Terms of Service

1. Agreement to these terms

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") are a binding agreement between you and Cartners Inc., a Delaware corporation ("Cartners", "we", "us" or "our"). They govern your use of the Cartners mobile application, the Cartners website and online clubhouse, and the Cartners Booking platform through which golf professionals offer their services (together, the "Service").

By creating an account or using any part of the Service you accept these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. If you use the Service on behalf of a golf club, league, society or other organization, you confirm that you are authorized to bind that organization to these Terms.

Please read section 17 carefully. It requires most disputes between you and Cartners to be resolved by individual arbitration rather than in court, and it gives up the right to take part in a class action. Section 17.8 explains how to opt out of it within 30 days.

Golf professionals who list or sell their services through Cartners Booking also agree to the professional terms presented there when they register a business. Where those professional terms and these Terms differ, the professional terms apply to the professional relationship.

2. What Cartners is

Cartners is a golf community. It lets golfers find and arrange tee-time groups, connect and message with other golfers, create and take part in tournaments and leagues, run clubs and organizations, keep scorecards and leaderboards, and find, contact and request bookings with coaches and caddies.

Cartners is a technology service. We do not own or operate golf courses, we do not hold tee-time inventory and we do not reserve tee times with any course on your behalf. A tee-time group in Cartners organizes people; the tee time itself must be confirmed with the course by the golfers who play it. Cartners does not itself provide golf instruction, caddie services or any other on-course service.

Cartners hosts what its members write and publish. We are not the author of another member’s profile, message, score, event listing or review, and we do not check those before they appear.

3. Your account, and the age requirement

Cartners is for adults. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account or use the Service, and we do not knowingly permit anyone younger to do either. The date of birth you give during setup is checked against this requirement, and an account we find to belong to someone under 18 will be closed and its personal information deleted. If you believe a child holds an account, tell us at support@cartners.golf and we will act on it.

You sign in with a one-time code sent to the email address on your account, so you must keep that address current and keep the device you sign in on secure. You are responsible for everything done through your account until you sign out or tell us it has been compromised.

Keep the details in your profile accurate. Giving a false date of birth, or a false name or identity, is a breach of these Terms. One person may hold one account, and an account may not be transferred to anyone else. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these Terms, that has been used to harm other members, or that we are required by law to close.

4. Tee-time groups, tournaments, leagues and organizations

Organizers of a tee-time group, tournament, league or organization decide who may join, what the format and rules are, and when registration opens and closes. Cartners records those decisions and applies them; it does not make them. Organizers are responsible for the accuracy of the details they publish and for any commitments they make to participants.

Scores are entered by the golfers who play and by organizers or the scorers they appoint. Leaderboards, standings and results are calculated from what is entered. Handicap-adjusted results are offered only where the course and tee information permits them, and Cartners never invents course data to produce a result it cannot support. Results published by an organizer are the organizer’s responsibility.

A guest scoring code lets a golfer without an account enter scores for a tournament. Anyone who uses such a code agrees to enter only true scores for the round it was issued for, and agrees to these Terms in doing so.

5. Meeting other people, and your own safety

Cartners introduces people who have not met. Whether to meet anyone you find through the Service, on a course or anywhere else, is your decision alone, and you make it in the same way you would decide to meet anyone else you had not met. Use ordinary care: tell somebody where you are going, meet in public at the course, and stop if you are uncomfortable.

Cartners does not screen the golfers who join it. We do not run criminal record checks, identity checks or reference checks on members, we do not verify what a member says about themselves, and nothing in the Service should be read as a statement that another member is safe, honest or suitable to meet. Badges, ratings, connection counts and completed-round counts describe activity on Cartners; they are not vouching for anybody.

You accept the ordinary risks of golf and of meeting new people, including the risk of injury, loss or damage. As between you and Cartners, you are responsible for your own conduct and for your own safety, and each member is responsible for their own behaviour toward others. To the fullest extent permitted by law, you release Cartners from claims arising from the acts or omissions of another member, another user or a third party, whether on the Service or in person. This release does not apply to anything the law does not allow us to be released from.

Tell us straight away if a member or professional behaves in a way that breaks these Terms, and contact the police or emergency services first if anyone is in danger. Nothing in these Terms prevents you from reporting anything to the police, to a regulator or to any other authority.

6. Coaches, caddies and bookings

Coaches, caddies and other professionals who appear on Cartners are independent businesses. They are not employees, agents or partners of Cartners, and Cartners does not supervise, direct or control the services they provide. Cartners does not set their prices, their methods or their terms.

