Terms of Service

1. Who we are and what this is

Niborz is operated by Niborz LLC, a Texas limited liability company (“Niborz”, “we”, “us”). It is a platform where verified residents of a participating residential community (an HOA, condominium association, or similar) can:

• ask their neighbors for recommendations for local businesses and services, and
• vouch for businesses they have personally used, with a short comment.

We host what residents write. We do not write vouches, and we never will. We are an intermediary, not the author of the recommendations you read here.

How to reach us. Niborz LLC, Texas, USA. General questions: help@niborz.com. Content reports and takedowns: moderation@niborz.com.

2. Accepting these terms

By creating an account or using Niborz, you agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy, which form one agreement between you and us. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

3. Who can use Niborz

You may use Niborz if:

• You are 18 or older. Niborz is not for children. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18, and we will close accounts we learn belong to minors.
• You are a resident (or resident owner) of a participating community, and your membership has been confirmed by that community’s administrator or by our verification process.
• You can form a binding contract and are not barred from using the service under applicable law.

One person, one account. You are responsible for everything done through your account and for keeping your password secure. Tell us immediately at help@niborz.com if you think someone else has access.

4. Community membership and verification

• Your access to a community’s content depends on your verified membership of that community. Community administrators may confirm or revoke that membership.
• If you move out, your membership in that community ends. You will keep your account, but you will no longer be able to post new requests or vouches in that community. Vouches you already posted remain, marked as being from a former resident. See section 8.
• We may suspend or end membership if verification fails, is withdrawn by the community, or appears to have been obtained dishonestly.
• Community administrators can manage membership. They cannot delete, edit, or order the removal of a lawful vouch simply because they disagree with it, and they cannot exercise your privacy rights on your behalf.

Confirming your mobile number

• Where your community has switched it on, joining asks for a US mobile number, and we send one text message containing a six-digit code. You ask for that message by tapping “Send code”; standard message and data rates from your carrier apply.
• That is the only text we send you. We do not send marketing or promotional messages by text, and agreeing to receive a verification code is not agreement to receive anything else. If that ever changed, we would have to ask you again, separately.
• One confirmed number, one account. If a number is already confirmed on another account, you cannot confirm it on a second one. You can release a number from your account settings if it is genuinely yours and somebody confirmed it in error.
• Confirming a number is not proof of residency. It shows you control a phone. Whether you live in a community is decided by that community’s administrator and by nothing else, and confirming a number does not entitle you to be admitted anywhere.
• We may refuse or stop sending codes to a number, or from an account, where the pattern of requests looks automated or abusive.
• Your confirmed number is never shown to other residents, to administrators, or to businesses. The number some residents choose to display to neighbors is a separate, optional setting that only you can turn on.

5. What you can post

When you post, you confirm that:

• You have personally used the business you are vouching for, or you have direct personal knowledge of the work described.
• You have no undisclosed connection to the business — you do not own it, work for it, are not related to its owner, and have not been paid, discounted, gifted, or otherwise rewarded for the vouch. If any connection exists, you must say so in the vouch itself.
• What you write is your own honest opinion and, so far as you state facts, accurate.
• You have the right to post it, and it does not infringe anyone’s rights.

6. What you must not post

Do not post content that:

• Attacks or disparages another business or person. Praise for one business must not be built out of accusations against another.
• Accuses anyone of a crime, fraud, or professional misconduct. If something serious happened, that belongs with the police, a consumer forum, or your community committee — not in a vouch.
• Contains someone else’s personal information without their consent — a private individual’s phone number, home address, apartment number, photo, license plate, or identity documents. A business’s published business contact details are fine.
• Is false, misleading, or paid for by anyone (including the business).
• Is abusive, harassing, hateful, obscene, or threatening, or targets anyone on the basis of religion, caste, gender, sexuality, disability, ethnicity, or similar.
• Infringes copyright, trade marks, or other rights.
• Is spam, advertising, or a solicitation, or promotes a multi-level marketing or investment scheme.
• Is unlawful under the laws that apply to you or to us.

We may remove content that breaks these rules, and we may suspend or close accounts for repeat or serious breaches.

7. Vouch integrity — the rules that make this worth reading

These rules exist because a vouch is only worth anything if it is real.

1. One vouch per household, per business. You cannot stack vouches for the same business from the same home.
2. No self-vouching. You may not vouch for a business you own, work for, or are related to the owner of.
3. Businesses cannot buy, edit, remove, or reorder vouches. Ever. Payment never changes what your neighbors said.
4. Sponsored content is always labelled as sponsored or paid placement, shown in a separate area, and never mixed into the vouch feed.
5. We do not pay for vouches and we do not run incentives that reward posting.
6. Niborz staff and contractors do not post vouches. Any sample content shown before your community is live is labelled as a demonstration.
7. We use rate limits and automated checks to detect manipulation. Accounts that game the system are removed, and businesses that solicit fake vouches lose their listing.

If you believe a vouch is fake or bought, report it (section 9). We will investigate.

8. Your content, and the license you give us

You own what you write. We do not claim ownership of your vouches, comments, or requests.

To run the service, you grant Niborz a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sub-licensable license to host, store, reproduce, display, distribute, adapt for formatting and display, and create excerpts of your content, for the purposes of:

• showing it to members of your community and, where you choose, to members of other communities and to visitors of the business’s public profile;
• producing share-cards and summaries of community recommendations;
• moderation, security, and enforcement of these Terms; and
• keeping the community directory usable over time.

