Terms of Service

Welcome to Yard Snail 🐌

Yard Snail is a community discovery platform operated by Sthetic Creative Group, LLC ("we," "us," or "our"). By creating an account or using any part of Yard Snail — the website, mobile app, or any related service — you agree to these Terms. If you don't agree, please don't use Yard Snail.

We're a small, passionate team that genuinely cares about making local buying and selling better. These terms exist to keep the community safe and fair for everyone — not to be scary fine print.

1. What Yard Snail Is (and Isn't)

Yard Snail is a listing and discovery platform. We help people find local yard sales, markets, food trucks, and pop-ups — and help sellers post and promote their events.

We are not a party to any transaction. When you buy or sell something through a listing you found on Yard Snail, that transaction happens directly between you and the other person. Yard Snail does not handle payment, does not guarantee item condition, and is not responsible for what happens at any sale or meetup.

You use Yard Snail at your own risk when meeting strangers. We strongly encourage you to meet in public places, bring a friend, and inspect items before handing over cash. See our Community Guidelines for safety tips.

2. Eligibility & Age

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account or use any account features on Yard Snail. By creating an account, you confirm you are 18 or older. Anyone may browse the public map and listings without an account. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18 — if we discover we have, we'll delete it promptly.

3. Your Account

You're responsible for keeping your login credentials secure and for all activity that happens under your account. If you think your account has been compromised, let us know right away. We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms.

4. Prohibited Items & Content

Yard Snail is for real, local community sales. The following are not allowed on the platform — posting them may result in immediate removal and account termination:

• Weapons, firearms, ammunition, or any item regulated by federal or state law
• Illegal drugs, drug paraphernalia, or prescription medications
• Counterfeit, replica, or trademark-infringing goods
• Recalled products (check CPSC.gov if unsure)
• Live animals (with limited exceptions for licensed breeders in applicable jurisdictions)
• Adult content or services
• Stolen or fraudulently obtained property
• Anything illegal under federal, state, or local law
• Misleading, deceptive, or spam listings
• Personal information of others without their consent

5. Local Rules, Permits & Ordinances

Requirements vary by location. Before posting or attending an event, check the applicable city, county, state, and HOA rules—including any permits, licenses, zoning, parking, food-safety, or vendor requirements. Yard Snail provides general information only and does not verify legal compliance or provide legal advice. Event organizers and sellers are responsible for obtaining required approvals.

Depending on where you live, this can include yard sale permits or limits on how often you can hold one, food truck health-department licenses and mobile vendor permits, farmers market and venue rules, sales tax obligations, signage restrictions, and HOA or neighborhood association rules.

Check with your city, county, and state — and your HOA — before posting or hosting a sale. Yard Snail does not verify permits or licenses and is not responsible for a seller's failure to comply with local requirements. We do not represent that any listing is "legal," "permitted," or "approved" unless we explicitly verify and maintain that status.

Helpful starting points for finding your local requirements:

• City & county government (USA.gov)
• State government (USA.gov)
• Food safety (FDA)

6. All Sales Are Final

All transactions arranged through Yard Snail happen directly between buyers and sellers, and all sales are final. Yard Snail does not process payments and does not offer refunds, returns, chargebacks, escrow, or buyer protection of any kind. Inspect items in person before paying, and follow our Safe Meetup Tips for every exchange.

7. Your Content

When you post listings, photos, reviews, or messages on Yard Snail, you keep ownership of that content. By posting it, you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to display, distribute, and promote it within the platform (and in our marketing materials, like social posts showing a great local sale).

You agree that your content is accurate, legal, and doesn't infringe on anyone else's rights. Don't post photos or text you don't have the right to use.

8. Community Standards & User-Generated Content

Be decent. Don't harass, threaten, or discriminate. Don't try to game the system with fake reviews, duplicate accounts, or false Scout submissions. Full details are in our Community Guidelines.

Yard Snail hosts user-generated content including listings, comments, reviews, and local tips. We provide tools for reporting and moderating content that violates our guidelines, and we may remove or restrict access to material we believe is unlawful or harmful. Information on the platform (including local rules and permit tips) is date-stamped and links to official sources where available.

To the extent permitted by applicable law, Yard Snail relies on the protections afforded to interactive computer services under 47 U.S.C. § 230 with respect to user-generated content. Nothing in these Terms alters or waives those protections. Users remain solely responsible for the content they post and for their own compliance with local laws.

9. Subscriptions, Cancellation & Refunds

We want you to feel confident when you subscribe — so here's exactly how it works, in plain language.

Subscriptions covered by this policy:

• Seller Pro (monthly or annual)
• Food Truck / Vendor (annual)
• Venue / Market Page (annual)

Cancellation

You can cancel any subscription at any time — no phone calls, no retention hoops. One tap in your account settings does it. Cancelling turns off auto-renewal; you keep every feature you paid for until the end of the billing period you already paid for. Nothing is shut off early.

