Merchant Terms of Service

1. Eligibility and claiming

• You must have a PlateRanks account and be at least 18 years old to claim or manage a restaurant.
• You may claim a restaurant only if you are its owner or an authorized representative (for example, an owner, general manager, or a person the business has authorized to act on its behalf). You represent that you have the authority to accept these Merchant Terms on behalf of the business.
• Claims are verified, for example by a one-time code sent to an email address on the restaurant’s website domain, or by manual review of documentation you provide. Providing false, misleading, or unauthorized claim information is prohibited and may result in denial or revocation of the claim and suspension of your account.
• A restaurant may be managed by one owning account (which may include additional team members it invites). For businesses with multiple locations, each location is claimed and managed separately.

2. Owner obligations and content accuracy

• You are responsible for the accuracy of the information you add or edit about your restaurant, including name, address, hours, contact details, menu items, descriptions, prices, and allergen or dietary information. Keep it current and truthful.
• You are responsible for all activity under your account and for safeguarding your credentials. Do not share management access with anyone not authorized by the business.
• You agree to comply with all applicable laws in operating your restaurant and using the Business Services, including consumer-protection, advertising, food-safety, and accessibility laws.
• Menu and business information you submit may be shown to diners on PlateRanks. Do not submit content you do not have the right to use, and do not use the menu or profile fields to post promotional spam, off-topic content, or contact-harvesting solicitations.

3. Reviews are owned by PlateRanks and its reviewers

• You cannot edit or remove reviews. Diner reviews, ratings, and the aggregate scores derived from them are the content of the reviewers and PlateRanks. As a merchant you have no right to edit, hide, reorder, delete, or suppress any review or rating, or to condition service or benefits on a review being changed or removed.
• Your recourse is a reply or a dispute, not removal. You may post one public response per review, and you may dispute a review you believe violates PlateRanks’ guidelines (for example, a review that is not based on a genuine experience, targets the wrong restaurant, or contains prohibited content). A dispute opens a support conversation for PlateRanks to review. Only PlateRanks may remove or reinstate a review, at its discretion and consistent with its guidelines; a disputed review remains visible unless and until PlateRanks decides otherwise.
• PlateRanks may hide or restore a review at any time to enforce its guidelines. When PlateRanks removes a review, it may be shown as removed and the reviewer may be notified. These moderation decisions rest solely with PlateRanks.

4. Review-reply conduct

In your replies and in your dealings with reviewers, you agree not to:

• Create, solicit, incentivize, or facilitate fake, paid, or deceptive reviews, or offer any benefit in exchange for a positive review, the removal of a negative review, or a changed rating.
• Retaliate against, harass, threaten, intimidate, or attempt to identify or contact a reviewer off-platform because of a review, or discriminate against a diner for having left one.
• Post replies that are defamatory, harassing, hateful, obscene, deceptive, or that disclose a reviewer’s private information.
• Impersonate a diner, PlateRanks, or another business, or misrepresent your affiliation with the restaurant.

Replies are public and attributed to your restaurant. We may remove replies, and suspend or revoke management access, for conduct that violates these Merchant Terms.

5. Data use and insights

The Business Services may give you access to insights about your restaurant, for example aggregate ratings, review counts, and trends. You agree that:

• Insights are provided for managing your own restaurant. You may use them for that purpose but must not resell them, use them to build a competing product, or attempt to re-identify individual diners from aggregate or anonymized data.
• Any competitor or market insights we may provide are anonymized and/or aggregated and are provided on an “as is” basis for general context, not as a guarantee of accuracy.
• PlateRanks may use data generated through your use of the Business Services to operate, secure, analyze, and improve PlateRanks and its services, consistent with the Privacy Policy.

6. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Use the Business Services for any unlawful, fraudulent, or deceptive purpose, or in violation of any third party’s rights.
• Access, probe, scrape, or interfere with the Business Services or PlateRanks by automated means except as expressly permitted, or attempt to circumvent security, rate limits, or access controls.
• Attempt to gain access to restaurants, accounts, or data you are not authorized to manage, or to another business’s insights.
• Reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to derive the source code of the Business Services except where that restriction is prohibited by law.

7. Suspension, revocation, and unclaiming

We may suspend or revoke your access to a claimed restaurant, or unclaim a restaurant, if we reasonably believe the claim was unauthorized or fraudulent, that you have violated these Merchant Terms or applicable law, or that doing so is necessary to protect diners, other businesses, PlateRanks, or the integrity of reviews. When a restaurant is unclaimed, management access ends and the restaurant page may return to a community-managed state. You may also stop managing a restaurant by contacting us. Reviews, ratings, and history are not deleted by a suspension, revocation, or unclaim.

8. Disclaimers

The Business Services are provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Business Services will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, or that any insight, aggregate, or estimate is accurate or complete. Insights are informational and are not business, financial, or legal advice.

9. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, PlateRanks will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, or goodwill, arising out of or related to your use of (or inability to use) the Business Services or any review, reply, moderation decision, or insight. Our total liability for all claims relating to the Business Services will not exceed the greater of the amounts you paid PlateRanks for the Business Services in the twelve months before the claim or one hundred U.S. dollars (US$100). Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of the above may not apply to you.

10. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold PlateRanks harmless from claims, damages, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of the content you submit, your replies, your use of the Business Services, your claim of a restaurant you were not authorized to claim, or your violation of these Merchant Terms or of any law or third-party right.

11. Changes to these Merchant Terms

We may update these Merchant Terms from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the version identifier and effective date above and may ask you to accept the updated terms. Your continued use of the Business Services after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Merchant Terms.

12. Governing law

These Merchant Terms are governed by the laws of the State of [GOVERNING-LAW STATE], without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. (Any dispute-resolution, venue, or arbitration provisions to be finalized by counsel.)

13. Contact

[LEGAL ENTITY NAME]
[NOTICE CONTACT]
Questions about the Business Services: support@plateranks.com

Looking for the diner terms? Read the PlateRanks Terms of Service. You can return to PlateRanks for Restaurants at any time.