Customer Terms

1. About these terms

These terms are a contract between you and us. We are Smart Approaches Limited, trading as Smart Eatx, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 14796914), whose registered office is at 4 Admiral Way, Regus House, Doxford International Business Park, Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, SR3 3XW. In these terms, ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ mean Smart Eatx, and ‘you’ means the person using the app or placing an order.

They apply when you use the Smart Eatx app to order from the restaurants, takeaways, cafés and grocery stores listed on our marketplace, whether you have an account or order as a guest.

If you order through a restaurant's own branded app or website, these terms don't apply to that order. The restaurant's own terms and privacy notice do, and the restaurant is responsible for them. Our Custom App Terms explain how we provide those apps.

Two other documents apply too. Our Customer Privacy Notice explains how we use your personal information, and our Cookie Policy covers cookies on our website. All our documents are on our legal page.

You can contact us by email at hello@smarteatx.com, through Help in the app when you're signed in, or by post at our registered office. The contract is made in English, and we'll deal with you in English.

These terms, together with what the app shows you before you order, give you the information the law requires us to provide, including under the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002. Please read them before you order. By creating an account or placing an order, you agree to them.

2. Who you're buying from

The restaurants, takeaways and grocery stores in the app (we call them stores) are independent businesses. When you order, you buy the food, drinks and groceries from the store. The store prepares them, and it's responsible for their quality, their description, their allergen information and for following food safety law.

We run the app, and we sell you the delivery and our service. On an order placed with a Smart Eatx account, the delivery fee, the service fee and any small-order fee are ours. Your receipt shows each seller's part: the store's food or groceries, and our fees.

Some stores let you order as a guest. On a guest order, the store sells the whole order, fees included, and your receipt shows this.

We take payment for the whole order. For the food and groceries, we collect the money on the store's behalf, and paying us counts as paying the store.

Deliveries are made by our own riders. When none is available, we may pass a delivery to Stuart, a courier company that delivers for us, and one of its couriers will bring your order.

3. Your account and guest orders

You must be 18 or over to create an account or place an order.

To create an account, you give us your first and last name, email address, mobile number and a password, and then your delivery address. We email you a 6-digit code to check the email address is yours. We may also ask you to confirm your mobile number with a code sent by text. You can sign in with Google or Apple instead of a password; we'll still ask for your phone number and address.

Keep your details up to date, especially your phone number and address: the rider needs them to reach you. Keep your password safe and don't share your account. Tell us straight away if you think someone else has used your account.

You're responsible for orders placed from your account, unless someone used it without your permission and you hadn't been careless with your sign-in details.

Where a store allows it, you can order from it as a guest, without an account. You give us your name, email address, phone number and delivery address for that order. You can follow a guest order and get its receipt from the order screen, but you won't have an order history or chat. Email us if you need help. Grocery orders need an account.

4. Placing an order

The app shows the stores that deliver to your address, with their opening times. A store may be closed, paused or too busy, an item may have sold out, or your address may be outside its delivery area. If so, the app won't let you order.

Placing an order works like this:

1. Choose a store and add items to your basket, with any sizes and options.
2. Choose delivery or collection, check your address, and add a note for the store if you want to.
3. Check your basket, the fees and the total. This is your chance to correct any mistakes.
4. Pay. If anything has changed since you saw the total, such as a price, an offer or a fee, we'll stop and show you the new total before you pay.
5. When your payment goes through, we send your order to the store and confirm it in the app. That's when the contract for your order is made.

A store may set a minimum order. If your items come to less, either a small-order fee is added or you'll need to add more before you can order. The app tells you which.

We email you a receipt once you've paid (for groceries, once you've been charged after picking). If you have an account, your orders are kept in your order history in the app.

Very occasionally, a store may have to cancel an order after it's been sent, for example because the kitchen has a problem. If that happens, we'll tell you and refund what you paid.

5. Prices, fees and payment

Prices are in pounds sterling and are set by each store. The price shown is the price you pay. On top of your items, the app may show:

• Delivery fee: this depends on how far your address is from the store, measured in a straight line, using price bands set for that store. A delivery offer may reduce it.
• Service fee: a percentage of the price of your items, set by us, for using the platform.
• Small-order fee: added if your items cost less than the store's minimum order, where the store has a small-order fee.
• Tip: where the app offers it, you can add a tip of £1, £2 or £3 to a delivery. It's optional, and the whole tip is passed on to the rider.

