Plantative Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (the ’Terms’) govern your access to and use of the Plantative mobile application, the website at plantative.com and the related back-end services (together, the ’Services’). They form a binding agreement between you and Plantative.

These Terms and our Privacy Policy together form the ’User Agreement’. Please read section 6 (what Plantative is and is not), section 8 (legal compliance for plants), section 13 (artificial intelligence) and section 19 (limitation of liability) with particular care: they allocate risk between you and us, and they describe risks that you carry yourself.

1. Who we are and how to contact us

The Services are provided by Sebastiaan Verplancke, a natural person carrying on business as a sole trader established in Belgium and trading under the name Plantative (’Plantative’, ’we’, ’us’, ’our’).

• Place of business: Patijntjestraat 87, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
• Crossroads Bank for Enterprises number: 1034.776.796
• VAT identification number: BE 1034.776.796
• Email: [email protected]

The email address above is also our single point of contact for the purposes of Articles 11 and 12 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 (the ’Digital Services Act’), for communications with Member State authorities, the Commission and the European Board for Digital Services, and for direct communication with recipients of the Services. Communications may be made in Dutch or in English.

2. Scope, acceptance and definitions

By creating an account, or by accessing or using any part of the Services, you confirm that you accept the User Agreement and agree to be bound by it. If you do not accept it, you must not use the Services.

In these Terms:

• ’Content’ means any material you submit, upload, publish, transmit or otherwise make available through the Services, including listings, photographs, plant names and descriptions, prices, messages, addresses, reviews, profile information and support requests;
• ’Listing’ means an entry you publish offering a plant, cutting, seed or other plant material for sale, swap or giveaway, and any ’wanted’ post you publish;
• ’Offer’ means a proposal made through the Services by one user to another to buy, sell or swap plant material, including any revision of that proposal;
• ’Trade’ means an agreement concluded between two users following an accepted Offer or a direct purchase, and its performance;
• ’Doctor’ means the in-app assistant and the plant identification, diagnosis and care-guidance features described in section 13;
• ’Premium’ means a paid subscription plan offered through an app store as described in section 14;
• ’Consumer’ means a natural person acting for purposes which are outside their trade, business, craft or profession, and ’Trader’ means any user who is not a Consumer in respect of a given Listing or Trade.

3. Changes to these Terms

We may amend these Terms to reflect changes in the Services, in our business or in applicable law. Where an amendment is material, we will give notice through the application or by email at least 30 days before it takes effect. Where an amendment is required to comply with a legal obligation, a court or regulatory order, or to address a security or safety risk, it may take effect immediately.

If you do not accept an amendment, your remedy is to stop using the Services and delete your account before the amendment takes effect. Continued use of the Services after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the amended Terms, to the extent permitted by applicable law.

4. Eligibility

To use the Services you must:

• be a natural person, and not an automated agent or bot;
• be at least 18 years of age;
• have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract under the law of your country of residence;
• where you act on behalf of a business or other organisation, be authorised to bind it, in which case ’you’ means both you and that organisation;
• not be the subject of any applicable trade or economic sanctions, and not be located in a territory subject to comprehensive sanctions; and
• not previously have had an account terminated by us for breach of the User Agreement, unless we expressly agree otherwise in writing.

We may at any time require reasonable evidence of your age, identity or authority, and may suspend access pending its provision. The Services are not directed at persons under 18. If we become aware that a person under 18 holds an account, we will close it.

5. Your account

You must provide accurate and complete registration information and keep it up to date. You are responsible for keeping your credentials confidential and for all activity that occurs under your account, and you must notify us without undue delay at [email protected] of any suspected unauthorised use. You may not hold more than one account without our consent, and you may not sell, rent, lend or otherwise transfer your account, username, reputation or reviews to any other person.

6. What Plantative is — and what it is not

Plantative is an information society service which provides a venue where users may publish Listings, communicate with one another, negotiate Offers, record Trades and exchange plant material directly among themselves. In providing that venue we act as a provider of hosting services within the meaning of Articles 4 to 6 of the Digital Services Act and Book XII of the Belgian Code of Economic Law, storing information provided by users at their request.

