Terms of Service
Please read these Terms carefully. Section 17 contains a binding arbitration agreement and a class action waiver that affect how disputes with us are resolved. Section 10 describes the risks of surfing and your assumption of them.
1. What these Terms cover
These Terms are an agreement between you and CatchMoreWaves LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company (“CatchMoreWaves,” “we,” “us”), P.O. Box 957, Haleiwa, HI 96712. They govern your use of catchmorewaves.com, the CatchMoreWaves app at book.catchmorewaves.com, and everything we offer through them (together, the “Service”).
By creating an account or using the Service you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you don’t agree, don’t use the Service.
Instructors also agree to the additional terms in Section 12. Where Section 12 conflicts with the rest of these Terms, Section 12 governs for instructors.
2. What CatchMoreWaves is, and isn’t
CatchMoreWaves is a booking service. It lets adults find independent surf instructors, book lessons for themselves or for children in their care, pay for them, and communicate with the instructor about the booking. It lets instructors list lessons, manage availability, and get paid.
We do not teach surfing, and we are not a party to any lesson. Instructors are independent businesses, not our employees, agents, contractors, or partners. Every lesson is a contract between the person who books it and the instructor who delivers it. We are the booking agent that arranges it and collects payment on the instructor’s behalf, and nothing more. We do not supervise lessons, we are not present at them, and we do not control how an instructor teaches, what equipment they use, or the decisions they make in the water.
We do not vet, verify, or endorse instructors. We do not perform background checks, and we do not verify an instructor’s identity, qualifications, experience, licenses, insurance, or history. Where an instructor’s profile shows that a certification document is on file, that means only that the instructor uploaded a document and we looked at it. It is not a representation by us that the document is authentic or current, or that the instructor is competent or safe. You are responsible for deciding whether to book with any instructor. Do your own research, ask the instructor whatever you need to know, and use your own judgment. You book, and take a lesson, at your own risk.
3. Accounts
You must be 18 or older to create an account or use the Service. There are no accounts for children.
You choose a role when you sign up — someone who books lessons, or an instructor — and it can’t be changed by you afterward. Contact us if you need a different role.
Keep your login credentials secure and your account information accurate. You are responsible for everything done through your account. Tell us at once if you believe it has been compromised.
You may sign up with Google. If you do, Google’s terms apply to that sign-in.
4. Booking a lesson
How it works. You pick an instructor, a lesson type, a time, and who’s taking the lesson. Some lessons are open-enrollment (other people may book seats in the same session up to its capacity); some are private-party (you take the whole session). The instructor sets which, and sets the prices.
Holding your seats. When you start checkout, your seats are held for a short time (currently 15 minutes) while you pay. If payment isn’t completed in that time, the hold is released and the seats go back on sale.
Instant and requested bookings. Some instructors accept bookings automatically; your booking is confirmed when payment succeeds. Others review each request. For those, your card is authorized but not charged; it is charged when the instructor accepts, and the authorization is released if they decline or don’t respond within the window shown at checkout (currently 24 hours). An authorization can appear on your statement until your bank drops it.
Waivers. Before a booking is completed, you must sign our liability waiver once for each participant — yourself if you’re taking the lesson, and each child you’re booking for. If we update the waiver, you’ll be asked to sign the new version before your next booking. You can’t book without it.
Your responsibilities. You must give accurate information about each participant, including anything that affects safety in the water: swimming ability, experience, and any medical condition, allergy, or injury the instructor should know about. You must arrive on time, at the location the instructor specifies, with the participants you booked for.
Confirmation. A booking is confirmed only when the app and our confirmation email say it is. Until then, no lesson has been agreed.
Changing a booking. Other than a reschedule offered after a weather cancellation (Section 7), a confirmed booking can’t be moved. To change the time, cancel under Section 7 and book again.
5. Booking for a child
If you book for a child, you represent that you are the child’s parent or legal guardian, or are otherwise legally authorized to book activities, sign waivers, and share medical information on the child’s behalf.