All of these are shown at checkout before you pay. Collection orders have no delivery fee and no tip.

We take payment through Stripe, our payment provider. You can pay by the methods the app shows at checkout, such as a debit or credit card or Apple Pay. Your full card details go to Stripe, not to us. If you have an account, a card you pay with may be saved with Stripe for your next order. You can ask us to remove a saved card at any time.

Your card is charged when your order is placed, except for grocery orders, which are charged after picking (see Grocery orders).

If a price in the app is obviously wrong, such as a meal shown at a fraction of its real price, we or the store may cancel the order and refund you in full.

6. Offers and promo codes

Stores and we sometimes run offers. These include money off your first order from a store, money off orders over or under a set amount, cheaper delivery, and promo codes.

You can use one promo code per order, and the app also applies the best automatic offer you qualify for. Each offer has its own conditions, shown in the app. These may be a minimum spend, a maximum discount, an end date, a limit on how often you can use it, or that it's for new customers only. Your ‘first order’ means your first order at that store that was paid for and went ahead.

If a code won't work, the app tells you why and shows the price without it.

Offers have no cash value and can't be exchanged. We may withdraw an offer, or cancel a discount gained by misuse, such as by using several accounts.

If you're refunded for an order that used an offer, we refund what you actually paid.

7. Grocery orders

When you place a grocery order, we don't take the money straight away. Instead, we ask your bank to hold an amount on your card. That amount is the order total, plus 20% of the price of any items sold by weight.

The store then picks your order:

• Items sold by weight, such as loose fruit, vegetables or meat, show an estimated price. You pay for what they actually weigh, but never more than 20% above the estimate.
• Substitutes: for each item, you choose whether the store may send a substitute if it's out of stock. A substitute never costs you more than the item it replaces; if it costs less, you pay the lower price. It's never something with a higher age limit.
• Missing items: if an item isn't available and there's no substitute, it's left out and you're not charged for it.

Once your order is packed, we charge your card for what's being sent, plus the fees, tip and discount shown at checkout. We never charge more than the amount held, and the rest of the hold is released. Your bank decides how quickly the hold disappears from your account, which can take a few days.

If a substitute doesn't suit you, tell us and we'll refund it.

Alcohol is sold only during the store's licensed hours. If the store can't sell alcohol at the time you order, the app tells you when it can.

8. Delivery and collection

Our riders deliver most orders. When none is available, we may ask Stuart to deliver. You can follow your order in the app. For our riders, you'll see their name, photo, vehicle and rating, and where they are on a map, and you can call them from the app.

Delivery and preparation times are estimates. Weather, traffic and how busy a store is can make an order late. We'll keep you updated in the app.

The delivery code. Our riders always hand food to you in person; they never leave it at the door. Give the rider the 4-digit code shown in the app. They can't hand over the order without it. After five wrong codes, the hand-over locks and our support team will help. If Stuart delivers your order, the app will tell you, and you may not need a code.

If you're not there. Please be at the address with your phone on. If you don't answer, the rider will try to reach you and wait at least five minutes. After that, the delivery ends and the rider leaves with the food, which can't be resold. We may not refund you in that case (see If something goes wrong).

Collection. If you choose collection, go to the store when the app says your order is ready, and bring ID if it includes age-restricted items. If you don't collect your order, we may not refund you.

Your order becomes yours, and your responsibility, once it's handed to you or you collect it.

Please treat riders with respect. A rider may refuse to hand over an order if they're abused or feel unsafe.

9. Alcohol and other age-restricted items

Some items can only be sold to adults. The app marks them with their minimum age. They include:

• alcohol: 18 or over, under the Licensing Act 2003, and only during the store's licensed hours;
• tobacco, vapes, knives, solvents (such as lighter refills) and fireworks: 18 or over, or any higher age the law sets;
• high-caffeine energy drinks: 16 or over, where a store sells them with that limit.

When your basket includes an age-restricted item, you confirm you're old enough before you pay. That doesn't replace the check when you receive the items.

