Legal
Terms of service
The terms on which we work with you — what our fee covers, how we are paid, and your right to cancel.
These terms govern the concierge service SmileBound provides to you. Please read them before you pay our fee — by paying it you accept them. We have written them in plain English on purpose. If anything here is unclear, ask us before you book and we will explain it.
1Who we are
SmileBound is a trading name of Musa Tariq, a sole trader established in the United Kingdom.
- Trading name: SmileBound
- Trading address: 85 Great Portland Street, London, W1W 7LT, United Kingdom
- Email: info@smile-bound.com
- WhatsApp: +359 88 658 8386
We are not registered for VAT, so no VAT is added to our fee.
2What we do — and what we do not do
We are a dental travel concierge, not a dental provider. We do not carry out treatment, we do not employ dentists, and nothing we tell you is clinical advice. What we do is:
- talk through what you are looking for and what is realistic;
- match you to a clinic in Bulgaria that is registered and regulated in that country, and pass your information and any photographs or scans to that clinic;
- obtain an indicative treatment plan and price from the clinic;
- coordinate your appointment dates around your travel;
- help you plan flights and accommodation, and tell you what to expect on the ground;
- stay reachable throughout your trip, and act as your point of contact with the clinic afterwards if something needs following up.
The contract for your dental treatment is between you and the clinic, not between you and us. The clinic decides what treatment is appropriate, sets its own prices, and is responsible for the treatment it provides, including any guarantee or warranty it offers. We do not book, pay for or provide flights, accommodation, travel insurance or medical insurance, and we are not a package travel organiser.
3Our fee
Our booking and concierge fee is £399, paid to SmileBound before we begin work.
It is a fee for our service. It is not a deposit. It is not held on your behalf, it is not paid to the clinic, and it is not deducted from your clinic bill. You pay the clinic separately, directly, in Bulgaria, for your treatment.
The fee covers our work from your first consultation through to your return home: clinic matching, obtaining and explaining your treatment plan, appointment coordination, travel planning support, and being contactable before, during and after your trip.
4How we are paid — in full
We think you should know exactly what our financial interest is when we recommend a clinic, so here it is without ambiguity. We are paid in two ways:
- the £399 fee you pay us, described above; and
- a commission from the clinic — currently 15% of the amount you actually pay them for your treatment.
This commission does not increase what you pay. You pay the clinic's own price — the price it charges its other private patients — and our commission comes out of the clinic's side of that payment, not out of yours. Our agreements with clinics prevent them from offering our patients a worse price than they would offer anyone else.
We are not tied exclusively to any clinic, and no clinic pays us to be recommended ahead of another. If you want to know what we earn on your particular treatment, ask us and we will tell you.
5Quotes, prices and estimates
Any price we give you before you are examined is an estimate, based on the information and photographs you have given us and on the clinic's published price list. It is not a fixed quotation, and it is not binding on the clinic.
Your final treatment plan and price can only be confirmed by the dentist after examining you in person, and it may differ — sometimes substantially — from the estimate, particularly where an examination reveals work that photographs could not show. If the plan or price changes once you are there, you are free to decline the treatment. Prices we publish on this website are guide market prices at Bulgarian clinics and are not offers.
Where a price is shown in pounds but payable in euros, the amount you actually pay will depend on the exchange rate and on any charges made by your bank or card provider. We do not control either.
6Booking
Our contract with you begins when we confirm in writing that we have received your £399 fee. Before then, nothing is committed on either side.
We may decline to take on, or may stop working with, anyone whose expectations we do not think a clinic can safely meet, whose treatment we believe should be carried out at home, or who is abusive to us or to clinic staff. If we decline at the outset, you pay nothing. If we stop partway through for a reason that is not your fault, we will refund a fair proportion of the fee.
7Your right to cancel
You have 14 days to cancel this contract, for any reason, without giving one. The 14 days run from the day after we confirm your booking. This is your legal right under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013.
How to cancel
Tell us in a clear statement — email info@smile-bound.com, or WhatsApp us, or use the cancellation form. You may use the form but you do not have to. To meet the deadline, it is enough that you send your message before the 14 days end.
If you ask us to start straight away
Most people want us to begin at once rather than wait two weeks. If you ask us to start during the cancellation period — which you do by ticking the box at checkout — then:
- you keep your right to cancel within the 14 days; but
- if you do cancel, we may charge you a proportionate amount for the work we have already done, based on how much of the service we had completed when you told us. We will show you the calculation. The rest is refunded.
- Once the service has been fully performed — meaning we have completed your clinic matching, your treatment plan is agreed and your appointments and travel dates are set — the right to cancel is lost, and no refund is due. By ticking the box you acknowledge this.
Refunds
We refund within 14 days of being told you are cancelling, to the same payment method you used, with no fee for making the refund.
Cancelling your treatment, as opposed to our service
Cancelling with us does not cancel anything you have arranged with the clinic, an airline or a hotel. Those are separate contracts with their own terms, and you will need to cancel them yourself. We will help you do it if you ask.
8Travel, documents and insurance
You are responsible for your passport, for any visa you need, for your travel and medical insurance, and for arriving at your appointments. We strongly recommend insurance that covers medical treatment abroad and trip cancellation; a standard travel policy often excludes planned treatment, so check before you buy. We can point you at what to look for, but we cannot advise you on insurance and we do not sell it.
9Clinical responsibility
The clinic is responsible for your treatment, for the standard of care, and for its own guarantees. Any complaint about clinical work, and any claim arising from it, lies against the clinic, under Bulgarian law and its regulator. We will support you in raising it — translating, chasing, escalating, and putting your case to the clinic — but we cannot accept liability for the clinical work itself, because we do not perform it.
Tell us and the clinic about your medical history, medication and allergies honestly and in full. A clinic that is given incomplete information may not be able to treat you safely, or at all, once you arrive.
10Complaints
If something goes wrong with our service, email info@smile-bound.com with the detail. We will acknowledge within 2 working days and give you a considered response within 14 days. If you are still unhappy, nothing in these terms affects your right to take the matter further.
11Our liability
We are responsible for loss you suffer that is a foreseeable result of us breaking this contract or failing to use reasonable care and skill.
We are not responsible for: the clinical treatment you receive; the acts, omissions or prices of a clinic, airline, hotel or insurer; loss caused by information you gave us that was wrong or incomplete; or events outside our reasonable control. Because our service is supplied to you as a consumer for personal use, we are not liable for business losses.
Where we are liable, our liability is limited to the amount of the fee you paid us — except that we do not exclude or limit our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else it would be unlawful to exclude. This does not affect your statutory rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, including the right to a service carried out with reasonable care and skill.
12Changes, and the law that applies
We may update these terms. The version that applies to you is the one published when you booked, and we will keep a copy for you on request. If we need to change the terms of a booking already made, we will tell you and you may cancel and be refunded in full for anything not yet performed.
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and you may bring proceedings in the courts of England and Wales. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland you may also bring proceedings there. Nothing here removes rights you have as a consumer that cannot be removed by agreement.