Terms of use

1. What Private Encounters is

Private Encounters is an advertising platform, and we'll set out plainly what that does and doesn't mean rather than leave it vague.

Listings are advertising. People pay us a fixed advertising fee to publish a listing for a set period; other people read those listings and contact them directly. That is the entire relationship. We charge no booking commission and take no share of anything you earn in person. We are not an employer, an agency, a brothel operator, a booking service, or a manager. We do not employ, contract, roster, direct, or supervise anyone who advertises here. We take no percentage of anything you are paid by someone who found you through a listing - we never see it, and it is none of our business. We are not party to anything you arrange with someone you found here, and no listing on this site is an offer capable of acceptance by us or through us.

That distinction isn't a technicality we're hiding behind. It's what we actually are, and we've built the site so it stays true.

"We", "us" and "Private Encounters" mean the operator of privateencounters.co.nz. "You" means whoever is using the site - as an advertiser, as a reader, or both. Using the site at all means you accept these terms.

2. 18 and over. No exceptions.

Advertising a person under 18, or appearing in a listing while under 18, ends the account immediately and permanently and is reported to New Zealand Police. There is no appeal, no refund, and no conversation about it. Under the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 it is a serious criminal offence to arrange or receive commercial sexual services from a person under 18 - the person under 18 commits no offence, and never will as far as we are concerned.

If you believe someone on this site is under 18, report it right now. It goes to the top of every queue we have.

3. Your account

• One person, one account, and it's yours. Don't share it, don't sell it, don't hand it to a "manager".
• Keep the password to yourself. Anything done from your account is treated as done by you, so tell us straight away if you think someone else is in there.
• The email on the account has to reach you. It doesn't have to have your real name on it and we'd rather it didn't.
• You must be advertising yourself, or an adult who has genuinely and freely asked you to advertise them and knows exactly what is published. Agencies and parlours must be able to show that on request.

4. Your listing

It's your advertisement and your voice. We're not going to sand the personality off it. But you're telling us, every time you publish, that:

• You are 18 or over and doing this of your own free will. Nobody is making you, nobody else is taking the money, and you can stop whenever you want.
• You are legally entitled to provide commercial sexual services in New Zealand. Under section 19 of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 that means you are a New Zealand citizen or resident - a person here on a temporary visa (including a student, visitor, or working-holiday visa) may not provide commercial sexual services, and doing so puts their visa at risk. We can't verify immigration status, so this warranty is yours to give - but it is not a formality: if we're given credible evidence that someone advertising here has no right to do this work, we will suspend the listing while we look into it, and remove it if the concern holds up. You can raise this confidentially through our report form.
• Every photo is of you, and you own it or have the right to use it. Nobody else identifiable is in shot without their agreement.
• What the listing says is broadly true - your rates, your city, your services, your tour dates.
• Nothing in it is unlawful, and nothing in it offers or implies unprotected sex.
• You are responsible for your own tax and your own compliance. We don't report your income to anyone and we don't withhold anything, because we never touch it.

5. What you can't do

The short version: don't put anything here that hurts someone.

• Advertise anyone under 18, in any way, including photos.
• Advertise anyone who is being coerced, controlled, trafficked, or who hasn't freely agreed to be here.
• Use photos that aren't yours, or that include someone who didn't consent.
• Offer or imply unprotected sex. It's an offence under the PRA and it's an instant removal here.
• Advertise anything else illegal - drugs, weapons, stolen goods, or services involving anyone who can't consent.
• Post someone else's private information: their legal name, address, workplace, or photos, whether they're on this site or not.
• Harass, threaten, stalk or blackmail anyone, here or after you've left here.
• Scam people. Fake listings, deposit fraud, bait and switch.
• Scrape, copy, or bulk-harvest listings, photos or contact details. Automated collection isn't research, it's how stalkers and spammers work.
• Attack the site - break the security, break the payment flow, break the age gate, or try to.

6. We review everything, and we can remove things

Every listing, photo, edit and tour date is reviewed by a person before it's published. Paying us doesn't guarantee publication and never has - you're buying advertising days, not a right to be online no matter what the listing says.

We can reject, edit, pause, hide or remove any listing, and suspend or close any account, if we reasonably believe it breaks these terms or the law, or if leaving it up would put someone at risk. Where it's a fixable mistake we'll tell you what's wrong and let you fix it. Where it's the serious stuff in section 5, we'll act first and explain after.

