Tapd Terms of Service

1. Who we are, and what these Terms cover

Tapd is an online marketplace, operated from Australia, that helps students find independent Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) coaches and book private sessions with them. These Terms form a contract between you and Tapd. They cover your use of the website, your account, and any booking or payment made through it.

These Terms do not form the contract for the coaching itself. When a booking is confirmed, a separate agreement is formed directly between the student and the coach for that session. We are not a party to it.

2. The words we use

• Student means a person who books, or seeks to book, a session through Tapd.
• Coach means a person who lists themselves on Tapd to offer private coaching.
• Session means a coaching session booked through the Platform.
• Booking value means the coach rate for a session, before service fees and before any taxes that apply.
• Service fee means the percentage Tapd charges for running the Platform, described in section 8.

3. Eligibility and accounts

• You must be at least 18 years old to hold an account.
• A parent or legal guardian may hold a student account and book sessions on behalf of a person under 18. The adult who holds the account is responsible for everything done under it, including consent to training and supervision arrangements with the coach.
• Coaches must be at least 18 years old and must be the person shown on the profile. Profiles run by agencies, gyms or anyone other than the coach themselves are not permitted.
• Give us accurate information, and keep it up to date. Profiles exist so that other people can rely on them.
• You are responsible for your login details and for activity under your account. Tell us promptly if you think someone else has access to it.
• One person, one account. Extra accounts created to get around a suspension, to inflate ratings, or to claim something more than once are not permitted.

4. What Tapd is, and what Tapd is not

Tapd is an introduction and booking service. We provide the listing, the calendar, the messaging and the payment rails. We do not provide coaching, and we do not supervise, direct or control how a coach runs a session.

Coaches are independent providers. Nothing on Tapd makes a coach our employee, partner or agent:

• Coaches set their own rates, availability, locations and teaching methods.
• Coaches are responsible for their own tax, insurance, equipment and legal obligations.
• We do not guarantee a coach's skill, teaching quality, punctuality, or the result of any session.
• We do not guarantee that any student will book you, or that any coach will be available.

We also do not control the venues where sessions happen. If a session takes place at a gym, that gym has its own rules, insurance and membership requirements, and those apply to you independently of these Terms.

5. Coach verification, and its limits

We review coach applications before a profile goes live. That review is a reasonable check, not a guarantee. We want to be straight with you about what it does and does not mean.

What we do:

• We check the information in an application for plausibility and internal consistency.
• We may ask for identity documents, proof of rank, affiliation details or references before approving a profile.
• We may remove or suspend a profile if information turns out to be false or if we receive credible reports of unsafe conduct.

What our review does not mean:

• It is not a background check, a police check, or a working-with-children check unless we state in writing that one has been obtained for that coach.
• It is not an endorsement, a certification, or a statement that a coach is suitable for you, for a child, or for any particular goal.
• It is not a continuing warranty. A coach's circumstances, rank, affiliation or insurance can change after approval.

If you are booking for a child, or for anyone who needs supervision, satisfy yourself independently about the coach, the venue and any checks you require. We will help where we reasonably can.

6. Training risk, health and supervision

BJJ is a close-contact combat sport. It carries inherent risks, including sprains, strains, joint and ligament damage, concussion, fractures, infection, and in rare cases catastrophic injury or death. These risks exist even when everyone involved acts carefully.

By training through Tapd, you acknowledge and agree that:

• You voluntarily accept the risks that are inherent in training, and you participate at your own risk.
• You are medically fit to train, or you have taken your own medical advice. If you have an injury, illness, pregnancy or condition that could be affected by training, you will tell your coach before the session.
• You will stop, and tell your coach, if something hurts. Tapping is not optional and neither is saying no to a technique you are not comfortable with.
• You will not train while affected by alcohol or drugs, and you will not train with an open wound, a skin infection or any contagious condition.
• Nothing in this section asks you to accept risks caused by someone else's recklessness, intentional harm, or failure to meet an obligation that cannot be excluded by law.

