Terms & privacy

Who you are dealing with

Counterboard

Counterboard is a digital menu board and price list service operated from the United Kingdom. Our postal address and company details are on request from hello@counterboard.com, and appear on every invoice.

What you are paying for

The subscription

One screen is free, for as long as you like, with no card and a small counterboard.com band along the bottom of the board. Paying takes the band off: a monthly subscription, charged from the day you subscribe, priced per screen paired to your account at that address: one price for the first screen and a lower one for each screen after it, as shown on the pricing page. The price for your screens is the price you see before you pay.

If you pair another screen, your subscription goes up by one extra screen straight away, and you pay the difference for the rest of the month. A screen counts from when it is paired until you remove it in the dashboard, whether or not it is switched on. Removing one never lowers the price part way through a month: your next renewal is still charged for the screens you had, and the lower price starts from the renewal after that.

There is no contract and no notice period. Cancel from inside the dashboard or by email and it stops at the end of the month you have paid for. We do not refund part months, and we do not charge to set you up or to draw your first board. Changing anything on your board yourself, in the dashboard, never costs anything.

Fair use of the loyalty card. The loyalty card comes with the paid plan, with fair use of wallet cards: up to 2,000 a month for each shop, counting every card a customer adds to Apple or Google Wallet and every stamp that updates one. That is far more than a busy shop uses. If a shop goes well over it month after month, we will talk to you before anything changes, and nothing is ever charged for it without your agreement.

If a payment fails your boards keep showing. A screen going blank over a fryer at lunchtime is a worse outcome for everybody than an unpaid month, so we will email you rather than switch anything off.

The artwork

Ours to draw, yours to use

We draw your first board's artwork at no extra charge, and often before you have paid us anything. New artwork you ask for after that, such as a board for another screen or a design for the season, is quoted before we start, and you only pay for it if you agree to the quote. Whatever we draw stays ours. What you get is a licence: while you are a Counterboard customer you may show it on any screen at your own premises, in your own printed material, and on your own website and social accounts, as much as you like.

What the licence does not cover: selling it, giving it to somebody else, or using it on a board or price list system that is not ours. If you leave, you stop using the artwork we drew — your menu or price list, your prices, your own photographs and your own logo are a different matter and are dealt with below.

We keep the original files and a dated record of everything we draw. That is not a threat, it is housekeeping: it means we can redraw your board in five years, and it means that if somebody else puts your board on their wall we can say whose it was.

If you would rather own the artwork outright, ask. We will quote for it and assign it to you in writing.

Your side of it

Your menu or price list stays yours

Your prices, your item names, your logo and any photographs you upload remain entirely yours. We store them so your screens can show them, and we use them for nothing else. We do not sell them, and we do not use them to train anything.

You keep the right to take them with you. Export is in the dashboard under Settings, and if you ever cannot get at your own menu or price list, email us and we will send it to you.

When you upload a photograph you are telling us you are allowed to use it. A picture taken off somebody else's website is their picture, and putting it on your board is your responsibility rather than ours.

Information

What we hold, and why

Your account. The name and email of whoever signs in, so they can sign in. Passwords are stored as a hash and cannot be read back, by us or by anybody else.

Your shop. Its name, trade, town and menu or price list, because that is the product.

Your screens. Which televisions are paired, when each was last heard from, and what version of the board it is showing, so we can tell you when one has gone off.

Visitors to our website. We count how many people open a page and which site sent them. If you press Yes on our cookie question, Google Analytics and Google Ads set cookies so we can see which adverts bring shops to Counterboard, and we set one cookie of our own, cb_hero. It keeps which of two versions of our front page and trade pages you are shown, for 90 days, so we can count which works better; you are given one from your next page after pressing Yes. Press No thanks, or don't answer, and neither Google's cookies nor cb_hero is set, and you see the page as it normally is. You can change your answer by clearing this site's data in your browser.

The advert that brought you. If you come to us from an advert, the link carries its tags (the utm tags) and a click number from Google Ads (gclid, gbraid or wbraid). When you sign up or draw a free board, we keep these with your shop's sign-up details. We use them to see which adverts bring shops to Counterboard, and to tell Google Ads when an advert led to a sign-up. No cookie is used for this. They are kept and deleted with the rest of your shop's details.

Questions asked of the Help assistant. We keep them, without anything that identifies the person, to improve the service. An email address or phone number typed into a question is blanked out first. If you are signed in to your dashboard, we note which shop asked.

