Bountio terms and conditions

Our aim in providing our Services is to make finding the right role or candidate easier for everyone involved and encourage respectful head hunting practices

We provide an online venue to introduce Members in various ways, and to allow Members to advertise all sorts of jobs and services.

In providing the Bountio venue, we don’t participate in the actual the transaction itself, nor do we act as an agent for either party. We also don’t take part in the actual provision of Member Services.

Our Members will only use Bountio if they trust other Members and feel confident in the Bountio community. We are committed to making Bountio the safest online marketplace for you. While we can’t pre-screen Listings or monitor our entire Site, if we become aware of any misuse of our Services, we’ll take the appropriate action. This could be issuing a warning, removing content, disabling an account, banning a Member, or contacting the relevant authority.

Some examples of the kind of misuse we’d take action over are: Listings that do not comply with employment law or that infringe upon international human rights; discriminatory or harmful or offensive conduct. We may also limit your activities on our Site based on your off-site conduct, such as prior criminal convictions, insolvency, or any other conduct that puts our community or systems at risk.

You agree that we may disclose your personal information in accordance with our privacy policy, including your name and contact details, as well as any transactional records, site interactions or other relevant information, to the relevant authorities, parties and/or intellectual property rights holders.

To enable you to use and enjoy our Services, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable licence to use our Site and Services in accordance with our Terms.

We retain all of our intellectual property rights, including our rights in the software and source code used, to provide the Site and Services. You may not adapt, reproduce, copy, store, distribute, publish or create derivative works from any part of the Site, or commercialise or on-sell any information obtained from the Site or our Services, without our prior written consent.

We have a separate bank account where we hold Member funds. All amounts deposited in that separate bank account are held on trust for our Members, so that each Member has the right to a proportion of the account balance equal to the face value of their Bountio account.

We may deduct amounts from the separate bank account as contemplated by these Terms, and you agree that you have no right to any interest earned on amounts deposited in this trust account.

No charges other than our Fees will be applied to Trade Me account balances, unless clearly stated in the Terms.

We are constantly changing and improving our Site and Services. We may add or remove features or functions and we may suspend or stop providing a Service altogether.

It’s free to become a Member of Bountio, but we do have some eligibility terms. To become a Member you must:

• be at least 18 years old and able to enter into contracts;
• complete the registration process and provide true, correct and up-to-date information.

We may allow you to register or log-in to some of our Services with a third party service (e.g. Facebook or Google), in which case we will access, store and use your information from that service, subject to their terms. Our privacy policy covers this also.

In order to use our Services, you only need one account. So, you can’t register as a Member under multiple identities, personas, or aliases (whether they are false or not). You may create a business membership, in addition to your personal one. If you think you need both, please check first.

You must maintain and update your personal and account information, to ensure it’s always current and correct. We may contact you to verify your details

You’re responsible for all the activity that happens on your account. To protect it, keep your login information secret and secure, change your password regularly, and don’t let anyone else use your membership.

Our Members work hard to earn great feedback, and rely on the feedback placed about others. Unless we give specific prior approval, your membership is not transferable and can’t be sold, leased, lent or traded. If you want to transfer your membership, you can get in touch to apply.

We maintain an account for each Member. You can check your account balance at any time by logging in and going to your dashboard. You must use your account to pay all fees. You’re not able to use your account balance to pay another Member, and account credit is not transferable between Members.

You must promptly pay any negative account balance. If your account remains negative or you are in debt to us, we may take action against you to recover that debt. For example: by using a third party debt collection service, or deducting the amount owed from any other Bountio account that you operate. You’ll be liable for all expenses that we incur trying to recover that debt, including legal costs.

If your membership is terminated, we’ll refund any balance of your account, less a processing fee that we may charge. If your balance is less than $5, we won’t refund you. If you haven’t logged into your account for more than 18 months, your account will be suspended and any unused balance will be forfeited to us. You’ll need to get in touch to get your account back up and running.

Promotional giveaways of Bountio credit, bonus credit, or any free credit gifted to you on registration won’t be refunded (upon termination or at any other time).

We may contact you about your membership, your transactions and any other activities on the Site. Our privacy policy has more information on this.