7. Bookings and sessions

• A booking is a request until it is confirmed. A session is confirmed when the Platform shows it as confirmed and payment has been authorised or taken.
• The session details shown at checkout, including date, time, duration, location and rate, are the agreed terms of that session.
• Changes to a confirmed session must be agreed between the student and the coach, and recorded through the Platform so that both sides, and any refund, follow the same record.
• Keep communication about a booking on the Platform. It protects both sides to have one record if something is disputed later.
• If a session is to be run at a private address, both sides are agreeing to that voluntarily. Share only the address detail that is needed, and take the ordinary precautions you would take for any private appointment.
• Coaches may decline a booking request. Students may choose not to proceed. Neither side has to give a reason, but neither may discriminate on a ground protected by law.

8. Fees and payments

Listing a coach profile is free. Browsing and messaging are free. Tapd makes money only when a booking is made, and the fee is split across both sides of it.

• Both fees are shown to you before you confirm anything. If a number is not displayed, it is not payable.
• Fees are stated in Australian dollars and are inclusive of GST where GST applies. Coaches are responsible for their own tax obligations, including GST on their own services and their own income tax.
• Payments are processed by a third-party provider (currently Stripe). Your card details are handled by that provider, not by us. Their terms apply to the payment itself.
• Coach payouts are released after the session is completed, less the coach service fee and any amount refunded, reversed or held under these Terms. Payout timing depends partly on the payment provider and on your bank.
• We may place a reasonable hold on a payout where there is an open dispute, a chargeback, a credible report of fraud, or a suspected breach of these Terms. We will tell you why, and we will release the hold once the issue is resolved.
• If a payment is reversed or charged back after a payout has been made, the amount may be recovered from later payouts or from you directly.
• We may change our fees. We will give at least 30 days notice by email or in the Platform, and any booking already confirmed keeps the fees that applied when it was confirmed.
• Promotional or reduced fees, where we offer them, apply only as described in that promotion and may be withdrawn for future bookings.

9. Cancellations, no-shows and refunds

The aim of this section is simple: nobody should be out of pocket for someone else's change of plans, and nobody should be punished for an emergency.

If the student cancels:

• More than 24 hours before the session: full refund of the coach rate and the student service fee.
• Less than 24 hours before the session: the coach may keep the session fee, since that time was held for you and is usually impossible to refill. Where the coach agrees to waive it, we refund it.

If the coach cancels, at any notice: the student receives a full refund, including the student service fee. Repeated late cancellations by a coach may lead to restrictions on the profile.

No-shows: if the student does not arrive within a reasonable time and does not make contact, the session is treated as a late cancellation by the student. If the coach does not arrive or does not make contact, the session is treated as cancelled by the coach and fully refunded.

Things nobody controls: if a session cannot safely go ahead because of weather, injury on the day, illness, a venue closure, transport failure or a similar event outside either side's control, the fair outcome is a reschedule, or a full refund if a reschedule cannot be agreed. Service fees are refunded with the booking in that case.

Partial refunds: where a refund is partial, service fees are refunded in the same proportion as the booking value, so neither side pays a fee on money that was returned.

Multi-session packs: where sessions are bought as a pack, unused sessions may be refunded at the per-session value paid. Sessions already taken are not refundable merely because the rest of the pack is cancelled.

If a session was genuinely not delivered, or not delivered as described, tell us within 7 days and we will look at it. This sits alongside your rights under the Australian Consumer Law, which are described in section 19 and are not limited by anything in this section.

10. If you are a coach

• List only ranks, affiliations, titles and results that are true, and that you can evidence if we ask.
• Hold the insurance, licences, accreditations and checks that the law and your venue require for the coaching you offer, including any working-with-children check required in your state or territory when you coach minors.
• Make sure you are allowed to coach where you say you will. If the venue is a gym, you need that gym's permission.
• Coach within your competence, and within the limits of what your student has told you about their body and experience.
• Never use a coaching relationship to pressure, intimidate, harass or take advantage of a student. Instruction involves physical contact and trust, and misuse of that trust ends an account immediately.
• When coaching a minor, follow the supervision arrangement agreed with the parent or guardian, and do not train a minor alone where your venue or the law requires otherwise.
• Handle student details, including addresses and health information, only for the purpose of delivering the session.
• You are responsible for your own tax, superannuation, insurance and business registration. You are not our employee or contractor.

