where necessary.

Lawful bases

• Contract or steps before a contract: account creation, horse profiles, saved location, forecasts, recommendations, Premium features, subscription management and essential service communications.
• Legitimate interests: security, fraud and abuse prevention, rate limiting, troubleshooting, service reliability, protecting our rights and improving the service using product feedback and operational information.
• Legal obligation: accounting, tax, regulatory and other legal requirements.
• Consent: only where consent is required by law for a particular processing activity, such as non-essential storage/access technologies or certain marketing activity.

Automated recommendations

RugWeather uses automated processing to turn forecast and horse-profile information into rugging recommendations. These recommendations are decision-support information only and are not used to make legal or similarly significant decisions about you.

Who receives personal data

We use service providers where needed to operate RugWeather, including:

• Stripe - payment processing, checkout, billing, subscription management and customer billing records.
• OpenWeather - location/geocoding and weather forecast services. The saved location/coordinates are used to obtain the relevant forecast.
• hCaptcha - registration anti-abuse and bot protection.
• SMTP/email infrastructure - account and password-reset emails.
• PostgreSQL/database infrastructure - application data storage.
• Hosting and infrastructure providers - operating, securing and maintaining the application.

These providers may process information on our behalf or, where they independently determine purposes for their own services, act as separate controllers. We do not sell your personal data.

International transfers

Some providers may process personal data outside the UK. Where a restricted transfer applies, we will use an applicable UK GDPR transfer mechanism and appropriate safeguards. Where the law requires us to provide information about those safeguards, you can request it from support@rugweather.co.uk. Provider arrangements may change, so this notice will be updated when material changes are made.

How long we keep information

• Account, horse, feedback and feature-suggestion information is normally kept while your account is active and then deleted or anonymised when no longer required, subject to legal, security and backup requirements.
• Uploaded horse images are kept while attached to an active horse/account and are removed when the active record is deleted or replaced, subject to backups and security retention.
• Password-reset tokens expire after 45 minutes and are cleared after successful use.
• Premium and billing identifiers and related accounting records are retained for as long as necessary for subscription administration, accounting, tax, dispute resolution and legal obligations. Stripe may separately retain its billing records under its own policies and legal obligations.
• Push-subscription and notification information is kept while needed to provide notifications or maintain their history/state and is removed with the relevant account or subscription when no longer required.
• Security and operational logs are kept for as long as reasonably necessary for security, troubleshooting, reliability and legal purposes, subject to the retention settings of the infrastructure providers used.
• Backups may retain deleted information for a limited period until they are rotated or overwritten.

Your data-protection rights

Subject to applicable law, you may have rights including access, correction, deletion, restriction and data portability. You can request these by emailing support@rugweather.co.uk.

Your right to object: where we process personal data on the basis of legitimate interests, you generally have the right to object. We will stop that processing unless we have compelling legitimate grounds to continue or need the information for legal claims, as permitted by law.

Where processing is based on consent, you can withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawal does not affect processing that was lawful before withdrawal.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your personal data, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). See the ICO complaints service.

Security

We use measures intended to protect accounts and personal data, including password hashing, CSRF protection, access controls, rate limiting, secure session cookies in production, upload validation and HTTPS security controls. No internet service can guarantee absolute security.

14. Cookies and similar technologies

RugWeather uses essential authentication/security technologies and first-party Cache Storage for PWA/offline functionality. We do not currently use our own advertising cookies or analytics cookies. Third-party services such as hCaptcha and Stripe may use their own storage/access technologies on their pages or components.

Read the standalone Cookies & Storage Technologies notice.

15. Account deletion

You can delete your account through the account settings page. The deletion process removes the active account and associated horse data and uploaded images from the service, subject to information we are required or permitted to retain for legal, security, accounting or backup purposes.

If you have an active Premium subscription, deleting your account also cancels that subscription as part of the deletion process. This is different from a normal Premium cancellation: normal cancellation stops future renewals while Premium normally remains available until the end of the current paid period. Before account deletion, RugWeather displays a warning that an active Premium subscription will be cancelled. Mandatory consumer rights continue to apply.

If RugWeather cannot cancel the Stripe subscription automatically, the account is not deleted and you will be asked to resolve the billing issue or contact support@rugweather.co.uk first.

16. Complaints and contact

If you have a complaint about RugWeather, contact support@rugweather.co.uk with enough information for us to understand the issue. We will review complaints and respond within a reasonable time. If the issue concerns your statutory rights or personal data, nothing in this complaints process prevents you from using any legal or regulatory route available to you.

17. Changes to these terms and privacy information

We may update this page when RugWeather changes or when legal requirements change. If a material change affects an existing contract and notice is required, we will take reasonable steps to provide that notice. The date at the top of this page shows the current version.

18. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, except where mandatory consumer-protection law gives you rights that apply differently. If you live elsewhere, mandatory rights that cannot lawfully be excluded may continue to apply.