Terms and Conditions

1. About these terms

Mypetzilla (mypetzilla.co.uk) is run by MYPETZILLA LIMITED. In these documents, “we”, “us” and “our” mean MYPETZILLA LIMITED.

• Address: Studio I1c Witan Studios, Witan Gate, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom, MK9 1EF
• Email: [email protected]
• Contact form: mypetzilla.co.uk/contact

How we use personal information is explained in our Privacy Policy and the cookies we use in our Cookie Policy. Both form part of how the site works, but the Privacy Policy is information for you, not a contract.

In these terms, a seller is anyone who places an advert, whether they are selling a pet or rehoming one. That includes private owners, breeders, rescue organisations and businesses. A buyer is anyone looking for a pet, including people who want to adopt.

2. What Mypetzilla is, and is not

Mypetzilla is an online classified advertising site. We let sellers advertise pets and let buyers find them and get in touch. We also publish breed guides, pet advice and a directory of rescue centres.

• We are not part of any sale or adoption. The agreement to sell, rehome or adopt a pet is between the buyer and the seller. We do not own, keep, inspect, transport or deliver animals, and we do not act as an agent for either side.
• We never handle money for a pet. The only payments taken on Mypetzilla are for advert packages (section 6). Any deposit or price for a pet is agreed and paid between buyer and seller.
• We don’t guarantee what sellers tell us. Sellers are responsible for their adverts. We review every advert before it goes live (section 12), but we can’t confirm every detail about an animal, its health or its history.
• Labels only mean what they say. A label such as “licence checked” or “verified rescue” appears only when our team has carried out that check and it is still valid. See what our seller labels mean. Any other details, such as a licence number the seller gave us without a check, are the seller’s own statement.
• Breed guides and pet advice are general information. They are not veterinary advice. Speak to a vet about your own animal.

3. Your account

• You must be 18 or over to create an account, place an advert or contact a seller.
• Mypetzilla is for people in the UK. You need a UK address to place an advert, and the animal must be living in the UK.
• Have one account. A rescue or other organisation has one account in its own name. Don’t open extra accounts, for example to place more adverts or to hide how many animals you breed or sell.
• Give us accurate details and keep them up to date. Use your own name; don’t pretend to be someone else or to represent an organisation you don’t act for.
• Keep your password private and don’t share your account. You are responsible for what happens through it. Tell us straight away if you think someone else has used it.
• If you act for a rescue, breeding business or other organisation, you confirm you are allowed to accept these terms on its behalf, and these terms apply to the organisation as well as to you.
• You can stop using Mypetzilla at any time, and close your account yourself in your account settings. Closing it takes your adverts down straight away. A card payment held for an advert we have not yet approved is released, so you are not charged. Payments already taken are not refunded, except that private sellers keep their right to cancel within 14 days (section 7). Some records are kept after an account closes, as our Privacy Policy explains.

4. Placing an advert

When you place an advert, you promise that:

• you own the animal or are authorised by its owner (or rescue) to advertise it;
• the advert is accurate and complete, including the animal’s age, sex, breed, health, vaccinations, microchip status and any known problems, and that you will keep it up to date;
• the photos are of the actual animal being advertised (or its parents, if labelled as such), and are not copied from elsewhere or created or altered with AI tools;
• the location in the advert is where the animal lives, and buyers can see it there. Puppies, kittens and other young animals can be seen with their mother;
• you have chosen the seller category that truly describes you (private owner, breeder, rescue or business), and you will not present a business as a private sale;
• the price shown is the full price you will ask, and you will not add hidden charges;
• the animal is available, and you will mark the advert reserved, sold or rehomed promptly when that changes.

One advert covers one animal or one litter, and a litter is advertised together in one advert. Don’t place more than one advert for the same animal. Only rehome an animal to someone aged 18 or over.

Adverts must meet the minimum standards for pet adverts set by the Pet Advertising Advisory Group (PAAG), which we follow. We may ask you for changes, or refuse an advert, if it doesn’t meet these terms, those standards or the law.