We are not a party to any Trade. We are not the seller, buyer, supplier, importer, exporter, distributor, wholesaler, retailer, auctioneer, broker, agent, escrow agent, carrier, freight forwarder, payment service provider or insurer in respect of any plant, plant material or other item offered through the Services.

The following apply without exception:

• we never take possession, custody or control of any plant or other item offered through the Services;
• we do not inspect, test, examine, authenticate, appraise, identify, certify or otherwise verify any plant, Listing, photograph, description, species name, price, condition, provenance, permit, phytosanitary document or user identity;
• no payment is processed, held, escrowed, guaranteed or transmitted by us in respect of any Trade. Payment and delivery are arranged directly between the users concerned, outside the Services, at their own risk;
• any contract arising from an accepted Offer or a direct purchase is concluded exclusively between the users concerned. All rights and remedies arising from it, including any right of withdrawal, any legal or commercial guarantee of conformity, any right to a refund, replacement or repair, and any claim for damages, lie against the counterparty and not against us;
• nothing displayed through the Services constitutes an offer, invitation, recommendation, endorsement, representation or warranty by us in respect of any user, plant or Listing; and
• where the Services display the state of a Trade — including that an Offer has been accepted, that receipt has been confirmed, that a plant has been returned or that a review has been left — that display is a record of what users have told us. It is not verification, confirmation, escrow, certification or a guarantee by us that any event actually occurred, that any payment was made, or that any item was delivered or was as described.

We have no general obligation to monitor the information we transmit or store, or actively to seek facts or circumstances indicating illegal activity, in accordance with Article 8 of the Digital Services Act. Nothing in these Terms, and no voluntary investigation or moderation we carry out on our own initiative, shall be construed as giving us actual knowledge or awareness of any specific illegal content or activity.

7. Listings, Offers and Trades

7.1 Publishing a Listing

When you publish a Listing you represent and warrant, on each occasion and for as long as the Listing remains published, that:

• you own the plant material or are otherwise lawfully entitled to dispose of it, and it is free of any third-party right that would prevent its transfer;
• the Listing is accurate, complete and not misleading, in particular as to species, cultivar, size, age, condition, health, pest and disease status, propagation method, origin and price;
• the photographs are of the actual plant material offered, are yours to publish, and have not been altered in a way that misrepresents the item; and
• the Listing complies in full with section 8.

7.2 Offers and formation of a Trade

An Offer may be revised, declined or withdrawn in accordance with the functionality of the Services. Where both parties accept an Offer, or where a buyer completes a direct purchase of a Listing that permits it, a contract is formed between those users. The content, validity, performance and consequences of that contract are matters between them and are governed by the law applicable between them; we are not a party to it and take no position on it.

7.3 Payment, delivery and risk

The parties to a Trade agree the method, timing and place of payment and of delivery, collection or shipment themselves. You are solely responsible for choosing your counterparty, for the payment method you use, for packaging, labelling, insurance and carriage, for compliance with the carrier’s conditions, and for bearing the risk of loss, damage, delay, deterioration or death of plant material in transit or in storage.

Because no payment passes through the Services, we cannot reverse, refund, recover, hold or intervene in any payment between users, and we offer no buyer protection, seller protection, guarantee, escrow, insurance or dispute adjudication scheme of any kind. Users who transact without meeting in person do so at their own risk. We strongly recommend that you use a payment method that offers you an independent right of recourse against your payment provider.

7.4 Sharing addresses and meeting in person

The Services allow you to send an address to another user in a chat, and to record an address when confirming receipt. Whether to disclose an address, and to whom, is entirely your decision. Once disclosed, that information is in the hands of the recipient and we cannot recall or control it.

If you choose to meet another user in person, you do so entirely at your own risk. We do not screen, vet, background-check or verify any user. Take the precautions you would take with any stranger: meet in a public place, tell someone where you are going, and do not admit a stranger to your home.

7.5 Our discretion over Listings and Trade records

We may at any time remove, hide, demote, edit for formatting, decline to publish or restrict access to any Listing or Trade record, and may cancel a Trade record on the Services, in accordance with section 12. Doing so is a measure in respect of the Services only. It does not annul, vary, rescind or otherwise affect any contract concluded between users, and it does not make us a party to, or arbiter of, any dispute between them.