What we check, and what we do not. A professional cannot be offered for booking on Cartners Booking until a third-party provider has returned a criminal records check for them. That check reports what public records showed on the day it was run, about the identity given to the provider. It is not a prediction of future conduct, it is not a check of skill, teaching ability, fitness to work with any particular person, insurance cover, tax status or professional licensing, and it is not repeated continuously. Everything else a professional publishes about themselves — qualifications, certifications, affiliations, experience and prices — is their own statement, shown as they wrote it, and is not verified by Cartners. A filter or badge describing a credential means the professional says they hold it.

A booking request you send through Cartners is an invitation to the professional, who may accept or decline it. Any service you then receive is provided by that professional under their own terms. Prices, deposits, payments, cancellations and refunds are handled on the Cartners Booking platform under the professional’s policies and through the payment processor used there. The professional, not Cartners, is the merchant of record for what you pay. Cartners is not a party to the agreement between you and a professional, holds no deposit or fee for a service, and does not guarantee the quality, safety, legality, timing or delivery of any service booked.

7. Side games and stakes

Cartners can record the results of side games played within a group or tournament, such as skins or points contests, and can note a stake that the players have agreed between themselves. A stake noted in Cartners is a private arrangement among those golfers and nothing more. Cartners never collects, holds, transfers, escrows, settles, guarantees or has any interest in money or anything of value wagered between golfers, charges nothing for recording it, and takes no part in any wager. Cartners is not a gambling operator, a bookmaker, a stakeholder or a payment service for any wager.

You are responsible for making sure that any arrangement you enter into is lawful where you play and where you live, and you agree not to use the Service to record, organize, promote or settle any wager that is unlawful there, or any wager involving a person under 18. We may remove a recorded stake and suspend the feature or an account where we believe this is being broken.

8. Your content

You keep ownership of the profile details, photos, messages, scores, tournament information, organization logos and other content you add to Cartners ("your content"). You give Cartners a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt for display, publish and distribute your content within the Service and to the members you share it with, for the purpose of operating and improving the Service. That licence exists only so the Service can work; we do not use your content to advertise to you and we do not sell it.

The licence ends when you remove your content or close your account, except that we may keep copies in routine backups for a limited period, and except for content that has already been incorporated into something shared with others — a published leaderboard, a tournament result, a message another member received — which stays where it is. Aggregated or de-identified information that cannot reasonably identify you is not your content for this purpose.

You are responsible for having the right to add the content you add, including any photo that shows other people. We may remove content that breaks these Terms, infringes someone else’s rights or exposes members to harm.

9. Acceptable use

You agree not to use the Service to do anything unlawful; to harass, threaten, intimidate, stalk or defame anyone; to impersonate another person or organization or misstate your affiliation with one; to enter false scores or false event details; to post content that is obscene, hateful, sexually explicit or that infringes intellectual property; to send unsolicited commercial messages; or to arrange or conceal any activity involving a person under 18.

You also agree not to interfere with the Service or its security, to access it by any automated means or to scrape it, to attempt to obtain sign-in codes, tokens or accounts that are not yours, to upload malicious code, or to collect or use other members’ personal information for any purpose other than taking part in Cartners with them.

Breaking these rules may lead to removal of content, suspension or closure of your account, and, where the law requires or permits it, disclosure to the authorities.

10. Copyright complaints

If you believe content on Cartners infringes your copyright, send a notice to copyright@cartners.golf identifying the work, identifying the content and where it appears, giving your contact details, and stating that you believe in good faith the use is unauthorized and that the information in your notice is accurate. Sign it, physically or electronically. We will remove or disable content in response to a complete notice, and we may close the account of a repeat infringer.

If your content was removed and you believe that was a mistake or a misidentification, you may send a counter-notice to the same address with the equivalent information. We may restore the content after passing your counter-notice on, as the law provides.

11. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy describes what information Cartners collects, why, who it is shared with and the choices you have. It is bundled in the mobile app and published on the website, and it forms part of these Terms.

12. App stores and third-party services

The mobile app is distributed through the Apple App Store and Google Play, and your use of it is also subject to the terms of the store you obtained it from. Notifications are delivered through Apple, Google and Firebase services. Golf videos in the app are hosted on YouTube, animated GIF search in chat is provided by GIPHY, and payments for professional services on Cartners Booking are processed by that platform’s payment processor. Each of those services is governed by its own terms and privacy policy, and Cartners is not responsible for them.

