Terms of service

1. What Merla is

Merla is a digital health record for pets. You create pets, keep their record (vaccinations, medications, weight, symptoms, diagnoses, vet visits, preventive care, food, costs, photos, home history), organise pets in spaces with other people, share excerpts via pet pass link, hand a record over to another person and export your data as a file at any time.

Merla is no substitute for seeing a vet. The app gives no medical advice, makes no diagnoses and does not guarantee that due-date displays are complete or timely; they calculate only with what you have entered. The app sends no reminders or notifications; you see due dates in the app.

For shelters and rescues there is a separate workspace. It currently runs with selected pilot shelters; the agreements made with each shelter apply to it in addition.

2. Account

Anyone of legal age may create an account. Each person keeps their own account, keeps their credentials secret and reports suspected misuse to us. You are responsible for everything that happens through your account, as far as you are accountable for it.

Registration is complete once you confirm your email address. This concludes the user contract for the free plan.

3. Plans and prices

• Free: the core features for one pet with 250 MB of storage for photos, permanently free of charge.
• Private: 24.99 € per year or 3.49 € per month. The plan is tied to your account and covers all spaces you own, with 5 GB of storage per space.
• Organisation: 59 € per month per shelter, regardless of the number of pets and members, with 20 GB of storage per space. The first pilot shelters work a full year for free.

All prices include statutory VAT. The prices shown on the pricing page at the time of booking apply. The contract for a paid plan is concluded when we confirm your booking and activate the plan.

The monthly plan renews month by month and can be cancelled to the end of the current month. The yearly plan runs for twelve months; after that it continues for an indefinite period and can be cancelled monthly. We announce price changes in the app at least six weeks in advance; you can then cancel before they take effect.

After a paid plan ends, everything remains, readable and exportable. In a private account one pet of your choice additionally stays fully editable, all other records become read-only. In the organisation workspace, after the plan ends everything can still be read and exported, but nothing can be edited any more. Shared links keep working. You can resume the plan at any time. The only hard limit is the storage quota of the respective plan.

4. Right of withdrawal for consumers

You have the right to withdraw from the contract for a paid plan within fourteen days without giving reasons. The period starts on the day the contract is concluded. To exercise your right of withdrawal, inform us of your decision by an unambiguous statement, for example by email to hello@merla.pet or by letter to Broken Ladder Labs UG (haftungsbeschränkt), Am Büschel 7, 67273 Bobenheim am Berg, Germany. You may use the model form below, but you do not have to. To meet the deadline it is sufficient that you send your notice before the period expires.

Effects of withdrawal: If you withdraw, we refund all payments we received from you without undue delay and at the latest within fourteen days from the day we received your notice, using the same means of payment you used. If you requested that the service begins during the withdrawal period, you pay us a reasonable amount for the part of the service provided until your withdrawal, in proportion to the full scope of the contract.

Model withdrawal form (if you want to withdraw from the contract, fill in this form and send it back): To Broken Ladder Labs UG (haftungsbeschränkt), Am Büschel 7, 67273 Bobenheim am Berg, Germany, hello@merla.pet. I hereby withdraw from the contract concluded by me for the plan (Private or Organisation), booked on (date), for the account (email address). Name, address, date, signature (only if notified on paper).

5. Your content and duties

What you enter belongs to you. You grant us only the right to store and process your content and to display it to the people you designate: members of your spaces and recipients of your links.

You enter only content you are entitled to: no photos without the necessary rights, no information about other people without permission, nothing unlawful. You are responsible for the information on a public adoption page.

In case of a violation we may remove the affected content and, for serious or repeated violations, suspend the account. We announce this beforehand, unless there is imminent danger.

6. Sharing and transfer

Pet pass links show the released sections to anyone who has the link. You decide whom you give a link to and can revoke it at any time.

Handing a record over to another person is final: after acceptance the record belongs to the recipient. Personal notes stay with you. We do not broker pets and are not party to agreements between owners.

7. Availability, development, backups

We run the app with the care of a small team but cannot guarantee uninterrupted operation. We announce maintenance where possible. We keep developing the app; features may change or be removed as long as the core (keeping, sharing and exporting a record) remains.

We back up the data regularly. In addition you can export your data yourself at any time; we recommend doing so before major changes.

8. Liability

We are liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, and under the German Product Liability Act.

For slight negligence we are liable only for the breach of essential contractual duties, meaning duties whose fulfilment makes the performance of the contract possible in the first place and on whose observance you may regularly rely, and then limited to the typical, foreseeable damage.

Decisions about a pet's health made on the basis of the data stored in the app are the responsibility of you and your vet.

9. Term and termination

The free account runs indefinitely. You end it at any time by deleting your account in the settings. Paid plans you cancel as described in section 3.

We may terminate the user contract with four weeks' notice, for example if we discontinue the service. In that case you can export your data until the end of the notice period. The right to suspend accounts for violations remains unaffected.

10. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms where there is a valid reason, such as new features, changed laws or case law. We announce changes in the app at least six weeks in advance. If you do not object before they take effect, the new terms apply; we point this out in the announcement. If you do not agree, you can cancel until then.

11. Final provisions

The law of the Federal Republic of Germany applies. If you are a consumer habitually resident in another country of the European Union, the mandatory consumer protection rules of that country remain unaffected.

For merchants and legal entities the place of jurisdiction is Mannheim.

We are neither obliged nor willing to take part in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board.

Should a provision be invalid, the rest remains valid. The German version is authoritative; the English version is provided for readability.