Terms of Service

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and Ginseng Swap Limited, a Hong Kong company doing business as BothCups ("BothCups," "we," "us," or "our"), governing your access to and use of BothCups — a coffee connector that introduces students to each other for a coffee between classes — including the chat at bothcups.com/chat, the campus map at bothcups.com/campus, the bothcups.com website, and the emails we send (collectively, the "Service").

By creating an account, signing in, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

Registered office: Ginseng Swap Limited, Room 1006, 10/F, Haleson Building, 1 Jubilee Street, Central, Hong Kong.

• You must be at least 18 years old and capable of entering a binding contract to become a member.
• The Service is currently a pilot at Seneca Polytechnic's Newnham campus (1750 Finch Ave E, Toronto). Only Newnham students who have verified a Seneca email address (@myseneca.ca; staff addresses at @senecapolytechnic.ca are also accepted for verification) can be matched. You may sign in without verifying, but you will not be matched.
• One account per person, tied to an email address you control. You may not verify with someone else's Seneca email, create multiple accounts, or let another person use your account.
• You must provide accurate information — including your real first name and a timetable that is actually yours. Matching only works, and is only safe, if members are who they say they are.
• We may refuse, suspend, or remove accounts at our discretion, including for suspected fraud, misrepresentation, abuse, or conduct that makes other members feel unsafe.

BothCups helps students meet for a coffee between classes. A connector proposes intros (with a first name and the reason, such as a shared course or being free at the same time); if both people say yes, it suggests a time from both people's free gaps and a café, and you tap "Lock it in." You can also mark yourself free right now, sign up for Coffee Tuesday (pairs are formed on Monday evening), start or join a coffee run from a café, or play the walker game, where a bump between walkers on a stylised campus map can create an intro.

• The connector is a coordinator, not a party to your plans. Coffees are between members. What you buy at a café is between you and the café.
• Intros need two yeses. An intro only goes ahead if both people say yes. If either person passes, nobody learns who passed.
• No guarantee of matches. Whether you are matched depends on who else is on campus and free when you are. We do not guarantee any number of intros or coffees.
• The Service is a pilot; features may change, and may be added or removed at our discretion.

Being a member means agreeing to be a decent classmate. You will not:

• harass, threaten, stalk, or discriminate against other members — in chat or in person;
• use the Service to promote a business, solicit sales, recruit, canvass, or spam other members;
• misuse personal details learned through the Service — including sharing another member's photo, bio, or messages, or contacting them outside the Service without their consent;
• try to find out who passed on an intro, or to identify anyone from the anonymous campus map;
• repeatedly no-show. A locked-in coffee is a commitment someone else plans around; if you can't make it, say so in the chat as early as you can.

No-shows. After a planned coffee, each person gets a quick private check-in. A no-show reported privately counts as a strike, and a couple of strikes pauses matching for a while. Strikes are never shown publicly or to other members, and you can dispute one.

Other violations may result in warnings, paused matching, suspension, or permanent removal, at our discretion.

The Service introduces you to people you may not know. Please read this section carefully.

• We verify Seneca email addresses, not people. Verification confirms control of a Seneca email address. We do not conduct criminal background checks, identity document checks, or reference checks on members, and we make no representations about any member's identity, character, or conduct.
• Use your own judgment. You are solely responsible for deciding whether to meet someone and for your interactions with other members, online and in person. Meet in public places (the Service suggests public cafés), tell someone where you're going, and leave any situation that feels wrong.
• We are not responsible for member conduct. To the maximum extent permitted by law, BothCups is not liable for the acts or omissions of members, cafés, or other third parties, whether online or in person.
• Report problems. You can report a chat or end it at any time from the chat, or contact us directly. Our admins review reported threads and can remove messages and close matches. In an emergency, contact local emergency services first (911 in Canada).

• Only upload a timetable, photo, or other content that is yours to share. Your photo must be of you and appropriate for a campus audience.
• Timetables are processed as described in the Privacy Policy: PDFs are read without AI, screenshots are read by a third-party AI vision model, and the uploaded file itself is not stored.
• By using the Service, you agree to receive the emails it runs on — intro, booking (with a calendar invite), reminder, check-in, unread-message, and verification emails.
• Connecting Google Calendar is optional. If you connect it, we check your free/busy times and add booked coffees to your calendar; you can disconnect at any time.

• We do not charge for BothCups during the pilot. If we ever introduce paid features, pricing will be shown clearly before you are charged.
• Anything you buy at a café is between you and the café and is governed by its prices and policies.

