Terms of Service

By accessing or using Rate My City ("the Service"), you agree to these Terms. If you don't agree, don't use the Service. We may update these Terms from time to time; continued use after a change means you accept the updated Terms.

Who can use the Service

You must be at least 16 years old to submit a review, listing, or claim. If you create an account, you're responsible for keeping your login credentials secure and for activity under your account.

User-submitted content

"User Content" means reviews, scores, review text, display names, photos, vendor listings, and any other material you submit to the Service.

• Ownership. You retain ownership of your User Content. By submitting it, you grant Rate My City a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable license to host, store, reproduce, display, distribute, and adapt it (e.g. for formatting, thumbnails, or excerpts) in connection with operating and promoting the Service, for as long as it remains published.
• Your responsibility. You're solely responsible for what you submit. You represent that your User Content is accurate to the best of your knowledge, doesn't infringe anyone's rights, and complies with our Community Guidelines.
• Moderation rights. All reviews and vendor listings are held in a pending state and reviewed before publication. We may approve, reject, edit for formatting, remove, or restore any User Content at our discretion, at any time, including after publication — for example in response to a Community Guidelines violation, a legal request, or a DMCA notice (see Contact). We have no obligation to publish any submission.
• Anonymous submissions. Reviews may be submitted without an account. An anonymous submission is still subject to these Terms and to moderation; we cannot verify the identity of an anonymous submitter and disclaim any representation as to who authored it.

Prohibited conduct

You agree not to:

• Post false, defamatory, or intentionally misleading reviews, including reviews for a city you have no genuine basis to rate.
• Post content that is unlawful, harassing, hateful, or that discloses another person's private information.
• Submit reviews on behalf of, or paid/incentivized by, a business, government body, or organization without disclosing that relationship.
• Attempt to manipulate scores through duplicate accounts, automated submissions, or coordinated review campaigns.
• Use the vendor listing or claim tools to submit a listing you don't have the authority to represent.
• Interfere with, scrape at disruptive volume, or attempt to circumvent security or rate-limiting on the Service.

Full detail on what makes a review acceptable is in the Community Guidelines.

Vendor claims and billing

Business/tourism-board claims on a vendor listing are reviewed before approval and, once approved, billed as a recurring subscription through Stripe. Subscription terms (price, billing interval, cancellation) are presented at checkout. Cancelling a subscription stops future billing; it does not retroactively refund past periods except as required by law or stated at checkout. We may revoke a claim if the underlying listing is found to be fraudulent or claimed by someone without authority to represent the business.

Scores are derived, not editorial

Every city's displayed score is a computed average of individual, approved review scores — never manually entered or edited by us. We don't guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any score, review, or listing; they reflect the opinions of individual submitters, not Rate My City's own assessment.

Intellectual property

The Service's design, code, and branding (excluding User Content and third-party map/data sources) belong to Rate My City. Map data is provided by OpenStreetMap contributors under the Open Database License.

Disclaimers

The Service is provided "as is," without warranties of any kind. We don't guarantee the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that any review or listing is accurate. Decisions about where to live, visit, or do business shouldn't be based solely on crowdsourced reviews here.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Rate My City and its operators aren't liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential damages arising from your use of the Service, or from User Content posted by others. Our total liability for any claim relating to the Service is limited to the amount you paid us (if any) in the twelve months before the claim arose.

Termination

We may suspend or terminate access to the Service, or remove content, for violation of these Terms or the Community Guidelines, at our discretion.

Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the United States and the state in which Rate My City is operated, without regard to conflict-of-law principles.

Contact

Questions about these Terms: contact@ratemycity.app or the Contact page.