A parent or guardian must be present. For any participant under 18, a parent or legal guardian — or another adult, 18 or older, whom the parent or guardian has authorized — must be present at the lesson location for the entire lesson. An instructor may refuse to start or continue a lesson if no such adult is present, and that is treated as a no-show by you under Section 7.
You are responsible for:
- The accuracy of the information you provide about the child, and for updating it if it changes
- Deciding whether the lesson, and the instructor, are appropriate for the child’s age, ability, and health
- The child’s transportation to and from the lesson, and for the child before and after it
Children do not get accounts and cannot message instructors through the Service. All communication is between you and the instructor.
6. Prices, fees, and payment
Prices are set by the instructor and shown before you book.
Booking fee. We charge a booking fee, shown as a separate line item at checkout, per participant. The fee in effect when you book is the one that applies to that booking.
Payment is processed by Stripe. By paying through the Service you agree to Stripe’s Services Agreement as applicable. We don’t store your card details.
We collect on the instructor’s behalf. When you pay through the Service, we receive the payment as the instructor’s limited payment collection agent. Payment to us is treated as payment to the instructor, and we pay the instructor after deducting our fees. Once you have paid us, you have paid the instructor, and the instructor may not seek payment from you for the same lesson again.
Currency and taxes. All prices are in US dollars. Prices and fees are exclusive of any tax that may apply. Instructors are responsible for determining, collecting, and remitting any tax due on the lessons they provide. If we are required to collect a tax on our booking fee, it will be shown at checkout.
7. Cancellations and refunds
The rules below are enforced automatically by the Service. The specific hours and percentages are shown to you at checkout; the ones shown when you book are the ones that apply to that booking. Current values are given here for reference.
If you cancel:
- 24 hours or more before the lesson start: full refund of the lesson price and the booking fee.
- Less than 24 hours before the lesson start: 50% of the lesson price is refunded. The other 50% goes to the instructor. The booking fee is not refunded.
- Exactly 24 hours before counts as “24 hours or more.”
- You cancel with one action in the app; the Service determines which rule applies from the time of your cancellation.
If the instructor cancels for any reason other than weather or conditions: full refund of the lesson price and the booking fee.
If the instructor cancels for weather or conditions. Surf lessons depend on the ocean. An instructor may cancel a session because conditions are unsafe or unsuitable, and we want them to do so without hesitation. When that happens you choose:
- Reschedule to another available time with the same instructor, at no extra charge (as long as the lesson’s price hasn’t changed); or
- Full refund of the lesson price and the booking fee.
The choice is yours; the app offers reschedule first. If you haven’t chosen by the original lesson time, we refund you automatically. A weather cancellation applies to the whole session, so every booking on it is treated the same way.
If we cancel a booking (for example because an instructor’s account is suspended), we refund you in full, or as we otherwise decide in the circumstances, and we’ll tell you why.
No-shows. If you or a participant doesn’t show up for a confirmed lesson, or a lesson can’t proceed because of something on your side (including the absence of a required adult under Section 5), no refund is owed. If an instructor doesn’t show up, contact us. In either case, whether to refund some or all of the payment is at our sole discretion.
Refunds go back to the original payment method. We issue them promptly; your bank may take several days to show them. A refund of a booking that was only authorized (never charged) releases the authorization rather than producing a refund.
Disputes. If something went wrong with a lesson, contact us first at support@catchmorewaves.com. Chargebacks filed without contacting us may result in suspension of your account.
8. Messaging
Once a booking is confirmed, you and the instructor can message each other in the app about that booking. The conversation stays open until seven days after the lesson, then becomes read-only.
Use messaging only to coordinate the booked lesson. Don’t use it to harass, threaten, or deceive anyone, to solicit anything unrelated to the booking, or to send content that’s unlawful or that a reasonable person would find offensive. We may read conversations for safety, support, and moderation, and we log when we do.