What you do in your dashboard. Once you have signed up, we keep a short record of what you do in Counterboard: the setup steps you reach, where you got stuck, when you make or change a board, when you try to pair a screen and whether it worked, which screen code was used and when, when you add or change your logo, when you use credits and for what, when you send a board to your screens, and which of our help pages you read. We do not keep what you type into it. We use it to fix the places people get stuck and to make our emails to you useful, for example a tip about the step you have not finished yet. Each entry is deleted after 90 days, and the whole record is deleted within a day if you press “stop these emails” or close your account. We never keep this for shops that have not signed up.

Payments. Taken by Stripe. Card numbers never reach us and we never see them. We hold the reference Stripe gives us and nothing more.

How busy your shop is. When you sign up we may ask roughly how many customers come in on a normal day. Answering is optional. We use it to understand the kinds of shops that use Counterboard and to improve the service.

Anonymised statistics. We may combine information from many shops (for example how many use Counterboard in a trade or area, or typical customer numbers) into statistics that we publish or share, including with suppliers. These statistics never name a shop, and nobody can pick out any single shop from them.

Offers from suppliers. If you tick “Tell me about offers from suppliers for my trade” when you sign up, we will send you offers from suppliers relevant to your trade. We do not give your details to those suppliers; any offer comes from us. We keep a record of when you agreed and the words you agreed to. You can stop at any time in Settings, or by using the unsubscribe link in any such email. The box is unticked unless you tick it.

Recommending a shop. If you sign up using another shop's link, we record which shop sent you so that both of you can get a free month when you start paying. We only tell the shop that sent you how many shops joined with their link, never your name.

We keep your data while you are a customer and for a year afterwards in case you come back, then delete it. Ask us to delete it sooner and we will, within thirty days. You can ask for a copy of everything we hold about you at any time.

Partners and affiliates

If you recommend Counterboard for money

What you earn. A share of what a shop that signed up from your link actually pays us, after Stripe's card fee on each payment: for its subscription and the credits it buys, the share for its first twelve months, then the share after that, as your page and your email say. Nothing on trials, refunds, add-ons or money we give back. The terms you were given the day you joined are kept with you and are not changed later without your agreement.

Not your own shop. A shop you own or run, or one signed up with your own email address or your business's own domain, earns you nothing.

Paid monthly by Stripe, to the bank account you connect once on your own page (Stripe keeps your bank details; we never see them), for the month before, once you are owed £25 or more; less is carried to the next month. Stripe's fees for paying you are ours. Money in another currency is paid by arrangement. A statement comes by email on the 1st of each month, and your own page shows the same numbers at any time. Anything owed and unpaid when you stop being a partner is still paid.

How you share it. Honestly, and never by spam: no bought lists, no messages to people who have not asked for them where the law says you need permission, no pretending to be Counterboard, and no advertising on our name (for example bidding on "Counterboard" in search adverts). Say what the shop gets the way we do: free for the stated time, no card.

Ending it. Either of us can end it at any time. We can end it at once, and not pay for the shops concerned, if a link is used against these terms. We may change the offer for people who join later.

Your details. We keep your name, email, link and what you are owed, to pay you and to send your statements, and nothing else. We never tell you a shop's details: only how many signed up and what they earn you.

Offers

Emails to your customers, sent by us for you

Offers is a monthly add-on to the loyalty card. When it is on, customers who left “the shop may email me offers” ticked when they got their card are on your list, and we send your emails to them: the ones you write and press Send on, the ones you put on a schedule, and the two automatic ones (a reward is ready; stamps are about to run out).

When you switch Offers on you agree that:

They are your emails. They go out in your shop's name, to people who asked your shop for them. You are the sender in law; we are the postman, sending on your instructions.

You answer for the words. No claims you cannot keep, nothing unlawful, nothing to anyone who has pressed stop.

Every email carries a stop link that works without signing in. When somebody presses it we take them off your list, and you do not put them back.

The addresses are used for your emails, for finding a lost card, and for nothing else. We never pass them on and never write to your customers about anything of ours.

Switch it off any time from Card & invoices. Your list stays, so it is there if you switch it back on.

Email

If we wrote to you first

We sometimes write to a shop we have not heard from, with a board already drawn for them. Every one of those emails has a one-press link that stops it for good, and pressing it means we never write to that shop again. Replying with the word stop does the same thing.

We do not buy lists, we do not pass your address to anybody, and we do not send anything that is not about your own board.

The dull but necessary part

What we do not promise

We work hard to keep every screen showing, and each one holds the whole board on itself so it keeps working when the internet drops. Even so, we cannot promise the service is never interrupted, and we are not liable for lost trade if it is. If we get something badly wrong, the most we will be liable for is what you have paid us in the previous twelve months.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales.

We may change these terms. If a change matters to you we will email you before it takes effect, and you may cancel rather than accept it.