8. Legal compliance for plants and plant material

Trade in plants and plant material is heavily regulated. You are solely responsible for ensuring that every Listing you publish and every Trade you conclude complies with all laws and regulations applicable to you, to your counterparty and to the movement of the material between you. You represent and warrant on each occasion that this is the case.

Without limitation, this includes where applicable:

• Council Regulation (EC) No 338/97 on the protection of species of wild fauna and flora by regulating trade therein, and Commission Regulation (EC) No 865/2006, implementing the CITES Convention. Many commonly traded ornamental plants are listed, including numerous cacti, orchids, cycads, succulents, Euphorbia, Aloe, Dionaea, Nepenthes and Sarracenia. Sale, offer for sale, purchase, acquisition for commercial purposes and movement of listed specimens may require permits or certificates;
• Regulation (EU) No 1143/2014 on invasive alien species and Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2016/1141 establishing the Union list, together with the Flemish, Walloon and Brussels regional rules and equivalent rules in other Member States, which prohibit keeping, breeding, transporting, placing on the market, using and exchanging listed species;
• Regulation (EU) 2016/2031 on protective measures against pests of plants and Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2072, including the requirement for a plant passport to accompany plants for planting moved within the Union, which applies also to distance sales to final users, and the requirement in certain cases to be registered as a professional operator and authorised to issue plant passports;
• phytosanitary certificate, customs, import and export requirements for any movement into or out of the Union;
• Union and national rules on the marketing of seed and propagating material, and on plant variety rights under Council Regulation (EC) No 2100/94, including the prohibition on propagating and selling protected varieties without the holder’s authorisation;
• species protection under Council Directive 92/43/EEC and regional nature conservation law, including prohibitions on collecting plants from the wild;
• the Belgian Act of 24 February 1921 concerning the trafficking of poisonous, soporific, narcotic, psychotropic, disinfectant and antiseptic substances and its implementing decrees, and equivalent legislation elsewhere, in respect of any plant or plant material containing a controlled substance; and
• all applicable tax, VAT, customs and reporting obligations arising from your activity.

You must not publish a Listing for, or trade, any plant or plant material that you are not lawfully entitled to possess, propagate, transport, offer or transfer, or for which you cannot supply the documentation the law requires.

8.1 Toxicity, edibility and health claims

Many ornamental and wild plants are toxic to humans or to animals, by ingestion, by contact with sap or by inhalation of smoke or pollen, and some are lethal in small quantities. You must not describe any plant as edible, medicinal, therapeutic, psychoactive, safe for children or safe for animals unless that description is accurate and lawful, and you must not make any health claim prohibited by Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 on nutrition and health claims. You must disclose any toxicity of which you are aware. We do not verify any such statement, and we accept no responsibility for it.

8.2 No verification and no advice

We do not carry out, and are under no obligation to carry out, any check on the regulatory status of any plant, on any permit, certificate or plant passport, or on any user’s registration as a professional operator. Nothing in the Services constitutes legal, regulatory, customs, phytosanitary, veterinary, medical or tax advice. If you are in any doubt about the lawfulness of a Listing or a Trade, obtain independent professional advice or contact the competent authority before proceeding.

9. Traders, professional users and tax

If you use the Services for purposes relating to your trade, business, craft or profession, you are a Trader. You must tell us so on request, must identify yourself as a Trader to your counterparties, and must comply with the obligations that consumer protection law imposes on you, including the pre-contractual information requirements, the right of withdrawal and the legal guarantee of conformity under Book VI of the Belgian Code of Economic Law and the equivalent law of your counterparty’s country.

We currently qualify as a micro or small enterprise within the meaning of Recommendation 2003/361/EC and are therefore excluded from Section 4 of Chapter III of the Digital Services Act by Article 29 of that Regulation. We nevertheless reserve the right to require from any Trader the information listed in Article 30 of the Digital Services Act, and to suspend the provision of the Services to a Trader who fails to supply or correct it.

