Terms of Service — «Expat Market»

1. About the Service

«Expat Market» is a Telegram Mini App for posting, browsing, and promoting classified listings within the Telegram ecosystem. The service is operated by Sergei Korolenko, a sole proprietor registered in Georgia.

2. Acceptance of Terms and Age Restrictions

By starting to use the service, the user confirms that they have read these Terms, the Privacy Policy, and the Personal Data Processing Consent, understand their content, and accept them in full. The Terms are considered accepted at the moment the user confirms their consent in the service interface on first launch or, absent such confirmation, from the moment the user actually starts using the service.

The service is intended for persons aged 16 and over. Use of the service by persons under 16 is not permitted. If the operator becomes aware of a violation of the age restriction, the relevant account may be deleted and personal data erased without prior notice.

Since the service operates within a Telegram Mini App, the terms and policies of Telegram also apply. Telegram's documents supplement these Terms but do not replace the rules governing this service and the user's relationship with the operator.

If the user does not agree with the Terms, they must stop using the service.

3. Account and Telegram Data

The service uses data provided by Telegram Mini Apps, including Telegram user ID, name, username, client language, and other data Telegram makes available to the Mini App. The user must use the service in good faith and must not violate Telegram's rules, these Terms, or applicable law.

Telegram provides the Mini Apps infrastructure but is not the operator of this service, does not manage its content, and bears no responsibility for transactions, listings, digital features, or support quality.

The user is responsible for all actions performed through their account, including actions of third parties to whom the user has granted access to their device or Telegram account. If the user discovers unauthorised access to their account, they must immediately notify service support.

Each user may have only one account on the service. Creating multiple accounts to circumvent a block, increase posting limits, or gain other advantages in violation of these Terms is prohibited and constitutes independent grounds for blocking all associated accounts without prior notice.

Telegram may restrict, suspend, or terminate access to Mini Apps — including this service — for specific users or regions to comply with regulatory requirements or platform policies. Such restrictions are outside the operator's control and do not constitute grounds for claims against the operator.

4. Listings and User Content

The user bears sole responsibility for the content of their listings, photographs, item or service descriptions, the legality of the offer, compliance with third-party rights, and the accuracy of information.

By posting content on the service, the user grants the operator a free, non-exclusive licence to reproduce, store (including backups), technically process (thumbnail creation, format conversion), display, and communicate to the public (including on the service's publicly accessible web pages and in search engines), moderate, and remove such content — to the extent necessary for operating, promoting, and protecting the service and fulfilling these Terms. The licence terminates when the content is deleted by the user or at their request, except for backup copies for the duration of their natural rotation and copies whose retention is necessary for legal compliance, dispute resolution, and protection of the operator's rights. The operator does not claim ownership of user content and does not use it for commercial purposes beyond the service's functions.

The user must not post unlawful, misleading, fraudulent, abusive, or third-party rights-infringing content. The operator may restrict access to listings or the user's account in the event of violations, complaints, legal requirements, or Telegram platform rules.

Moderation. All listings are checked before publication and may be re-checked afterwards. Checks are performed by automated means (including machine-learning-based algorithms) and manually. The operator may, at its own discretion, refuse to publish a listing, require its modification, restrict its visibility, or unpublish an already published listing — including in the absence of a formal violation, where, in the operator's assessment, the listing creates risks for users, the service, or the Telegram platform. Publication of a listing is not guaranteed and is not an obligation of the operator. The user may request a review of a moderation decision by contacting support; the re-review is carried out with human participation. The operator communicates the reason for rejection in the service interface or via the bot, except where disclosing the reason would facilitate circumvention of protection systems.

Technical limits. The operator may set and change technical limits on the use of the service, including the number of active listings per user, posting frequency, and the volume of uploaded materials. The current limits are displayed in the service interface.

The following listings are prohibited:

alcohol, tobacco, nicotine products, vapes, e-cigarettes, and components for their home manufacture;
narcotic, psychotropic, potent, and toxic substances, precursors, and their analogues;
prescription medicines and dietary supplements with medical indications;
donor organs and tissues;
weapons, ammunition, explosives, military equipment, and their components (except where explicitly permitted by law);
counterfeit goods or goods infringing intellectual property rights;
forged documents, ID papers, diplomas, certificates, seals, and services or devices for producing them;
services for completing academic work (essays, coursework, dissertations) or taking exams or tests on behalf of another person;
adult, erotic, or pornographic content, escort services, and related offerings;
artificial inflation of followers, likes, views, reviews, and other behavioural metrics on social networks or marketplaces;
sale, rental, or transfer of accounts on third-party services and social networks;
unlicensed financial services: investment schemes, forex, binary options, money-raising schemes promising returns;
lotteries, gambling, and betting without appropriate authorisation;
goods and services whose circulation is restricted or prohibited under applicable law;
flora and fauna listed as endangered species, and products derived from them;
personal data and databases of individuals without their explicit consent;
services involving deception, fraud, or unlawful remuneration;
content promoting violence or hatred based on race, gender, religion, or other protected characteristics.

