Terms of service

1. Acceptance of these terms

Using the Service means accepting these terms.

They apply to everyone who comes in: Residence staff working with the dashboard, and the student completing the survey with the code their Residence issued.

2. What the Service is

WeMates matches roommates in student residences. It has three parts:

• A survey of 20 behavioural questions and 5 open questions, which the student answers using their booking code, without giving a name or an email address.
• A matching engine that turns each set of answers into a 20-dimension profile and compares every possible pair in the building simultaneously, rather than one after another.
• A management dashboard where the Residence uploads its student list and its room inventory, reviews the result room by room, and decides.

The engine honours the rules the Residence sets as hard constraints: gender according to its own policy, a shared language, who is returning to the same room from the previous year, and pairs that are already fixed. Where a student has no reasonable match, they are placed in a single room rather than forced into a pairing.

What the dashboard shows are proposals. No assignment takes effect until a person at the Residence approves it, and they can swap, lock or redo any of them.

3. Use of the Service

The Service must be used lawfully and in accordance with these terms. Specifically:

• Answer the survey honestly. It is what makes the matching work: each student's answers are the raw material of their own result and of the result of whoever they end up sharing with.
• Keep booking codes and dashboard credentials in the hands of those entitled to them.
• Use the platform as delivered: without reverse engineering, decompilation or tampering with the matching engine, and without circumventing access controls or interfering with the operation or the security of the Service.
• The Residence enters into the platform only data on students it is entitled to process, having met its own information and, where applicable, consent obligations towards them.

If we detect use that puts the data or the operation of the Service at risk, we may suspend the affected access in order to protect it, and we tell the Residence as soon as possible.

4. Data: who answers for what

The division of roles is the same one set out in the privacy policy. For the survey data of its students, the Residence is the data controller and WeMates acts as processor, processing it on its documented instructions and under a data processing agreement. WeMates is a controller only in respect of its own website, its contact form and the accounts of staff using the dashboard.

The student list, the room inventory and the survey responses remain the Residence's. WeMates acquires no ownership of them: it processes them to provide the Service and, once the accommodation ends and within the periods set out in the privacy policy, deletes them or irreversibly anonymises them for aggregate statistics, with the express authorisation recorded in the data processing agreement.

Each Residence sees only its own data. The isolation is enforced in the database; it does not depend on anyone remembering to respect it.

The full detail — what is collected, on what legal basis, who processes it and how long it is kept — is in the privacy policy.

5. Intellectual property

The software, the matching engine, the survey and its scales, the dashboard, the text, the design and the WeMates brand belong to WeMates and are protected by applicable intellectual and industrial property law.

Using the Service transfers none of those rights. The Residence obtains a non-exclusive, non-transferable right of use, limited to the term of its contract. Reproducing them, distributing them or using them to create derivative works requires our prior written permission.

6. The scope of our recommendations

WeMates proposes and the Residence decides. The engine computes compatibility from a statistical model of survey responses, and what it delivers are reasoned proposals, not final assignments: Residence staff review them room by room and can swap, lock or redo any of them before they take effect. The final allocation is decided by the Residence, and responsibility for that decision is the Residence's.

Being what it is — a decision-support tool, and not the sole basis on which to allocate rooms — the Service is provided "as is" and as available: beyond the warranties the law imposes, we do not warrant that it will run uninterrupted, or that any given pairing will result in harmonious cohabitation.

7. Liability

We are liable for direct damage we cause in providing the Service, in accordance with the law and with what is agreed in the contract with the Residence. Beyond that, and to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, WeMates is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages arising from or related to use of the Service — including roommate conflicts, tenancy disputes, lost revenue or reputational harm — even if we had been advised that they might occur.

Our total aggregate liability for any claim arising from these terms or from the Service shall not exceed the amounts the Residence has paid WeMates in the twelve months preceding the claim.

Where an event beyond our reasonable control — the outage of a hosting provider or of communication networks, for instance — prevents us from providing the Service, our obligations are suspended for as long as it lasts, and we tell the Residence as soon as possible.

Nothing above excludes or limits liability that the law does not permit to be limited — in particular liability arising from wilful misconduct or gross negligence — nor any rights that apply on a mandatory basis to anyone using the Service as a consumer.

8. Governing law and courts

These terms are governed by Spanish law. For any dispute concerning them or the use of the Service, the parties submit to the courts of Barcelona, Spain, unless a mandatory rule determines another venue.

9. Interpretation of these terms

If a court or authority declares any of these terms invalid or unenforceable, the rest remain in force, and the affected term is read in the way closest to its purpose that is valid.

These terms are published in Spanish and in English. Where the two differ, the Spanish version prevails.

10. Changes to these terms

The Service is improved continuously, and these terms are updated when needed. Material changes are communicated to the Residence and published on this page, with the date at the top kept current. Continuing to use the Service after that notice means accepting the new version.

11. Contact

Questions about these terms? Write to us at info@wemates.es.