Niro
Home Care Booking Terms
These terms apply when you book home care through Niro for yourself or for someone you look after. They are between you and Xtramile Consultancy Services (Pvt) Ltd of Town Mosque Road, Akkaraipattu 02, 32400, Sri Lanka ("Niro", "we", "us").
You accept them when you make your first home care booking.
1. What you are booking
Home care through Niro comes from one of two kinds of provider, and the app tells you which before you book:
- An independent companion. A person introduced to you by Niro, offering companion services only: company and supervision, meals, light housekeeping, errands, escorting to appointments, and reminding about medicines. We verify their identity and a police or character certificate. While they are on a visit booked through Niro they are covered by Niro's group public liability policy, shown on their profile as Covered by Niro. We are not a care agency and we do not employ them.
- An institution's home care staff. A clinic, nursing bureau or hospital with a Home care department on Niro provides personal and nursing care — bathing, toileting, transfers, wound care, injections, medicines and the rest — through the caregivers and nurses it employs. Your booking is with the institution: its desk accepts the request, assigns a member of its staff, and is responsible for the care given. Every staff member is a person Niro has verified — identity, police or character certificate and NVQ or Nursing Council registration — who has accepted the institution's invitation. The institution declares whether its own public liability and professional indemnity insurance covers care in patients' homes. The app shows Covered by [institution] where it does. Where it does not, the booking step tells you that no insurance policy is lodged with Niro, and you must acknowledge, before booking, that any claim would be with the institution directly.
Whoever the provider, we check what we say we check, we hold the payment until the visit is done, and we keep the record. We do not supervise the visit or direct how the work is carried out.
A visit can be booked up to six days ahead, so that the payment hold described in section 6 covers it. A carer cannot be booked within 30 minutes of another visit — the app allows for travel time — and it tells you when the time you want is not available.
2. Care levels, and what you may ask for
Everyone who comes to your home works at a level:
- Companion — an independent carer: company and supervision, meals, light housekeeping, errands, escorting to appointments, and reminding about medicines.
- Qualified caregiver — through an institution: the above, plus bathing, toileting and continence care, dressing, feeding, moving and transfers, and repositioning.
- Registered nurse — through an institution: the above, plus wound dressing, catheter care, injections, administering medicines, tube feeding and post-operative care.
An independent companion offers companion services only. Personal and nursing care is booked from an institution, which assigns a caregiver or nurse at the level the work needs. Once its desk has chosen someone, the visit card shows who is coming — name, photo and level — and you can reach them from that point. The institution may reassign a visit, for example if the nurse falls ill; you will be told.
Please do not ask anyone to do work above their level, and please accept it when they decline. They have agreed with us to refuse, and we will support them. This is not bureaucracy: moving a frail person is how people get hurt, and a carer working outside their level is usually uninsured, which leaves you unprotected too.
If you need something a companion cannot do, book it from an institution.
3. Medicines
A companion or caregiver may remind the patient to take medicine. Only a registered nurse, assigned by an institution, may give medicine, and only where a doctor has prescribed it.
You will:
- obtain the medicines yourself from a pharmacy — the carer does not bring or supply them;
- make the prescription available, ideally by having it on the patient's Niro record;
- tell us and the carer about all allergies before the visit.
First doses of injectable antibiotics are not given at home. A first dose can cause a severe allergic reaction and belongs somewhere with resuscitation available.
4. What we ask of your household
So that the carer can work safely:
- Tell us the truth about the patient's condition before booking — including infectious illness, confusion, wandering, aggression, weight, and how much help they need to move. This is the single most important thing you can do. A carer who arrives expecting to help someone walk, and finds someone who cannot stand, is how both of them end up injured.
- Provide a safe place to work, and treat the carer with respect. Harassment of any kind ends the booking.
- Understand that the carer is there for the patient, not for the household. Cooking, cleaning and laundry for other members of the family are not part of the booking.
- Be clear about entry, keys and who else is at home.
- Have a responsible adult contactable throughout the visit.
The carer may end a visit and leave if they are unsafe or harassed, and will be paid for the time worked.
5. Privacy, both ways
The carer will see the parts of the patient's Niro record needed for the visit — allergies, current medicines, current conditions, and the plan for that booking. They will not see the patient's past consultations or history unless the patient allows it separately.
The carer is bound not to photograph the patient or the home, or to discuss them with anyone.
Please do not record or photograph the carer without their agreement.