You are solely responsible for determining, declaring and paying any tax, VAT, social contribution or duty arising from your activity through the Services. Where we are required to do so under Council Directive 2011/16/EU as amended by Council Directive (EU) 2021/514, or under any equivalent obligation, we may collect from you and report to the competent tax authority information about you and your activity, including your name, address, date of birth, tax identification number and the consideration recorded for your Trades. You must supply that information promptly on request, and we may suspend your account until you do.

10. Your Content

10.1 Ownership and licence

You retain all rights you hold in your Content. We claim no ownership of it.

By making Content available through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable and sublicensable licence to host, store, cache, reproduce, resize, re-encode, adapt, translate, index, format, publish, publicly communicate and display that Content, and to create derived technical representations of it, for the purposes of operating, providing, securing, analysing and improving the Services and of promoting the Services. The licence includes the right to sublicense to our hosting, storage, content delivery, search, translation and artificial-intelligence providers strictly for those purposes.

The licence lasts for as long as the Content remains on the Services and, thereafter, only for the limited period necessary to complete routine backup and log rotation cycles and to comply with a legal obligation or to establish, exercise or defend legal claims. To the extent permitted by Article XI.165 of the Belgian Code of Economic Law, you agree not to exercise your moral rights in a manner that would prevent the ordinary exercise of this licence.

10.2 Your warranties

You represent and warrant that you hold all rights necessary to grant the licence in section 10.1, that your Content does not infringe any third-party right, and that its publication does not breach any law or any duty of confidence. Where your Content contains the personal data of another person, you must have a lawful basis for making it available, and you act as an independent controller in respect of it.

10.3 Reviews and reputation

A review may be submitted only by a party to the Trade to which it relates, and must reflect that party’s genuine experience. Reviews that are fabricated, purchased, incentivised, submitted in exchange for consideration or submitted on behalf of another person are prohibited and constitute a misleading commercial practice under Article VI.100 of the Belgian Code of Economic Law. We display reviews as they are submitted, subject to section 12; a review is the statement of its author and not a statement by us, and we do not verify its accuracy. We may remove a review that breaches these Terms and may recalculate any aggregate rating accordingly.

10.4 Feedback

If you send us suggestions, ideas or feedback about the Services, we may use them without restriction, without obligation of confidentiality and without any payment to you.

11. Prohibited conduct

You must not, and must not permit any other person to:

• publish, transmit or store content that is illegal, or that infringes an intellectual property right, a personality right or a right of privacy;
• list, offer or trade any plant or item in breach of section 8, or any counterfeit, stolen or unlawfully obtained item;
• misrepresent yourself, your Listings, your reputation, your location or your affiliation, impersonate any person or organisation, or use another person’s account;
• engage in any fraudulent, deceptive, manipulative or aggressive commercial practice, including bait listings, price manipulation, shill bidding, advance-fee schemes and requests for payment by irreversible methods on false pretences;
• harass, threaten, stalk, defame, or incite violence or hatred against any person, or publish content that is discriminatory, sexually explicit or otherwise abusive;
• publish another person’s personal data without a lawful basis, including addresses, contact details, photographs or chat messages;
• send unsolicited commercial communications, chain messages or spam, or use the Services to advertise goods or services unrelated to plants;
• scrape, crawl, harvest, index or systematically extract data from the Services, or use any robot, spider or automated means to access them, except as expressly permitted by us in writing;
• reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the application except to the extent that applicable law expressly permits it, circumvent App Check, rate limits, usage quotas, geographic restrictions or any other technical protection measure, or create derivative applications or unauthorised clients;
• introduce malware, interfere with or place an unreasonable load on the Services or their infrastructure, or attempt to gain unauthorised access to any account, system or data;
• use the Doctor or any other automated feature to generate illegal content, to seek to circumvent its safeguards, to obtain instructions for the extraction or preparation of controlled or toxic substances, or to process another person’s personal data unlawfully;
• create a new account, or use another account, in order to evade a suspension or termination; or
• use the Services in breach of any applicable export control or sanctions law.

12. Content moderation, reporting and complaints

This section sets out the restrictions we impose on the use of the Services and the policies, procedures and tools we use for content moderation, as required by Article 14 of the Digital Services Act.