You can appeal, and a different person will look. Full process is on our moderation page, and it's part of these terms.

We'll report to New Zealand Police anything involving a person under 18, coercion or trafficking, or a credible threat to someone's safety. We'll do that without telling you first, and we won't apologise for it.

Different problems have different routes, and using the right one gets you help fastest. Intimate images shared without consent, harassment, or other seriously harmful posts about you are handled under the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 - report it here and we follow that Act's process. Someone using your copyrighted photos is a copyright complaint; a privacy breach (your real name, address or workplace exposed) is a privacy complaint to our privacy officer; and content that may be objectionable under the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993 is dealt with under that Act. If you're not sure which applies, use the report form and we'll route it.

7. Payments

We take cryptocurrency, or a New Zealand bank transfer. Why crypto comes first is explained here.

• The NZD rate is locked onto your invoice when it's created and never re-read. Whatever the market does after that is our problem, not yours.
• Send the amount on the invoice. We allow a small tolerance for wallet fees; underpay by more and the invoice stays open until it's topped up.
• Send to the address on the invoice, and only that one. Send to a wrong address, or send the wrong coin, or send to an expired invoice, and the money is gone - we cannot recover it and we are not liable for it.
• You buy a block of advertising days. There's no auto-renew, because there's no card on file. When it runs out, your listing goes quiet until you pay again.
• Add-ons like bumps and featured weeks are consumed when used and aren't refundable once they've run.

When you get your money back

Five different situations, because they genuinely are different. Your rights under the Consumer Guarantees Act sit over all of them and nothing here reduces them.

• You changed your mind. If the service is working as described and you simply decided you'd rather not, we don't owe you a refund, and we don't promise one. That is the ordinary position and it is the only one on this list where the answer is no.
• We rejected you before the service started. If we turn down your listing or your room before any of it goes live, you get your money back. You can choose account credit instead if you'd rather - fix it and republish, or move to a different plan - but that is your choice to make and we will not make it for you.
• Something went wrong and it can be fixed. If the service fails in a way we can put right, we'll put it right: correct the problem, restore access, extend your period, or run it again. Your paid days start when you are actually visible, so time in our review queue never comes out of them, and if we take a listing or a room down over something that turns out to be our mistake, you get that time back.
• Something went badly wrong, or can't be fixed. If the failure is substantial, or we can't fix it in a reasonable time, you can cancel and get a refund - full or proportionate depending on what you actually received. We will not force account credit on you instead. The Consumer Guarantees Act gives you a refund right in this situation and store credit is not a substitute for it.
• We closed your account for a serious breach. If we close your account for one of the serious breaches in section 5 - a minor, coercion or trafficking, unprotected sex, or fraud - we may cancel unused prepaid time. Only for those specific breaches, only in proportion to what happened, and only after a person has reviewed it. You can ask us to look again and a different person will. It is never automatic, it is never for a minor breach, and it never removes a right you have under the law.

How a refund actually happens

The awkward part of refunding crypto is that the price was in dollars and the payment was in coins, and the two have moved apart by the time anyone asks. So:

• Refunds are worked out in New Zealand dollars, by reference to the amount legally refundable. That is the number the contract was always in.
• Subject to legal, security and sanctions checks, we can pay it in the original cryptocurrency, using the rate at the time we process the refund, or by another method we agree with you. What we cannot promise is to send back the same number of coins you sent, because the price you paid was never a number of coins.
• Refunds go only to the original payer, at an address you can demonstrate you control. We will ask you to prove that. It is not bureaucracy: a refund route that pays a stranger is a laundering route.
• Network fees for sending the refund come out of the refund, because someone has to pay the chain and it is not a cost either of us controls.
• We aim to process a refund within 10 working days of agreeing it. Confirmation on the chain is usually minutes after that, sometimes longer if the network is busy.
• Overpayments and underpayments: underpay by more than the tolerance and the invoice stays open until it is topped up. Overpay, and tell us - we will refund the excess on the same basis as everything else here.

If you're buying for a business

Advertisers usually buy this service for their own business. Where you are in trade, you and we are both in trade, and you agree in writing that the Consumer Guarantees Act does not apply, then it does not apply to that purchase - as the Act itself allows, and only where that is fair and reasonable. That is an agreement you make deliberately, not something buried here that catches you by accident.

If you are buying as a consumer, the Consumer Guarantees Act applies in full and nothing in these terms contracts out of it. The Fair Trading Act applies either way, to everyone, always.

