Terms of use

BOBBY — Black Owned Businesses By You — is operated by the operator of BOBBY. Using the site means accepting these terms. If you do not accept them, please do not use it.

BOBBY is a directory of businesses at least 51% owned, operated and controlled by African Americans. It helps people find those businesses. It is not a marketplace, an agent or a party to anything you buy: any transaction is between you and the business.

A listing’s tier says how much checking BOBBY has done about ownership — nothing else. The eligibility standard and how vetting works set out exactly what each tier took.

In particular, no tier is a statement that a business:

• is good at what it does, or will do good work for you;
• is solvent, insured, licensed or currently trading;
• is endorsed or recommended by BOBBY.

A listing with no badge has not been checked, and BOBBY is not vouching for it. Please do your own diligence before spending money.

You need an account to claim a listing, review a business or subscribe. Give accurate details, keep access to your email secure, and do not use someone else’s account. Accounts can be suspended for breaking these terms.

Claiming a listing is a statement that you control that business. Do not claim a business you do not control — it is the one thing here that directly harms another person, and claims are logged.

If you manage a listing, you are responsible for what you publish on it. Keep it accurate; do not post anything you do not have the right to publish, and do not use a listing to advertise a different business.

Claiming is not vetting, and it never changes a tier. Documents given for a claim are checked only for a connection between you and the business.

Reviews must come from genuine experience. Do not post a review of your own business, a competitor’s, or one you were paid to write. Do not post anything unlawful, abusive, or that identifies a private individual.

BOBBY moderates reviews and may remove one that breaks these rules. A business owner who has claimed their listing can reply publicly; replying does not change the rating or the text of the review.

BOBBY’s side of this: it does not write, buy, solicit or import reviews, and it does not show a rating for a business that has none.

Anyone can submit a business, with a signal that it is Black-owned and a source for that signal. A submission is a suggestion, not a listing: a person reviews it before anything appears.

The supporter subscription costs $1 per month and is billed by Stripe. It supports the checking that makes a BOBBY listing worth something. It does not buy a tier, a badge, a position in search results, or a rating — for any business, including your own.

Cancel any time from your account; cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for, and there are no partial refunds for the remainder of a month. Prices may change with notice, and a change never applies to a period already paid for.

Please do not:

• scrape or bulk-copy the directory, or use it to build a competing listing set;
• attempt to reach data, documents or accounts that are not yours;
• interfere with the service, or probe it for weaknesses without permission;
• impersonate a business or a person;
• use BOBBY to harass anyone, or for anything unlawful.

BOBBY runs an API for its own agents under separate credentials and terms. If you want programmatic access, ask at [contact email] — not published yet rather than scraping.

Security researchers are welcome; report what you find to [contact email] — not published yet before disclosing it, and do not access other people’s data in the course of testing.

BOBBY’s name, logo, written content and the directory as a compilation belong to the operator of BOBBY. What you post stays yours, and you give BOBBY permission to display it in the directory and to show extracts of it elsewhere when promoting the directory.

If something on BOBBY infringes your rights, write to [contact email] — not published yet with enough detail to find it and it will be looked at.

BOBBY is offered as it is. It will sometimes be down, and some listings will be out of date or wrong — businesses change faster than directories do. Tell BOBBY when you find one and it will be fixed.

To the extent the law allows, BOBBY is not liable for loss arising from your dealings with a business you found here, from information in a listing being wrong or out of date, or from the service being unavailable.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for anything that cannot lawfully be limited, including fraud.

You can stop using BOBBY and delete your account at any time. BOBBY may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, and will say why unless there is a good reason not to.

These terms may change; material changes will be posted here with the date they take effect, and continuing to use BOBBY after that means accepting them.

The governing law is still to be published here.

Questions about these terms go to [contact email] — not published yet.