Challenge 25. If you look under 25, you'll be asked for valid photo ID: a passport, a photocard driving licence, a card with the PASS hologram, or a military ID. The person receiving the items must be the one who's old enough. Age-restricted items are never left with someone else or at the door.

It's an offence to buy alcohol for someone under 18. The rider can refuse to hand over age-restricted items if they think the items are for someone underage, or if the person receiving them is clearly drunk.

If you can't show valid ID, the rider won't hand over the age-restricted items. On a grocery order, they hand over the rest and take those items back. On a restaurant order that includes an age-restricted item, the whole order goes back to the store. We refund you for what was taken back.

If you collect an order, the store will check your ID in the same way.

10. Allergies and dietary needs

Under the Food Information Regulations 2014, food businesses must tell you about 14 allergens: celery, cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, lupin, milk, molluscs, mustard, tree nuts, peanuts, sesame, soya, and sulphur dioxide and sulphites.

Stores add allergen information and dietary labels (vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free and halal) to their items, and the app shows them. The store is responsible for this information being right. We don't prepare food and can't check what's in it.

If you have an allergy or intolerance, ask before you order. Contact the store directly, or ask us through Help in the app or by email and we'll pass your question on. Recipes and suppliers change, and kitchens handle many ingredients, so a store may not be able to rule out traces of an allergen.

You can add a note to your order, but don't rely on a note alone to tell the store about an allergy. Notes are also read by the rider.

Some stores show calories, and larger businesses must do so by law.

11. Changing or cancelling an order

Before you pay, you can change your basket or cancel your order, and nothing is charged.

Once your payment goes through, the order goes to the store and work on it starts straight away. After that, you can't change or cancel it in the app. If you've made a mistake, contact us at once. We'll ask the store, but we can't promise to cancel the order or refund it.

If the store or we cancel your order, or we can't deliver it for a reason that isn't your fault, you get a full refund of what you paid.

The 14-day right to cancel. The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 give you 14 days to cancel many purchases made online. That right doesn't apply to:

• food and drink made or prepared for you, such as restaurant meals;
• goods that go off quickly, such as fresh, chilled and frozen food, bread and cakes, and flowers;
• sealed goods that can't be returned for health or hygiene reasons once you've opened them, such as toiletries;
• the delivery and our service, once they've been fully provided. By placing an order, you ask us to provide them straight away, and you accept that you'll lose the right to cancel them once they have been.

The right does apply to grocery items that keep, such as tins, dry food, bottled drinks and household products. You can cancel these within 14 days of the day you receive them, for any reason.

To cancel, tell us clearly within those 14 days, by email or through Help in the app. You can use this wording, but you don't have to:

To Smart Approaches Limited (Smart Eatx), for [store name]: I cancel my contract for the following goods: [items], ordered on [date] and received on [date]. Name: [your name]. Address: [your address]. Date: [today's date].

You must then return the items, unopened and in the condition you received them, within 14 days of telling us. We'll tell you how. You pay the cost of returning them, unless they were faulty or weren't what you ordered.

We'll refund the price of the items, and the delivery fee if you cancel the whole order. We'll do this within 14 days of getting the items back, or of you showing us you've sent them, if that's sooner. We may reduce the refund if the items have been handled more than was needed to check them.

12. If something goes wrong

The Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives you rights. The food and groceries must be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described. Our delivery and service must be carried out with reasonable care and skill.

If an item is missing, wrong, damaged, unsafe or not as described, or the delivery went wrong, tell us as soon as you can through Help in the app or by email, with your order number. Photos help. If you think food has made you ill, keep any packaging and leftovers if you can.

Depending on what went wrong, you may be entitled to a refund, a partial refund or a replacement. For goods that go off quickly, tell us soon after delivery: your right to reject them lasts only as long as they could be expected to last. If our service wasn't carried out with reasonable care and skill, you can ask us to put it right or, if that isn't possible, for a price reduction.

Refunds go back to the card or payment method you used. Once we've agreed a refund, we send it within 14 days, and usually much sooner. Your bank may take a few working days to show it.