5. Rules for selling and rehoming animals

You are responsible for following every law that applies to you and the animal. Depending on where you are in the UK, that includes the following. This is a summary, not a full statement of the law; if you are unsure, check with your local council or PAAG.

• Licences. If you need a licence to breed or sell animals (for example, in England a dog breeding licence is needed to breed three or more litters in 12 months, or to breed and sell dogs as a business), you must hold a valid licence and show its number and issuing council in your advert.
• Puppies and kittens under six months (“Lucy’s Law”). In England, Wales and Scotland, puppies and kittens under six months old may only be sold by the person who bred them, or rehomed by a rescue. Third-party sellers and dealers must not advertise them.
• Minimum age. Puppies and kittens must not go to a new home before they are eight weeks old. Litters can only be advertised once they are born.
• Microchipping. Dogs must be microchipped, with the keeper’s details registered on a database, before they go to a new home (and by eight weeks old). In England, cats must be microchipped by 20 weeks old.
• Banned dogs. You must not advertise any dog of a type banned under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 or equivalent law, including the Pit Bull Terrier, Japanese Tosa, Dogo Argentino, Fila Brasileiro and XL Bully types, or crosses of them.
• Mutilations. You must not advertise animals with cropped ears, or with docked tails except where the law allows it for certified working dogs.
• Welfare. Animals must be healthy enough to be rehomed, and you must meet their needs under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 (or the equivalent law in Scotland and Northern Ireland). You must not sell an animal to anyone under 16.
• Protected and restricted species. Only advertise animals in the categories the site offers. Don’t advertise wild-caught animals, or species that need a licence or permit (for example under CITES), without it.

Adverts we don’t accept

Even where the law would allow it, we don’t accept adverts:

• for an animal that is pregnant, or that may be;
• offering an animal in exchange for another animal, goods or services;
• offering to deliver an animal or send it by post or courier. Buyers collect from where the animal lives;
• to rent or hire out an animal, or to loan one (except horses and donkeys);
• for animals sold as food, or for farmed animals;
• for primates, dangerous wild animals or invasive species;
• for dogs offered for working, hunting, guarding or protection in the pet section, or for stud services outside a stud advert;
• presenting an animal as a gift or present, for example for Christmas.

Some of these are checked automatically when you submit an advert (section 12). Our team may refuse any advert that we reasonably believe puts an animal’s welfare at risk, even if it isn’t listed here.

6. Paid adverts, payment and refunds

Placing an advert costs money. Searching, browsing and messaging sellers are free. Verified rescue organisations get our Spotlight package free; the package page shows what applies to you. Before you pay you will see the package, what it includes, how long it runs and the full price. There are no charges added at the end.

• Payment. Card payments are handled by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number. When you pay for a new advert, your card is held, not charged.
• When you are charged. We take the payment only when we approve the advert, and the advert period starts then. If we refuse the advert, or you withdraw it before we approve it, the hold is released and you are not charged.
• Changes we ask for. If our team asks you to change the advert before approval, you can edit and resubmit it at no extra cost.
• Renewals. In the last 14 days of an advert, or after it has ended, you can renew it for 30 more days with Essential features. The price is shown before you pay and you are charged straight away. An advert that has already ended goes back to our team first; if we refuse it, we refund the renewal.
• Upgrades. While an advert is live you can move it up to a higher package. You pay the difference between the two packages at today’s prices, straight away. The extra features start once the payment is confirmed and the end date stays the same.
• Featured place and bumps. Featured adverts are labelled “Featured” and share up to three places above the results they match, in an order that changes through the day, so a particular position is not guaranteed. A bump moves an advert back to the top of the newest adverts; it does not change any other order.
• Price changes never affect an advert you have already paid for.

Refunds

Payments are non-refundable once an advert is live. That includes when the pet sells or is rehomed early, when the advert gets no enquiries, when you change your mind, and when we remove the advert because it broke these terms. This does not affect your legal rights. In particular:

• if you are charged twice by mistake, we refund the duplicate payment;
• if something goes wrong on our side (for example the site is unavailable for a significant time, a paid feature isn’t delivered, or we remove an advert by mistake), we put it right, by adding back the lost days or re-running the feature. If we can’t, we refund a fair amount;
• private sellers can cancel within 14 days, as section 7 explains.

