The rules

“We” and “us” on this page means Carbora Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under number 17482064, whose registered office is at 17A Langland Gardens, London NW3 6QE. Your agreement is with the company. You can reach us at admin@carbora.org.uk.

Carbora is free to play. Points are a score for your leagues, not money, and they can’t be spent on anything. When you say you’ve been somewhere, we take your word for it — so don’t say it if you haven’t. A sticker in a shop can fail like any other piece of hardware, and we don’t promise the app is always available. Play fair with the people in your leagues. You can delete your account and leave at any time.

By creating a passport — the moment you agree at the consent screen — you’re agreeing to these terms. If you don’t agree, don’t start one.

Carbora is a directory of independent shops with a game on top. The app suggests places to go, and you collect a stamp for each visit: by pressing “I’ve been here” on a shop’s card, or by tapping the NFC sticker at a partner shop. Shops can be added, edited, or removed from the directory, and special-edition circuits can change, close, or be replaced, without notice. We’ll try not to surprise you, but nothing here is a promise that a specific shop, circuit, or feature stays available.

Points are a score. They exist so that you and the people in your leagues can compare; they have no cash value, can’t be bought, sold, transferred or redeemed, and don’t entitle you to anything from us or from any shop. We may change how points are calculated — what a visit, a first visit, a far-out shop, a streak or a partner tap is worth — at any time, and we may adjust or remove points that were awarded for visits that didn’t happen (see “Playing fair”).

We may in future offer ways to use points at participating shops. Until we do, nothing in the app is a reward, a discount, or a promise of one. If that changes, we’ll say so here first.

Carbora lists independent shops in Oxford from publicly available information — a shop’s name, address, the kind of shop it is and where it is on the map. Most listed shops are not partners, and a shop appearing in Carbora doesn’t mean it’s affiliated with us, has agreed to anything, or endorses the app. Shop names belong to the shops; we use them only to tell you which shop is which. A shop owner can ask us to correct or remove a listing at any time — see support.

A partner shop is one that has agreed to carry a Carbora sticker. Tapping it is worth double, because the tap proves you were actually there. Pressing “I’ve been here” at a partner still counts, at the ordinary rate. A partner shop is a business independent of us: we don’t control its opening hours, its prices, or what it does or doesn’t offer you, and a shop being listed isn’t an endorsement by us or of us.

“I’ve been here” is on trust. We don’t check where you are — by design, so that we never have to know — which means the game only works if people press it when it’s true. Pressing it for a shop you haven’t visited, running scripts against the app, or otherwise inflating a score is a breach of these terms, and we can remove points, reset a passport, or close an account over it.

Display names and league names are visible to other people in your leagues. Don’t impersonate someone else, and don’t use a name that’s abusive, harassing, or offensive. Don’t try to defeat the sticker verification — forging, replaying, or tampering with a tap doesn’t award a real stamp, and trying to is a breach of these terms.

We can rename or remove a display name or league name, and suspend or close an account, for conduct that breaches this section. If someone’s behaviour in a league is a problem, tell us.

Carbora’s own name, design, and the app itself belong to us, not to you — using the app doesn’t give you rights to any of it beyond playing as intended. Shop names and descriptions belong to the shops.

Anything you provide — a display name, a league name — stays yours. By adding it, you’re letting us show it to other people as part of how the app normally works (a display name in a league, for instance), and nothing more than that.

Carbora is provided as it is. We don’t promise it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or available at any particular time — sticker hardware fails, phones lose signal, and servers have outages. The directory is our best effort at listing Oxford’s independents; a shop may have moved, closed, or changed since we listed it, and we’re not responsible for a wasted walk. Nothing here excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud — those can’t be excluded under UK law, and we’re not trying to.

You agree to cover any claim, loss, or cost that arises from your own misuse of the app — an impersonating display name, an attempt to forge a tap, a score inflated with visits that didn’t happen. This doesn’t apply to ordinary use of the app as intended.

You can delete your account at any time — a real deletion, not a flag on a row we keep — from Account in the app. We can suspend or close an account for a breach of the “Playing fair” section above, or stop offering the service altogether, with reasonable notice where we can give it.

You can use Carbora under 18. These terms still apply to you regardless of age — if you’re young enough that a parent or guardian would normally be involved in agreements you make, it’s worth them knowing you’re playing, though we don’t require that. See privacy for what that means for your data specifically.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction over anything arising from them.

If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still applies — one clause failing doesn’t invalidate the whole agreement.

We can transfer these terms, and our obligations under them, to someone else — if the business is sold or reorganised, for example — and we’ll tell you if that happens. Your own account isn’t transferable to anyone else.

These terms, together with the privacy page, are the whole agreement between you and us about using Carbora — nothing said anywhere else overrides what’s written here.

If we change these terms in a way that matters, we’ll update the date at the top of this page. Continuing to use Carbora after a change means you accept the new terms; if you don’t, you can delete your account.