Refunds

We do not offer prorated refunds for unused time remaining in a paid period — but we do offer two exceptions:

• 14-day full refund window: If you subscribe and decide within 14 days that it's not right for you, just contact us and we'll issue a full refund — no questions asked. This applies to any new subscription purchase.
• Goodwill exceptions: We handle unusual circumstances (like a vendor closing their business) on a case-by-case basis. Contact us and we'll do our best to find a fair resolution.

One-time purchases (Boosts, etc.)

Listing Boosts and other one-time add-ons are non-refundable once delivered, as the service is consumed at the time of purchase.

10. Slugs & Scout Points

Slugs are community recognition points — they are not currency, have no cash value, cannot be bought or sold, and are not redeemable for any monetary amount. We can adjust or reset Slugs at any time without notice or compensation.

11. Disclaimer of Warranties

Yard Snail is provided "as is" and "as available." We don't guarantee that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that any listing is accurate, safe, or current. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied.

12. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Sthetic Creative Group, LLC will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising out of your use of Yard Snail — including any transaction you enter into based on a listing found here.

13. Account Termination

You can delete your account at any time from your profile settings, or by contacting us if you'd rather we did it for you. We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms, harm the community, or for any reason at our discretion. We'll try to give you notice unless doing so would cause harm to others.

14. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms occasionally. We'll notify you of significant changes via email or in-app notice. Continuing to use Yard Snail after changes take effect means you accept the updated Terms.

15. Governing Law & Translations

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to conflict of law principles.

Where Yard Snail offers the interface in languages other than English, translations are provided for convenience only — the English version of these Terms and all policies controls.

16. AI Features

Yard Snail includes optional AI-powered tools — like suggested titles and descriptions, item-detail auto-fill, and price-range estimates. These are automated suggestions generated by third-party language models. They may be inaccurate, incomplete, or outdated, and they are not appraisals, professional valuations, or legal, tax, or financial advice.

Price suggestions are informational estimates only — you alone choose your price. You are responsible for reviewing all AI-generated content before posting and for the accuracy and legality of your final listing. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all liability arising from reliance on AI-generated suggestions.

17. Messaging & Communications

All contact happens in the app

Buyers and sellers reach each other through Yard Snail's built-in messaging, and that is the only contact channel we provide. Yard Snail does not collect, store, or share phone numbers, and we never publish your email address on a listing or profile. The other person sees only what you choose to send them. When you send a message, Yard Snail and its service providers process it in order to deliver it, and the recipient receives its contents.

Contact that happens off Yard Snail

This one matters, so we're saying it plainly. If you choose to share your own phone number, email, or another app inside a message, the conversation from that point leaves Yard Snail entirely. We cannot see it, moderate it, keep a record of it, or step in if something goes wrong. Our scam warnings, blocking, and reporting tools only work on messages sent inside Yard Snail. Anything you exchange with another member elsewhere is between the two of you, and is subject to your own carrier's or provider's terms and charges.

We recommend keeping the conversation in-app until you have a reason to trust the other person — and you can always report someone here even if the behavior happened elsewhere.

How we handle in-app messages

We use automated tools to flag messages that match known scam patterns or violate our Community Guidelines, and a moderator may review a conversation that is reported to us. We have no access to anything said outside the app and do not monitor it.

What you may not do

• Collect, scrape, store, or resell other members' contact details
• Send unsolicited marketing, autodialed, prerecorded, or bulk messages to members — this violates these Terms and may violate telemarketing law
• Continue contacting a member after they have asked you to stop, blocked you, or declined
• Use messaging to harass, threaten, defraud, or impersonate anyone

If you receive unwanted contact, block the member and report them. We may suspend or remove accounts for any of the above.

Records

We keep in-app messages and phone-verification records for as long as needed to operate the service, resolve disputes, and investigate fraud or abuse. See our Privacy Policy for detail on what we store and for how long.

Automated access, scraping & AI training

Yard Snail's listings, shop pages, photos, descriptions and prices are published so that people nearby can find them. They are not published as a dataset.

Not permitted without our written permission

• Scraping, crawling, harvesting, or bulk-downloading listings, shop inventory, photos, prices, reviews, or member profiles — by script, bot, headless browser, extension, or any other automated means
• Using our public endpoints for anything other than browsing Yard Snail in a normal web browser, including circumventing rate limits or sending requests from multiple addresses to avoid them
• Copying our content into a competing marketplace, directory, or listing service
• Using our content to train, fine-tune, or evaluate machine-learning or AI models. Our robots.txt states this in machine-readable form; this section states it in writing. Ignoring either is a breach of these Terms.

What is fine

• Search engines indexing our pages so people can find us — that is the point
• Sellers exporting their own listings and inventory. Your data is yours, and the app has tools for it
• Linking to, quoting, or sharing individual listings and shop pages
• Press, researchers, or partners who ask us first. We are usually happy to say yes

We may rate-limit, block, or suspend access that looks automated, and we may pursue removal of content copied from Yard Snail. Sellers' listings remain their own work; this section protects them as much as it protects us.

Questions?

Reach out to Sthetic Creative Group, LLC at hello@sthetic.org. We're real people and we read every message.