If you obtained the app from the Apple App Store, the following also applies. These Terms are between you and Cartners only, not Apple, and Apple is not responsible for the app or its content. Apple has no obligation to provide any maintenance or support for the app. If the app fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may tell Apple and Apple will refund the purchase price, if any; to the maximum extent permitted by law Apple has no other warranty obligation, and any other claim, loss, liability, damage, cost or expense attributable to a failure to conform to a warranty is Cartners’ responsibility. Cartners, not Apple, is responsible for addressing any claim by you or a third party relating to the app, including product liability claims, any claim that the app fails to conform to a legal or regulatory requirement, and claims arising under consumer protection or privacy law. Cartners, not Apple, is responsible for investigating, defending, settling and discharging any third-party claim that the app infringes intellectual property. You confirm you are not located in a country subject to a United States Government embargo or designated as supporting terrorism, and that you are not on any United States Government list of prohibited or restricted parties. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of this paragraph and may enforce it against you.

13. Intellectual property

The Cartners name, logo, software, design and text are owned by Cartners Inc. or its licensors and are protected by copyright, trademark and other laws. You may install and use the mobile app on a device you control and use the website, in each case only to take part in the Service under these Terms. You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, lease or reverse-engineer any part of the Service except to the extent the law allows despite this limitation.

If you send us a suggestion about the Service, we may use it without restriction or payment. We are not asking for your ideas and we do not treat a suggestion as confidential.

14. Changes, availability and ending your account

Cartners is a developing service. We may add, change or withdraw features, and we may need to take the Service offline for maintenance. We do not promise that the Service will be available without interruption or free of errors, and a feature that is shown but cannot currently be completed will say so rather than pretend to succeed. We are not responsible for a failure or delay caused by something beyond our reasonable control, including a failure of a network, hosting provider, payment processor or app store, a natural event, an outbreak of disease, industrial action, or an act of government.

You may close your account at any time from Account settings. Closure starts a short grace period during which you can cancel the request; after it, your account and the personal information described in the Privacy Policy are deleted, except for records we must keep or that other members legitimately hold, such as published tournament results. We may suspend or close your account for a breach of these Terms, and we will tell you why unless the law prevents us.

Sections 5 through 9 and 13 through 19 survive the closure of an account, and so does any licence in section 8 that these Terms say continues.

15. Disclaimers

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by law, Cartners disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement. Cartners does not warrant that the Service will meet your requirements, that it will be uninterrupted or secure, that scores, standings or results entered by others are accurate, or that any other member or professional will do what they have said.

Golf is played outdoors on courses Cartners does not control. Cartners is not responsible for course conditions, weather, cancellations by a course or a professional, or injury or loss arising from play.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or under any non-excludable consumer guarantee. If you are a consumer you have rights under the law of your own country that these Terms do not affect.

16. Limitation of liability and indemnity

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Cartners and its officers, directors, employees and agents will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, data, goodwill or opportunity, arising out of or in connection with the Service, however caused and under any theory of liability, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the total liability of Cartners for all claims arising out of or relating to the Service is limited to the greater of one hundred US dollars (US$100) and the amount, if any, you paid to Cartners in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain warranties or liabilities to be excluded or limited. In those places these limitations apply only to the extent the law allows, and the rest of this section continues to apply.

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Cartners and its officers, directors, employees and agents from any claim, loss, liability, damage, cost or expense, including reasonable legal fees, arising out of your content, your use of the Service, your dealings with other members or professionals, or your breach of these Terms or of any law. We will tell you about any such claim, and you may not settle it in a way that imposes any obligation on Cartners without our written agreement.

17. Resolving disputes

17.1 Talk to us first, and this step is required. If you have a dispute with Cartners, email support@cartners.golf with your name, the email address on your account, what happened, when, and what you want us to do. We will try to resolve it informally, and neither of us may start an arbitration or a court case about it until 60 days after we receive that notice. This step is a condition of bringing a claim, and the time limit in section 17.9 pauses while it runs.

17.2 Who this section applies to. Sections 17.3 to 17.8 apply if you live in the United States or your claim is otherwise governed by United States law. If you live in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Canada, Brazil or Australia, or anywhere else whose law gives you a right to bring a consumer claim in your own local courts or before a consumer body, section 17.10 applies to you instead and sections 17.3 to 17.8 do not.

17.3 Individual arbitration. If we cannot resolve a dispute informally, you and Cartners agree that any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be resolved by binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules then in effect, before a single arbitrator. The arbitration will be held in the county where you live, by telephone or video, or on documents alone, as you choose. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this section. The arbitrator decides everything except the matters section 17.5 sends to a court, including whether a claim is arbitrable, and may award any individual remedy a court could award. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court with jurisdiction.

