Terms of Service

1. Who we are and what these Terms are

The Third Connection ("TTC", "we", "us") is operated by RELAYLANE LABS LTD, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17162321), registered office: Lavender Cottage Hazelden Farm, Marden Road, Cranbrook, England, TN17 2LP.

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a legal agreement between you and RELAYLANE LABS LTD. They govern your use of the TTC app, www.thethirdconnection.com, and your attendance at TTC events, and they incorporate by reference:

• our Community Guidelines (04-community-guidelines.md) — how to behave on the service and at events;
• our Acceptable Use Policy (05-acceptable-use-policy.md) — technical and platform misuse;
• our Subscription, Billing, Cancellation & Refund Terms (09-billing-cancellation-refunds.md) — tickets, payments and refunds;
• our Privacy Policy (document 01) — how we use your personal data (the Privacy Policy is a notice, not a contract, but these Terms refer to it for how data is handled).

2. Acceptance

You accept these Terms by creating an account or buying a ticket. If you do not agree to these Terms, do not create an account, buy a ticket, or use the service.

3. Eligibility

To use the service you must:

• be at least 18 years old — no exceptions. TTC is an adults-only service;
• provide accurate information about yourself, including your real date of birth;
• hold only one account, in your own name, for your own personal use;
• not have been previously banned from the service;
• have the legal capacity to enter into this agreement.

We may ask you for evidence of your age or identity, refuse or close accounts that do not meet these requirements, and remove anyone we reasonably believe to be under 18 (see our Child Safety Standards, 06-child-safety-standards.md).

4. The service — what TTC is (and is not)

TTC offers:

1. Ticketed in-person events in participating cities. Tickets are one-off purchases (see section 10 and document 09). There are no subscriptions and no paid membership tiers.
2. Post-event matching. After attending an event, you can express interest (romantic or friendship) in other attendees of that event. A match is created only when the interest is mutual.
3. Chat. Text chat in the app, only between people who have mutually matched.

Honest expectations — please read this:

• We do not guarantee matches. Whether you match with anyone depends entirely on mutual choice between attendees. Buying a ticket buys entry to an event; it does not buy matches, chat access, dates, or relationships.
• Matching and chat are unlocked by attending an event (checked in at the venue), not by paying for a ticket.
• We do not manufacture interest: we do not send fake likes, fabricated interest notifications, or misleading urgency messages.

We may change, suspend or withdraw features of the service (acting reasonably and, for material changes, with notice per section 16). Individual events may be changed or cancelled — your rights when that happens are in document 09.

5. Your account and security

• Passkeys. TTC uses passkeys (no passwords). You are responsible for the devices holding your passkeys. Keep your devices secure and your device unlock (biometrics/PIN) private.
• Device management. You can view and remove enrolled passkeys/devices in the app. Remove any device you no longer control.
• Email. Your account email is used for enrolment codes and important service messages — keep it current and secure, because it can be used to enrol new devices.
• Tell us about compromise. If you believe your account has been accessed by someone else, contact us immediately (section 18) and remove unknown devices.
• You must not share, sell, or transfer your account, and you must not access anyone else's.

We may suspend access to protect you or the service if we detect suspected unauthorised access.

6. Your content and licence to us

"Your content" means anything you submit: profile details, photos, chat messages, safety reports, and feedback.

• You own your content. We claim no ownership of it.
• Licence. You grant RELAYLANE LABS LTD a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, resize/reformat (for example, generating photo renditions and thumbnails), display and distribute your content solely for the purposes of operating, moderating, securing and improving the service — for example showing your profile to other eligible attendees and matches, delivering your chat messages, and reviewing content for moderation and safety. This licence is not a right for us to use your content in advertising or marketing without your separate consent.
• Duration. The licence lasts while the content is on the service, plus any period we are required or permitted to retain it under our retention schedule and the law (for example safety records — see the Privacy Policy). When your content is deleted, the licence ends for that content except for those retained records.
• Your warranties. You promise that your content: is yours or you have the rights needed to post it; is accurate where it states facts about you (including your age and photos being of you); and does not infringe anyone else's rights or break the law or our Community Guidelines.
• Moderation. We may review, reject, restrict, or remove content per our Content Moderation and Appeals Policy (08-moderation-appeals.md). Photos are subject to pre-publication review.