11. If you are a student

• Turn up at the agreed time, or give as much notice as you reasonably can.
• Tell your coach about injuries, conditions and limits before you start, and again if something changes.
• Follow reasonable safety instructions from your coach and the rules of the venue.
• Train with hygiene: clean kit, short nails, no training with contagious conditions.
• Treat coaches with respect. Abuse, harassment or unwanted physical contact ends an account.
• Pay through the Platform, so that both sides have a record and the protections in these Terms apply.

12. Keeping bookings on Tapd

Tapd only works if the people it introduces keep transacting through it. The service fee is what pays for the matching, the payments, the records and the support. So:

• If you first meet through Tapd, keep bookings with that person on Tapd for 12 months from your first session.
• Do not use profiles, messages or reviews to move a booking off the Platform, and do not ask for cash on the side to avoid the fee.
• Do not include contact details, payment links or external booking links in a profile, a message or a review for that purpose.

We take a proportionate approach to this. The first time we see it, we will tell you and ask you to bring the booking back on-Platform. If it continues, we may restrict or close the account. We do not charge punitive penalties for a single mistake, and this section does not stop anyone from training with people they already knew, or from training at a gym they already belonged to.

13. Platform integrity and security

You agree not to do any of the following, and not to help anyone else do it:

• Access any account, booking, payout or data that is not yours, or attempt to.
• Probe, scan, penetration-test, overload or interfere with the Platform or its infrastructure without our prior written permission.
• Scrape, harvest or bulk-copy listings, profiles, reviews or contact details, or use bots, crawlers or automated scripts against the Platform, except for a search engine following our robots file.
• Create fake accounts, fake bookings, fake reviews or fake disputes, or pay anyone to do so.
• Manipulate ratings, search ranking or availability, including by self-booking, review trading, or arranging reviews from people who never trained with you.
• Use stolen or unauthorised payment details, launder funds, or structure bookings to disguise payments that are not for coaching.
• Reverse engineer, decompile or copy the Platform, or remove or obscure any notice in it.
• Upload malware, or anything designed to disrupt or gain unauthorised access.
• Misrepresent who you are, or impersonate another coach, gym, brand or person.

If you find a bug, tell us. If a defect lets you obtain money, access, discounts or data you are not entitled to, do not use it. Report it to sachasilberberg@gmail.com. If you report it promptly, do not exploit it beyond the minimum needed to demonstrate it, do not access or retain anyone else's personal data, and give us a reasonable chance to fix it, we will treat you as having acted in good faith and will not pursue you for the report itself. We would rather hear about it than read about it.

Value obtained by exploiting a defect, by fraud, or by any of the conduct listed above may be reversed, withheld from payouts, or recovered from you, and we may report serious cases to the payment provider or to law enforcement.

14. Reviews, photos and other content

• You keep ownership of what you post. You give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, display, resize and distribute it for the purpose of operating and promoting the Platform. That licence ends for future use when you delete the content or close your account, except where we must keep a copy for legal, accounting or dispute reasons.
• Post only content you have the right to post. Do not upload photos of other people, gym logos, course material or footage without permission.
• Reviews must come from a real session, booked on the Platform, and must describe your own honest experience.
• We do not edit reviews to make a coach look better. We may remove a review that is abusive, discloses private information, is clearly off-topic, is not based on a real session, or is the subject of a credible legal complaint. If we remove one, we will tell the person who wrote it why.
• Coaches may respond publicly to a review. Threatening or pressuring a student to change or withdraw a review is a breach of these Terms.
• We may moderate, label or remove content that breaches these Terms, but we are not obliged to monitor everything posted, and we are not the author of user content.

15. Our intellectual property

The Platform itself, including its software, design, text, graphics and the Tapd name and logo, belongs to us or to our licensors. You may use it as an ordinary user of the service. You may not copy, resell, frame, rebrand or build a competing product out of it, and you may not use our name or logo in a way that suggests we endorse you without our written permission.