Refunds go back to the card you paid with. Stripe says they usually take 5 to 10 working days to arrive. If you open a chargeback with your bank, we may pause the advert while it is resolved.

7. Your right to cancel (private sellers)

If you advertise as a private individual (not as a business, breeder business or organisation), the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 give you the right to cancel a paid advert within 14 days of paying, without giving a reason.

• When you buy, you ask us to start your advert as soon as it is approved, within those 14 days. If you then cancel within the 14 days, we refund what you paid minus a proportionate amount for the days the advert has already been live and any extras already provided.
• To cancel, contact us with your advert’s details and say you want to cancel. You can use the contact form or email us. We refund within 14 days of you telling us.
• Business sellers (including licensed breeders running a business, rescues and other organisations) don’t have this cancellation right.

8. Buying or adopting a pet

Finding the right pet takes care. To protect yourself and the animal:

• Always see the animal in person, at the seller’s home or premises, before paying anything. For puppies and kittens, see them with their mother.
• Never send a deposit or payment for a pet you haven’t seen. Be very wary of anyone who asks for payment by bank transfer before a visit, or who offers to deliver a pet.
• Keep your conversation on Mypetzilla messages. Be wary of a seller who wants to move to WhatsApp, text or email straight away.
• Check the paperwork: microchip registration, vaccination record, vet checks and, where it applies, the breeder’s licence. You can check a licence with the council that issued it.
• Read PAAG’s advice on buying a pet, and report any advert that looks wrong.

Any agreement you make with a seller, including about the pet’s health, is between you and the seller. Your legal rights against a business seller (for example under the Consumer Rights Act 2015) are with that seller, not with us.

9. Messages between members

You can message sellers through Mypetzilla without sharing your email address or phone number. Use messages only to talk about the advert.

• Be honest and polite. Don’t send spam, threats, harassment, scams, or links designed to collect other people’s details or money.
• You can block a member and report a conversation at any time.
• Our team doesn’t routinely read messages. We may read a conversation when it is reported, when we need to investigate fraud, abuse or a breach of these terms, or when the law requires it. Every time our team opens a conversation, it is recorded. We may remove a message that breaks these terms.

10. Your content

You keep ownership of the text and photos you upload. You give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, copy, resize, display and share them for as long as needed to run Mypetzilla: on the site, in emails such as search alerts, and when we promote adverts (for example by sharing a link). The licence ends when the content is deleted, except for copies we must keep for legal reasons or that others have already shared.

You promise you have the right to upload the content and that it doesn’t break anyone else’s rights. Don’t upload photos of people without their permission, and don’t include personal details such as a home address or phone number in an advert.

11. Things you must not do

You must not:

• post anything illegal, false, misleading, offensive or discriminatory;
• advertise an animal you don’t have, or use an advert to collect deposits or personal details;
• advertise anything other than animals in the categories we offer, or place “wanted” adverts;
• get around our checks: for example by creating a new account after being banned, splitting a business across private accounts, or changing an advert after approval to show a different animal;
• copy or scrape the site’s content or adverts by automated means, or try to break, overload or gain unauthorised access to it;
• use other members’ details for anything other than the advert they were shared about.

12. How we check and order adverts, and reporting problems

• Our team reviews every advert before it goes live. Our systems also check adverts automatically for wording and details that break our rules or the law. Some problems stop an advert being submitted until you change it, and others send it to our team for a closer look. A person makes the decision to approve or refuse an advert.
• Approval only means an advert met our standards when we reviewed it. It is not a guarantee about the seller or the animal.
• Anyone can report an advert using “Report this advert”, report a conversation from the messages page, or contact us. We look at every report and act quickly on anything illegal or that puts an animal or a person at risk. We may tell the police, local council or other authorities where the law requires it or a crime may have been committed.

