Terms of Service

§1 General provisions and definitions

1. These terms set out the rules for using the MingleAway website at [domain] (the Service) and are the terms required by Article 8 of the Polish Act of 18 July 2002 on the provision of services by electronic means.

2. The provider is [full legal name], [registered address], tax ID (NIP) [number], REGON/KRS [number] (the Provider). Contact details are on the "Contact and company details" page; the contact address for matters concerning the Service is [email address].

3. In these terms:

– User means anyone using the Service;

– Guest means a User without an account, who can browse public trips;

– Account means a User’s individual profile in the Service, protected by a password or by Facebook sign-in;

– Trip means a listing for a planned shared journey, published in the Service by an Organiser;

– Organiser means a User with an Account who publishes and manages a Trip;

– Participant means a User with an Account who has joined a Trip or asked to join;

– Join request means a User’s request to join a Trip that is managed in the Service;

– Administrator means a person acting for the Provider who approves trips and photos, handles reports and blocks accounts;

– Consumer means a User who is an individual using the Service for purposes not directly related to their business or profession.

4. To use the Service you need a device with internet access, a current web browser with JavaScript enabled and, to create an Account, a working email address.

5. These terms are available free of charge in the Service in a form you can read, save and print. The Service works in Polish and English.

§2 What the Service is: not a travel agency

1. The Service helps people who want to travel together find each other. It lets Organisers publish Trips, lets everyone browse, search and filter them, lets travelers create profiles, and lets Participants send and Organisers decide on Join requests.

2. The Provider is not a travel agency, tour operator, travel intermediary or insurer. It does not organise, sell, book or insure Trips, is not a party to any agreement or arrangement between Users and is not responsible for how they are carried out.

3. Trips published in the Service are not package travel or linked travel arrangements within the meaning of the Polish Act on package travel and linked travel arrangements, unless the Organiser runs a business to which that Act applies. If so, the Organiser alone is responsible for meeting every legal requirement.

4. The Service is meant for private individuals looking for travel companions. Commercial offers from travel agencies and other businesses need the Provider’s prior permission [owner to confirm].

5. The Provider recommends buying travel insurance that covers your trip, your luggage and the activities you plan, and checking entry, health and visa requirements for your destination.

6. The Service is free. The Provider may introduce paid features in the future and will tell you in advance; this will not affect your right to the free features available on the day of the change.

§3 Account: sign-up, age, email verification

1. Guests can browse Trips without an Account. Publishing a Trip, sending a Join request and seeing Organisers’ contact details needs an Account.

2. The agreement for the Account service is concluded when sign-up is complete, that is after you fill in the form, accept these terms and the Privacy Policy and confirm your email address. It is concluded for an indefinite period.

3. An Account may be created by an individual who is at least [18] years old and has full legal capacity. By creating an Account you confirm that you meet these conditions.

4. You sign up with a form (name or nickname, email address, password) or by signing in with Facebook. Until you confirm your email address you can browse Trips but cannot publish or ask to join. The confirmation link is valid for a limited time.

5. A User gives true, current information and does not impersonate anyone; has only one Account; keeps the password safe and does not share the Account; and tells the Provider at once about any unauthorised use of the Account.

6. A profile can include, among other things, a display name, photo, bio, home region, languages, travel styles, interests and a bucket list. The optional fields are filled in voluntarily. Other Users can see the profile to the extent the Service shows it.

7. Your acceptance of these terms and the Privacy Policy is recorded together with the version of each document. When they change, the Service asks signed-in Users to accept again before they continue.

8. The Service does not verify Users’ identity. Verification marks (where shown on a profile) describe only what they explicitly say.

§4 Trips and the Organiser’s role, moderation

1. An Organiser publishes a Trip by filling in a form: title, destination and country, dates, budget per person with currency, travel style, description, number of places and, optionally, an age range and who may join (everyone, women or men). Up to three photos can be added to a Trip; the first is the cover photo.