The connector in your chat is an automated AI assistant powered by third-party AI models. When someone mentions it, it reads the shared thread (recent messages plus a summary of older ones) and replies without a human reviewing each message. It can suggest or confirm a time, change the café when both people agree, and search the web for café information. AI output is probabilistic: the connector may occasionally misunderstand you, suggest an unsuitable time, or get a detail wrong (such as a café's opening hours or walking directions).

• Confirm details that matter to you — the booking email and calendar invite are the record of what was arranged.
• The connector's statements are not professional advice of any kind.
• If the connector gets something wrong, tell it — or contact us at the address below and a human will help.

You will not:

• use the Service for any unlawful purpose, or to organize unlawful activities;
• transmit content that is defamatory, harassing, hateful, sexually explicit, or that exploits minors in any way;
• probe, scrape, overload, or interfere with the Service, its security, or its rate limits, or attempt to reverse-engineer it;
• attempt to manipulate the connector into disclosing other members' personal information, bypassing safety features, or acting outside its intended purpose;
• impersonate another person, upload someone else's timetable, or operate multiple accounts;
• use the Service — including the campus map and campus room directory — to harvest data about members, or for any tracking or surveillance purpose.

The Service depends on third parties — hosting, database and authentication providers, an email provider, AI model providers, Google (if you connect Google Calendar), and the cafés where coffees happen. Their services are governed by their own terms, and we are not responsible for their availability, pricing, policies, or conduct. A café may change its hours or close; where that happens the connector will try to help you rearrange, but we are not liable for the disruption.

The campus map is built from OpenStreetMap building footprints (© OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence), plus room numbers and landmark facts noted by our team. Interiors are illustrative sketches — do not rely on the map for accessibility, safety, or emergency navigation.

The Service — its software, design, brand, and documentation — is owned by BothCups and its licensors. Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the Service for its intended personal, non-commercial purpose. Map data from OpenStreetMap remains subject to its own licence.

You retain rights to your content — your messages, profile, and photo. You grant BothCups a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, process, and display that content as necessary to provide and improve the Service, as described in the Privacy Policy.

Feedback. If you submit suggestions or feedback, we may use them without obligation to you.

• You may stop using the Service at any time. You can end any chat, clear your timetable, and disconnect Google Calendar yourself; to delete your account, email tony.lau@pulse520.ai.
• We may pause matching as described in Section 4, and may suspend or terminate your account immediately if you breach these Terms, if other members report conduct that makes them unsafe, or if your use creates risk or legal exposure for us. Safety-based removals may be immediate and without prior warning.
• Upon termination, your right to use the Service ends. Sections intended to survive (including assumption of risk, IP, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, and dispute resolution) survive termination.
• We will retain and delete your data as described in the Privacy Policy and as required by law.

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free; that any intro or coffee will happen or be satisfactory; that café hours, walking directions, or the campus map are accurate; or that any member is who they claim to be.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, BothCups and its affiliates, officers, employees, and agents will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for personal injury, property damage, or losses arising from interactions between members, meeting in person, café acts or omissions, or scheduling errors, arising out of or in connection with the Service, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.

Our aggregate liability for all claims arising out of or relating to the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the amounts you paid to BothCups in the 12 months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) CA$100.

Some jurisdictions — including provinces of Canada with consumer-protection legislation — do not allow certain exclusions or limitations. In those jurisdictions, the above applies only to the extent permitted by law, and nothing in these Terms limits rights that cannot be waived.

You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless BothCups and its affiliates from and against any third-party claims, damages, liabilities, losses, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or related to (a) your conduct when meeting other members, (b) your content or communications, (c) your use of the Service in breach of these Terms or applicable law, or (d) your violation of any third-party rights.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms will be referred to and finally resolved by arbitration administered by the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC) under its Administered Arbitration Rules; the seat is Hong Kong, one arbitrator, in English.

Consumer rights preserved. If you reside in a jurisdiction whose law grants you non-waivable consumer rights — including the right to bring proceedings in your local courts or under your local law (such as Ontario's Consumer Protection Act) — nothing in this section deprives you of those rights, and this section applies only to the extent permitted by the law of your residence.

Class-action waiver. To the extent permitted by the law of your residence, you and BothCups agree that each party may bring claims against the other only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class or representative action.

We may update these Terms from time to time — including after counsel review and before a wider launch. Material changes will be notified via the Service or by email at least 15 days before they take effect (except where a shorter period is required by law or to address safety, security, or legal issues). Continued use of the Service after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. We may also modify, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Service at any time.

• Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy constitute the entire agreement between you and BothCups and supersede any prior agreements on the same subject.
• Severability. If any provision is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions will remain in full force.
• No waiver. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of our right to do so later.
• Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
• Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delays or failures caused by events beyond its reasonable control.
• Notices. We may send notices by email or in-product. You may send notices to us at the address or email in Section 19.

Questions about these Terms? Contact: