Terms of Use & Disclaimer

1. Mission

StartLocal's mission is to offer a forum to promote interaction within local communities and promote the use of local businesses.

2. About this website

http://www.StartLocal.com.au (the Site) is owned and operated by Eaco Systems (ABN 94 105 346 389) (Start Local, we, our, us).

We provide the Site as a venue only for members of the public (Users) to access listings of businesses, provide reviews on local businesses (Local Business) and to engage with other Users.

3. About these terms of use

These terms of use, the associated privacy statement and editorial policy (known collectively as the Terms of Use) govern access to, use of and submission of content to the Site by Users and Local Businesses (known collectively as you, your).

4. Policy acknowledgement

Our Privacy Policy can be found at www.startlocal.com.au/privacy.html and our Editorial Policy can be found at www.startlocal.com.au/editorial.html. Your use of this Site indicates that you have read, understood and agree to those policies which are part of our Terms of Use.

5. Your access/use implies agreement

By accessing or using the Site, including any premium services or other services we offer you from time to time, you accept the Terms of Use. If you do not agree to the Terms of Use, you must not access or use the Site.

6. Changes to Terms of Use

We may change our Terms of Use at any time by publishing those changes on the Site. Your continued use of the Site after any changes to our Terms of Use have been made and published indicates your acceptance of those changes.

7. Eligibility

You are only eligible to access and use the Site if you are over the age of 16.

8. Passwords

You must keep your username and/or password for the Site confidential and free from unauthorised use.

9. Local Business information

We publish data and information about Local Businesses on the Site.

We make no representations or warranties about the truth, accuracy, completeness, security or currency of the content or information contained on our Site (Our Content), including the competence, character or identity of any Local Businesses listed on the Site.

10. Access to our website

You are allowed to view, use, copy, and distribute the Materials found on StartLocal for internal, non-commercial and informational purposes only. However, you are prohibited from data mining, scraping, crawling, or using any process or processes that send automated queries to StartLocal. You may not use StartLocal or any of our related websites to compile a collection of listings, including but not limited to a competing listing product or service.

11. Submission of Content

You acknowledge that all content (including text, images and any other data) submitted to or through us (whether this be via email, comment form, blog, enquiry, posting of review or recommendation or by any other means) (Your Content) will not be considered confidential or proprietary and we are under no obligation to keep such information confidential.

You must not submit information that:

    1. you do not have the right to disclose or make available under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships (such as insider information, or proprietary and confidential information learned or disclosed as part of employment relationships or under non-disclosure agreements);
    2. publicly reveals your identity or sensitive or confidential personal information about yourself or others such as an email address, phone number or address; and
    3. would infringe the intellectual property rights of third parties.

By submitting Your Content through the Site, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide licence to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, enhance, transmit, distribute, publicly perform, display, or sublicense any such communication in any medium and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorise others to do so.

12. Use of Content

Your Content may be seen and used by other Users and Local Businesses. We are not responsible for misuse or misappropriation of any of Your Content.

You must not submit content or use the Site in any manner or for any purpose which is illegal or prohibited by any laws that apply to you or violate our rights in any way or is otherwise prohibited by our Terms of Use.

We do not endorse, support, sanction, encourage, verify or agree with Your Content including without limitation the comments, opinions, or statements posted or otherwise contained on the Site.

We reserve the right, but have no obligation to, amend, supplement, delete or update Our Content and Your Content, without notice to you and at our sole discretion. However, if we become aware of any defamatory, misleading, false or offensive material in Your Content, we will remove such material.

13. Outbound links

The Site may contain links to third party websites which in turn may contain hyperlinks to further third party sites (known collectively as Linked Sites). These are provided for your convenience only and you are responsible for evaluating whether you want to use a Linked Site.

We do not control, we are not responsible for and we do not endorse any features, content, advertising, products or other materials on or available from a Linked Site.

You acknowledge that we may receive payments and/or commissions from operators of Linked Sites as a result of your click-throughs to the Linked Site from our Site.

14. Local Business Listings

If you are a Local Business, you acknowledge by submitting or claiming a business listing to the Site (Listing) that:

  1. you are a director of the company, the business owner, or have authority to speak directly on behalf of the company director or business owner;
  2. all information you submit is correct, accurate to the best of your knowledge and that you agree to its publication without conditions;
  3. you will be held responsible for the accuracy of all data that you submit;
  4. you are the rightful and legal owner of any trade mark, logo or other insignia that you provide for publishing on the Site; and
  5. you are legally responsible for everything the you submit and indemnify us against any claim in law, equity or otherwise which may arise from you posting any content on to the Site.

A Local Business may request removal of the Listing at any time.

