Terms of Service

1. Who we are and what these terms cover

MasterGuest Ltd ("MasterGuest", "we", "us", "our") operates the website at https://masterguest.app, the MasterGuest reviewer app and the services available through them (together, the "Service"). We are a private limited company registered in England and Wales under company number 13769991, with our registered office at Red Lion, The Green, Shamley Green, Guildford, GU5 0UB. You can reach us at jamie@masterguest.co.uk.

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") govern your access to and use of the Service. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal data and forms part of your agreement with us. By creating an account or using the Service you confirm that you have read these Terms and agree to be bound by them. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

If you are using the Service on behalf of a business, you confirm that you have authority to bind that business, and "you" means both you and that business.

2. Definitions

• Client means a business that commissions mystery visits through the Service.
• Venue means a restaurant, bar, hotel or other premises a Client asks us to assess.
• Reviewer means an individual who carries out mystery visits through the Service.
• Review means a single commissioned visit: the questions to answer, the visit window, the budget and any instructions.
• Report means the account of a visit a Reviewer submits, including answers, ratings, comments, timings, receipts and photographs, together with any corrections and scores we add when we audit it.

3. Eligibility and accounts

You must be at least 18 years old to use the Service. By creating an account you confirm that you are, and that the details you give us are accurate and kept up to date.

You are responsible for keeping your password confidential and for everything done through your account. Tell us at once at jamie@masterguest.co.uk if you believe your account has been used without your permission. You may not hold more than one Reviewer account, use another person's account, or register under a name that is misleading, offensive or that you have no right to use.

We may suspend or close an account that breaches these Terms, that has been inactive for an extended period, or where we reasonably believe it is being misused. You may close your account at any time by contacting us; see the Privacy Policy for what happens to your data when you do.

4. Reviewers: requesting and carrying out visits

Requesting. Signed-in Reviewers can request open Reviews. A request is an expression of interest, not an assignment. We decide who is assigned to each Review, taking into account Reviewer rating, availability and how quickly the request arrived, and we are not obliged to assign any Review to you or to explain a decision.

Invitations. If we assign a Review to you we will send you an invitation. Invitations lapse if not accepted within the time stated (normally 48 hours), and the Review is returned to the pool. Accepting an invitation is a commitment to carry out the visit within the visit window and to submit your Report promptly afterwards. If you can no longer make a visit you have accepted, tell us as early as you can. Repeatedly accepting and abandoning visits will affect your rating and may lead to your account being closed.

Conduct on the visit. Mystery dining only works if the Venue does not know it is being assessed. When on a visit you must:

• behave as an ordinary guest would and follow the Review's instructions, including any reservation requirement;
• not reveal to anyone at the Venue, before, during or after the visit, that you are a mystery guest or acting for MasterGuest or the Client;
• not contact the Venue, the Client or its staff about the visit other than as an ordinary guest;
• comply with the law and the Venue's reasonable rules, and treat staff with courtesy;
• pay for what you order in the ordinary way and keep an itemised receipt;
• take photographs only where the Review asks for them, discreetly, and without photographing other guests.

Reports. Your Report must be your own honest and accurate account of the visit you actually made, completed within the visit window, and must not be copied, invented, exaggerated or written on someone else's behalf. We audit every Report before it is released and may correct, annotate or score it. We may decline a Report, or send it back to you for completion, if it is incomplete, late, inconsistent with the receipt, or does not reflect a genuine visit. A declined Report is not eligible for reimbursement.

Ratings. We maintain a rating for each Reviewer, which we use to decide which Reviews are visible to you and how invitations are allocated. We may raise or lower it based on the timeliness and quality of your Reports, your feedback and your conduct, and we may grant temporary boosts. Ratings are at our discretion and are not a contractual entitlement.

5. Reviewers: reimbursement

Each Review states a budget and how it is paid: either a passphrase you give to a designated person at the Venue, a voucher, or reimbursement by us after the visit. Unless a Review says otherwise:

• reimbursement covers your actual, receipted spend at the Venue up to the stated budget and is conditional on a complete, accepted Report;
• spend above the budget, and any spend not evidenced by a receipt, is your own cost;
• reimbursement is not payment for work; it is the reimbursement of an expense you incur in carrying out the visit. Any further payment, incentive or prize will be described in the relevant Review or campaign.

Reviewers are independent participants, not employees, workers or agents of MasterGuest or any Client. Nothing in these Terms creates an employment relationship, and you are responsible for any tax or reporting obligations that arise from your participation.

6. Clients

Commissioning. The Reviews we carry out for you, the Venues covered, the questions asked, timescales and fees are set out in the written proposal, order or agreement between us (the "Client Agreement"). If these Terms conflict with a Client Agreement, the Client Agreement prevails for that engagement.

Using Reports. Reports are provided for the purpose of assessing and improving the guest experience at your Venues. You may share them within your organisation and with your advisers. You may not resell them, publish them, or present them as your own or as an independent inspection. You are responsible for how you act on a Report, including complying with employment law in respect of any staff it names.

Reviewer anonymity. Reviewer identity is never disclosed to Clients or Venues. You agree not to attempt to identify a Reviewer, whether from the Report, the receipt, CCTV, booking records or otherwise, and not to contact, confront, penalise or offer anything to a person you believe to have been a Reviewer. A breach of this section is a material breach of your agreement with us.