7. Acceptable use and rules of conduct

You must follow:

• the Community Guidelines (04-community-guidelines.md) — respectful behaviour, prohibited content and conduct (harassment, hate, sexual misconduct, NCII, scams, impersonation, CSAE zero tolerance), photo rules, conduct at events; and
• the Acceptable Use Policy (05-acceptable-use-policy.md) — no scraping, automation, unofficial clients, security probing, or interference with the service.

Both documents form part of these Terms. Breach of either is a breach of these Terms.

8. Safety — important information

• We do not carry out criminal background checks or screening on users. We do not verify the criminal history of any person you meet through the service. You are responsible for your own interactions and for taking sensible precautions.
• In-person events carry inherent risks. You attend events, and meet other users, at your own judgement. Meet in the public event setting first, tell someone where you are going, arrange your own transport, and do not feel obliged to stay in any interaction.
• Emergencies. If you or anyone else is in immediate danger, contact the emergency services first — 999 in the UK (112 in the EU, 911 in the US) — before reporting to us.
• Reporting and blocking. You can report any user or content in-app or at www.thethirdconnection.com/report, and block any user (blocking is mutual and immediate). See 07-user-safety-reporting.md.
• Nothing in this section makes us responsible for the conduct of users, on or off the service, but we take reports seriously and act on them under our moderation policies.

9. Moderation, enforcement, suspension and termination by us

• We moderate the service and enforce these Terms as described in our Content Moderation and Appeals Policy (08-moderation-appeals.md), using the enforcement ladder in the Community Guidelines (warning → content removal → account restriction → permanent ban). Serious violations lead to immediate permanent removal.
• Telling you why. We tell you when we take action against your content or account and why, where the law allows, and how to appeal.
• Appeals. You can appeal enforcement decisions — see 08-moderation-appeals.md section 5.
• Tickets and enforcement. If we ban or restrict your account, tickets you hold for future events may be cancelled; whether a refund is due is set out in document 09. Enforcement never removes refund rights you have under law.

10. Tickets and payments

Event tickets are one-off purchases processed by Stripe. Prices shown are the total price including all mandatory fees. Ticket terms — pricing, payment, event changes and cancellation, refunds, the statutory position on cooling-off for dated events, promo codes, and chargebacks — are set out in our Subscription, Billing, Cancellation & Refund Terms (document 09), which form part of these Terms.

In short: tickets are non-refundable if you cancel or do not attend; tickets are for a dated leisure event, so the 14-day online cancellation right does not apply (this is stated before you buy); if we cancel an event you get a full refund; and if we materially reschedule an event (date, time or venue) you can choose between keeping your ticket and a full refund.

11. Intellectual property

• The service — the app, website, software, design, branding, logos, and all content we create — belongs to RELAYLANE LABS LTD or its licensors. We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the app and service for your personal, non-commercial use in accordance with these Terms.
• You must not copy, modify, reverse-engineer, or create derivative works from the service except as the law allows notwithstanding this clause.
• Other users' content belongs to them; being able to see it gives you no rights to copy, republish or reuse it.
• If you believe content on the service infringes your intellectual property rights, use our IP takedown process (11-ip-takedown.md).

12. Third-party services and app stores

• Stripe processes payments. Your card details go to Stripe, not to us, and Stripe's own terms and privacy policy apply to its processing.
• App stores. The app is distributed through the Apple App Store and Google Play. Your download and use of the app binary are also subject to the applicable store terms — for iOS, Apple's standard Licensed Application End User Agreement (LAEA). If there is any conflict between those store terms and these Terms, the store terms govern the software licence to the app itself, and these Terms govern the service (accounts, content, conduct, tickets, refunds, termination). Apple and Google are not responsible for the service and have no obligation to provide support for it; where required by store terms, Apple is a third-party beneficiary of these Terms with the right to enforce them against you as regards the iOS app.
• Links to third-party websites or venues are provided for convenience; we are not responsible for them.

