Writing to us
No ticket number, no chatbot, no form with a required field for your date of birth. Mail to privacy@pipkin.eu reaches the person who builds the app, and is answered within a few days — within one month at the outside, which is the same commitment the privacy policy makes for a formal request.
- Which phone it is, and which version of iOS or Android.
- Whether you installed from the App Store or from Google Play.
- What you did, what you expected, and what happened instead.
- A screenshot, if there is anything to see. One is worth three paragraphs of description.
Signing in
Almost everything here is one of three things, and the third is the one nobody thinks of:
- “Forgot your password?” on the sign-in screen emails a link to set a new one. The link is single use and it expires — ask for another rather than reusing an old email.
- If the mail does not arrive, look in the spam folder first. A sign-in link is the message most likely to be filtered.
- Sign in the way you signed up. An account created with Apple or Google is not the same account as one created with a password at the same address, and the app cannot tell you which you used without giving away that an account exists.
Pipkin+, billing and refunds
The subscription is sold by Apple or by Google, not by us. We never see a card number and we cannot charge, refund or cancel anything ourselves — but we can usually tell you which of the screens below you want.
- Cancel it in Settings → Manage subscription, which opens your store's own subscription screen. Cancelling stops the renewal; the subscription runs to the end of the period you paid for.
- The free trial is seven days, on the monthly plan. Cancel before it ends and nothing is charged.
- New phone, or a reinstall? Settings → Restore purchase, signed into the same store account that bought it.
- Refunds are Apple's and Google's to give: reportaproblem.apple.com for the App Store, and the subscriptions page of your Google Play account. Tell us as well if something went wrong at our end — we cannot issue the money back, but we can correct what the app thinks you have.
- Deleting your Pipkin account does not cancel a subscription. Cancel it in the store first, or you will go on paying for an account that no longer exists.
Scanning food
Three scans, and all three are Pipkin+: photograph a shelf, read a best-before date off the packaging, and read a barcode. Typing is free, always there, and often faster for one item.
- Nothing a scan finds is saved until you have looked at the list. A model that reads a lemon as a lime should cost you one tap.
- The app tells you whether it read a date off the packaging or worked one out. If it read the wrong one, type over it.
- A barcode that finds nothing is a product Open Food Facts does not have yet. It is a community database anyone can add to, and the only thing the app sends it is the number on the packet.
- A photograph taken for a scan is identified and then discarded. It is never written to any storage of ours.
Reminders that never arrive
Reminders are off until you turn them on, in Settings → Expiry reminders. If the switch is on and nothing is arriving, it is one of these:
- Notifications are turned off for Pipkin in the phone's own settings. Reinstalling clears that permission, which is why the app asks for it again after one.
- Nothing in your kitchen has a date on it. A reminder is about a date, so food added without one is never the subject of it.
- There are two reminders and the switch sends nothing else: one at nine in the morning covering everything close to its date, and one in the evening on a day a cook streak would otherwise end.
- They are scheduled on the device rather than pushed from a server, so nothing about your food leaves the phone to make them work.
Recipes you submit
- Submitting is free, on the free tier too, and will stay that way — a catalogue grows from the people using it, not from the subset who subscribed.
- A moderator reads every submission, usually within a day or two. Settings → My submissions shows where yours has got to.
- If one is turned down you are told why, and you can correct it and send it again.
- Approved recipes are translated into all six languages, method included.
Reporting a recipe or a review
- Report is at the foot of every community recipe and under every review. Choose a reason, add anything a moderator should know, and send it.
- You can write to privacy@pipkin.eu instead if you would rather not use the app. A report by email carries exactly the same weight.
- If you think a decision about your own recipe or review was wrong, reply to us and a person looks at it again.
Your data, and leaving
- Delete your account from inside the app: You → Settings → Account → Delete account. It happens while you wait, and there is no retention period we did not tell you about.
- What is deleted, what is kept and for how long is set out in full on the account deletion page, linked at the foot of this one.
- A request under the GDPR — a copy of your data, a correction, an objection — goes to privacy@pipkin.eu and is answered within a month.