Your team. You are responsible for the people you add to your organisation's account and for keeping their access appropriate. You may be able to appoint administrators who can manage your organisation's reviews and members; they act on your behalf.

Logo. Unless you tell us otherwise in writing, you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free right to display your name and logo on our website and in marketing materials to identify you as a client, in a professional manner and in accordance with any brand guidelines you give us. You may withdraw this at any time by emailing jamie@masterguest.co.uk.

7. Content and licences

Your content. You keep ownership of the material you submit to the Service (the "Content"), including Reports, photographs, comments and feedback. You warrant that you have the right to submit it, that it does not infringe anyone else's rights, and that it complies with these Terms.

Licence to us. You grant MasterGuest a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual licence to store, copy, edit, correct, translate, format, analyse and display your Content in order to operate, audit and improve the Service and to produce Reports for Clients. Where you are a Reviewer, this includes providing your Report, with your identity removed, to the Client that commissioned it, who may use it as described in section 6.

Anonymised data. We may use Content and information about how the Service is used, in a form that does not identify any individual, to compile statistics and benchmarks and to improve the Service.

Our content. The Service, its design, software, question libraries, scoring methods, templates and branding are owned by MasterGuest or our licensors and protected by intellectual property laws. Except for the rights expressly granted in these Terms or a Client Agreement, no rights are granted to you.

Feedback. If you send us suggestions or feedback about the Service, we may use them without any obligation to you.

Removal. We may remove or refuse any Content that we reasonably consider breaches these Terms, the law or someone else's rights, and we may edit Content to correct factual errors before a Report is released.

8. Communications

We will send you emails and, if you have enabled them in the app, push notifications that are necessary to run the Service: verification links, review invitations, reminders, submission nudges, audit outcomes and account notices. You cannot opt out of these while you hold an account.

We may also email Reviewers when new Reviews become available. You can stop these at any time using the unsubscribe link in any such email or the notification setting in your profile.

9. Acceptable use

You must not:

• use the Service for any unlawful purpose or in breach of these Terms;
• submit false, misleading or defamatory Content, or Content that infringes another person's privacy or intellectual property;
• attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Service, other accounts or our systems, or probe, scan or test their vulnerability;
• copy, scrape, reverse engineer or interfere with the Service or its underlying software, except to the extent the law allows;
• use automated means to request Reviews or otherwise interact with the Service;
• impersonate any person or misrepresent your affiliation with anyone.

10. Third-party services and links

The Service uses third-party services such as maps and may link to websites we do not control. We are not responsible for their content, availability or privacy practices. Your use of them is at your own risk and subject to their terms.

11. Availability and changes to the Service

We aim to keep the Service available but do not guarantee that it will be uninterrupted or error-free. We may change, suspend or withdraw any part of the Service at any time, including for maintenance, and we may restrict access to some or all of it. Where a change materially reduces what a Client has paid for, the Client Agreement governs the consequences.

12. Termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service immediately if you breach these Terms, if we are required to by law, or if we reasonably believe your use presents a risk to the Service, other users, a Venue or a Client. You may stop using the Service at any time.

Sections 5 to 7 and 13 to 16, and any other provision that by its nature should survive, continue to apply after termination. Termination does not affect a Client's obligation to pay for Reviews already carried out, or our obligation to reimburse a Reviewer for an accepted Report.

13. Disclaimers

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available". Reports reflect the observations and opinions of an individual Reviewer on a particular occasion, corrected and scored by us in good faith; they are not a guarantee of a Venue's standards at any other time and should not be relied on as the sole basis for any decision.

To the fullest extent permitted by law we exclude all warranties, conditions and other terms that might otherwise be implied into these Terms, whether by statute, common law or otherwise. Nothing in this section affects any rights you have as a consumer that cannot be excluded by law.

14. Liability

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited under the law of England and Wales.

Subject to that, we will not be liable to you for any loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill or data, or for any indirect or consequential loss, arising out of or in connection with the Service or these Terms, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty or otherwise, even if foreseeable.

Subject to the two paragraphs above, our total liability to a Client in connection with the Service in any twelve-month period is limited to the fees that Client paid us in that period, and our total liability to a Reviewer is limited to the reimbursement due to that Reviewer for accepted Reports in that period.

You agree to compensate us for any loss, liability or cost we suffer as a result of your breach of sections 4, 6, 7 or 9.

15. General

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any Client Agreement, are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service. If any part of these Terms is found to be invalid or unenforceable, the rest continues to apply. If we do not enforce a right under these Terms, that is not a waiver of it. You may not transfer your rights under these Terms to anyone else; we may transfer ours to a successor of our business on notice to you.

These Terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute, except that if you are a consumer resident in Scotland or Northern Ireland you may also bring proceedings in your local courts, and you retain the benefit of any mandatory consumer protection in your country of residence.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. We will post the new version on this page and update the date at the top, and where a change is significant we will tell you by email or a notice in the Service before it takes effect. Your continued use of the Service after a change takes effect means you accept it. If you do not accept a change, stop using the Service and contact us to close your account.

17. Contact

Questions about these Terms, or about anything else, to jamie@masterguest.co.uk.