Subject to your email preferences, we may contact you with information or promotions about our other Services that we think you’ll be interested in. We also send emails and e-newsletters to some of our Members, where we think they’ll be relevant. You can unsubscribe from all emails and newsletters that don’t contain important information about using Bountio.

You may terminate your membership at any time, for any reason.We’ll need around three days to process your request. Similarly, we may refuse to offer some or all of our Services to you without prior notice, for any reason.

If we have restricted or prohibited your access to our Services, we will have done this for a reason and, if we can, we’ll tell you why. You agree not to bypass these controls, for example, you agree not to create a new membership. If we have explained why your access to our Services has been restricted or prohibited, we reserve the right to cease further correspondence with you.

If your membership is terminated (by you or by us), your ability to access our Site will end and you must stop using our Services. Certain clauses from these Terms will continue to apply after termination. If you visit our Site after termination, or otherwise use our Services, these Terms will apply.

Our code of conduct sets out principles and behaviours that the Bountio community reasonably expects of Members using our Services. The code of conduct forms part of these Terms. It's pretty common sense stuff, but if you’re in any doubt please check it out.

Don't scrape our site: You may not use a robot, spider, scraper or other unauthorised automated means to access the Site or information featured on it for any purpose. You also may not manually scrape, harvest or otherwise extract data from our Site without our express permission.

Keep it legal: You’ll comply with all applicable laws when using our Services.

No content spamming: You won’t use any feature to promote your own product or service to the lister. We call this 'spamming', and it's not cool.

What starts on Bountio, stays on Bountio: You agree not to (a)use the Services or the Site to promote Items or services for sale outside of the Services; (b) complete a transaction, that started on Bountio, outside of the Bountio process; or (c) seek to avoid our success fees or our process. For the same reason, you mustn’t list your contact details anywhere (e.g. in the Listing description, questions and answers, feedback, Member profile or messages), other than in the relevant fields provided during the listing process.

You confirm that you either own or have permission to use all of the content that you post and upload when using our Services. For example: any photos, data, information, Listing descriptions and other content (“your content”).

You retain ownership of your content and nothing in these Terms is intended to claim ownership of your content or to restrict your ability to use your own content. To help us provide and improve our Services though, we need you to give us some permissions in relation to that content, which we set out below.

You give us a licence or right to use your content so we can improve and provide our Services. Lawyers refer to this as an intellectual property licence under which you grant a non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free, and worldwide licence to us, to use, store, display, reproduce, modify, distribute, create derivative works, and save your content in any manner and on any media or platform to promote, improve and provide our Services. This means, for example, that if you create a listing, you give us permission to store, copy, use and share that Listing (including any photos or videos). This licence continues even if you stop using our Services. You confirm that you have the right to grant this licence to us.

The following examples don’t cover all the ways we may use your content, but are intended as helpful examples: We may use the content by displaying it on a third-party website to promote the Listing while it’s live (free advertising – awesome!). We may store the Listing so that we can help you re-list it in the future if it did not sell. Our team may use your Listing as an example on our blog as part of their mission to make Bountio a safe place for everyone. We may use the content for marketing purposes, or we may store and use the content for our own internal purposes, to help us improve our Services. We won't use your trade marks or logos without your express permission.

Our current fees are explained on our fees page. You’ll be able to review and accept any fees before you list, and must pay them when they’re due. By using our Services, you agree to pay our fees.

Some of our Services have set fees that are not success fees. These fees will be charged at the time the Listing is created, and aren’t refundable.

We may change our fees. We’ll notify you about fee changes, usually by site announcement, and we’ll generally give you two weeks’ notice. If we introduce a new Service, the fees for that Service are effective at the time the new Service is launched. If you want to know what our current fees are at any time, just visit our fees page.

From time to time we may offer special or promotional deals (“promos”) on certain goods, such as a discount on the normal success fees, or the chance to list without any success fees applying. When we offer these promos, the success fee discount terms will apply along with any other terms advertised in connection with the special.

We understand that sometimes when a Claim is awarded it doesn’t always mean the transaction is completed. In these circumstances we’re usually happy to refund any success fee by crediting your Bountio account via our refund process. If we need to, we may contact you or other Members about a success fee refund request that we’ve received.

