Terms and conditions

1 — The short version

I’m Anthony. I’m not a dermatologist and I’m not going to pretend to be one.

Everything under this follows from that one sentence. The system reads a questionnaire, runs your answers against a database of products somebody else tested, and takes out everything your answers rule out. It has never seen your face. It never will.

2 — Medical

Nothing here is medical advice. Not the 4 stages, not the database, not the plan the read builds, and not a read I write by hand. A plan is a reading of a questionnaire against a database rather than a diagnosis. Nobody has looked at your face.

If something on your skin is painful, spreading, or not healing, go and see a doctor. A routine is the wrong tool for that one, and the weeks you’d spend swapping products are weeks you don’t get back.

Anything prescribed to you stays prescribed until whoever prescribed it says otherwise. Don’t stop it, don’t space it out, and don’t layer anything from here on top of it because a page told you your barrier needs work first. That’s a conversation with the person who wrote the prescription.

3 — Who this won’t advise

Before the read scores anything it asks three questions that have nothing to do with finding you a good moisturiser. Your age. Whether you’re pregnant or nursing. And a health block covering a dermatitis diagnosis, anything prescribed on your skin, and a peel, laser or microneedling in the last 30 days. Those three exist only to decide what you must never be shown.

Leave one of them unanswered and the read stops rather than scoring you. A skipped question is never read as a no. Rather not say is stored as rather not say, and gated exactly the same as a yes.

In every case below the product is removed before anything is ranked, rather than shown with a warning next to it.

Pregnant, nursing, trying, or you'd rather not say

7 retinoid rows come out. Some say so in their own source and some carry the retinoid class rule, and both block just as hard. The plan tells you on its face that they went.

Under 18

Every row with a stated minimum age comes out, and so do the rows carrying no age data at all. The active step is locked outright, so nobody under 18 is taken past the barrier stages into introducing actives. You need to be 13 to buy, and under 18 a parent should be in this with you.

Using anything prescribed on your skin

A prescription of any class locks the active step. Nothing here gets layered on top of what you were given, and whatever you were given stays with whoever gave it to you.

A peel, laser or microneedling in the last 30 days

For those 30 days your skin counts as compromised. The active step is locked, the tolerance floor jumps to the highest band the database records, and any product with no tolerance reading on file comes out rather than getting tried on you.

Eczema or atopic dermatitis that's flaring

Only rows with a positive flare clearance survive, and there are 7 of them. Every row where the evidence says nothing about flares comes out too. It is a short list, so some steps will come back empty. Same answer if you’d rather not say which phase you’re in.

Broken, infected or freshly picked skin

The one spot treatment on file can’t be reached at all while there’s an open or picked lesion, and it can never be a routine step. A questionnaire has no way to see an infection, so see a doctor for this one.

When nothing clears

A step with no good match comes back empty rather than filled with the closest thing left. The receipt names what was removed and which gate removed it.

What it doesn't check

It doesn’t check what layers with what. There’s no ingredient-clash rule in it. Anything about two products fighting each other turns up as a Skip it if line on the product card instead.

4 — Patch testing and reactions

Patch test anything new before it goes on your face. One product, one small patch, and long enough for it to actually react. The system introduces one change every 14 days for the same reason.

If something stings, stop it. Not reduce it. Stop it, and run the base alone until the skin settles.

Stinging with visible swelling or a rash isn’t a routine problem. See a doctor.

And I don’t know what’s in your bathroom, what you react to, or what a brand quietly changed in a reformulation last month. Read the label on the bottle in your hand. That’s the only version of an ingredient list anybody can promise is current.

5 — What you’re buying

The System. $19.99, once. 730 days of access, counted from the moment the payment clears. The 4 stages in order, the product database, and the adjustment guide. The holds are as much the product as anything else is. 28 days on the base untouched, another 28 on repair if the read sends you there — 56 in total before a first active — then one change every 14.