17.4 No class actions, and no jury. You and Cartners agree that each of us may bring claims against the other only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, consolidated or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not preside over any form of class or representative proceeding and may not award relief to anyone who is not a party. You and Cartners also waive any right to a jury trial to the extent the law allows. If this paragraph is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim alone is severed from arbitration and heard in the courts named in section 18, and the rest of this section continues to apply to every other claim.

17.5 What is not arbitrated. Either of us may bring an individual claim in small-claims court instead of arbitrating. Either of us may ask a court for an injunction or other relief to stop infringement or misuse of intellectual property, or unauthorized access to the Service, without first arbitrating. A claim for public injunctive relief is not arbitrated and is heard in the courts named in section 18; that claim may be stayed while any arbitration between us proceeds. A claim that you were sexually assaulted or sexually harassed is not subject to this arbitration agreement or to section 17.4 unless you choose arbitration after the dispute arises, and your choice is yours alone to make.

17.6 Coordinated filings. If 25 or more claims of a substantially similar kind are filed against Cartners by or with the assistance of the same lawyer or coordinated group of lawyers, the claims will be administered in sequential batches of no more than 50, each batch before a single arbitrator, with the parties choosing the order. Only the claims in a batch then being heard accrue filing or administrative fees. The parties will ask the arbitrator in each of the first two batches to decide common questions in a way that can inform the rest, and either party may propose mediation of the remaining claims after those batches are decided. The time limit in section 17.9 pauses for every claim in the group while this process runs, so no claim is lost by waiting its turn. This paragraph is about how many cases are heard at once and does not decide any of them.

17.7 Fees and costs. The AAA Consumer Arbitration Rules decide who pays the filing, administrative and arbitrator fees, and under those rules your share is capped and Cartners pays the rest. Each of us pays our own lawyers, except where a statute or the arbitrator’s award provides otherwise. Nothing in this section makes you liable for Cartners’ legal costs because a claim did not succeed.

17.8 How to opt out of arbitration. You may opt out of sections 17.3 to 17.6 by emailing support@cartners.golf with the subject line "Arbitration opt-out", from the address on your account, within 30 days of first accepting these Terms. Nothing else needs to be said in the message. Opting out does not affect any other part of these Terms, and we will not close your account or treat you differently for doing it. If we materially change section 17 later, you may opt out of the change within 30 days of being notified of it.

17.9 Time limit. To the extent the law allows, any claim arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service must be brought within one year after it arises, or it is permanently barred. This does not shorten any period that the law does not allow to be shortened.

17.10 If you are a consumer outside the United States. Nothing in this section takes away a right you have under the law of the country you live in. You may bring a claim in the courts of that country, and you may use any consumer complaints body or alternative dispute resolution scheme available to you there; if you live in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, the mandatory consumer protections of your own country apply to you whatever section 18 says about governing law. We may only bring a claim against you in the courts of the country you live in. Arbitration is available to you if you and we both agree to it after a dispute arises, and not otherwise.

17.11 Confidentiality. You and Cartners will keep the existence and content of an arbitration, and any award, confidential, except as needed to enforce or challenge an award, to comply with the law, to answer a regulator, court or tax authority, to tell an insurer or professional adviser, or where the information is already public. Nothing here stops you from saying that you brought a claim or from speaking about your own experience of the Service.

18. Governing law and general terms

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules, except that if you are a consumer living outside the United States the mandatory consumer protections of the country you live in apply to you as well, and prevail over this paragraph where they conflict with it. Any matter that is not subject to arbitration, and any matter where section 17.10 applies and you choose a United States court, will be brought in the state or federal courts located in New Castle County, Delaware, and you consent to their jurisdiction.

These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and Cartners about the Service. If any part of these Terms is held unenforceable, it is narrowed to the minimum extent needed to make it enforceable, or if that is not possible it is severed and the rest remains in force; section 17.4 says what happens if the class waiver is the part affected. Our not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them to a successor to our business, and we will tell you if we do. There is no third-party beneficiary of these Terms except as section 12 says about Apple.

You may not use the Service in breach of export control or sanctions law, and you confirm you are not a person any such law prohibits us from dealing with.

We may revise these Terms. The current version, with its version number and effective date, is always shown in the mobile app and on the website, and we will notify you through the Service before a material change takes effect. A change does not apply to a dispute we already knew about before it took effect. Using the Service after a change takes effect means you accept the revised Terms; if you do not accept them, close your account.

19. Contact

Questions about these Terms can be sent to Cartners Inc. at support@cartners.golf. Copyright complaints go to copyright@cartners.golf.