Terms Of Service

Welcome to PenPal!

Above all, we founded PenPal to help people rediscover genuine friendships. Our service is designed to respect and protect your privacy while enabling you to connect with other members around the world on our platform and exchange physical mail.

We expect your participation to be done in a responsible and respectful way, so we created our Community Guidelines.

We cover operating costs by charging our user for sending cards. By having one central postcard distribution service, we can ensure that your address will never be shared with another PenPal. Every sender sends the card to a username instead of a physical address. We then send the card to the address stored in the recipient's account, so that safe exchange can take place. Our Privacy Policy explains how we collect and use your personal data to be able to operate PenPal.

The services we provide

Our mission is to enable our members to build genuine human connections with new friends across the world. To bring this mission to life, we provide the following services.

PenPal Profile
When registering for PenPal, you can set up your own profile by selecting your username, uploading pictures, and adding languages or information about yourself. By choosing from a variety of interests and adding them to your profile, you can define your personality and show others who you really are and what you are looking for on PenPal.

PenPal Match
PenPal enables you to connect with users across the world by using PenPal Auto-Match, our algorithm that selects another user based on common interests, language, age, and other preferences. The filter settings allow you to set your matching preferences as specific as possible and find your like-minded friend.

PenPal Website and App
After finding a match, our online platform provides services that enable you to reach out to your pen pal by sending physical postcards to each other and exchanging on common interests. You can create the postcard online by uploading your own pictures or choosing our pre-selected designs. Subsequently, you can share the postcard picture digitally with the online community. The postcard function allows you to rediscover the writing experience with more meaningful conversations. After exchanging a set of postcards, you can interact with your pen pal through a chat to foster your relationship. Postcard pictures that were uploaded to the platform by yourself or fellow users can be shared with others and allow for additional interaction. You can also search and discover PenPals by looking up their username in the search box

PenPal Direct Exchange
Direct postcard exchange can take place between two PenPals. You can add a PenPal and once the request is approved by the other user, you become PenPals. By being PenPals, both users can directly exchange postcards and chats with each other and build-up long-lasting relationships.

Your commitments to the community and PenPal

While we offer you our services to bring to life our mission of connecting people around the world, we need your commitment to the following.

Use of PenPal
When signing up to PenPal you must comply with the following.

• The registration information provided by you must be accurate.
• You may not use a username that is a trademark, subject to copyright, offensive, obscene, or vulgar.
• You may never use the postal address of another person or entity without authorization.
• You must be 13 years or older in order to use PenPal.
• PenPal is for personal use and may not be used with any commercial purpose.
• You may not misuse the website for illegal or unauthorized purposes or publish copyrighted content that does not belong to you.

Postcard & Chat Content
When sending cards and sharing card pictures, please be aware of the following.

• All postcard pictures and text submitted to PenPal are the user’s sole responsibility.
• PenPal uses an upload filter (Google Vision API) to protect and enforce our Community Guidelines.
• Any content that PenPal deems discriminatory or offensive may be removed.
• The user is solely responsible for their interactions with other users.
• By publicly sharing a postcard picture, the user acknowledges and accepts that the postcard picture can be publicly accessed.
• Any chat messages must be in line with the community guidelines.

Additional Provisions

Any new features that enhance or augment the current service shall be subject to the Terms. At any time and at its sole discretion, PenPal reserves the right to suspend and discontinue the availability of the service and remove user content without prior notice. PenPal reserves the right, but has no obligation, to monitor disputes between users to enforce our Community Guidelines. Failure to comply with the Terms or Community Guidelines is considered a breach of Terms and results in account termination.

Terms of Sale with PenPal

§ 1 Scope
(1) These General Terms & Conditions of Sale (hereinafter: T&Cs) apply to the website www.penpal.me and our mobile applications PenPal apps (hereinafter: “the service”, or “PenPal”) and to contracts concluded between us.
PenPal GmbH
Hohenzollerndamm 3
10717 Berlin
Email: info@penpal.me
in accordance with § 27a German VAT Act VAT ID. no.: DE353117919
Registration number: HRB 242845 B Registered at Charlottenburg District Court, Berlin
Managing Directors: Oliver Kray & Marco Hülsmann
and you as our customer. The T&Cs apply irrespective of whether you are a consumer, entrepreneur or merchant.
(2) All agreements made between you and us in connection with the use of the portal are based specifically on these T&Cs, our written order confirmation and our declaration of acceptance.
(3) The version of the T&Cs that applies at the time the contract is concluded is definitive.

§ 2 Conclusion of contract
(1) The presentation and advertising of postcards on our service does not represent a binding offer to conclude a contract.
(2) On submitting an order for a PenPal postcard via our service by clicking the button "Send and pay", you are submitting a legally binding order.
(3) A contract only comes about when we accept your order with a declaration of acceptance or by sending the postcard ordered.
(4) Orders for deliveries of the postcard worldwide can only be considered from an amount of US $1,95.
(5) Should delivery of the postcard you order not be possible, we will not send a declaration of acceptance. In this case, no contract comes about. We will inform you without delay and any payments received will be returned immediately.