12.1 How to report content

Any person may notify us of content they consider illegal, or in breach of these Terms, using the report function in the application or by writing to [email protected]. To allow us to assess the notice diligently, please include a sufficiently substantiated explanation of why the content is unlawful or in breach, the exact location of the content such as the listing, profile or message concerned, your name and email address unless the notice concerns an offence under Articles 3 to 7 of Directive 2011/93/EU, and a statement that you believe in good faith that the information in the notice is accurate and complete.

We will confirm receipt of a notice without undue delay where contact details have been provided, will process notices in a timely, diligent, non-arbitrary and objective manner, and will notify the person who submitted the notice of our decision and of the redress possibilities available.

12.2 How we moderate

Content is reviewed principally in response to reports. We may in addition use automated tools to detect duplicate, spam, abusive or manifestly non-compliant content, and we may act on information received from authorities or third parties. Decisions to restrict a Listing, an account or a review are taken or confirmed by a human. We do not carry out general monitoring of the Services.

Where we determine that content or conduct is illegal or breaches the User Agreement, we may take one or more of the following measures, proportionate to the seriousness, frequency and effect of the breach and to whether it is repeated: remove or disable access to the content; restrict its visibility or demote it in rankings; suspend or terminate the provision of the Services in whole or in part; suspend or terminate the account; and suspend access to Premium features, subject to section 14.

Where we impose such a measure, we will inform you of it and give you a statement of reasons in accordance with Article 17 of the Digital Services Act, including the facts and circumstances relied on, whether automated means were used, the contractual or legal ground relied on, and the redress available to you.

12.3 Complaining about a decision

If you disagree with a decision we have taken, you may complain by email to [email protected] within six months of being notified of it. Complaints are examined by a human, and we will reverse a decision without undue delay where the complaint shows that the content was not illegal or not in breach, or that it does not justify the measure taken. This procedure is in addition to, and does not restrict, any judicial remedy available to you or your right to contact the Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunications as Digital Services Coordinator.

12.4 Misuse

After issuing a prior warning, we may suspend for a reasonable period the account of a user who frequently publishes manifestly illegal content, and the processing of notices and complaints submitted by a person who frequently submits notices or complaints that are manifestly unfounded.

12.5 Suspicion of a criminal offence

Where we become aware of information giving rise to a suspicion that a criminal offence involving a threat to the life or safety of a person has taken place, is taking place or is likely to take place, we will inform the competent law enforcement or judicial authorities in accordance with Article 18 of the Digital Services Act.

13. Plant identification and the Plantative Doctor

The Services include automated features that identify plants from photographs, suggest diagnoses, and generate care guidance and conversational answers. These features rely on third-party artificial-intelligence and identification services, as described in section 5 of our Privacy Policy. The number of identifications and assistant conversations available to you may be limited by plan and by day.

Output generated by these features is informational and probabilistic. It is not professional horticultural, agricultural, botanical, veterinary, medical, nutritional, legal, customs or regulatory advice, and it may be incomplete, outdated or incorrect, including as to species identification, toxicity and edibility. Identifications are frequently wrong, and closely related species differ radically in toxicity and in legal status.

You must independently verify any identification or guidance before acting on it, and in particular before ingesting any plant or applying it to the skin, before exposing any person, child or animal to it, before administering any treatment or chemical, and before importing, exporting, propagating, trading or disposing of any plant that may be protected, invasive, controlled or otherwise regulated. You must not rely on these features to establish compliance with section 8. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, we exclude all liability for any loss or damage arising from reliance on such output.

These features depend on third-party services and may be changed, limited, interrupted or withdrawn. Where a source is displayed with an answer, it is generated automatically and we do not verify that it supports the answer given.

14. Premium subscriptions

Premium plans are offered as auto-renewing subscriptions and are purchased through the Apple App Store or Google Play. The prices, billing periods and included features are those displayed to you in the application at the time of purchase.

