Terms of Service

01 Eligibility & your account

You must be old enough to form a binding contract in your jurisdiction to use the Service. If you are under the age of majority where you live, you may only use the Service with the involvement of a parent or guardian who agrees to these Terms.

Some features require an account. You can sign in with an email address or through a supported identity provider (for example, Google). You are responsible for:

• Accurate details — keeping the information associated with your account current and truthful.
• Account security — safeguarding access to your account and any device or inbox you use to sign in.
• Activity — all activity that occurs under your account, unless it results from our breach of these Terms or unauthorised access you could not reasonably have prevented.

You may not share, sell or transfer your account, create an account on behalf of someone else without their permission, or use the Service if we have previously suspended or removed your account.

02 Acceptable use

SpotRate exists to share genuine, first-hand experiences of real places. To keep the signal honest, you agree not to:

• Spam or flood the Service — posting repetitive, automated, bulk, or low-effort content, or scraping the Service without our prior written permission.
• Impersonate any person, business, or organisation, or misrepresent your affiliation with anyone, including SpotRate.
• Abuse or harass others — posting content that is harassing, threatening, hateful, defamatory, obscene, or that targets any person or group.
• Manipulate ratings — submitting fake, paid, incentivised, coordinated, or self-interested ratings; rating your own venue or a competitor to distort scores; or otherwise gaming the scoring or tier system.
• Post unlawful or infringing content — anything that is illegal, violates someone's intellectual-property or privacy rights, or that you do not have the right to share.
• Compromise the Service — attempting to gain unauthorised access, probe or breach security or authentication measures, disrupt or overload our infrastructure, or introduce malware.
• Misuse personal data — collecting or harvesting other users' information, or using the Service to send unsolicited communications.

We may investigate and take appropriate action against anyone who, in our reasonable judgement, violates this section — including removing content, applying rate limits, or suspending or terminating accounts. We may also be legally required to share information with law enforcement.

Access to the Service may be unavailable or restricted in certain countries or regions. [Confirm whether to disclose the geo-blocked country list (operationally: RU, CN, NG, IN, PK, BD, ID, VN, BR, PH) here, or to state generally that the Service is not available in all locations.]

03 Your content & ownership

"Your content" means everything you submit to the Service — including the ratings, scores, written notes and reviews, photos, spot requests, wishlist entries, and profile details you create.

You own your content

You keep ownership of your content. These Terms do not transfer any ownership of your ratings, photos, or notes to us. As between you and SpotRate, your content remains yours.

The licence you grant us

So that we can actually operate the Service, you grant SpotRate a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt (for example, resizing or compressing images), publish, and display your content on and through the Service — including showing it publicly within SpotRate and incorporating your ratings into aggregated, weighted scores for the places you rate. This licence exists only to run, promote, and improve the Service, and it ends when you delete the relevant content or your account, except that:

• aggregated or de-identified scores that no longer identify you may remain part of a venue's combined rating; and
• residual copies may persist for a short period in backups or where retention is required by law.

Your responsibilities for content

You represent that you own or have the necessary rights to the content you post, that it is your genuine first-hand experience, and that it does not violate these Terms or any law or third-party right. You are solely responsible for your content; we do not endorse it and are not responsible for opinions expressed by users.

Feedback

If you send us suggestions or feedback about the Service, you grant us the right to use it without restriction or obligation to you.

04 Ratings, scores & moderation

SpotRate combines individual ratings into a weighted score using factors such as rater tier, trust, and how recent a visit was. Scores, tiers, and the way they are calculated may change as we refine the Service, and no particular score, ranking, tier, or placement is guaranteed.

We may review, moderate, edit for formatting, decline to publish, or remove any content — and adjust or withhold a rating's weight — where we reasonably believe it breaches these Terms, distorts scores, or is inaccurate or unlawful. Moderation is carried out on a reasonable-efforts basis and we are not obliged to monitor all content.

05 Suspension, termination & deletion

When we may suspend or terminate

We may suspend, restrict, or terminate your access to the Service (in whole or in part), with or without notice, if we reasonably believe that:

• you have breached these Terms or our acceptable-use rules;
• your conduct exposes you, other users, SpotRate, or third parties to legal liability or harm;
• doing so is necessary to comply with the law or a request from a competent authority; or
• your account has been inactive for an extended period, or we discontinue the Service.

Where it is reasonable and lawful to do so, we will try to give you notice and an opportunity to address the issue, but we may act immediately for serious or repeated breaches.

Your right to leave and delete

You can stop using the Service at any time. You may delete your account from your profile. Deleting your account removes your account and associated data — including your ratings, photos, drafts, wishlist, avatar, and spot requests — as described in our Privacy Policy.

[Define data-retention periods before publishing] — confirm how long, if at all, residual data (for example, backups, spot-request records and requester emails, error-monitoring events, or analytics) is kept after deletion, and state it here and in the Privacy Policy.

What survives termination

Sections that by their nature should continue — including content ownership and licence terms for content that remains in aggregated scores, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, and governing law — survive termination of your account or these Terms.

06 Service availability ("as is")

Ratings and scores reflect the personal opinions of users and are provided for general information only. They are not professional advice, and you rely on them at your own discretion. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any rights or guarantees you have under applicable consumer-protection law that cannot lawfully be excluded.

07 Third-party services & links

The Service relies on third-party providers (for example, hosting and database, authentication, email delivery, analytics, and error monitoring) and may contain links to third-party websites — such as outbound map links that open Google Maps in a new tab. Sign-in through a third-party identity provider (such as Google) is also governed by that provider's own terms.

We do not control third-party sites and services and are not responsible for their content, availability, or practices. Your use of them is at your own risk and subject to their terms. How we share data with our service providers is described in our Privacy Policy.

08 Limitation of liability

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions or limitations, so some of the above may not apply to you. Nothing in these Terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, or any other liability that cannot be limited by law.

09 Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless SpotRate and [Legal entity name] from any claims, losses, liabilities, and reasonable expenses (including legal fees) arising out of content you submit, your use of the Service, or your breach of these Terms or of any law or third-party right.

10 Governing law

These Terms, and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or the Service, are governed by the laws of [Governing law jurisdiction — e.g. Queensland, Australia], without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. You and SpotRate submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts located in [Governing law jurisdiction — e.g. Queensland, Australia], except where applicable law gives you the right to bring proceedings in your local courts.

Where any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions stay in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.

11 Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time — for example, to reflect changes to the Service or for legal reasons. When we do, we will revise the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. For material changes, we will take reasonable steps to let you know before they take effect — such as posting a notice within the Service or, where appropriate, emailing the address associated with your account.

Your continued use of the Service after updated Terms take effect means you accept the changes. If you do not agree to the updated Terms, you should stop using the Service and may delete your account.

12 Contact

Questions about these Terms? Contact us at [Contact email].

[Legal entity name] — the entity operating SpotRate. The legal entity name and contact address above must be confirmed by the product owner before publishing.