How HOODLY works
This page walks through how Hoodly works: where deals come from, how you claim one, what happens at the counter, and what the different times mean. If something stays unclear or you run into a problem, the support page says how to reach us.
Deals
A deal is an offer published by a business near you, open for a limited time and to a limited number of customers. Hoodly gathers your neighborhood's deals into one view; everything else happens at the venue.
The business that published the deal decides its content, price, quantity, and times. Hoodly does not sell deals and is not a party to your dealings with the business.
Browsing deals
The front page shows what is claimable near you right now, and below that what is coming soon. The view changes through the day: businesses publish deals at different times, and each one leaves the view when its claim window ends.
If the view is empty, no deals from participating businesses are claimable near you right now. New ones appear through the day.
Signing in
Browsing deals needs no account. Claiming needs a sign-in, because a claim is yours: it takes one place out of the deal's limited quantity and produces a claim code of your own.
Signing in and your account are covered in more detail in the terms of service.
Claiming a deal
You claim a deal from its own page with Claim deal. After that the card is marked as claimed, and it stays visible after you collect it too — as used. Your claims sit in the same view as everything else, and they have a page of their own too: Claims collects them with their codes even once a deal has left the front page.
Claiming does not always go through, and the app always says why:
- The deal ran out — the places went before you.
- You have already claimed the same deal. One deal is claimed once.
- The deal is not claimable yet. The card says from what time it will be.
- You cannot claim deals from your own business.
- Your account is suspended. Get in touch with us in that case.
You can hold several claims at once. Each has its own code, and each is collected separately — including when they are at the same venue.
The claim code
Every claim has an eight-digit claim code of its own. It is the evidence that you were there, so it is not something to show around in advance.
You find the code on a claimed deal's page under Show code. It appears both as digits and as a QR code, and you can open it as many times as you need.
Collecting at the counter
Tell the counter you have claimed a deal on Hoodly and open the code on your phone. The business finds your claim in its own arrivals list and reads the code. Once the code has been read, the claim is confirmed by itself and the card reads as used — there is nothing else for you to do.
Collecting always happens at the venue. The code cannot be used in advance or remotely.
If the code will not scan
Reading a QR code can fail in dim light or with a dim screen. Try this, in order:
- Turn your screen brightness up and hold the screen square to the scanner.
- Ask the counter to key in the code's eight digits by hand. The digits are in the same view as the QR code, and keying them in works in exactly the same way.
- Close the code view and open it again if the digits are not showing.
If the counter gets an error or the collection is not confirmed, your claim does not disappear: it is still there in the app. Get in touch with us in that situation.
The claim window and the collection window
A deal has two different times, and the card shows both:
- The claim window is the time during which the deal can be claimed. Once it ends the deal has ended and can no longer be claimed.
- The collection window ends at the point by which a claim has to be collected at the venue. It closes at the same moment for everyone who claimed the same deal, and it does not start running from the moment you claimed.
A claimed deal's card says how much time is left to collect it, and the deal's page names the time by which the collection has to be made.
If you cannot make it
A claim cannot be canceled, and it does not need to be. If the collection window closes, the claim lapses by itself and the card is marked as lapsed — you are charged nothing and you do not need to tell us.
Still, only claim deals you intend to collect. The place is away from everyone else for the whole collection period, and the business has prepared for you to arrive.
Why a deal left the view
A deal stops being claimable for two reasons, and the card says which one it is:
- Ended — the claim window has run out.
- Sold out — every place has been claimed.
A business can also stop taking new claims mid-day, in which case the deal leaves the view entirely.
A claim you have already made does not disappear for any of these reasons. It stays valid to the end of its collection window.
Paying
Nothing is paid in the app, and a claim is not a payment. Any payment happens at the venue, with the business's own payment methods.
Your account and your data
You can sign out and delete your account at any time on the account page.
What data we process and on what basis is set out in the privacy notice. The terms of using the service are in the terms of service.
Support
Signed in, you can write to us directly in the app: open the conversation with the button in the bottom right corner. Naali, Hoodly's bot, answers what it can, and the rest of the messages reach the team.
The email address, and when we aim to answer, are on the support page.