Terms of use for the shop-owner portal (my.refinds)
Last updated: 20 October 2026
The Dutch version of this text is the source. If the two versions differ in meaning, the Dutch version prevails.
These terms apply if you manage your own shop or market in Refinds. They sit alongside the terms and conditions; where this document governs something specific, it prevails.
Managing your listing is free and stays free. You need buy nothing, and nothing about your visibility changes if you do nothing.
1. Why your shop is already listed
Refinds compiles the guide itself from public sources. Your shop or market is therefore probably already listed before you have heard of us. What we process in doing so, why we may, and what rights you have — including if you never sign in — is set out in privacy statement §7.
This document is about what changes once you take over the listing.
2. An account
- Managing requires an account. You sign in without a password: with a sign-in code by email, or via Apple or Google.
- You are responsible for access to your own mailbox and accounts. Whoever can read your mailbox can claim your listing — that is inherent in any verification by email.
- One person can manage several listings; one listing has one holder.
- Only a person aged 18 or over may create an account. On creating it you confirm that you accept the terms and conditions, including the licence on photos and texts in article 7; we record which version you accepted and when. We remind you of this at the upload field.
3. Claiming your listing
3.1 How we establish that you belong to it
Signing in with your own email address proves who you are, not that you belong to a particular shop. We therefore work with levels of evidence, from strong to weak:
- You read the contact channel we already know. We send the code or link to the email address that is already in our data for that shop or market. Whoever reads that mailbox gets the listing.
- An email address on the shop’s domain, if there is no known contact address. We only approve this route automatically if we can send a warning to another, independent channel that we already knew. If we cannot, the request goes to a human.
- Everything else goes to a human. We will then ask you to supply something showing that you belong to the business.
We always take the strongest available evidence. If we hold a contact address for the business, the code goes there — even if you give us a different address.
3.2 If someone else is already the holder
Once a listing has a holder, a second claim can never succeed automatically, not even with strong evidence. That claim becomes a dispute:
- the existing holder keeps their access but sees a neutral notice that a claim is pending;
- both parties are notified on their own channel;
- we examine both sets of evidence and the listing’s history;
- we decide: reject, transfer, or freeze temporarily until there is clarity. While frozen, the listing stays visible in its last approved state.
We never apply "last one wins".
Is the business changing hands? The transfer follows the same path: the new owner supplies evidence, we transfer, and the history is retained.
3.3 What we do against abuse
We limit the number of claim attempts per listing and per IP address, never show the full contact address we send a code to (only a masked hint), never confirm whether a listing is already claimed, and record every attempt — successful or not. On every successful claim and every significant change we notify the known channel, so that the real owner sees a hijack.
4. What you can manage
4.1 Shop
You manage: name, address (street, number, postcode, town), phone number, email address, website, social media profiles (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest), category, keywords, opening hours and exceptional opening hours.
4.2 Market
For a market series you manage: location, address, photo, and the organisation’s contact details (website, email address, Facebook, Instagram). Per edition you manage: date, start and end time, location, address, price and the number of stalls. You can add editions yourself.
4.3 What you cannot change — and why
Some fields are deliberately out of your reach:
- The description cannot be overwritten directly. There are two other routes for that; see §5.
- Position, status and quality score of your listing in our own production chain, and the provenance data per field. Otherwise an edit could silently determine what does and does not get published, and the trail of "where did this value come from" would break.
- Country and region are derived from your address; if you change the address, we recalculate them.
That is not distrust but a separation of roles: you are the source about your own business, we are responsible for what is published and why.
4.4 "We have closed"
If you have closed, you report that in the portal. That is a report to us, not a button that immediately removes your listing. We check it and act on it. That prevents a misdirected or malicious action from making an existing business disappear from the guide.
If you want your listing removed while the business still exists, that is an objection to the processing. See privacy statement §7.6.
5. The description
We write the text accompanying your listing, based on what we can establish about your business. You can change it in two ways:
- Ask for a rewrite. You tell us what is wrong or what you would like differently; we produce a new proposal. That proposal only goes live once you have accepted it.
- Supply your own text. You write it yourself. We check the text for length, for unwanted phrasing and for spam. If it is in order, it goes live and we lock it, so that our automated chain no longer overwrites it. If it is not, you are told why — or it goes to a human.
We apply the same quality checks on both routes. We do not publish text we cannot substantiate, and we do not publish advertising copy: the guide describes, it does not sell. A text you supply also remains subject to our editorial control: see terms and conditions article 7.7.
6. Photos and rights
- Upload only photos that are your own, or for which you demonstrably have the right to have them published. Note that a photo a photographer took for you often remains theirs, unless you agreed otherwise.
- Passers-by who happen to appear in the picture are permitted. If a recognisable person is the subject of the photo, you have their permission; if a child is the subject, that of a parent or guardian.
- What you permit Refinds to do with a photo, for how long, and what happens when you delete it, is set out in terms and conditions article 7.3: a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence for the channels of Refinds (website, app, own social media, own articles and videos), which ends as soon as you delete the photo, except for publications already made and back-ups. There is no separate tick box for wider use any more; the licence applies to every upload.
- Every uploaded photo is automatically assessed before publication. If it is rejected, it is not kept.
- If someone believes a photo infringes their rights, the notice procedure for third-party rights applies. You indemnify Refinds in accordance with terms and conditions article 7.6.
7. What happens when you change something
- Your change goes live immediately, after automated checks on form and plausibility (valid email address, coherent opening hours, recognisable social media links, an address that can be located).
- What you fill in yourself, we leave alone. A field you have set is no longer overwritten by our automated chain — until you release it again.
- One exception: exceptional opening hours whose date has already passed are cleaned up. In doing so we remove only days before today in your own time zone; we add nothing and change nothing.
- Sampling. We review a proportion of changes manually afterwards, and we do so more often for higher-impact changes — name, address, email address, website. We notify you when we do.
- We may revert a change or remove a photo if it is demonstrably incorrect, contrary to these terms, or for an editorial reason (see terms and conditions article 7.7). You will be briefly told why.
8. What we expect of you
- You manage only listings you genuinely belong to.
- You enter accurate data and keep it up to date.
- You use the description and keywords to describe your business, not to advertise, to rank on inaccurate search terms or to point elsewhere.
- You post no content that infringes the rights of others.
In the event of abuse we may withdraw your access to a listing or close your account. For serious or repeated abuse we do so immediately; otherwise we tell you first. You are told on what ground, and you can respond to it; see terms and conditions article 14.
9. Messages from us
As a holder you receive:
- transactional messages — confirmation of your claim, a warning on a significant change, notice of a dispute. Those are part of managing the listing; you cannot unsubscribe from them while you manage it;
- service reminders — that a season is changing, for example, or that your agenda is running empty. You can always unsubscribe from those, with one click. In any case we send no more than one every fourteen days.
Unsubscribing takes effect immediately and is recorded in the same central list as any other opt-out — there is no second list.
10. Stopping
- You can end your management of a listing. The listing itself then continues to exist as part of the guide, in its last known state; only your access lapses. Photos you placed on the listing remain there unless you delete them before the end or ask us to delete them afterwards; see terms and conditions article 14 paragraph 6.
- You can have your account deleted by asking us to do so via the contact address; we carry that out within the statutory period of one month. We then withdraw your links and erase your identity and session data. We keep the changes you made to a listing without your name or email address, so that disputes about the listing can still be settled (see privacy statement §11).
See terms and conditions §13, §16 and Contact in the privacy statement.