15. Submission of Recommendation, Review, Vote Up and Vote Down

You acknowledge and agree that the recommendation, review and voting (Ratings) system (Ratings System) is in place for Users to inform other Users about the experiences Users have had with a Local Business.

By submitting a Rating, Users acknowledge and agree to the following:

    1. that everything the User posts in the Rating is true and accurate to the best of the User's honest knowledge and belief;
    2. that the User has been a customer of the Local Business for which the User is submitting a Rating and the User has no connection (other than a customer-business relationship) to the owner or any employee of the Local Business or any trade competitor of that business;
    3. that the vote down system on the Site is only to be used to indicate the User's displeasure with a particular business;
    4. that the User's Rating may, or may not, affect a Local Businesses rating;
    5. that the User may submit as many Ratings as the User wishes, but the User may only submit one Rating for each Local Business during a 12 month period;
    6. that the User is legally responsible for everything the User submits and indemnifies us against any claim in law, equity or otherwise which may arise from the posting of the User's Rating on the Site; and
    7. that the User must not identify the name of any employee or agent of the Local Business.

Any comments a User submits with a vote down rating will be sent to the Site administration team and will not be published, but your Rating will contribute to the overall rating of that business The User's comments including any Personal Information of the User, may be released where a claim is made that the User has breached any law.

16. Payment for Premium Services

If you purchase any services that we offer for a fee, either on a one-off or subscription basis (Premium Services) you agree to pay the applicable fees, as they become due plus all related taxes, and to reimburse us for all collection costs and interest for any overdue amounts.

Your obligation to pay fees continues through to the date you cancel your subscription to the Premium Services.

All fees and charges are non-refundable and there are no refunds or credits for partially used periods.

You acknowledge that our Premium Services are subject to our Terms of Use and any additional terms provided to you when you apply for a Premium Service.

17. Disputes

You acknowledge that the Site is a venue only and we are not a party to, and do not participate in any transaction between you and any Local Business or other User. So if a dispute arises in relation to a transaction, please seek professional advice rather than contacting us.

18. Ownership of intellectual property

You acknowledge that all materials displayed on the Site, including without limitation all information, text, materials, graphics, software, tools, results derived from the use of software and tools, advertisements, names, logos and trademarks on the Site (Intellectual Property Rights) are our property or the property of their respective owners and are protected by copyright, trademark and other intellectual property laws unless expressly indicated otherwise on the Site.

Except as expressly permitted by the Terms of Use and to the extent the law otherwise permits, you may not in any form or by any means use, adapt, reproduce, copy, modify, store, distribute, print, display, perform, publish or create derivative works from any part of this Site or commercialise any of our Intellectual Property Rights obtained from any part of this Site. We monitor and take active steps to identify any potentially infringing use of our data through methodologies such as the inclusion of false listings in our datasets.

You may not contact any business listed on this Site, using the contact details they have published on this Site, to approach them in regards to offering online advertising packages.

19. Liability and Indemnification

To the extent the law permits, neither we, nor our directors, officers, agents, employees or contactors will be liable for any loss or damage, however, arising (whether in negligence or otherwise), in connection with your use of the Site, any Linked Site or Our Content or any omissions from Our Content.

You indemnify us and hold us harmless for all damages, losses and costs (including, but not limited to, reasonable legal costs) related to all third party claims, charges, liabilities and investigations caused by:

  1. Your failure to comply with the Terms of Use, including, without limitation, your submission of content to us that violates third party rights, including the intellectual property rights or applicable laws; and
  2. any activity in which you engage yourself, or through us.

20. Disclaimer

To the extent permitted by law, the Site is provided to you 'as is' without warranty, either express or implied, statutory or otherwise, including but not limited to the implied warranties of truth, accuracy, reliability, title, merchantability, non-infringement of third parties' rights, and fitness for any particular purpose, or any other warranty, condition, guarantee or representation (whether oral or in writing), including but not limited to the accuracy or completeness of any information contained therein or provided by Us.

If any statute implies warranties into these Terms of Use that cannot be excluded, nothing in these Terms of Use operates to exclude them.

You acknowledge that your use of the Site, your Content, Our Content, Listings and Linked Sites is entirely at your own risk.

We do not accept responsibility for any interference or damage to your computer system or data which arises in connection with your use of the Site.

Although reasonable precautions have been taken, we do not guarantee that access to the Site will be uninterrupted, or that there will be no failures, errors or omissions or loss of transmitted information, or that no viruses will be transmitted on the Site.

21. Termination

We may terminate your access to this Site at any time without reason and without notice. The Terms of Use survive any such termination.

22. Jurisdiction

The Terms of Use are governed by the laws in force in Victoria, Australia. You agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts in Victoria, Australia.