The operator may remove such listings and block accounts without prior notice.

For the purposes of this section, the applicable law is the law of the country where the listing is posted (the country of the selected city) as well as the law of Georgia. A listing is not permitted if the offer is prohibited under either of them.

Listing requirements. The user agrees to: describe only genuinely existing and immediately available items or services; post photographs that accurately reflect the item's actual condition; not include contact details (phone numbers, links, email addresses) in listing text or photographs; not post duplicate listings of the same item. Violation of these requirements is grounds for removal of the listing without notice.

Intellectual property of the service. The design, software code, database structure, ranking algorithms, and compilation of listings of the service are the result of the operator's intellectual activity and are protected by copyright. Automated data collection from the service (parsing, scraping, crawling) without the operator's written permission is prohibited. Violation of this prohibition is grounds for immediate account blocking and may result in civil liability.

Listings from public sources. The service may display listings reproduced from publicly accessible Telegram channels, with an indication of their origin. Such listings are not posted by their authors; the operator does not verify or confirm their currency or accuracy and is not responsible for their content to any greater extent than for user content. Contact details in such listings link directly to the sellers; the prohibition on including contact details does not apply to listings from public sources. The author of a listing, or the rightsholder of materials used in it, may request its removal by contacting @expatmarket_bot or expat.apps@gmail.com, specifying the listing and the grounds; the operator removes the listing or restricts access to it within 7 days of receiving a substantiated request. Upon the author's registration on the service, previously aggregated listings matched by username are unpublished automatically; if that has not happened, please contact support.

The service is a platform connecting sellers and buyers. The operator is not a party to transactions between users and does not assume the obligations of seller, buyer, agent, commission agent, guarantor, or payment intermediary.

Deal arrangements, communication between the parties, handover of goods, and settlements between users take place outside the service — directly between users, including in Telegram private messages. The service does not provide user-to-user payment functions, escrow, delivery, or insurance, and receives no remuneration from transactions between users. The only payments within the service are payments in Telegram Stars to the operator: payment for digital listing promotion features and voluntary donations in support of the service.

The user must independently assess the good faith of counterparties, verify item or service descriptions, and decide whether to engage at their own risk.

5. Paid Features and Telegram Stars

The service may offer paid digital features, including listing promotion and pinning a listing in the catalogue. The service may also accept voluntary payments in support of the service's development (donations) via the "Support the project" feature. Payment is made via Telegram Stars under Telegram's rules and these Terms.

the user sees the feature description, validity period, and price before paying;
the digital feature is considered rendered upon its activation in the service;
questions about undelivered features and refunds are handled by the service operator, not Telegram;
if payment has been charged but the digital feature was not provided, the user may contact service support for verification and a refund.

Voluntary donations. A donation is a voluntary payment in support of the service's development. It is not payment for a digital feature: it does not unlock additional features, grants no advantages (including listing ranking or moderation decisions), and involves no consideration in return; the operator's obligation is deemed performed at the moment of a successful payment. The terms of donations, including amount limits and the refund procedure, are governed by Section 7 of the Public Offer; donation enquiries are handled by the operator (the /paysupport command in the bot chat or the support channels).

The terms of paid features and the procedure and grounds for refunds are governed by the Public Offer for Digital Services. In the event of any discrepancy between these Terms and the Offer regarding paid features and donations, the Offer prevails. The treatment of paid features upon listing closure, account deletion, or blocking is governed by Section 6 of the Offer.

6. Account and Data Deletion

The user can delete their account and associated personal data directly in the app settings: after confirmation, a 7-day recovery period applies, after which the data is deleted irreversibly. Deletion can also be requested via support (@expatmarket_bot or expat.apps@gmail.com); such requests are fulfilled no later than 10 business days after the account's ownership by the requester is confirmed.

Account deletion results in deletion of the user's profile, their listings, and associated data. Some data may be retained after deletion if necessary to comply with legal requirements, resolve disputes, prevent fraud, or protect the operator's rights — in accordance with the Privacy Policy.

The operator does not guarantee the ability to export or recover listings and other account data after deletion or blocking. In the event of a block for violation of these Terms, access to the listings and the account is terminated without compensation for paid-feature costs; data may be retained to the extent necessary to prevent repeat violations and protect the operator's rights, in accordance with the Privacy Policy.

7. Support and Claims

For questions about the service, payments, and refunds, the user must contact support through the channels listed on the service support page. Support channels: @expatmarket_bot, expat.apps@gmail.com.