• Billing and cancellation. The app store, and not Plantative, is the merchant of record. Payment, renewal, billing, invoicing, cancellation and refunds are handled by the app store under its own terms and its own privacy policy. Your subscription renews automatically until you cancel it, and you must cancel it through your app store account settings at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Uninstalling the application does not cancel a subscription.
• Refunds. We cannot process, grant or reverse a refund for a purchase made through an app store; you must request it from the store. This does not affect any right you have against us under mandatory law.
• Right of withdrawal. Where you are a Consumer in the European Union, you have a right of withdrawal within 14 days in respect of a contract for the supply of digital content or a digital service. That right is lost once performance has begun with your prior express consent and your acknowledgement that you thereby lose it, in accordance with Article VI.53 of the Belgian Code of Economic Law. Where the app store is your counterparty for the purchase, you exercise that right against the store.
• Changes to plans. We may change the features, quotas or price of a plan. Where a change is materially detrimental to you, we will give at least 30 days’ notice and you may cancel before it takes effect; where mandatory law so requires, you will be refunded the unused portion of any period you have prepaid.
• Suspension. If we suspend or terminate your account for breach of the User Agreement, Premium features may become unavailable. Except where mandatory law requires otherwise, no refund is due in that case, and you remain responsible for cancelling the subscription with the app store.
• Advertising. The Services may include advertising. Where a plan is described as removing advertisements, that applies only for the duration of an active subscription. Advertising will be identifiable as such.
• Statements about supporting nature causes. Any statement that surplus subscription revenue may be directed towards nature or conservation causes is a non-binding expression of intention. It is not a contractual undertaking, not a charitable donation made on your behalf, and it commits no specific amount or proportion of any payment. You acquire no right in respect of it.

15. Availability of the Services

We aim to keep the Services available but do not guarantee that they will be uninterrupted, timely, error-free or free of security vulnerabilities. We may suspend, withdraw, restrict or modify all or part of the Services, including any feature, without liability, for maintenance, security, legal or business reasons. Where a suspension is planned and material, we will give reasonable notice where practicable.

Features may be offered on a trial, beta or experimental basis; such features are provided as-is and may be withdrawn at any time. You are responsible for retaining your own copies of any photographs, records or other Content that matter to you. We do not provide the Services as a backup, archiving or record-keeping service.

16. Third-party services

The Services rely on and interoperate with services operated by third parties, including cloud infrastructure, identity providers, app stores, identification and artificial-intelligence providers, messaging and analytics providers. Your use of those services may be governed by their own terms. We do not control them, we make no representation as to them, and to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law we accept no liability for their acts, omissions, availability, content or practices.

17. Our intellectual property

The Services, the application, the website, our software, databases, design, interface, text, graphics and the Plantative name and logo are owned by us or licensed to us and are protected by intellectual property law. Subject to your compliance with the User Agreement, we grant you a limited, personal, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable and non-sublicensable licence to install and use the application on a device you own or control, and to use the website, for your own non-commercial use of the Services. All rights not expressly granted are reserved. Nothing in the User Agreement transfers any intellectual property right to you.

18. Disclaimers

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, and without prejudice to section 19.1, the Services and all content available through them are provided on an ’as is’ and ’as available’ basis, and we exclude all warranties, conditions, representations and terms implied by statute, common law or otherwise, including any implied warranty of satisfactory quality, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, completeness, uninterrupted availability or non-infringement.

In particular, we make no representation or warranty as to the existence, identity, honesty, solvency, reliability, capacity or conduct of any user; as to the accuracy, legality or completeness of any Listing, description, photograph, price or review; as to the species, cultivar, health, viability, safety, toxicity, origin, legal status or fitness for any purpose of any plant or plant material; as to whether any Trade will be concluded, performed or paid for; or as to the accuracy of any output of the features described in section 13.

Nothing in this section limits or affects the rights you have as a Consumer under mandatory law, including the legal guarantee of conformity applicable to any Premium subscription supplied to you under Directive (EU) 2019/770 as implemented in Belgian law and Book VI of the Belgian Code of Economic Law.

19. Limitation of liability

19.1 What is never excluded

Nothing in the User Agreement excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for our own wilful misconduct or gross negligence, for liability under the legislation implementing Directive 85/374/EEC on liability for defective products, for the non-performance of an obligation constituting one of the principal commitments of the contract, or for any other liability which cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including under Article VI.83 of the Belgian Code of Economic Law and other mandatory Belgian consumer protection law. Every other provision of this section 19 is subject to this section 19.1.