Be clear and upfront: All Listings must be accurate, current, complete and include all relevant information and the key terms. For example, a Listing on Trade Me Marketplace must include an honest description of the criteria to be met. You agree to only list opportunities that you are authorised to post.

Keep it legal: Your Listing must comply with all laws. Your Listing must not breach any legal requirement, e.g. all jobs Listings must comply with the Human Rights Act and all other relevant employment law.

Keep it relevant: Keyword spamming to manipulate search results is not allowed.

Use as intended: Each of our Services and Listing options have a clear function or purpose. You must use our Services for their intended purpose and must not misuse them in order to avoid our fees, advertise your business or manipulate search results. Our Listing Policy provides more detail and specific examples on how our Services should be used and what behaviour is and is not OK. If you’re ever in doubt about how to use our Services, feel free to get in touch.

We may contact you to request further information about your Listings, if we need to.

Feedback is provided to facilitate trading between Members, and helps us to ensure a great experience for all Members.

We take feedback seriously and we hope you do too. The feedback you provide on other Members must not contain offensive, defamatory or retaliatory language or content. What’s ‘offensive’? We mean anything we find offensive, in our opinion. If in doubt, check out our feedback policy for guidance. We’ll remove any infringing feedback that we become aware of, but we hope that you’ll be considerate and constructive.

Any feedback should relate to the specific transaction and not any other transaction.

We provide a messaging system for our Members to use. We do have some restrictions on use, for example the messaging system is not to be used to sidestep our processes or promote websites or any other commercial activity.

We don’t screen messages before they are posted on the messaging system, and we aren’t responsible for any of the messages or opinions expressed. By posting a message to the messaging system you agree that you’re fully responsible and liable for your comments, including if those comments are offensive, defamatory or breach our Code of Conduct

If we become aware of any harmful, offensive or otherwise unacceptable messages, we’ll take appropriate action.

You agree to try to resolve any disputes you have with other Members directly with them.

We do try to offer help and information where we can, but please keep in mind that we’re not a party in any transaction between you and another Member, and there’s only so much we can do.

Because we care about our Members’ privacy, if you’re taking a dispute with another Member to any Tribunal, Court or other legal venue, we’ll only release that Member’s details if you sign a statutory declaration. We can provide you with a statutory declaration form if you need one. See our privacy policy for more information.

If you have a dispute with us, please get in touch and we’ll try to resolve it informally. If we need to contact you about a dispute, we’ll use the last email address you gave us or any other reasonable method. If we haven’t been able to resolve a dispute informally, either party can look to resolve a dispute or seek any remedy available through any legal method available.

We do try to offer help and information where we can, but please keep in mind that we’re not a party in any transaction between you and another Member, and there’s only so much we can do.

Because we care about our Members’ privacy, if you’re taking a dispute with another Member to any Tribunal, Court or other legal venue, we’ll only release that Member’s details if you sign a statutory declaration. We can provide you with a statutory declaration form if you need one. See our privacy policy for more information.

We work hard to ensure the security and performance of our Services but we don’t guarantee that our Services will be 100% secure, uninterrupted or error-free. We provide our Services on an ‘as is’ basis, without any warranty of any kind. That means your use of our Services is at your own risk. It also means that we exclude and disclaim all implied warranties, to the extent that we legally can, such as fitness for purpose, merchantability and non-infringement.

If you are using our Services for a personal purpose, then nothing in our Terms limits any consumers’ legal rights that may not be waived or limited by contract.

Any information or advice that we may give you regarding or during your use of our Services is also subject to the disclaimers in these Terms and won’t create any warranty that isn’t expressly given in these Terms.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, you assume full responsibility for any loss or damage that results from your use of the Site and Services. We won’t be liable to you or any other person in connection with the Services, this Site, your use of the Services or Site, or another Member’s acts or omissions, whether for negligence, breach of contract, breach of statutory duty or otherwise. We won’t be liable for anything that is outside of our reasonable control. We won’t be liable for any loss or damage, whether direct or indirect. For example, we won’t be liable for loss of profits, loss of business or anticipated savings, general or special damages, or consequential or incidental loss.