13. Disclaimers and our liability to you

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for:

• death or personal injury caused by our negligence;
• fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;
• any liability that cannot be excluded or limited under the law of England and Wales, including your statutory rights as a consumer (for consumers, including the Consumer Rights Act 2015 requirement that services be performed with reasonable care and skill).

Subject to that:

• The digital service (app, matching, chat) is provided free of charge alongside paid event tickets. We will provide the service, and run events you have tickets for, with reasonable care and skill.
• We are not liable for: the conduct of other users (online or at events, subject to our own negligence); content posted by users; your interactions or relationships with people you meet through the service; matters outside our reasonable control; or losses that were not foreseeable to both of us when you accepted these Terms.
• We are not liable for business losses. The service is for personal use only.
• These Terms do not impose a monetary cap on our liability to you.

14. Your responsibility to us (indemnity)

If a third party brings a claim against us arising from your content infringing their rights, or from your fraudulent or unlawful use of the service, you will compensate us for losses we suffer as a direct result — but only to the extent the claim results from your breach, and nothing in this section limits your statutory rights.

15. Closing your account and what happens next

• You can leave at any time. To delete your account, email privacy@thethirdconnection.com from the email address on your account and we will action your request. There is currently no in-app deletion option, so deletion requests are handled by email.
• What happens to your data on deletion — what is erased, what minimal records are retained (for example safety and financial records) and for how long — is set out in the Privacy Policy and our deletion procedure. In outline: your profile, photos and chat participation are deleted; payment records are retained as required by law; limited safety records may be retained as described in the Privacy Policy.
• Deleting your account does not entitle you to a refund for future event tickets except where document 09 or the law provides one.
• Sections that by their nature survive termination (your licence over retained records, IP, liability, disputes, governing law) survive.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms — for example for legal changes, new features, or safety improvements. For material changes we will give you reasonable advance notice in the app or by email before they take effect. If you do not accept the changes, you may close your account; continuing to use the service after the changes take effect means you accept them. Changes do not apply retrospectively and do not affect tickets already purchased except where required by law or to your benefit.

17. Governing law and where disputes are heard

• These Terms are governed by the law of England and Wales.
• You and we can bring proceedings in the courts of England and Wales. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you may also bring proceedings in your local courts, and nothing in this section deprives you of any consumer protections or forum rights you have under the law of the country where you live.
• These Terms contain no arbitration clause and no class-action waiver. The service is not currently available in the United States; if that changes, we will review these Terms and publish any US-specific terms before US availability.

18. Complaints and contact

• Support and complaints (including data-protection complaints) are handled under our Complaints & Customer Support Policy (12-complaints-support.md).
• Contact: support@thethirdconnection.com (support, complaints and general legal queries); privacy@thethirdconnection.com (data-protection rights, deletion requests and data-protection complaints); safety@thethirdconnection.com (safety reports); tickets@thethirdconnection.com (ticket and payment queries); post: RELAYLANE LABS LTD, Lavender Cottage Hazelden Farm, Marden Road, Cranbrook, England, TN17 2LP.
• Nothing in these Terms limits your right to complain to a regulator (including the ICO) or to use any dispute-resolution route the law gives you.

19. General

• Entire agreement. These Terms (with the documents they incorporate) are the whole agreement between you and us about the service, but nothing in them excludes liability for fraud, and nothing affects your statutory rights.
• Severability. If any part of these Terms is found invalid or unenforceable, the rest continues in force.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce a right straight away, we have not given it up.
• Assignment. You may not transfer your rights under these Terms. We may transfer ours to a successor of the business, provided your rights are not reduced.
• Third-party rights. Except as stated in section 12 (Apple, where required by store terms), no one other than you and us has rights under these Terms.