If an order is cancelled after you've paid, whether by the store, by us or because it couldn't be delivered, we refund what you paid unless the cancellation was down to you. If you weren't there to receive it, gave a wrong address or phone number, or the order couldn't be handed over because of how you behaved, we may refuse a refund or give a partial one, because the food was made and delivered.

We may decline a refund if a claim isn't genuine, and we may suspend accounts that make repeated claims that don't hold up.

Nothing in these terms affects your legal rights. For free advice, contact Citizens Advice (Advice Direct Scotland in Scotland, or Consumerline in Northern Ireland).

13. Ratings and reviews

After an order is delivered or collected, the app may ask you to rate it. You can rate each item and add a comment, and change or delete your review later.

Your review shows your name and profile picture, the date, your stars and any comment, to other signed-in customers. A store's average rating is shown in the app, and customers can sort and filter stores by rating.

Reviews must be your own honest opinion of an order you've had. Don't post anything false, offensive or discriminatory, or anything that includes someone's personal details. Don't accept anything in return for a review. Fake reviews are banned by the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.

We may remove reviews that break these rules. We don't remove reviews just because they're negative.

If you delete your account, your reviews stay but show as from ‘Deleted customer’, without a picture.

14. Using the app

We give you a personal right to use the app to order for yourself, which you can't transfer. The app, our name and our content belong to us or the people we license them from. Stores' names, logos, menus and photos belong to the stores.

Don't misuse the app. That means you mustn't place fake or fraudulent orders, use someone else's card or account, try to get around our checks or limits, copy or scrape the app, or interfere with how it works. You also mustn't harass or abuse riders, store staff or our team.

We may refuse an order, or suspend or close your account, if you break these terms, if we suspect fraud, or if you're abusive. We'll tell you why, unless the law or a safety reason stops us.

We work to keep the app running, but we can't promise it will always be available or free from errors. We update it from time to time, and you may need the latest version to keep ordering. Some features, such as order progress on your lock screen, depend on your phone.

The app uses notifications to tell you how your order is going. You can turn them off in your phone's settings, but you'll miss updates.

15. Our responsibility for loss or damage

If we break these terms or fail to use reasonable care and skill, we're responsible for loss or damage you suffer that's a foreseeable result. Loss is foreseeable if it's obvious it would happen, or if we both knew it might happen when you ordered.

Each store is responsible for its food and groceries: what's in them, how they're prepared and their allergen information. We're responsible for running the app and for the delivery.

We're not responsible for:

• loss that isn't foreseeable;
• business losses, as the app is for personal use only;
• delays or failures caused by events outside our reasonable control, such as severe weather, road closures or an outage at a provider we rely on. If that happens, we'll tell you, and refund what you paid for anything we couldn't provide.

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else the law doesn't allow us to limit. That includes your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

16. Complaints

If you're unhappy, contact us through Help in the app (when you're signed in, during the support hours it shows) or by email at hello@smarteatx.com. Tell us your order number. We'll reply as soon as we can and try to put things right.

If we can't settle your complaint, we'll tell you about an independent alternative dispute resolution service and whether we're willing to use it. You can also go to court (see The law).

17. Closing your account

You can delete your account in the app, from Settings. We'll email you a code to check it's you. You can't delete your account while an order is on its way or a refund is still being paid.

Your account is closed straight away and deleted after 30 days. If you sign in during those 30 days, the deletion is cancelled. Our Customer Privacy Notice explains what we keep after deletion, and why.

We can close your account by telling you, for example if it's been used in breach of these terms. If we stop offering the app altogether, we'll give you reasonable notice.

18. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms, for example when the law changes or we change how the app works. We'll show the date of the latest version at the top. If a change matters to you, we'll tell you in the app or by email before it applies, and we may ask you to accept the new terms before your next order. Each order is covered by the terms that applied when you placed it.

19. The law and other legal points

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. You can bring a claim in the courts of England and Wales. If you live in Scotland, you can also bring a claim in the Scottish courts; if you live in Northern Ireland, you can also bring one in the courts of Northern Ireland.

We may transfer our rights and duties under these terms to another business, but this won't reduce your rights. You may only transfer yours if we agree in writing.

Nobody else has the right to enforce these terms.

If a court decides part of these terms isn't valid, the rest still applies. If we don't enforce one of our rights straight away, we can still enforce it later.