No subscription, no auto-renewal

The price you see when you buy is the price you pay, fixed onto that invoice - we can't change it after you've paid. There is no ongoing subscription and nothing on file to charge, so we can never take another payment without you starting one. When your paid period ends, your listing simply goes quiet until you choose to pay again. If we ever change our prices, the new price only applies to purchases you make after the change - never to a period you've already paid for.

Nothing here takes away rights you have under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 or the Fair Trading Act 1986, where those apply to you. If a term in this section conflicts with those Acts, those Acts win.

8. If you're using the site to find someone

Everything you read here is written by the advertiser, not by us. We check listings for the things in section 5 and we reject a lot - but we haven't met these people, we haven't tested their claims, and a listing is an advertisement rather than a promise from us.

• Anything you arrange is between you and them. We're not a party to it and we can't help if it goes wrong.
• Our verified badge means we checked an ID and a face. It doesn't mean the person is safe, current, or accurately described. We spell out the limits on the safety page and we mean them.
• Screen anyway. Read the safety page.
• Safer sex isn't optional and isn't negotiable - it's an offence under the PRA for you as well as for them.
• No means no, including a no that arrives after you've paid and including one that arrives halfway through.
• Don't photograph, record, out, follow, or look for the real name of anyone you meet through this site. Do any of that and you're banned, and depending what it is, reported.

9. What we're responsible for, and what we're not

We're responsible for running this site properly: reviewing what gets published, acting on reports, protecting your data, and not lying to you. Those are real obligations and we take them seriously.

We're not responsible for what other people do. We can't guarantee any listing is accurate, that anyone is who they say, that a booking goes well, or that the site is never down. We provide the site as it is. To the extent the law allows, we're not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost income, or loss caused by someone else's conduct - and where we are liable, our total liability to you is capped at what you've paid us in the previous twelve months.

None of that limits liability we can't lawfully limit - including under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 where it applies, or for our own fraud. If you use this site for a business (and if you're advertising here, you probably are), you agree the Consumer Guarantees Act doesn't apply to that use, under section 43 of that Act.

We link to other sites - wallets, exchanges, NZPC. We don't control them and we're not responsible for them. We don't get paid to name any of them.

10. Your photos and your words

They stay yours. Completely. We don't take ownership of anything you upload.

You do give us permission to host, resize, and display your listing on this site, and to show it in our own search results - which is just the permission we need to do the thing you're paying us for. It's non-exclusive, it's royalty-free, and it ends when your listing comes down.

We won't use your photos in advertising for Private Encounters, on social media, or anywhere off this site without asking you first and getting a yes. Delete your listing and we delete the images. Copies may sit in backups for a short period before they age out, and search engines may hold a cache we don't control - we'll do what we can, but we can't reach inside Google.

The site itself - the name, the logo, the design, the code - is ours.

11. Ending it

You can stop whenever you like. Delete your listing from your dashboard, or email support@privateencounters.co.nz and ask us to close the account and erase what we hold. We'll do it, we won't make it a retention conversation, and we won't ask you to justify it. There's no notice period and no exit fee.

If you choose to leave while the service is working as described, we don't refund the unused days - that's the change-of-mind line in section 7, not anything to do with crypto being hard to reverse. Come back within a year and we'll honour the remainder. If you're leaving because something went wrong, section 7 covers that instead, and your Consumer Guarantees Act rights come with you either way.

We can close an account for a breach of these terms, or if we shut the site down. If we ever wind up, we'll give as much notice as we can and delete everything we hold.

12. New Zealand law

These terms are governed by New Zealand law, and the New Zealand courts have jurisdiction over any dispute about them. We're a New Zealand site for a New Zealand industry that New Zealand decriminalised in 2003, and we're not going to pretend otherwise for anyone's convenience.

Sex work being legal here doesn't make it legal everywhere. If you're reading this from somewhere it isn't, that's on you.

If a court finds any part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still stands. If we don't enforce something straight away, that doesn't mean we've given it up.

Got a complaint about us? Email support@privateencounters.co.nz first. We'd rather fix it than argue about it. Who "we" are - the company operating this site and the people responsible for it - is set out on our operator details page.

13. Changes to these terms

We'll update this page from time to time. If a change actually affects you, we'll email advertisers before it takes effect and put a notice on the site - not silently swap the file and update the date. Keep using the site after a change and you've accepted it. If you don't like it, close your account.