The database is a reference rather than a prescription. A row records what a product is and what its source said about it, and a row being in there is not a recommendation for you. Where a product is missing from the safety file, no citable restriction was found for it, which isn’t the same as that product being safe for everyone.

Most of what’s on file is Korean and the prices on it are in Korean won. The read asks where you buy and removes anything that isn’t sold where you are. But a plan can still name something you’ll have to order, at a price you’ll have to convert.

Any database update that ships inside your 730 days is included. There’s no fixed schedule for them.

Personal skin read. $100, once. 90 days of access, and everything in The System comes with it. You send photos and a long form. I read it and write the routine myself, and it’s back in three to five business days. The access clock starts when the payment clears rather than when the read lands, so those days are counted from the purchase.

The limits of it. Photos on a screen aren’t an examination. I can’t feel your skin, I can’t test it, and I’m working from what you chose to tell me. If what you send looks like something a doctor should see, I’ll say so, and you should go there first.

6 — Refunds

There aren’t any. Every purchase here is final.

What you’re buying opens the second the payment clears and you can read all of it the same afternoon. There’s no version of handing that back. So buying it is you asking for it right now, and agreeing that you’re giving up any cooling-off period you’d otherwise have had.

Which means look before you pay, and there’s a fair amount to look at. The 4 stages are laid out on the system page without paying for anything. One question of the read is on the home page and it costs nothing. And this page tells you what the thing refuses to do before it tells you what it does.

If something is actually broken — you paid and the access never arrived, or you were charged twice — that isn’t a refund question, it’s a fix. Email me and I’ll sort it.

7 — Price and promotions

What checkout shows you is what gets charged. If the number on the page and the number at checkout ever disagree, don’t confirm it. Tell me first.

A sale here comes off a price I actually charged. 50% off $39.99 means $39.99 was the real price before it, rather than a number picked to make the discount look bigger.

A sale doesn’t backdate. Buying at $19.99 and seeing it lower two months later isn’t a refund.

8 — Your account and your access

There’s no password. You log in with a link sent to your email. The link lasts fifteen minutes, then you ask for another one.

Access attaches to the email you paid with. Pay with one address, log in with another, and you’ll be staring at a paywall with everything you bought sitting behind it. Log in again with the address you paid with and it attaches itself. That’s the most common way to lock yourself out of this site and it takes about twenty seconds to undo.

730 days on The System, 90 on the read, both counted from the payment. Nothing renews, nothing charges you a second time, and there’s no subscription to cancel.

9 — Using it

One person, one login. Don’t share the login, don’t repost the stage instructions or the database or a read I wrote for you, and don’t feed any of it into something you sell.

And if it turns up somewhere it shouldn’t, I’ll close the access. No refund.

Submitting a product is welcome and I read every submission myself. Anything you send me about a product, I’m free to use in the database.

10 — What I store

The read asks whether you’re pregnant, whether you’re on a prescription, and whether a doctor has diagnosed a dermatitis. Those are health-adjacent answers, so I’d rather over-explain this than leave you guessing.

What’s stored. Your answers, and the profile the read derives from them. The raw pregnancy, prescription and dermatitis answers sit inside that profile because the gates re-run every time a plan is rebuilt, and re-deriving them from a summary would eventually get one of them wrong.

Who reads it. I do. I can open a read, uncover those fields, and export reads to a spreadsheet. I use it to find where the system is failing people and to decide what goes into the database next.

What I don’t do with it. I don’t sell it, I don’t hand it to a brand, and I don’t run ads off it. Where a product reached me by any route other than buying it, the disclosure prints on its card.

Payment. Stripe handles the card and I never see it. What reaches me is an email address, an amount, and a customer reference.

Ask me to delete your read and I’ll delete it.

11 — Changes to these terms

I’ll change this page when the system changes, and the date at the top is the whole version history. A change that takes something away from what you already bought doesn’t apply to what you already bought.

12 — Contact

routinelabs6@gmail.com

Say what you bought and what happened. I answer it myself, because there’s nobody else here to pass it to.