16. Privacy

We collect and handle personal information in line with Australian privacy law and our privacy practices, which are summarised here and set out in full in our privacy policy when published. In short: we collect what we need to run bookings and payments, we share it with the people who need it for that purpose (your coach or student, and our payment and email providers), we do not sell it, and you can ask us for a copy of your data or ask us to delete your account by writing to sachasilberberg@gmail.com. Some records, such as transaction records, must be retained for a period required by law even after an account is closed.

17. Suspension, removal and your right to reply

We may suspend or close an account, remove a listing, cancel a booking or withhold a payout where we reasonably believe there has been a breach of these Terms, a risk to someone's safety, fraud, or a legal requirement to act.

• Where it is safe and practical to do so, we will tell you what the issue is before we act, and give you a chance to fix it.
• Where the issue involves safety, fraud or a legal obligation, we may act first and explain afterwards.
• You can reply to any decision by writing to us, and a person will look at it again. If we got it wrong, we will reverse it.
• If your account is closed, money properly owed to you is still paid, less any amount legitimately held for a dispute, refund or chargeback.
• You can close your account at any time. Confirmed bookings should be honoured or cancelled under section 9 first.

18. Disputes between students and coaches

Disputes about a session are, in the first instance, between the student and the coach. Talk to each other first: most problems are a misunderstanding about time, place or expectations.

If that does not resolve it, raise it with us within 30 days. We will look at the booking record and the messages, and we may decide, acting reasonably, to refund, partially refund, release or withhold payment. We can make decisions about money that passed through the Platform. We are not a court, we cannot decide claims between you beyond that money, and we are not obliged to take a side.

19. Your rights under Australian Consumer Law

Our services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts or modifies those guarantees, or any other right you have that cannot be excluded by law. Where we are permitted to limit our liability for a breach of a consumer guarantee, our liability is limited to re-supplying the service or paying the cost of having it re-supplied.

If anything else in these Terms conflicts with that, this section wins.

20. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

Subject to section 19, and to the maximum extent permitted by law:

• The Platform is provided as is. We do not promise it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or available at any particular time, and we may change or discontinue features.
• We are not liable for injury, loss, damage or death arising out of a session, the conduct of a coach or student, the condition of a venue, or anything else we do not control.
• We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of opportunity, or loss of data.
• Our total liability to you for all claims connected with the Platform is limited to the greater of the total service fees you paid to Tapd in the 12 months before the claim arose, or $200 AUD.
• Nothing in this section limits liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by our own negligence, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.

21. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify us for loss, damage and reasonable costs we suffer arising from your breach of these Terms, your unlawful or reckless conduct, or a claim brought against us by a third party because of something you did. This indemnity does not apply to the extent the loss was caused by our own breach, negligence or unlawful conduct, and it does not apply to loss you could not reasonably have avoided.

22. If you have a dispute with us

Write to us first at sachasilberberg@gmail.com with the detail of the problem and what you would like us to do. We will respond within a reasonable time and try to sort it out directly. If we cannot, either of us may refer the matter to mediation before starting court proceedings. Nothing in this section stops you from going to a court or a consumer protection body, or from seeking urgent relief.

23. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as the Platform changes. For a change that materially affects your rights, such as a fee change or a change to cancellation rules, we will give at least 30 days notice by email or in the Platform before it takes effect, and the version in force when you made a booking is the one that applies to that booking. Minor changes, such as corrections and clarifications, take effect when published. Continuing to use Tapd after a change takes effect means you accept it. If you do not, you can close your account.

24. General

• These Terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia, and the courts of that state and the courts able to hear appeals from them have jurisdiction.
• If a provision is found to be unenforceable, it is read down or severed, and the rest continues to apply.
• If we do not enforce something straight away, we do not give up the right to enforce it later.
• You may not transfer your account or your rights under these Terms without our consent. We may transfer ours, for example if the business is sold, as long as your rights are not reduced.
• We may send notices to the email address on your account. Keep it current.
• Neither of us is responsible for a failure to perform caused by something genuinely outside our control.
• These Terms, together with any policy they refer to, are the entire agreement between you and us about the Platform.

25. Contact

Questions, complaints, privacy requests and security reports all go to sachasilberberg@gmail.com. We read everything that comes in.