19.2 Matters for which we are not responsible

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, we are not liable for any loss or damage arising out of or in connection with:

• the acts, omissions, conduct, statements, Content, Listings, reviews or solvency of any user or other third party;
• the existence, identity, species, cultivar, quality, health, condition, viability, safety, toxicity, origin, provenance, legality or fitness for any purpose of any plant or plant material offered, sold, swapped, given or delivered through or following use of the Services;
• the formation, terms, performance, non-performance, defective performance, breach, cancellation, rescission or frustration of any Trade or other agreement between users;
• any payment made, withheld, delayed, reversed or not made between users, including non-payment, overpayment, fraud, chargeback or the failure of a payment method;
• any loss, theft, damage, delay, deterioration, disease, infestation or death of plant material, in transit, in storage or in the possession of any person;
• any interaction between users, whether online or in person, including any meeting arranged through the Services and any disclosure of an address or other information by one user to another;
• reliance on any identification, diagnosis, care guidance, ranking, recommendation or other automated output of the Services, including as described in section 13;
• any investigation, enforcement action, seizure, destruction order, fine, penalty or other regulatory or criminal consequence arising from your plants, your Listings or your Trades;
• any third-party service, app store, identity provider, carrier, payment provider, network or device;
• unauthorised access to, disclosure of, alteration of or destruction of Content or data occurring despite the implementation of appropriate technical and organisational measures; or
• loss of Content, Listings, messages, reviews or account access resulting from a measure applied in accordance with section 12 or from your own act or omission.

19.3 Excluded heads of loss

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, exemplary or consequential loss, or for any loss of profit, revenue, business, contracts, opportunity, anticipated savings, goodwill or reputation, for loss of or corruption of data, or for the value of any plant, cutting, seed or collection, in each case however arising and whether or not such loss was foreseeable.

19.4 Cap on liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, our total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with the User Agreement and the Services in any period of twelve consecutive months is limited to the greater of (i) the total amount you actually paid to us for Premium in the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to the liability, and (ii) one hundred euro (EUR 100).

19.5 Your contribution and mitigation

Any liability we have is reduced to the extent that the loss was caused or increased by your own act or omission, including any breach of the User Agreement or of section 8, or by your failure to take reasonable steps to mitigate it.

19.6 Time limit for claims

If you are not a Consumer, any claim against us must be brought within one year of the date on which you became aware, or ought reasonably to have become aware, of the facts giving rise to it, failing which it is barred. This section 19.6 does not apply to Consumers.

19.7 Basis of the bargain

The allocation of risk in this section reflects that the core Services are made available free of charge or for a low subscription fee, and that we neither participate in, nor derive any commission from, Trades between users. It is an essential basis on which we provide the Services.

20. Indemnity

If you are not a Consumer, you will indemnify us and hold us harmless against all claims, demands, proceedings, damages, fines, penalties, losses, costs and reasonable legal expenses arising out of or in connection with your Content, your Listings, your Trades, your breach of the User Agreement or your violation of any law or third-party right.

If you are a Consumer, you are liable to us in those circumstances only to the extent that the claim, loss or expense results from your intentional or grossly negligent breach of the User Agreement or from your violation of the law, and only to the extent that such liability arises under the general law. Nothing in this section extends your liability beyond what the general law provides.

21. Suspension, termination and deletion

You may stop using the Services at any time and may delete your account through the application or by writing to [email protected]. The consequences of deletion for your personal data are described in section 10 of our Privacy Policy.

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Services, in whole or in part, in accordance with section 12, where required by law or by an order of a competent authority, where necessary to protect the Services, other users or a third party from harm, where you have provided false registration information, or where your account has been inactive for more than 24 consecutive months. Except where immediate action is necessary, we will give you reasonable prior notice and, where the measure relates to content or conduct, a statement of reasons under section 12.2.

On termination, the licence granted to you in section 17 ends immediately, your Listings may be withdrawn and your Content may be removed. Sections 6, 8, 10.1, 10.2, 10.4, 14, 16 to 20, 22 and 24 to 27 survive termination, together with any other provision which by its nature is intended to survive.