6. Payment
You pay through Niro. When the carer — or, for an institution, its desk — accepts your booking, we place a hold on your card for the amount of the visit, where your card supports it; otherwise the amount is charged at that point. The money is only taken, or kept, once the visit is complete, and we may take less if less was delivered. Our commission is included in the price you see. For an institution booking the institution is paid, and it pays its own staff.
A payment made through a mobile wallet or bank app (eZ Cash, mCash and similar) cannot be held, so it is charged when the booking is accepted and is refunded under our Refund Policy if the visit does not go ahead. A bank transfer is accepted only where the app offers it, and the visit is confirmed only once we have verified the transfer.
Arrival. When a visit is accepted, the visit card shows a six-digit arrival code that only you can see. When the carer arrives they check in by scanning the patient's Niro QR code or by entering that code, and the app records where they checked in from. A check-in without proof is still allowed — nobody should be kept waiting at the door — but it is recorded as unproven, shown on the visit, and counts in the carer's reliability record.
Extra time. If the visit needs to run longer, the carer asks in the app for one to six extra hours. Nothing changes until you approve. Approved time is charged at the same hourly rate, and the hold or charge is updated.
Repeating visits. You may book the same visit to repeat every day, every week, or on weekdays, for up to four weeks. Each visit is created as its own booking six days ahead, under these same terms, and you may end the series at any time; visits already booked are unaffected.
A visit that the carer checked into but never checked out of is closed automatically shortly after its booked end — about 30 minutes, or up to two hours while a request for extra time is waiting for your answer — and we review it before anything is charged.
Please do not pay the carer or the institution directly or arrange work outside the app, including extra hours. It removes the record that shows what happened, removes your protection if something goes wrong, and removes the insurance cover for that work. It also ends the carer's access to Niro, which is rarely what a family intends.
7. Cancellations, lateness and no-shows
You may cancel free of charge at any time until the carer sets off — that is, until they tap "On my way" in the app. After that, or if a carer who has arrived is turned away at the door, a call-out fee of 30% of the visit amount (minimum LKR 500, and never more than the visit amount) may be charged. The call-out fee is paid to the carer, or to the institution that sent them.
The app keeps time for both sides. If the carer has not set off 30 minutes after the booked start, or is more than an hour past the arrival time they gave, you will be told and may cancel at no charge. If a carer never checks in by 24 hours after the booked end, the visit is cancelled as a no-show: nothing is charged, any hold on your card is released, and we will help you find a replacement.
A carer who is on their way may add travel time from their app, and you see the new arrival at once. Thirty minutes past the arrival time they gave — including any travel time added — with no update, you may cancel at no charge; an hour past it with no check-in, the visit is cancelled as a no-show automatically, and nothing is charged.
For an institution booking, the institution's desk is reminded twelve hours before the start if nobody has been assigned. If the visit still has no carer at the booked start you will be told and may cancel at no charge; if it is still unassigned 24 hours after the booked end it is cancelled as a no-show by the institution, and nothing is charged.
8. Ratings
You rate the carer after a visit, and the carer rates the household. Please rate honestly, including when things went well. We remove reviews that identify a patient's condition, that are abusive, or that we can see are retaliatory.
9. If something goes wrong
Report it in the app within 48 hours of the visit ending or being cancelled. We will look at the visit timeline — when the carer said they were on their way, when and how they checked in and out, and the visit note — together with the messages and both accounts. We then decide whether the charge stands, is reduced, is refunded in full, or whether a call-out fee applies. The decision is recorded on the visit, and any refund goes to the original payment method within 7 business days. For an institution booking the institution is the other side of the dispute, and it is told the outcome.
You can also report an incident — a fall, an injury, damage, or care refused — from the visit card during the visit and for 48 hours afterwards. It goes to the provider and to us at once, and is kept with the visit.
If the patient has been harmed, the provider's insurance is the first route — Niro's group policy for a companion, the institution's own policy for its staff — and so is yours. Serious clinical concerns about a nurse can be raised with the Sri Lanka Nursing Council and with the institution that employs them. We will provide the visit records to whoever properly needs them.
We are not the provider of care, and we do not accept liability for the acts of an independent companion or of an institution's staff. What we accept responsibility for is our own part: the checks we say we make, the records we keep, and the payment we hold.
10. Emergencies
In an emergency call 1990 Suwa Seriya. A carer on a visit has an Emergency button in the app that calls 1990 and, at the same time, tells you and — for an institution — its desk. Niro is not an emergency service, and no message or booking in the app reaches anyone urgently.
11. Law
These terms are governed by the laws of Sri Lanka.
Contact
privacy@niro.lk for anything about information and records. For anything else, use the help option in the app.