Good villages are built by good neighbors.

Be a real person

REC'D BY is built around real relationships and real recommendations. Use accurate information about who you are, and don't:

• Impersonate another person
• Create misleading or fraudulent profiles
• Misrepresent your relationship with another user
• Pretend to have used or worked with a caregiver when you haven't
• Manipulate connections simply to gain access to another family's village

The value of REC'D BY depends on knowing that the people behind the recommendations are real.

Recommend people you actually know

A recommendation should mean something. Recommend a caregiver because you have genuine experience with them and believe your experience could be useful to someone you know. Recommendations should be based on actual interactions — not hearsay, incentives, advertising, or something you saw online. You don't have to think someone is perfect; you simply need to be honest about your own experience. And remember: a recommendation is personal — not a guarantee. Another family's needs, expectations, children, pets, home, and experience may be different from yours.

Share your experience honestly

Ratings, recommendations, and notes should reflect your genuine experience. We welcome thoughtful feedback — including experiences that weren't positive — but content should remain relevant, factual to the best of your knowledge, and respectful. Please don't use REC'D BY to:

• Make knowingly false statements
• Threaten or harass another person
• Retaliate against someone over a personal dispute
• Post private or sensitive information that isn't yours to share
• Coordinate false ratings or recommendations
• Offer or accept compensation in exchange for misleading recommendations
• Use discriminatory, hateful, abusive, or degrading language

REC'D BY may remove content that violates these guidelines.

Respect household privacy

Being in someone's village isn't an invitation into their entire life. REC'D BY intentionally limits what different connections can see. Don't take information you've learned through REC'D BY and share it somewhere it wasn't intended to go. That's especially important for information involving children, pets, household members, addresses or booking locations, travel plans, entry or security information, care routines, medical, allergy, or safety information, contact information, and booking details.

If information was shared with you so you could provide care, use it for that purpose. Please don't screenshot, repost, forward, publish, or otherwise distribute private household information without permission.

Respect caregiver privacy, too

Don't publish a caregiver's private contact information outside the context in which you received it. Don't create misleading profiles for caregivers or intentionally provide inaccurate information about their rates, availability, experience, certifications, or services. When you add someone to REC'D BY, give them the opportunity to review and update information about themselves when that functionality is available. A caregiver is a person — not a listing.

Keep your information current

Life changes, and so do schedules. Families should keep important household and booking information reasonably current, and caregivers should make reasonable efforts to keep their availability and profile details current. If plans change, communicate. If you can't make a confirmed booking, say so as soon as reasonably possible. Good care coordination depends on good information.

Honor your commitments

A confirmed booking involves real people making real plans. When a caregiver confirms a booking, a family is relying on them. When a family books a caregiver, that caregiver may be reserving time they could have offered elsewhere. We understand that children get sick, flights get canceled, and life changes — when it does, communicate promptly and respectfully. Repeated intentional no-shows, fraudulent bookings, harassment, or abuse of the booking system may result in restrictions or removal from REC'D BY.

Family care counts, too

Not every caregiver is someone you hire. Grandparents, relatives, family friends, and other trusted people can be part of a household's care team. Treat them with the same respect for privacy and communication you would expect with a professional caregiver. REC'D BY is a care-coordination tool whether the person helping you is being paid or simply loves your kids enough to take them for the weekend.

Pay fairly + clearly

When care is paid, families and caregivers should agree on important terms before the care begins whenever reasonably possible — rate or total compensation, expected hours, overnight or multi-day arrangements, additional responsibilities, reimbursements, cancellation expectations, and payment method. REC'D BY can help organize care, but the family and caregiver are responsible for agreeing to the terms of their arrangement. If you use REC'D BY payment processing, applicable transaction and convenience fees will be disclosed during the payment process. You may also choose to pay directly using supported external payment options.

Don't use REC'D BY to spam or solicit

REC'D BY isn't a lead-generation directory. Don't use access to families, caregivers, contact information, or connections to send unsolicited advertising, mass marketing, recruitment campaigns, spam, or unrelated commercial solicitations. As REC'D BY expands to additional household professionals, we may create specific ways for appropriate services to participate. Until then, access to someone's village is not permission to market to it.

No harassment or discrimination

Everyone using REC'D BY deserves to be treated with dignity. Don't use REC'D BY to threaten, stalk, intimidate, exploit, harass, or discriminate against another person. Discriminatory behavior based on characteristics protected by applicable law is not permitted. Immediate safety concerns should be directed to the appropriate local emergency or law-enforcement resources — not handled through REC'D BY.

Don't misuse safety tools

Background checks, identity or credential information, recommendations, ratings, and other trust features exist to help families make informed decisions. Don't:

• Alter or falsify results
• Misrepresent someone's screening status
• Share a private background-check report without authorization
• Upload false credentials
• Claim REC'D BY has “approved,” “certified,” or “vetted” someone when it hasn't
• Treat one screening result as a guarantee of future conduct

Trust tools provide information. Families still make their own decisions.

Keep the platform safe

Don't attempt to interfere with REC'D BY or access information you aren't authorized to see. That includes attempting to circumvent privacy or permission controls, access another person's account, scrape user or caregiver information, probe or exploit security vulnerabilities, introduce malware or harmful code, reverse engineer protected portions of the service where prohibited, or use automated tools to collect data without permission. If you believe you've discovered a security issue, please report it privately through our Contact page rather than publishing household or user information.

When something doesn't feel right

If you encounter content, conduct, or a user that you believe violates these Guidelines, please contact REC'D BY. Reports may be reviewed and appropriate action may include removing content, limiting functionality, suspending access, removing an account, or preserving information when reasonably necessary for safety, fraud prevention, dispute handling, or legal compliance. We may also take action when conduct outside REC'D BY presents a credible risk to users or the integrity of the service, where permitted by law and appropriate under the circumstances.

A note about trust

REC'D BY can help you understand who recommended someone, organize ratings and recommendations, help coordinate bookings, offer screening and background-check tools, and help get useful information to a caregiver. But it can't make a personal trust decision for you. Families should use their own judgment when deciding who they invite into their homes and trust with their children, pets, property, or loved ones — and caregivers should use their own judgment when deciding which families and care arrangements are right for them.

Technology can help. Trust is still human.

Thank you for helping make REC'D BY the kind of village you'd want your own friends and family to join. Good people, recommended by your people.