22. Force majeure

We are not liable for any failure or delay in performing our obligations that is caused by circumstances beyond our reasonable control, including acts of God, natural disaster, epidemic, war, terrorism, civil disturbance, strike, failure of telecommunications or internet infrastructure, failure or withdrawal of a third-party service on which the Services depend, cyber-attack, power failure, embargo, and any act, order or measure of a government or competent authority.

23. Assignment

We may assign, novate or transfer the User Agreement, in whole or in part, to any successor in the context of a merger, reorganisation, incorporation of the business into a company, or sale or transfer of all or part of our assets, provided that your rights under the User Agreement are not thereby reduced. You may not assign or transfer the User Agreement or any right under it without our prior written consent.

24. Notices

We may give you notice through the application, by push notification, or by email to the address associated with your account, and any such notice is deemed received on the day it is sent. You must keep that email address current. You may give us notice at [email protected], and, where a notice is required to be in writing and to have legal effect, also by registered letter to our place of business.

25. Complaints and dispute resolution

If you have a complaint, please contact us first at [email protected]. We will acknowledge your complaint and aim to respond substantively within 30 days.

If you are a Consumer resident in Belgium and we are unable to resolve your complaint, you may submit it to the Consumer Mediation Service, an autonomous public service providing free mediation between consumers and businesses:

Consumentenombudsdienst / Service de Médiation pour le Consommateur
Koning Albert II-laan 8 bus 1, 1000 Brussels, Belgium
Telephone: +32 2 702 52 00
consumentenombudsdienst.be

Consumers resident in another Member State may contact the European Consumer Centre in their country. The European Commission’s online dispute resolution platform ceased to operate on 20 July 2025 following the repeal of Regulation (EU) No 524/2013 by Regulation (EU) 2024/3228, and is therefore no longer available. Submitting a complaint to a mediation body is voluntary, does not suspend any limitation period unless the law so provides, and does not affect your right to bring proceedings before a court.

Complaints about our content moderation decisions are dealt with under section 12.3.

26. Governing law and jurisdiction

The User Agreement and any non-contractual obligation arising out of or in connection with it are governed by Belgian law.

If you are a Consumer habitually resident in another country, this choice of law does not deprive you of the protection afforded to you by provisions that cannot be derogated from by agreement under the law of that country, in accordance with Article 6(2) of Regulation (EC) No 593/2008.

If you are a Consumer, you may bring proceedings against us before the courts of the country in which you are domiciled or before the courts of our place of establishment, and we may bring proceedings against you only before the courts of the country in which you are domiciled, in accordance with Articles 17 to 19 of Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012.

If you are not a Consumer, the courts competent for our place of establishment in Belgium have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or in connection with the User Agreement.

27. General

• Severability and savings. If any provision of the User Agreement is held invalid, unlawful or unenforceable, in whole or in part, it shall be deemed modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it valid, lawful and enforceable while preserving its purpose so far as possible, or, if that is not possible, severed. The remaining provisions continue in full force and effect.
• Mandatory law prevails. Nothing in the User Agreement operates to exclude or limit any right you have under mandatory provisions of applicable law that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, and any provision that would do so applies only to the extent that the law permits.
• No waiver. A failure or delay by us in exercising any right is not a waiver of it, and no single or partial exercise of a right prevents its further exercise.
• Entire agreement. The User Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between you and us in respect of the Services and supersedes all previous versions of it. Nothing in this paragraph limits liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.
• No partnership. Nothing in the User Agreement creates a partnership, joint venture, agency, franchise or employment relationship between you and us.
• Third parties. Except as expressly stated, no person other than you and us has any right to enforce any provision of the User Agreement.
• Languages. The User Agreement is made available in English and in Dutch, and each version is equally authentic. If you are a Consumer, you may rely on the version in the language in which the Services were made available to you.
• Headings. Headings are for convenience only and do not affect interpretation.

28. Legal information

Sebastiaan Verplancke, trading as Plantative
Patijntjestraat 87, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
Enterprise number 1034.776.796 · VAT BE 1034.776.796
[email protected]