This license does not permit us to sell your content to data brokers, to use it in advertising that implies you endorse Niborz itself, or to attribute it to you in a way you have not chosen.

When your content ends

If you delete a vouch, we remove it from the service.

If you leave a community — or an administrator removes you from one — your vouches in that community stay, with your name on them. They lose the verified-resident badge, are marked “Former resident”, and stop counting toward that community’s totals. Leaving is a change of standing, not a deletion request.

If you close your account, your vouches stay on the service but stop being linked to you: your name is removed from them and from everywhere else in the service, and they show as written by “A former member”. You can instead choose “delete everything, including my reviews and asks” in the account-deletion screen, and we will remove them. We keep the anonymised text because your neighbors relied on it when choosing a plumber or a tutor, and removing it silently would make the directory less trustworthy for everyone.

In either case, the license ends for future use when the content is removed, and we may keep copies in backups and in records we are legally required to retain (see the Privacy Policy and section 11 below).

Our content and the directory. The Niborz software, design, brand, and the compiled community directory (as a compilation, separate from the individual vouches in it) belong to us. You may not scrape, crawl, bulk-download, or resell the directory or any part of it, or use automated means to access the service without our written permission.

9. Reporting content, and how takedowns work

Anyone — a resident, a business owner, or a member of the public — can report content. You do not need an account to report.

How to report: use the “Report” control on any vouch, or email moderation@niborz.com with a link to the content, what is wrong with it, and how to reach you.

What we do:

We may remove content immediately, before completing a review, where it appears to put someone at risk, or where the law requires it.

Court orders and government notices. We remove content within 36 hours of receiving a valid court order or an authorized government notification, and we keep a record of removed content for 180 days (or longer if the law requires).

Businesses: if you are named on Niborz and want to see, respond to, or contest what has been said about you, write to moderation@niborz.com. You do not have to pay us anything to do this.

Intellectual property. Send infringement notices to moderation@niborz.com with the details required by applicable law.

10. Businesses on Niborz

• A business can be named by residents without signing up. Listings are created by the community, not by the business.
• We may remove a business listing that solicits fake vouches, harasses residents, or is unlawful.

11. Suspension, closure, and your rights

• You can close your account at any time from your account settings.
• We may suspend or close your account if you break these Terms, if verification fails, or if we are legally required to. Except where it would be unlawful or unsafe, we will tell you why and give you a chance to respond.
• Some records are kept after closure where the law requires.

12. Disclaimers — please read this part

We are not the person who fixes your tap.

• Niborz is a platform for recommendations, not a service marketplace. We do not employ, endorse, license, background-check, insure, supervise, or guarantee any business listed here.
• Any agreement, payment, or dispute is between you and the business. We are not a party to it and we have no responsibility for the work, its quality, its safety, its price, or its legality.
• Vouches are personal opinions of individual residents. They are not our statements, they are not professional advice, and they are not a promise of what you will experience.
• Nothing here is legal, medical, financial, or other professional advice — including vouches for professionals in those fields.
• We verify that a resident lives in the community. We do not verify the truth of what they write.
• The service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind to the fullest extent the law allows, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not promise the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that the directory is complete or current.

Nothing in these Terms limits any right you have that cannot be limited by law — including non-excludable rights under applicable state or federal law. Where a disclaimer or limit is not permitted, it does not apply to you.

13. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law:

• We are not liable for: any loss, injury, damage, cost, or dispute arising from your dealings with a business found through Niborz; the content of any vouch; the acts or omissions of other users or of community administrators; or any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, punitive, or exemplary loss, or loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or opportunity.
• Our total aggregate liability to you for all claims relating to the service is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or (b) US$100. Residents do not pay to use Niborz, so for most users this is (b).
• These limits do not apply to liability we cannot lawfully exclude — including death or personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or our wilful misconduct.

14. Indemnity

If someone brings a claim against us because of content you posted or because you broke these Terms or the law, you agree to cover our reasonable losses and legal costs, provided we tell you about the claim promptly and let you take part in the defense. This does not apply to claims caused by our own wrongdoing.

15. Changes to the service and these Terms

• We may change or discontinue features. If a change materially reduces what you get, we will give reasonable notice.
• We may update these Terms. We will post the new version, update the date at the top, and notify you in-product or by email before material changes take effect — and, in any case, at least once a year we will remind you of these Terms and the Privacy Policy.
• If you keep using Niborz after a change takes effect, you accept the new Terms. If you do not agree, close your account.

16. If a community leaves Niborz

If your community’s administrators end their relationship with us:

• the community space closes to new posts, and we stop using the community’s name and branding;
• the community’s administrators can request an export of that community’s business directory and vouch content;
• your account is yours. It is not closed, and it is not transferred to the community. The community cannot ask us to delete your data or exercise your privacy rights for you.

17. Disputes

Before starting formal proceedings, please contact us at help@niborz.com; most problems are faster to fix directly.

18. General

• Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between us about the service.
• Severability. If any part is unenforceable, the rest stays in force and the unenforceable part is narrowed to the minimum extent needed.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce a right, we have not given it up.
• Assignment. You may not transfer your account or these Terms. We may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, on notice to you.
• No third-party rights, except that our affiliates, officers, and staff may rely on sections 12–14.
• Force majeure. Neither of us is liable for delays caused by events outside our reasonable control.

19. Contact