Referral Program Terms

Your code, and the link it makes

Every account is issued one referral code when it is created. It is eight characters long, it never changes, and it is yours for as long as the account exists. You will find it on your My Events screen, next to the button that copies the whole link.

The link is your code on the sign-up page — /signup?ref=YOURCODE. That is the only way a referral is recorded. Somebody who signs up at the plain address and mentions your name afterwards has not used your link, and there is no way for us to attach the credit later: the referral is written once, at the moment the account is created, and it is never rewritten.

You may share your link wherever you like among people you actually know. You may not buy advertising against the Cityfolk name to distribute it, list it on a coupon or deals site, or post it anywhere it reads as an offer from us rather than an invitation from you.

When the reward is owed

The reward is paid the first time the person you brought is marked as having attended a table. Not when they sign up. Not when they take a seat. When they turn up and the host records them present.

• You get one guest pass. Added to your account the moment their attendance is recorded.
• They get one guest pass too. Both sides are paid, and both are paid once.
• Once per member, ever. A person can be somebody's first table only once, so an account can earn its referrer exactly one reward and no more, whatever happens afterwards.

If they never sit at a table, nothing is owed to anyone. A sign-up is not a regular.

What a guest pass is

A guest pass lets you put one named person on the waitlist for your city, credited to you. It is spent when you use it, whether or not they ever take a seat.

It is worth being exact about what that is not:

• It is not a seat at a table, and it does not reserve one.
• It is not a membership, a discount, or a credit against your own subscription.
• It has no cash value, cannot be sold or transferred, and is not refundable.
• It does not cover the bill. The membership buys the seat and the matching; the food has always been the guest's own bill, or yours.

Anyone you bring in on a pass must be 18 or over, is your responsibility for the evening, and is bound by the House Rules through you.

Referrals we refuse

Some referrals are refused when the account is created, and refusing them costs nobody a seat — the sign-up goes through either way, without the credit.

• Your own code on your own sign-up. A second account of your own is still your own account.
• A circle. If the person whose link you are using was originally brought in by you, or by somebody you brought in, the credit is refused rather than paid around a loop.
• A code that does not exist. An unknown or mistyped code reads as no code at all.

Beyond those, we will withhold or take back a reward, and close the accounts involved, where a referral is made up: addresses that reach the same person, accounts created to be referred, or a chain of sign-ups that nobody at a table has ever met. We would rather say this plainly than run a program that pretends not to notice.

Changing or ending the program

We can change what a referral is worth, or stop the program, and we will say so on this page before it takes effect. A pass already sitting in your account stays yours to spend; a referral that had not yet been paid at the time of the change is settled on the terms in force on the night the table happened.

If your membership is cancelled or your account is closed, unspent passes go with it. They are not paid out.

These terms sit on top of our Terms of Service and House Rules, which apply to you, to anyone you bring, and to every table either of you sits at. Where this page and those disagree about a seat, the House Rules are the ones about the table.