Terms of Service

LinkRide is operated by LinkRide Technologies LTD, a company registered in Scotland (company number SC872736) with its registered office at 2/3, 48 West George Street, Glasgow, United Kingdom, G2 1BP. In these terms "LinkRide", "we" and "us" mean that company, and "you" means the person using the app.

These terms apply to the LinkRide app and to linkride.co.uk. By creating an account you agree to them. If you drive on LinkRide, the Driver Terms apply to you as well, and if you disagree with either you should stop using the service.

LinkRide is a cost-sharing carpool platform. A driver who is already making a journey offers the empty seats in their car, and passengers going the same way contribute towards what that journey costs the driver to run.

LinkRide is not a taxi or private hire operator, is not a transport provider, and does not employ drivers. We do not own the vehicles, we are not a party to the journey, and we do not direct how or when anyone drives. The agreement to share a journey is between the driver and the passenger. What we provide is the platform that introduces them and handles the money.

You must be at least 18 years old to hold a LinkRide account — we ask for your date of birth when you join — and you must be able to enter into a binding contract. You may hold only one account, and it is personal to you — do not let anyone else use it, and do not book on behalf of someone travelling without you unless that is a child or dependant travelling in your care.

You are responsible for keeping your sign-in details secure and for everything done through your account. Tell us as soon as you think someone else has access to it.

The details on your profile must be accurate and about you. That matters more here than on most services: another person decides whether to get into a car with you partly on the strength of what your profile says.

We use a number of checks to make LinkRide safer, and show the results on profiles so people can make an informed decision. These include phone number verification by SMS, email verification, identity verification, vehicle checks against DVLA and DVSA records, and membership of a verified community such as a university or employer.

When you join a trip you agree to pay the contribution the driver has set for that seat, plus the LinkRide booking fee. Both amounts are shown in full before you confirm — the price you see is the price you pay, and we do not add anything afterwards.

The booking fee is what pays for LinkRide. It is currently 20% of the seat contribution on open trips, and 15% on trips restricted to a community we partner with. If we change the fee, the new rate applies to trips you book afterwards, never to ones already booked.

• The hold: shortly before departure your card is authorised for the full amount. This reserves the money without taking it, and it is why a card must be saved on your account before you can book.
• The charge: the payment is taken when the trip is completed. If the trip does not happen, the hold is released and nothing is taken from you.
• Failed authorisation: if your card cannot be authorised we will let you know, and your seat may be released so that someone else can take it.

Payments are processed by Stripe. We do not see or store your full card number. The money for the seat goes to the driver and the booking fee comes to us.

Plans change and cancelling is always allowed. Cancel as early as you can — a seat given up in good time can be filled by someone else, and a driver who finds out at the roadside has lost the trip.

• Passengers: cancel before the trip is completed and you are not charged for the seat.
• Drivers: if you cancel a trip, every passenger on it is released and charged nothing.
• No-shows: not turning up, or cancelling repeatedly at the last minute, is recorded on your account and shown to others as a reliability note. Do it persistently and we may suspend you.

Because a booking is for transport on a specific date, the 14-day right to cancel a distance contract under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 does not apply to it. Your other rights as a consumer are unaffected.

Everyone on LinkRide is expected to follow the Community Guidelines, which form part of these terms. They cover conduct on a trip, in chat, and on your profile, and they are written plainly enough to be worth reading properly.

In short: turn up when you said you would, treat people decently, do not harass, discriminate against, or endanger anyone, do not carry anything illegal, and do not use LinkRide to sell anything or to run a taxi service.

You keep ownership of what you write and the photos you upload. You give us permission to store and display them where the app needs to — your profile photo on a trip card, your messages in the chat for that trip.

Do not post anything unlawful, abusive, or that is not yours to post. We can remove content and suspend accounts that break these terms. If something needs our attention, report it from the person’s profile or message us from Settings.

LinkRide includes features to help you feel safer: sharing a live trip with a trusted contact, an emergency contact on your profile, the verification badges shown before you travel, and reporting or blocking anyone from their profile.

Some trips are restricted to a community — a university, an employer, or an event. Joining one usually means verifying an email address at that organisation, or holding a ticket to that event. You may only join a community you genuinely belong to.

Communities and events are run by their organisers, not by us. We may suspend or remove a community, and an organiser may remove you from theirs. Losing access to a community does not affect the rest of your LinkRide account.

Joining the waitlist at linkride.co.uk is free and does not guarantee early access, a place in any launch group, or a date. We will email the address you give when testing or launch opens.

Organisations can request a closed LinkRide community through the partner portal. Requesting one does not guarantee approval — we review each at our own discretion, and may suspend or remove a community that breaches these terms. Partner admins are responsible for the accuracy of what they submit about their organisation.

Do not misuse the site: no scraping, no attempting to reach another organisation’s community data, and no submitting false information. The LinkRide name, logo, and content belong to us and may not be reused without permission.

You can close your account at any time from Settings, and take a copy of your data with you on the way out. Some records have to outlive the account — trip and payment records in particular, which we are required to keep for tax and accounting purposes. The Privacy Policy sets out exactly what is kept and for how long.

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms or the Community Guidelines, that we reasonably believe puts other people at risk, or that is being used fraudulently. Where it is safe and lawful to do so we will tell you why, and you can appeal by emailing support@linkride.co.uk.

If your account is closed with money owed to you, we will still pay it, unless it relates to fraud or to a chargeback we have had to cover.

We will provide the app with reasonable care and skill. We do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free, and while LinkRide is in testing some features will change or be withdrawn.

Because the journey is between driver and passenger, we are not responsible for how a trip is driven, whether a driver or passenger turns up, what condition a vehicle is in, or how people behave towards each other. We do not vet drivers beyond the checks described above and shown on their profile.

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. Subject to that, and where we are liable to you, our liability is limited to the amount you have paid us in booking fees in the twelve months before the event.

You have rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 that these terms cannot take away. If any part of this document conflicts with those rights, your rights win.

We will update these terms as LinkRide changes. If a change is material — anything affecting what you pay, what we are responsible for, or what we ask of you — we will tell you in the app and ask you to accept the new version before you carry on using it. Minor changes take effect when published, with the date at the top of the document updated.

Please come to us first: email support@linkride.co.uk and we will reply. Most things are resolvable without anybody involving lawyers.

These terms are governed by the law of Scotland, and the Scottish courts have jurisdiction. If you live elsewhere in the UK you keep the right to bring proceedings in your local courts.

LinkRide Technologies LTD, 2/3, 48 West George Street, Glasgow, United Kingdom, G2 1BP. support@linkride.co.uk