How adverts are ordered

You choose how search results are sorted: newest first, price (lowest or highest), distance from a place, or how well an advert matches the words you searched for. If you don’t choose, we sort by how well adverts match your words when you search for words, by distance when you give a place, and otherwise by newest first. Some paid packages give an advert more visibility, for example a clearly labelled “Featured” place at the top of matching results, or moving it back to the top of the newest adverts at set times. What each package includes is shown before you pay. Nothing else that is paid for affects the order.

13. Removing adverts and suspending accounts

We may refuse, pause or remove an advert, record a warning (a “strike”) against a seller, or suspend or close an account if we reasonably believe these terms or the law have been broken, someone is at risk, or we are required to by law. Repeated or serious breaches lead to a permanent ban.

Where we can, we tell you what we have done and why. If you think we got it wrong, contact us and a member of our team will look at it again. If we made a mistake, we put it right and restore your advert or account.

We may also close an account for another reason, such as no longer offering the service, by giving you at least 30 days’ notice by email.

Business sellers. If we restrict or suspend your adverts or account, we email you our reasons when it takes effect. Before we end your use of the site entirely, we give you at least 30 days’ notice and our reasons, unless the law requires otherwise or you have seriously or repeatedly broken these terms. You can ask us to review any of these decisions within 14 days through our complaint process (section 16).

If we remove an advert for breaking these terms, the payment is not refunded (section 6). If we close your account for another reason, we refund the unused part of any live advert.

Data about business sellers

Business sellers keep ownership of their adverts. You can ask us at any time, including after your account closes, for a copy of the data we hold about your account: your adverts, your payments and the messages in your conversations. We don’t give you other members’ personal details beyond what they shared with you, and we don’t give one seller’s data to another.

14. Our responsibility to you

We provide Mypetzilla with reasonable care and skill. If we fall short, we will put it right, or reduce the price if we can’t.

• We are not responsible for what members do. We are not liable for an animal’s health, temperament or history, for a sale or adoption that goes wrong, or for what a buyer or seller says or does, unless we caused the loss by our own negligence or breach of these terms.
• Losses we could not foresee. We are not responsible for losses that were not a foreseeable result of us breaking these terms or failing to use reasonable care.
• Business losses. If you use Mypetzilla for business, we are not liable for loss of profit, revenue, business or opportunity, and our total liability to you in any 12 months is limited to the greater of £100 and the amount you paid us in those 12 months.
• The site may sometimes be unavailable for maintenance or because of problems outside our control. We will try to keep this short.
• Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow us to limit, and nothing affects your legal rights as a consumer.

15. Changes to the site and to these terms

We may update the site and these terms, for example when the law changes or we add features. The date at the top shows when these terms last changed.

• If a change matters to you, we will tell you before it takes effect, by email or on the site. Where the change requires it, we will ask you to agree to the new terms.
• For business sellers, we give at least 15 days’ notice of changes, unless the law requires a faster change or the change is needed to deal with an unforeseen risk to the site, its users or animals.
• The terms in force when you paid apply to that advert. If you don’t accept a change, you can close your account before it takes effect.

16. Complaints

If you are unhappy with Mypetzilla, please contact us using the details in section 1 and tell us what happened. We will acknowledge your complaint and aim to give you a full reply within 10 working days. If it will take longer, we will tell you why.

Business sellers can also use our complaint process for anything about how we apply these terms, rank adverts, restrict or suspend an account or advert, or give access to your data. At the end we explain our decision in writing.

If we can’t resolve a business complaint, we are willing to try mediation in good faith, through the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) or another mediator accredited by the Civil Mediation Council that we both agree on. Either side can still go to court.

17. Which law applies

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can bring legal proceedings in your local courts, and the mandatory consumer law where you live still applies to you. Otherwise, the courts of England and Wales deal with any dispute.

18. Other important terms

• If a court decides part of these terms can’t be enforced, the rest still applies.
• If we don’t enforce a term straight away, we can still enforce it later.
• We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to another organisation that takes over Mypetzilla, and we will tell you if that happens. Your rights under these terms won’t be reduced.
• Only you and we have rights under these terms. Nobody else can enforce them.