SMS Terms
CatchMoreWaves LLC (“CatchMoreWaves”) sends transactional text messages about your bookings to account holders who opt in. You opt in by checking the text-message consent box in your account or on your booking confirmation page. Consent is optional and is never a condition of booking or purchase.
What we send: messages about bookings you are part of, such as new booking requests, confirmations, cancellations, weather reschedule offers, and lesson reminders. You choose which categories you receive in your account; every category starts off. We do not send marketing messages.
Message frequency varies with your booking activity. Message and data rates may apply.
Reply STOP to any message to opt out at any time. Reply HELP for help, or contact support@catchmorewaves.com. You can also turn off any category of text in your account. Changing your mobile number ends your consent for the old number; you can agree again for the new one.
Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages. Text messages are a convenience; the email we send about the same event is the record.
We do not sell or share your SMS opt-in data or personal information with third parties for marketing purposes. See our Privacy Policy at https://catchmorewaves.com/privacy.
9. Your conduct
You agree not to:
- Provide false information, impersonate anyone, or create an account for someone else without authority
- Book a lesson for a child without the authority described in Section 5
- Use the Service to find an instructor and then arrange, book, or pay for lessons with that instructor outside the Service, or solicit or accept such an arrangement, in order to avoid our fees or these Terms. This is a strict violation and grounds for immediate termination of your account
- Interfere with the Service, probe or test its security, scrape it, or access it by any means other than the interfaces we provide
- Use the Service for anything unlawful
If you post a review or rating on the Service, it must reflect your own genuine experience of a lesson you booked through the Service.
We may suspend or terminate an account that violates these Terms.
10. Safety and assumption of risk
Surfing is dangerous. It involves open water, waves, currents, marine life, other people, and equipment, and it can cause serious injury or death, including to strong swimmers and experienced surfers. Instructors may reduce these risks; they don’t eliminate them, and we have no role in managing them.
By booking, and by signing the waiver for each participant, you acknowledge these risks and agree, to the fullest extent the law allows, that you and each participant you book for take part at your own risk. The waiver you sign is part of your agreement with the instructor and with us.
You agree to follow the instructor’s safety directions during a lesson. An instructor may end a lesson, or refuse to start one, if they judge conditions or a participant’s condition to be unsafe. That is not a breach of anything; Section 7 says what happens to the money.
11. Content and intellectual property
Your content. You keep whatever rights you have in the content you submit (profile information, photos, messages, reviews). You give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to use it to operate, promote, and improve the Service. You are responsible for having the rights to anything you submit, including any photo that shows another person.
Our content. The Service, its design, code, text, and trademarks are ours or our licensors’ and are protected by law. You may use them only as these Terms allow.
Feedback. If you send us suggestions, we can use them without obligation to you.
12. Additional terms for instructors
12.1 Your relationship with us
You are an independent business. You decide whether to accept bookings, what to teach, where, at what price, and how. Nothing in these Terms creates an employment, agency (other than our limited role as your payment collection agent), partnership, or joint-venture relationship. You are not entitled to any employee benefit. You are solely responsible for your own taxes, insurance, licenses, permits, equipment, and compliance with every law that applies to teaching surfing where you teach it, and you represent that you have and will maintain whatever is required.
12.2 Being listed
Before you can take bookings, all of the following must be true:
- We have approved your profile for listing
- You have completed Stripe Connect onboarding and Stripe has enabled payouts to you
We may decline to list you, or remove your listing later, at our sole discretion and without giving a reason. Anything we look at when deciding whether to list you — including any document you upload — is for our own purposes and creates no obligation to you, to students, or to anyone else. Removing your listing removes you from search and stops new bookings; existing confirmed bookings are handled under Section 7.