When contacting about a payment, the user should where possible provide the date, time, description of the issue, listing ID, and any other details that help identify the transaction.

If a dispute concerns another user's conduct, the operator may review the complaint but does not guarantee resolution in favour of either party and does not substitute for government authorities, courts, payment organisations, or law-enforcement agencies.

8. Limitation of Liability

The service is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. The operator does not guarantee uninterrupted and error-free operation of the service but takes reasonable measures to maintain availability and fix failures.

The operator is not responsible for Telegram outages, actions of third parties, platform blocks, App Store or Google Play restrictions, connectivity issues, loss of access to a Telegram account, and other circumstances beyond the operator's reasonable control.

The operator is also not responsible for the actual fulfilment of agreements between users, the quality of goods or services that users offer each other through the service, or losses arising from inaccurate information posted by users.

Responsibility for fraud and deception between users. The operator does not verify users' identities, does not verify ownership of items on offer, and does not control the actual execution of agreements between the parties to a transaction.

The operator takes reasonable steps to combat bad-faith conduct: moderating listings, reviewing complaints, and reserving the right to block or delete an account that violates these Terms. Nevertheless, the operator cannot guarantee the good faith of every platform participant or completely eliminate instances of deception, fraud, or other violations by users.

The user independently bears the risks associated with interacting with other users. It is recommended not to pay in advance to unfamiliar sellers, to check the counterparty's profile and listing history, and — if in any doubt — to contact support before completing a transaction. The operator does not compensate for losses incurred as a result of fraudulent or bad-faith conduct by other users.

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes user rights that cannot be limited or excluded under mandatory provisions of applicable law, or the operator's liability for intent or gross negligence. The limitations apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law.

9. Indemnification

The user agrees to compensate the operator for documented losses, costs, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising from substantiated claims and actions of third parties, government authorities, or the Telegram platform caused by: (a) content posted by the user; (b) the user's violation of these Terms or applicable law; (c) transactions concluded by the user with other users. The operator will notify the user of any such claim and give them the opportunity to participate in its resolution. This clause does not apply to the extent the claim is caused by the operator's own actions.

10. Term, Suspension, and Discontinuation of the Service

These Terms take effect upon their acceptance by the user and remain in force until the user stops using the service or the service is discontinued. The user may stop using the service at any time; account deletion is carried out as described in Section 6.

The operator may suspend the service for maintenance and may discontinue the service in whole or in part, giving users at least 30 days' notice via the service interface or the bot. Upon discontinuation of the service, paid digital services that have not been fully rendered are refunded for the unused period in accordance with the Public Offer.

The operator may suspend a user's access to the service for the duration of an investigation where there is a reasonable suspicion of a violation of these Terms.

11. Changes to the Terms

The operator may update these Terms. For material changes — affecting users' rights, payment procedures, or limitation of liability — the operator provides at least 30 days' notice before the changes take effect, via an in-app notification or bot message; changes that expand users' rights or are required for legal compliance may be introduced without observing this period. The current version is always available at a permanent URL. Continued use of the service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the new version. If the user disagrees with the changes, they must stop using the service before they take effect.

12. Governing Law and Disputes

These Terms are governed by the law of Georgia, unless otherwise required by mandatory rules of the user's country.

Before going to court, a party shall send the other party a claim (for the operator — via @expatmarket_bot or expat.apps@gmail.com). The response period is 10 business days; the dispute is considered unresolved 30 days after the claim was sent. Unresolved disputes are heard by the court at the operator's location (Tbilisi, Georgia), unless mandatory rules of the user's country establish a different consumer jurisdiction.

13. Final Provisions

These Terms, together with the documents they reference, constitute the entire agreement of the parties on their subject matter. For paid digital services, the Public Offer prevails; in all other respects, these Terms prevail. The invalidity of any individual provision does not affect the validity of the remaining provisions; an invalid provision is deemed replaced by a valid one closest to it in meaning.

The operator may transfer its rights and obligations under these Terms to a third party (including upon transfer of the service) with notice to users; the user's rights are not diminished thereby. The user may not assign their rights without the operator's consent.

Legally significant notices are delivered to the user via the service interface or the @expatmarket_bot bot, and to the operator at expat.apps@gmail.com.

These Terms are drawn up in Russian and English. In the event of any discrepancy, the Russian version shall prevail.

14. Operator Contact Details

Operator: Individual Entrepreneur Sergei Korolenko

Identification code: 305650676

Correspondence address: Georgia, Tbilisi city, Nutsa Ghoghoberidze street, N9, floor 4, apt. 19, building "A"

Support e-mail: expat.apps@gmail.com

Support: @expatmarket_bot

Effective date: 16 July 2026