Terms of Use

Last Updated: August 4, 2026

Welcome to the grocery shopping optimization platform owned and operated by ShoppeMate LLC (“Company,” “we,” “us,” or “our”). These Terms of Service (“Terms”) constitute a legally binding agreement between you and the Company concerning your access to and use of our mobile application and services.

By creating an account, downloading the application, or utilizing our services, you expressly agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree to all of these Terms, you are prohibited from using the application and must delete it immediately.

1. Free Trial, Subscription Billing, and Financial Terms

  • 1.1 Two-Week Free Trial: Your access to the platform begins with a complimentary two-week (14-day) free trial period. You must provide a valid payment method to activate your trial account. You will not be charged during these initial 14 days.
  • 1.2 Automated Billing Conversion: Upon the exact expiration of your 14-day free trial, your account will automatically convert into a paid premium subscription. Your designated payment processor (Apple App Store, Google Play Billing, or direct credit card terminal) will immediately be charged the standard recurring subscription fee of 99¢ per week (billed monthly).
  • 1.3 Continuous Automated Renewal: Following the trial conversion, subscriptions continue to renew automatically on a recurring monthly basis until you explicitly cancel.
  • 1.4 Cancellation Prior to Charge: You may cancel your subscription at any point during the 14-day trial period to avoid any charges. To prevent a conversion charge, you must cancel at least 24 hours before the trial period ends.
  • 1.5 Post-Trial Cancellation: You can cancel your paid subscription at any time through your ShoppeMate account settings. Cancellations apply to the subsequent billing cycle; no partial monthly refunds are provided.
  • 1.6 Earning Eligibility During Trial: For clarity, users are fully eligible to run price comparisons, accumulate 1¢ price-check rewards, and build referral networks during the 14-day trial period. However, first-time cash-out transfers remain bound by the minimum wallet balance rules outlined in Section 5.
  • 1.7 Secure Payment Processing & Non-Storage: All financial transactions related to your monthly subscription are executed via trusted, secure third-party billing providers (e.g., Apple App Store Google Play Store, or Stripe). ShoppeMate LLC does not collect, receive, or store your credit card details, debit card details, or banking numbers on our servers. You acknowledge that your billing transaction data is governed entirely by the privacy protocols and terms of service of those respective payment processors.

2. Price-Check Cash Back Rewards & Anti-Abuse Controls

  • 2.1 Reward Eligibility & Structure:The platform provides a crowdsourced data-verification reward program. Users receive a micro-reward of one United States penny ($0.01) cash back strictly for verifying, updating, or correcting a product price that is out-of-date or expired.
    • 2.1.1 Visual Visual Indicators:Product prices requiring verification are stale and highlighted in red text within the application interface. Successfully checking or updating any item marked in red guarantees a $0.01 credit.
    • 2.1.2 Non-Visual Expirations:If a product price is not highlighted in red text but our backend validation system determines the price was objectively out-of-date at the time of your check, you will still receive the $0.01 cash back reward. Checking prices that are already verified, live, and current does not qualify for a reward.
  • 2.2 Daily Cap Limitation: Eligible stale or out-of-date price updates are subject to a maximum cap of 100 legitimate, unique item rewards per 24-hour period. Price checks exceeding this cap will still return accurate price data but will not accumulate cash back rewards.
  • 2.3 Velocity Restrictions (Rate Limiting): Price-check rewards are subject to anti-spam filters. Price checks executed at an automated, non-human frequency (e.g., faster than one check every 3 seconds) will trigger an immediate safety hold and forfeit cash back eligibility.
  • 2.4 Duplicate and Unique Submissions: To qualify for the 1-cent cash back reward, the stale or out-of-date price must represent a unique item. Multiple users submitting updates for the exact same outdated product identifier within the same refresh window will only award cash back to the initial verified submission.

3. Independent Referral Affiliate Program & Non-MLM Compliance

  • 3.1 Referral Program Structure: The Referral Program is a two-tier affiliate marketing incentive designed to reward organic word-of-mouth growth. Users earn 5% monthly cash back for direct referrals (Tier 1), plus 2.5% monthly shared network cash back for extended network members (Tier 2).
  • 3.2 Non-MLM Compliance: Participation in this program is entirely voluntary and is not a requirement for maintaining an active application subscription. This program explicitly does not constitute a Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) structure, Network Marketing enterprise, or Pyramid Scheme.
  • 3.3 Income Misrepresentation Prohibited: Users are strictly prohibited from misrepresenting the program as an income-guaranteed business opportunity, investment vehicle, or franchise. No bulk inventory purchases, sign-up fees, or mandatory recruitment quotas exist. All referral cash-back credits are funded solely from active, paid end-user subscription revenue (99¢/week).

4. Third-Party Retailer Ordering and Curbside Pickup Integration

  • 4.1 Integration Disclaimer: The platform assists users by routing optimized shopping lists to third-party grocery retailers for curbside pickup fulfillment. The application relies entirely on external retailer data for pricing, inventory, and product availability.
  • 4.2 Performance & Substitution Shield: The Company does not guarantee that third-party prices will match exactly at checkout, nor do we guarantee item availability or the fulfillment performance of the chosen retailer. Users are solely responsible for finalizing payment with the retailer, managing product substitutions, and adhering to the individual pickup policies of each external grocery outlet.

5. Wallet Balances and Cashing Out

  • 5.1 Minimum Threshold: Users must accumulate a minimum verified balance of $10.00 before requesting a withdrawal.
  • 5.2 Payout Processing: Cash-out requests are transferred securely to connected, verified PayPal Venmo accounts. Approved transfers generally arrive within 1 to 3 business days.
  • 5.3 Transfer Limits & Fraud Review: Users are limited to a maximum of one cash-out transfers per calendar month. The Company reserves the right to freeze accounts and forfeit accrued cash back balances if automated scripts, emulators, bots, or scraping tools are detected during processing reviews.

6. Intellectual Property and Proprietary Rights Notice

  • 6.1 Ownership of the Platform: The mobile application, website, services, features, algorithms, mathematical payout models, cost-per-ounce calculation engines, multi-store cart routing systems, and all underlying source code, object code, databases, functionality, software, text, photographs, and graphics (collectively, the "Content") and the trademarks, service marks, and logos contained therein (the "Marks") are owned or controlled by the Company, or are licensed to the Company, and are protected by United States and international copyright, trademark, patent, and trade secret laws.
  • 6.2 Limited License Grant: Subject to your continuous compliance with these Terms and your active payment of the subscription fee, the Company grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, and revocable license to use the application solely for your personal, non-commercial household shopping.
  • 6.3 Prohibited Conduct: Except as expressly provided, no part of the Platform, Content, or Marks may be copied, reproduced, aggregated, republished, uploaded, posted, reverse-engineered, decompiled, or otherwise exploited for any commercial or competitive purpose whatsoever. You agree not to extract, scrape, harvest, index, or crawl any pricing data, comparison data, store lists, or user database structures via automated scripts, bots, spiders, or manual processes.
  • 6.4 User Feedback: You acknowledge and agree that any questions, comments, suggestions, ideas, or feedback regarding the Platform provided by you to the Company are non-confidential and shall become the sole property of the Company without acknowledgment or compensation to you.

7. Account Suspension and Termination

The Company reserves the right, in its sole discretion and without notice or liability, to deny access to and use of the platform (including blocking specific IP addresses) to any person for any reason, including without limitation for breach of any representation, warranty, or covenant contained in these Terms, or for any suspected automated exploitation of our pricing engine or reward networks.

8. Contact Information

If you have any questions, concerns, or disputes regarding these Terms, please contact us at: drichards@shoppemate.com