As mentioned in these Terms, other than providing our Site as a venue, we don’t take any part in the Listings or Claims on our Site, nor are we involved with the provision of Member Services. All transactions and other contact between you and other Members is entirely at your risk.

That means that we aren’t liable or responsible for:

• any Services that are offered or provided;
• the safety, quality or legality of any Listing or Claim on the Site, or the accuracy or truth of any Listings;
• any guarantees or assurances that a Member has made regarding a Listing or Claim, including any implied warranties.

Plus it means that we give no guarantee or warranty:

• that any Listing or Claim on our Site will meet your requirements or expectations;
• or that any information posted on our Site, including feedback, is error-free or reliable.

We don’t control our Members, nor do we pre-screen every Listing, Claim, feedback or other communication before it’s posted on our Site. Because of this, we take no responsibility for any misconduct of our Members. For example, we are not liable if:

• a Member has registered under false pretences or has attempted to defraud you;
• a Listing or Claim is inaccurate or untrue, or if the Poster doesn’t have the right to publish the listing;
• a Member fails to complete a transaction, including where they pay (or have tried to pay) by credit card.

Responsibility for the content of advertisements appearing on our Site (including links to advertisers' own websites) rests solely with the advertisers. The placement of these ads on our Site doesn’t mean that we endorse or recommend the product or service. Each advertiser is solely responsible for any representation made in connection with its advertisement.

Without limiting any other rights and remedies available to Bountio, we may limit your activities on the Site, remove your Claims, Listings or other content, warn other Members of your actions, issue a warning to you, suspend or terminate your membership, or refuse to provide our Services to you (and your affiliates), if you breach our Terms, or where we consider it appropriate.

If we don’t immediately take action on a breach of these Terms, that doesn’t mean we’re giving up any rights to do so and we can take action later.

You agree to indemnify us and hold us harmless against any claim made by yourself or any third party that is in any way related to: (a) your access to or use of our Service; (b) your failure to complete a transaction; (c) your breach of these Terms; or (d) any content or Listing or Claim that you submit, post, transmit or make available through our Services. Your indemnity under this clause covers all losses, damages or expenses (including legal costs) that we may suffer or incur.

These terms, our privacy policy and all terms and policies posted on our Site govern your use of our Services, and are the Terms that we offer our Services to you. Please read them carefully.

The Terms make up the entire agreement between us in relation to our Services and apply instead of any prior version of any of the Terms. Where there’s a conflict between these Terms and any Specific Terms, the Specific Terms will take priority to the extent of the conflict.

By browsing our Site, using our Services or registering as a Member of Bountio you’re agreeing to these Terms. If you don’t accept our Terms, you must immediately stop using our Services or browsing our Site.

Headings are provided only to make these Terms easier to read and understand. The fact that we wrote these Terms won’t affect their interpretation.

We have provided examples in these Terms to help explain what we mean. Where we have provided examples, or where we say ‘includes’ or ‘including’, the examples given may not be all possible examples.

If it turns out that part of these Terms aren’t enforceable, then that part will be removed or edited as little as possible, and the rest of the Terms will continue to apply.

Some words used in these Terms have special meanings. We have set these out below:

• Claim means a claim against a bounty on the Site through which you may collect a fee or reward.
• Listing means a listing on the Site through which you offer a bounty.
• Member means a registered member of Bountio.
• Services means any one or more of the services offered by Bountio, from time to time, and any other service Bountio may offer.
• Site means any Bountio website or application through which the Services are offered.
• Specific Terms means any other terms, conditions or policies which apply to your use of our Services and that are posted on our Site or otherwise communicated to or agreed with you in writing.
• Terms means these terms and conditions, our privacy policy and all terms and policies posted on our site.
• We, us, our and Bountio are a reference to Bountio Limited.
• You and your are a reference to you.

We may update these Terms from time to time by a site announcement, or other notice. For significant changes we may notify you directly via email. Occasionally urgent changes may be required, but we’ll generally give you at least two weeks’ notice to give you an opportunity to review the changes before they go into effect. Once any updated Terms are in effect, you’ll be bound by them if you continue to use our Services. If you don’t agree to any updated Terms, you must stop using our Services.

We encourage you to view this page from time to time for the latest Terms.