12.3 Your listings and availability
You set your lesson types, prices, group sizes, and availability, and you keep them accurate and truthful. Everything on your profile, including the certifications you list, must be true. When a booking is confirmed, you are committing to deliver that lesson at that time and place. If you connect Google Calendar, personal events on your calendar will block your availability and confirmed lessons will be added to it; disconnecting the calendar freezes your availability until you reconnect.
If you use manual acceptance, you must respond to booking requests within the acceptance window (currently 24 hours); a request you don’t answer is declined and the student’s authorization released.
12.4 Payments to you
You appoint us as your limited payment collection agent. We collect the lesson price from the student, deduct our fees, and pay you the remainder through Stripe Connect. A student’s payment to us satisfies the student’s obligation to pay you for that lesson, whether or not we pay you. Our fees are: a per-booking instructor fee, a percentage commission on the lesson price, and the booking fee the student pays; the amounts in effect when a booking is charged are recorded with that booking and shown to you, and later fee changes don’t alter it.
Payouts are made by Stripe on a weekly schedule to the bank account you provided. You agree to the Stripe Connected Account Agreement, including the Stripe Terms of Service, and you authorize us to share your information with Stripe and to instruct payouts, refunds, and reversals on your account under these Terms.
12.5 Cancellations and refunds — your side
Section 7 governs. From your side:
- A student cancels 24 hours or more before: you receive nothing for that booking, and no fee is charged to you.
- A student cancels less than 24 hours before: you keep 50% of the lesson price, less our normal fees.
- You cancel for weather or conditions: the student is refunded in full, and no fee is charged to you. You must cancel the whole session, not one booking on it. Cancel at least two hours before the start where you can; you may still cancel later for safety, but we review late weather cancellations.
- You cancel for any other reason: the student is refunded in full, including the booking fee, and our fees for that booking are still charged to you. The refund is recovered from your Stripe balance.
- We cancel: we tell you why and decide the refund; our fees may be charged to you if the cancellation was caused by your conduct.
- A no-show by you: we may refund the student in full and recover the refund and our fees from you.
Repeated non-weather cancellations, no-shows, or late weather cancellations may result in removal of your listing.
Disputes and chargebacks. If a student disputes a charge with their bank and the dispute is lost because of something on your side — the lesson was not delivered, was not as described, or was not delivered safely — we may recover the disputed amount and any dispute fee from your Stripe balance or from future payouts. Where a dispute is lost for reasons unrelated to you, we bear it.
12.6 Students’ information
You will receive a student’s name, emergency contact, and, for confirmed bookings, each participant’s details, including a child’s skill level, swimming ability, and medical notes. You may use that information only to deliver the booked lesson safely. You must not keep it beyond what you need for the lesson, share it with anyone, use it for marketing, or contact a student for any purpose other than the booking. You are responsible for handling it lawfully.
12.7 Minors
You will never communicate with a child through the Service (it isn’t possible) or seek to communicate with a child outside it. All communication about a child’s lesson is with the adult account holder. A parent, legal guardian, or an adult they have authorized must be present for the whole of any lesson involving a participant under 18; you must not start or continue such a lesson without one. You will follow every law and safety practice that applies to teaching minors. We treat any credible concern about an instructor’s conduct with a minor as grounds for immediate removal of the listing while we look into it.
12.8 Taxes
You are solely responsible for all taxes on your earnings and on the lessons you provide, in every jurisdiction that applies to you, and for any tax reporting or filings those jurisdictions require. Stripe may issue you tax forms where required. We provide no tax advice.
13. Suspension and termination
You can close your account by contacting us. We can suspend or terminate your account, or remove an instructor’s listing, if you breach these Terms, if we believe your use of the Service creates risk for anyone, or if required by law. Where reasonable, we’ll tell you why.
Confirmed bookings at the time of termination are cancelled and refunded under Section 7 unless we agree otherwise. Sections 2, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12.4–12.8, and 14–19 survive termination.
14. Disclaimers
The Service is provided “as is” and “as available.” To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability, and non-infringement.
