Terms of Service

1. About GearHub

GearHub is a product of Kingstone Consultancy Ltd. These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of the GearHub mobile apps (iOS and Android/Expo), the GearHub website, and the GearHub API (together, the "Service"), operated by Kingstone Consultancy Ltd ("GearHub", "we", "us", "our"), a company registered in England and Wales with its registered office at No1 Parkside Court, Greenhough Road, Lichfield, Staffordshire, United Kingdom, WS13 7FE.

By creating an account 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.

2. Eligibility and minimum age

You must be at least 16 years old to create a GearHub account or use the Service. We ask for your date of birth when you sign up and will not knowingly allow anyone under 16 to create an account.

Accounts created before this requirement existed may not have a stored date of birth; we are not retroactively removing those accounts, but every new signup is checked against the 16+ minimum.

If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 16, we may suspend or remove it. We do not currently offer a parental-consent pathway or a restricted experience for users under 16; the minimum age is a hard requirement, not a preference.

3. Your account

You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. You must provide accurate information (including your date of birth) and keep your profile information reasonably up to date.

You may make your account and individual gear records public or private, and you may control sharing on a per-item basis. Some information (such as your username) may remain visible to other users even on a private account so that friend requests and verification can function.

4. Gear records, verification, and the vault

GearHub lets you record details about musical instruments and audio gear you own, including ownership history, service and modification history, photos, and identifying information such as serial numbers. You are responsible for the accuracy of what you enter and for having the right to record and share any content you upload.

GearHub's vault feature lets you store encrypted attachments and metadata using end-to-end (zero-knowledge) encryption. We never have access to your vault passphrase or recovery key, and we cannot decrypt your vault contents on your behalf. If you lose both your passphrase and your recovery key, your vault contents cannot be recovered by us or anyone else — see the Privacy Policy for details on exactly what the vault does and does not protect.

GearHub's QR credentials, possession tokens, and theft-report/recovery-case features are provided to help owners verify and recover gear, but we cannot guarantee the accuracy of any user's claims, and we are not a substitute for reporting theft to the police or your insurer.

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to: impersonate another person or misrepresent ownership of gear; submit false theft reports or recovery claims; attempt to access another user's account, vault, or private data without authorization; scrape, reverse-engineer, or abuse the API or QR/possession-token systems; upload unlawful, infringing, or harmful content; or use the Service to harass, stalk, or endanger another person (including misusing location-adjacent features such as nearby-stolen-gear alerts or hometown/current-location data).

We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms, misuse administrative or verification features, or pose a security or safety risk to other users.

Band safety review: a serious, unresolved report against a band can temporarily reduce that band's visibility to promoters/agencies while it's reviewed, as a precaution rather than a finding of wrongdoing. This is always followed by a human admin review, which either lifts the reduced visibility or takes further action; it is never a final, unreviewed decision.

6. Research features

Certain features send content to a third-party model provider for processing: importing a gear listing from a URL sends the fetched web page, and identifying an item from a photo sends that photo. Reading a serial number from a photo and spec suggestions don't use this path — see "How we use your data" in the Privacy Policy for how those work instead. Only use these features with content you have the right to share, and treat any result as a starting point you should review, not a verified fact.

7. No generative AI content

GearHub is a platform for real gear, real photos, and real people. We do not allow AI-generated images anywhere on the Service. Automated screening currently covers profile pictures, brand/manufacturer company logos, gear photos, platform posts, and Voice content — images that appear to be generated are refused or held for review. Business-page logos and job-post photos aren't yet covered by automated screening (manual removal on report applies instead), but the no-AI-images rule applies to every image upload regardless.

Listing and post text that appears to be machine generated or machine formatted may be published with a visible note reading: "We suspect that this listing's information may be AI generated or formatted with the use of AI." You will be told before posting and given the chance to edit.

Accounts that breach this policy will be removed. Where an account is removed for breaching this policy, refunds are at our discretion to the fullest extent the platform allows, without exception.

8. Third-party services

The Service relies on several third-party providers (identity, storage, hosting, push notifications, and others) described in the Privacy Policy. Your use of features backed by those providers is also subject to their own terms where applicable.

9. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, regarding the Service, including that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that any gear valuation, serial-number verification, or ownership/recovery match will be accurate or complete.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, GearHub and Kingstone Consultancy Ltd will not be liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages arising from your use of the Service. Nothing in these Terms limits any liability that cannot be limited under the laws of England and Wales, including for death, personal injury caused by negligence, or fraud.

10. Changes to the Service or these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time to reflect changes to the Service or our legal obligations. If we make material changes, we will take reasonable steps to notify active users (for example, in-app). Continuing to use the Service after changes take effect means you accept the updated Terms.

The Service is currently free to use. We reserve the right to introduce fees, paid tiers, or paid features for some or all of the Service at any time in the future. If we do, we will provide reasonable notice before any such change takes effect for existing users, and any features that were free at the time you created your account will not have fees applied retroactively without that notice.

This reservation of rights does not itself commit us to any specific pricing, feature, or timeline, and no future pricing model should be inferred from it. It does not override any statutory rights you have under applicable consumer protection law, and if you have already paid for a specific paid feature or subscription period, we will not withdraw it without providing an equivalent replacement or a refund of any unused prepaid amount.

11. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and any disputes will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

12. Contact us

Questions about these Terms can be sent to serious-stuff@gearhub.tech, or by post to Kingstone Consultancy Ltd, No1 Parkside Court, Greenhough Road, Lichfield, Staffordshire, United Kingdom, WS13 7FE.