2. The Organiser is responsible for the accuracy, completeness and currency of the Trip description, including dates, place, estimated costs and conditions of taking part. Who may join is the Organiser’s own statement; the Service does not verify gender or age.

3. Moderation. A new Trip and the photos added to it wait for an Administrator’s approval and become public only after it. An Administrator may reject a Trip or photo, remove a published Trip or restore a removed one if it breaks these terms or the law, infringes third-party rights or is misleading. The Organiser is told of the decision in the Service or by email, with reasons.

4. An Organiser can edit a Trip until it ends.

5. An Organiser can cancel a Trip and must give a reason. The Service then informs the Participants. A cancelled or ended Trip stays visible on the Organiser’s profile as cancelled or ended and can no longer be edited.

6. An Organiser cannot leave their own Trip in the Service or be removed from it; they can only cancel it.

7. An Organiser’s profile lists their Trips: upcoming first, then running, then ended, including Trips with all places taken and Trips where joining is managed outside the Service.

8. Featured Trips are chosen only by the Provider; featuring is neither a recommendation nor a guarantee of a Trip’s quality.

§5 Joining a trip and contact details

1. The Organiser chooses how to gather the group:

– through the Service: Participants send a Join request (with a short message of up to 1000 characters) and the Organiser accepts or declines it; the Service shows how many places are left;

– outside the Service: the Organiser ticks that joining is managed outside the portal; then Join requests cannot be sent and the Trip shows no places progress bar.

2. An Organiser can switch joining to "outside the Service" only if nobody has joined or asked to join yet.

3. An Organiser can remove a Participant from a Trip. A Participant can withdraw a Join request or leave a Trip. Users take these decisions on their own responsibility, and the Provider does not settle disputes about who should be in the group.

4. The Service provides no messenger or chat between Users. An Organiser may, voluntarily, show signed-in Users a way to get in touch: a phone number (in international format) and/or a Messenger button. This information is visible only to signed-in Users and only on the Trip where the Organiser agreed to show it. The Organiser can withdraw that consent at any time.

5. A User who sees another person’s contact details may use them only to get in touch about that Trip. Copying, collecting, passing them on and using them for advertising, spam or harassment is forbidden.

6. Meeting another User and travelling together is at each person’s own risk. The Provider recommends being careful: talk to the group before leaving, arrange a first meeting in a public place and share your travel plan with someone close.

§6 No payments and no settling of accounts in the Service

1. The Service does not handle payments, advances, deposits or settlements between Users. The budget per person shown in a Trip is only the Organiser’s estimate and is not an offer or a price.

2. All financial arrangements (splitting costs, bookings, tickets, accommodation) are made between Users outside the Service, on their own responsibility. The Provider does not take part in these payments, does not guarantee their return and does not handle claims between Users.

3. It is forbidden to use the Service to mislead others into paying money to an Organiser or to a third party, in particular to obtain money by fraud (a "trip scam"). Suspicious listings should be reported as set out in §8.

4. The Provider recommends not sending money to people you do not know in person, and paying carriers and accommodation directly rather than through other Users.

§7 User content and licence

1. You keep the rights to the content you publish in the Service (descriptions, photos, profile data, messages in Join requests), the Content.

2. By publishing Content you grant the Provider a free, non-exclusive, worldwide licence to store it, display it, copy it as far as technically necessary (for example resizing a photo) and make it available to other Users within the Service, including in search results and link previews. The licence ends when the Content or the Account is deleted, except for copies needed to meet legal obligations and backups kept for a limited time.

3. You confirm that you have the right to the Content you publish, in particular that you took the photos or have their author’s permission, that no identifiable third parties appear in photos unless they agreed to the publication of their image, and that the Content does not break the law or infringe other people’s rights.

4. It is forbidden to publish Content that is unlawful, abusive, discriminatory, pornographic, inciting violence or hatred, misleading, advertising or spam, or that contains third parties’ personal data without their consent.

5. The Provider does not check Content before publication other than through the moderation described in §4 and is not responsible for it unless it knew it was unlawful. Once it learns this, it removes the Content or blocks access to it without delay.

6. Profile descriptions are only the statements of their authors.

§8 Rules of conduct, reports, blocks

1. Users treat each other with respect. In particular, the following are forbidden: harassment, threats, discrimination, hate speech, sexual harassment and unwanted sexual advances, scams, impersonation, spam and interfering with the Service (including scraping and getting round security). The Community guidelines give the details.

2. Reporting. A signed-in User can report a profile or Trip, choosing a category (harassment, scam, safety concern, fake profile, spam, other) and optionally adding a description of up to 300 characters. A report covers one profile or one Trip, and each person can file it only once.

3. An Administrator handles reports, closes them with a recorded decision and may apply the measures described below. The reporter can see the status of their reports. Reports made in bad faith may lead to measures against the reporter.

4. Blocking a user. A signed-in User can block another person. A block works both ways: the two people stop seeing each other’s Trips and Join requests. The other person is not told of the block.

5. Administrator measures. If these terms or the law are broken, an Administrator may, depending on how serious it is: remove or hide Content, reject or remove a Trip, warn the User, block the Account temporarily or indefinitely. A blocked User is signed out, cannot sign in or change anything, their Trips stop being visible and they see the reasons for the block in the Service. All such decisions are recorded in an administrative action log.

6. If the Provider restricts the visibility of content or blocks an Account, it tells the User concerned, gives the grounds and how to appeal (§12), unless the law or the safety of others forbids it.

7. If something threatens life or health, first call the emergency number 112 or the local emergency services.

§9 Liability

1. The Provider takes due care for the Service to work properly and safely but does not guarantee uninterrupted availability. It may limit the Service temporarily for technical, maintenance or security reasons.

2. The Provider is not responsible for: the content, accuracy and currency of Trips, profiles and other Content published by Users; Users’ behaviour, including at meetings and on shared trips, and its consequences; whether a Trip goes ahead or is cancelled, changes of plan, costs Users incur and settlements between them; harm caused by a User sharing their password or contact details with others; outages and failures caused by force majeure or by third parties, including internet service providers.

3. A User is liable to the Provider and to third parties for damage resulting from breaking these terms or the law, including from publishing Content that infringes third-party rights. If a third party makes a claim against the Provider on that ground, the User releases the Provider from liability to the extent the User was at fault.

4. The Provider’s liability to businesses is limited to actual loss and to [amount], excluding lost profit, as far as the law allows. This limit does not apply to damage caused intentionally.

5. Nothing in this section excludes or limits Consumers’ rights that cannot be excluded or limited under mandatory law.

§10 Reporting unlawful content

1. Anyone (including people without an Account) can report content they consider unlawful by email to [reports email address]. A person with an Account who reports content that is unsafe or breaks these terms can also use the report button in the Service (§8).

2. A report should include: where the content is (page address or Trip name), why it is unlawful, the reporter’s name and email address (unless it concerns the most serious offences listed in the law) and a statement that the report is accurate and true.

3. The Provider confirms receipt, handles the report without delay, diligently and objectively, and tells the reporter of its decision and, if it restricts content, the content’s author, with reasons.

4. The point of contact for supervisory authorities and Users on matters under Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 (the Digital Services Act) is [point of contact email address]. You can write to it in Polish or English.

§11 Personal data and cookies

1. The controller of personal data is the Provider. The Privacy Policy, available in the Service, explains how data is processed, the legal bases, retention periods and the rights of the people the data concerns.

2. The Service stores on the User’s device the cookies and similar mechanisms it needs to work (signing in, remembering the chosen language). Optional analytics cookies are switched on only with the User’s consent, which can be changed at any time through "Cookie settings" in the footer. The Cookie Policy gives the details.

3. Data shown on a profile and in a Trip (including display name, bio, region, languages) can be seen by other Users. The User decides which voluntary data to give. A phone number and Messenger name are visible only to signed-in Users and only on the Trip where the Organiser chose to show them.

