Terms & Conditions
Technically, we’re giving you a ‘limited license’ to the site. Here’s what that means. We’re happy for you to access our website and services (known as the services). You’re free to have this access (or limited license) as long as you follow these terms of use and all of our other Terms of Service as they apply to you. We’ll do our best to make sure our services are safe and working as they should, but we can’t guarantee you’ll have access continuously. In fact, we might even stop providing certain features or the services completely, and don’t have to give notice if we do.
We can take away your right to use our services at any time. If you violate our Terms of Use or other parts of our Terms of Service, we can take away your access to RGC websites. Officially, this is called terminating your license, and if it happens, we’ll tell you and you must stop using our services immediately.
Using our services doesn’t mean you can use any of our trademarks or other intellectual property, like copyrights and patents. We keep all of our rights to our intellectual property, even though we let you use our services. Our logos and names are our trademarks and registered in certain jurisdictions. Any other product or company names, logos or similar marks and symbols you see on RGC may be trademarked by our partners or other users like you.
You’re responsible for how you use our site and anything you post on it. If someone makes a claim against us because of anything you put on the site, you agree to compensate us for our legal fees and expenses (the lawyers call this, ‘indemnification’). When you post content on (or through) our site or give us content for posting, you agree that you’re completely responsible for that content and we’re not. You also agree to only post or give us content that:
You acknowledge and agree that whoever posts content is responsible for any harm caused to anyone by that content – not RGC – and that you’ll compensate and defend us, our partners, employees and representatives against any costs or legal or government action we have because of your content.
By posting content on the site, you give other people some rights to that content. Whenever you post content on our site, you give us and our affiliates a permanent right (called an ‘irrevocable and non-exclusive worldwide license’) to use, edit and share that content – across the world and without paying royalties. If your name, voice and image appear in content you post, we also might use those on the site or in our day-to-day business. For example, if you’re a freelancer, we might share your profile with clients we think could be a good match. You also give each user and site visitor the right to access and use your content through the site. They also have the right to use, copy and share your content – as long as they do it through the site, and follow both our Terms of Service and the law.
We might show ads near your content and information, without compensating you. Depending on choices you make in your profile, we might also include your name or photo when promoting one of our features.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on improving RGC websites. Here’s what happens when you share them. You can send us comments and suggestions about our services and ways to improve them. If you do, you’re agreeing your ideas are free and unsolicited, and you don’t expect or ask anything in return, unless we’ve specifically asked you for your ideas and offered something in return (we like to keep our word).
You agree we’re free to use, change and share the idea as we like, without being obligated to to give you anything for it. And if you do send us an idea, you also agree that this doesn’t affect our right to use similar or related ideas – including those we already have or get from others.
Anyone else who uses our site is responsible for what they post or link on RGC websites. We’re not responsible for the accuracy or reliability of any content shared by other people on our site, unless they’re officially working for us when they share or post the content. Any content represents the views of the person sharing it, not RGC websites.
Our site might also contain links or other access to third-party websites and applications. These sites and applications are owned and run by other parties, not RGC websites. If we use a link or application that goes to a third-party website, it doesn’t mean that we endorse it and you agree that you use it without our endorsement.
If you think content on our site infringes your rights, you can ask to have it removed. We’re committed to following UK copyright and related laws and need site visitors and users to follow them as well. That means you can’t use our site to store or share anything that infringes anyone’s intellectual property rights, including their rights under UK copyright law.
If you own copyrighted work and think your rights under UK copyright law have been infringed by anything on our site, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act means you can ask us to take it down. Here’s how to report it.
You can only use our services for work and to learn from the information we share. Our site and services were made to be used for business, not for personal or consumer use. We run our marketplace to help users find each other, build working relationships, and make and receive payments for that work. You can also use some of our services to get information we think might be interesting and useful for our site visitors and users – like our RGC websites blog. While we do our best to make sure that this information is timely and accurate, there might sometimes be mistakes. We don’t make any guarantees about information posted on our site, so never use it as tax or legal advice. And you should always double-check the information for yourself.
Certain uses of the site are not allowed. Here we go into much more depth about those things, including:
In short, you’re not allowed to use our services to do (or encourage others to do) anything that is illegal, fraudulent or harmful. If you don’t see something on one of the lists below, you shouldn’t assume it’s allowed. When in doubt, contact us to check.
You can’t offer, share, support or try to find anything that:
On RGC websites, you can’t do anything that’s dishonest or meant to fool others. You can’t misrepresent yourself, your experience, skills or professional qualifications, or that of others. This includes:
Similarly, you must always be honest about who’s doing the work. That means you can’t:
We’re particularly invested in avoiding fraud and misrepresentations when it comes to payments. This means: Freelancers can’t fraudulently charge a client in any way, including by:
Clients can’t engage in fraud related to payments, including by:
Everyone should be treated fairly and legally on RGC websites. You can’t use RGC websites to:
You must use our feedback system honestly and fairly. That means you can’t:
RGC websites relies on technology and trust – here’s how we maintain those things:
If you break any of these rules, we can suspend your account and stop you from using RGC websites (3.1). If you see someone else breaking these rules, please let us know (3.2).
We have the right to look into any potential violations of these terms of use, and might decide to pause, change or take away any content on our site when we do.
We can’t guarantee that we’ll take action against every potential violation, but just because we don’t take action against one breach doesn’t waive our right to take action against any future breaches, whether they’re related to the first breach or not.
If we do suspect rule-breaking, we can stop you using our site at any time. If we disable or close your account, you won’t be able to use any of our services, but these things will stay in place:
If you believe anyone is breaking any of our terms of use, please let our customer service team know or report it wherever you see this flag:
If we follow up on the breach, you agree to help with our investigation and take reasonable steps to help us fix the problem.
Here, we explain some of the terms we’ve used in our Terms of Use. Any other terms in italics should be defined when they’re mentioned, in the User Agreement or Terms of Service. An affiliate is anyone or anything that in any way manages, is managed by, or shares management with us. A client is someone using our site to find freelancer services from another user. A deep fake is a video or image that has been changed to replace one person with another in a deliberately misleading way, without asking the person whose face has been used. A freelancer is an individual or agency using our site to offer their services to clients. Freelancer services refer to the work freelancers do on RGC websites. A means of direct contact is information that would let someone get in touch with you directly (or find the information to do that) so you can bypass our site. For example, phone numbers, email and physical addresses, social media accounts, and personal websites with contact information are means of direct contact.
Site services are all services, applications and products – apart from freelancer services – that people can access through RGC websites. Content is what users post to RGC websites themselves, like comments, profiles, feedback, images, or other information. It includes anything posted as a response to questions asked by other users or RGC websites.