§ 3 Right of withdrawal
(1) We print the front of the postcards with designs that you add yourself to our service (individual postcard). The back has a message, the content of which you are free to choose. Our postcards are therefore goods that are made to meet customer specifications. In accordance with § 312d para. 4 no. 1 of the German Civil Code, you therefore have no right of withdrawal.

§ 4 Delivery conditions and requirement of advance payment
(1) We are entitled to make part deliveries, insofar as this is reasonable for you.
(2) The delivery period is approximately 3-6 working days worldwide, unless otherwise agreed. It begins when the contract is concluded.
(3) In the case of orders from customers whose place of residence or business is abroad or if there is legitimate reason to suspect that there is a risk of default on payment, we reserve the right to deliver only on receipt of the purchase price plus cost of postage (requirement of advance payment). If we wish to apply the requirement of advance payment, we will notify you immediately. In this case, the delivery period begins on payment of the purchase price and cost of postage.

§ 5 Prices and cost of postage
(1) All price information on our service refers to gross prices including statutory tax and the cost of postage due.
(2) Cost of postage is included in the prices on our service. The total price including tax and postage/shipping costs is also displayed on the order screen before you place your order.

§ 6 Payment conditions, offsetting and right of retention
(1) The purchase price including the cost of postage is due immediately on placement of the order.
(2) At your discretion, you can transfer the purchase price and the cost of postage to the account specified on our service, provide us with a direct debit mandate or pay by EC/Maestro or credit card or by PayPal. In the case of payment by direct debit mandate or by EC/Maestro or credit card, we will debit your account at the earliest at the time specified in para. 1. A direct debit mandate applies to subsequent orders until it is cancelled.
(3) You are not entitled to offset against our claims unless your counterclaims are legally established or uncontested. You are also entitled to offset against our claims if you are pursuing complaints or counterclaims arising from the same contract.
(4) As a customer you may only exercise a right of retention if your counterclaim is based on the same contract.
(5) By choosing the “SEPA direct debit” payment option, I grant the recipient of payment the right to withdraw payments from my account by using direct debit. At the same time, I authorize my bank to redeem the direct debit notes that the recipient of payment has booked to my account.
Please note: I can request the return of the charged amount within a period of eight weeks from the charge date. The terms and conditions which I have agreed with my bank apply.

§ 7 Retention of title
The item supplied remains in our possession until full payment of the purchase price.

§ 8 Guarantee
(1) We accept liability for items supplied in accordance with applicable statutory regulations. The limitation period for statutory complaints is two years and begins when the goods are sent.
(2) The agent expressly provides no guarantee of the quality of the photos transferred by the customer for the production of the postcard. The customer is responsible for the quality of the photo, in particular for the resolution of the pixels in color images, and he must check this before placing an order for which there is a charge.
(3) PenPal GmbH also cannot accept liability for any color differences between the original file and the postcard printed out by the agent.
(4) We cannot accept liability for any damage that occurs in transit.

§ 9 Liability
(1) We cover you in all cases of contractual and non-contractual liability in the event of malicious intent and gross negligence in accordance with the statutory provisions for compensation or refund of futile expenditure.
(2) In other cases we accept liability - unless otherwise stipulated in par. 3 - only in the event of the breach of a contractual obligation, the fulfillment of which makes possible the proper execution of the contract in the first place and on the observance of which you can normally rely as a customer (so-called cardinal obligations), limited to compensation for foreseeable and typical damage. In all other cases, our liability is excluded, with the exception of the regulation in para. 3.
(3) Our liability for damages resulting from loss of life, physical injury or damage to health and under the German Product Liability Act remains unaffected by the preceding limitations of liability and exclusions.

§ 10 Copyright
You guarantee that the rights of third parties are not breached by the images you upload and that you indemnify us against all claims that the holders of such rights pursue against us on the basis of a breach of those rights by you. The same applies to texts or other media used by you. The customer assigns to the agent the right to edit his data for processing and to ensure the quality of the postcard service, to publish it on the postcard requested and to pass it on to a postal service company of its choice, commissioned with its delivery. We reserve the right not to produce and not to send postcards with content such as racist, obscene and discriminatory images and postcards that, in our view, breach the rights of third parties or risk doing so. In this case, we will notify you of our refusal to process the postcard and refund the payments made to us in the meantime.

§ 11 Applicable law and court of jurisdiction
(1) The law of the Federal Republic of Germany applies, with the exclusion of the UN Convention on the International Sales of Goods. If you place an order as a consumer and at the time of your order your normal place of residence is in another country, the application of the compulsory legal regulations of that country remains unaffected by the choice of legal system in clause 1.
(2) If you are a merchant and your registered office is in Germany at the time of ordering, our registered office is the exclusive place of jurisdiction. Otherwise, the applicable statutory provisions apply to local and international jurisdiction.