We make no warranty of any kind about any instructor or any lesson. We do not warrant that any instructor is competent, qualified, licensed, insured, safe, or who they say they are; that any lesson will take place, be as described, or be delivered with any particular standard of care; or that any equipment used will be suitable or safe. Any statement on an instructor’s profile is the instructor’s, not ours. We don’t warrant that the Service itself will be uninterrupted or error-free.
15. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, CatchMoreWaves and its owners, officers, employees, and agents will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any personal injury, death, or property damage arising out of or connected to a lesson or to an instructor’s acts or omissions, however caused. Our total liability to you for any claim arising out of these Terms or the Service will not exceed the greater of the fees you paid us in the twelve months before the claim or one hundred US dollars ($100).
Some jurisdictions don’t allow some of these limitations; in those, they apply to the extent allowed.
16. Indemnification
You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless CatchMoreWaves and its owners, officers, employees, and agents from any claim, loss, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of your use of the Service, your breach of these Terms, your content, or — for instructors — any lesson you deliver or fail to deliver.
17. Disputes: arbitration and class action waiver
17.1 Talk to us first. Before starting arbitration or any court proceeding, you agree to send a written description of your claim to support@catchmorewaves.com and give us 30 days to try to resolve it with you. We agree to the same if we have a claim against you.
17.2 Binding arbitration. If a dispute isn’t resolved that way, you and CatchMoreWaves agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms, the Service, or any lesson booked through the Service — including claims about the existence, validity, or scope of this agreement to arbitrate — will be resolved by binding individual arbitration, not in court. The arbitration will be administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, or, for a dispute with an instructor, its Commercial Arbitration Rules. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this Section. The arbitrator will apply the law in Section 18 and may award the same relief a court could award to an individual, and no other. The arbitration may be conducted by video or by written submissions; any in-person hearing will be held in the county or municipality where you live, or another place you and we agree. We will pay the AAA filing and arbitrator fees for a consumer claim under $10,000 unless the arbitrator finds the claim frivolous.
17.3 Class action waiver. You and CatchMoreWaves agree that each may bring claims against the other only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person’s claims and may not preside over any form of class or representative proceeding. If this paragraph is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim — and only that claim — will be decided in court under Section 18, and the rest of this Section still applies to everything else.
17.4 Exceptions. Either party may bring an individual claim in small claims court if it qualifies there. Either party may seek an injunction in court to stop unauthorized use of the Service or infringement of intellectual property.
17.5 Opt-out. You may opt out of this arbitration agreement by emailing support@catchmorewaves.com within 30 days of first accepting these Terms, stating your name, the email on your account, and that you opt out of arbitration. Opting out does not affect any other part of these Terms.
17.6 Jury waiver. To the extent any claim proceeds in court rather than arbitration, you and CatchMoreWaves each waive any right to a jury trial.
18. Governing law and venue
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Hawaii and the United States, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, except that Section 17 is governed by the Federal Arbitration Act. Any claim that proceeds in court under Section 17 will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Honolulu, Hawaii, and you consent to their jurisdiction. Nothing in this Section takes away any protection you have under the consumer-protection laws of the place where you live that cannot be waived by agreement.
19. Changes
We may change these Terms. If a change is material, we’ll notify you by email or in the app before it takes effect. Changes to fees or cancellation rules apply only to bookings made after the change; a booking keeps the terms shown when it was made. Continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect means you accept it. Changes to Section 17 do not apply to a dispute you have already told us about under Section 17.1.
20. General
These Terms, the Privacy Policy, and the waiver are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service. If any part is unenforceable, the rest stands. Our not enforcing something isn’t a waiver of it. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets. Nothing here creates rights for third parties, except that instructors may rely on Sections 10 and 12.
21. Contact
Email: support@catchmorewaves.com
Mail: CatchMoreWaves, P.O. Box 957, Haleiwa, HI 96712