4. From their Account a User can download a copy of their data as JSON and ask for the Account to be deleted (§13).

§12 Complaints

1. Complaints about how the Service works, about an Account or about an Administrator’s decision (including rejecting a Trip, removing Content and blocking an Account) can be sent by email to [complaints email address] or by post to the Provider’s address.

2. A complaint should contain details that identify the User (the Account email address), a description of the problem and what the User asks for. Missing details do not rule out handling the complaint but may delay it.

3. The Provider answers a complaint within 14 days of receiving it. If the matter needs more time, it tells the complainant why and when to expect an answer. The answer is sent to the Account email address.

4. An appeal against a decision to restrict Content or block an Account can be made in the same way within [6 months] of receiving it. The decision is reviewed again by someone other than the person who took it, where the organisation allows.

§13 Deleting your account and ending the agreement

1. A User can end the Account agreement at any time, without giving a reason and free of charge, by asking for the Account to be deleted from the Account or by email.

2. After a deletion request the Account enters a 30-day grace period, during which the User can change their mind and restore the Account. For that time the Service cancels the User’s Trips that have not ended and informs the Participants; withdraws the User’s open Join requests; and removes the User from the groups of Trips that have not ended.

3. After 30 days the Account and the data linked to it are permanently deleted. Trips that other Participants joined may stay visible in the Service without the Organiser’s details, as the Trip of a "Deleted traveler". Data needed to show compliance with the law (for example the account activity log, without name or email address) may be kept for as long as the law requires.

4. The Provider may end the agreement with immediate effect (block and delete the Account) for serious reasons: when the User grossly or repeatedly breaks these terms, acts to the detriment of others, gives false data or uses the Service unlawfully. The Provider tells the User, with the reason, at the Account email address, unless the law or the safety of others forbids it.

5. The Provider may also terminate the agreement on [14] days’ notice if it stops running the Service or a feature of it. It will then let Users download their data.

§14 Consumer rights and out-of-court dispute resolution

1. A Consumer has the rights given by consumer protection law, including the Polish Act of 30 May 2014 on consumer rights. These terms do not limit them. Provisions of these terms that conflict with mandatory consumer protection law do not apply.

2. Because the Service is free and the agreement can be ended at any time (§13), a Consumer does not need to use the right to withdraw from a distance contract. If the Provider introduces paid services, it will explain the right of withdrawal separately.

3. A Consumer can use out-of-court ways of handling complaints and claims, in particular: ask the county (city) consumer ombudsman for help, ask the Trade Inspection for mediation or use a body entitled to conduct consumer dispute resolution (the list is on the website of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection: uokik.gov.pl). The EU online dispute resolution platform has been closed, so it is not available.

4. Using out-of-court methods is voluntary. The Provider [agrees / does not agree] to take part in out-of-court consumer dispute resolution [owner to decide].

5. A dispute with a Consumer is heard by the court that has jurisdiction under general rules. Disputes with businesses are decided by the court for the Provider’s registered office.

§15 Changes to these terms and final provisions

1. The Provider may change these terms for important reasons: a change of law, requirements of authorities or courts, a change of the Service’s features, better security or a change of the Provider’s details.

2. The Provider announces a change at least [14] days ahead, publishing the new text with its effective date and version and showing signed-in Users a message asking them to accept.

3. A User who does not accept the changes may delete the Account (§13) before they take effect. Continuing to use the Service after accepting means agreement to the new wording. Changes are not retroactive and do not affect acquired rights.

4. These terms apply from [date] and are available in Polish and English. If they differ, the Polish version prevails [to be confirmed].

5. Polish law applies to these terms and to the agreement with the User, without depriving a Consumer of the protection given by the mandatory provisions of their country of residence.

6. Matters not covered here are governed by Polish law, in particular the Civil Code and the Act on the provision of services by electronic means.