Terms of service

Ember lets guests at a participating venue see who else is in the room tonight, wave, and meet in person. Rooms exist for one night only. The service is operated by PubCrush™ ("we", "us"), a trading name of FA Creative & Technologies LTD, 3rd Floor 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE. By creating an account or joining a room you agree to these terms and to our privacy policy.

You must be 18 or older, legally able to enter this agreement, and not previously removed from Ember for breaking these terms. Venues hosting Ember nights are licensed premises; their age policies apply at the door and inside, and staff may ask for ID under their normal rules.

You sign in with a phone number or with a Google, Microsoft or Apple account. One account per person, and it is yours alone: do not share it, sell it, or let someone else use it. You are responsible for keeping access to your phone number and sign-in accounts secure; what happens through your account is treated as done by you.

You can delete your account at any time from Settings on your profile. Deleting it removes your profile and photos as described in the privacy policy.

Ember only works if the person on the screen is the person in the room. Use your real first name and a recent photo that clearly shows your face. Be decent to the people you meet, in the app and at the bar.

The following get an account removed, in most cases without notice:

• Harassment, threats, hate speech or discrimination of any kind.
• Pretending to be someone else, or using someone else's photos.
• Contacting people who have blocked or reported you.
• Nudity, sexual content, or content that sexualises anyone.
• Using Ember for anything commercial: promotion, solicitation, escorting, selling, recruiting or campaigning.
• Photographing or recording other guests through or because of Ember without their consent.
• Scraping, automating, probing or reverse engineering the service, or helping anyone under 18 to use it.
• Anything illegal.

Your name, photos and interests stay yours. So that the service can work, you give us a limited licence to show them to other guests in the same room on the same night, and to store and process them to run the service. We do not put your profile on the open web, use it in advertising, or license it to anyone else.

We may remove content that breaks these terms, and we may use automated checks and human review on photos and reported content to keep rooms safe.

The Ember name, logo, app, site and everything in them that is not your content belong to us or our licensors. We give you a personal, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the app and site for their intended purpose, and nothing more.

A room belongs to one venue and one night. Who you see depends on who joined, and we make no promises about how many people will be in a room, who they are, or whether anyone will wave back. When the night ends, the room and everything in it are deleted as described in the privacy policy.

A match at an Ember venue comes with a match reward: a single-use code, non-transferable, with no cash value, valid only at the venue that issued it and only on the night it was issued. Not every pub on Ember runs one; a match that does not come with a reward earns points instead, described in the next section.

What it is worth: the venue sets the reward and stands it, and any conditions are shown on your reward code before you claim it. Both of you must be there and claim it together, because one of you holds the QR code and the other holds the check code the bar asks for with it.

How many: one match reward per person, per night, however many people you match with. The reward comes with your first match of the night where both of you still have tonight's reward to claim. If either of you has already used theirs, that match earns points instead, and we do not say whose reward it was. You can also only match with the same person once a night, wherever you both go.

What it covers: the venue funds the reward, so the venue decides what is included and may exclude some items, for example bottles of wine, champagne, doubles, premium spirits, or anything above a price it sets. Any conditions the venue has given us are shown on your reward code before you go to the bar. Where a venue has given us none, we say so on the code and you should ask at the till what is included before you claim it, because the bar decides that, not us.

Alcohol: you must be 18 or over. Where the reward is alcoholic, the venue serves it, not us. It is responsible for serving alcohol lawfully and may refuse service under its normal policies, including to anyone who appears intoxicated or cannot show ID. You can always take a non-alcoholic option of the same or lower price instead.

Misuse: the match reward is there to break the ice between two people who met on the night, and nothing else. We may withhold, void or refuse to honour a code where we have reason to believe it is being abused, for example accounts matching with each other only to collect rewards or points, codes passed to someone who was not in the room, or an account that keeps redeeming in a way its nights do not explain. We may also remove the account. Venue staff can refuse a code they believe is not being used by the pair it was issued to.

The match reward is a perk, not a promise: a venue leaving Ember, changing what its match reward covers, or a technical fault does not entitle you to compensation.

A match that does not come with a match reward earns points for both of you instead: a match at a pub that does not run one, or a match where tonight's reward is already spent. Points sit on your account as your Ember Score, only you can see them, and unlike the rest of the night they carry over.

Points are a loyalty perk, not money: they have no cash value, cannot be bought, sold or transferred, and can only be spent inside Ember on what we offer for them, such as a reward at a participating venue on a later night. How many points a match earns, and what they can be spent on, may change over time.

We may correct or remove points earned through the kinds of misuse described above. Deleting your account deletes its points. Like the match reward, points are a perk, not a promise, and losing them does not entitle you to compensation.

Now and then we run a hunt, such as Find the Rabbit: someone we call the rabbit roams the pubs, the app nudges you when they are near, and the first few guests to find them win a small prize. A hunt can carry our name or a sponsor's, and the game label, the prize and how many finders it takes are shown in the app while the hunt is on.

The prize is given in person by the rabbit, whoever is running that hunt, and at their own discretion: it is their round, not a credit from Ember, not a code behind the bar, and not something the venue owes you. Where the prize is alcoholic, the venue's normal rules on age, ID and service apply, and you can always take a non-alcoholic option.

Hunts are occasional and small. Once the announced number of finders is reached, or the hunt ends, there is no prize left to claim, and a hunt can end at any time. A find is confirmed by comparing your position with the rabbit's at that moment; your coordinates are used for that comparison and never stored. A find that was gamed, for example with a faked location, does not count. Like the match reward and points, the hunt is a perk, not a promise.

Venues join through a paid subscription and accept a separate venue agreement during signup, covering the match reward, billing through Stripe, cancellation and removal. Where these terms and the venue agreement differ, the venue agreement wins for venue matters.

Ember introduces people; it cannot vouch for them. We do not run criminal background checks or identity verification on guests. Meet in the open, in the venue. Trust your instincts and involve venue staff if anything feels wrong. In an emergency, call 999.

The report button also blocks: reported pairs stop seeing each other for the night. We review reports and may warn, suspend or remove accounts. Deliberately false reports are themselves a breach of these terms. If we remove your account you can ask us why, and contest it, at the address below.

You can stop using Ember or delete your account whenever you like. We can suspend or remove accounts that break these terms, and we can wind down or change the service itself; if we ever shut it down, we will say so in the app first.

The service is provided as is and as available, without warranties of any kind. Nights depend on venues, guests, phones and networks, none of which we control; we do not promise the service will be uninterrupted or fault-free.

To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses arising from use of the service, and our total liability to you is limited to the amounts you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or £100 if you paid nothing. Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law. Nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights as a consumer.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and disputes belong to the courts of England and Wales. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland you may also bring proceedings at home, and consumers keep every protection their local law does not allow to be waived.

We may update these terms; material changes will be announced in the app before they take effect. Continued use after a change means you accept the new terms. If you do not, stop using Ember and delete your account.

[email protected]