Terms of Service

These terms cover your use of the TCG Drop platform. Plain English throughout - if anything is unclear, ask us before relying on it.

1. Who we are

TCG Drop is operated by DoniCodes Ltd, a company registered in England & Wales (company no. 17358107), registered office 128 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX. You can contact us at hello@tcgdrop.co.uk.

2. What TCG Drop is

TCG Drop is a platform where independent trading card stores list product releases ("drops") and their customers claim and purchase items for in-person collection. We provide the platform; each store is an independent business.

3. The store is the seller

When you claim or buy a product, your purchase contract is with the store you buy from - not with TCG Drop. The store is responsible for the products it sells: stock, condition, authenticity, fulfilment, collection, and your consumer rights on those products (including refunds on product sales). TCG Drop is not a party to product sales and does not hold your money for them - product payments go to the store directly through our payment provider, Stripe.

4. Claims and collection

• A claim reserves an item for you to collect in person from the store.
• You can cancel your own pending claims from your account at any time before collection.
• Please collect within 30 days of your claim. After that, the store may cancel the claim (and refund any payment you made online).
• A store may also cancel a claim before collection, with a full refund of anything you paid online, where something has genuinely gone wrong: an obvious pricing mistake in the listing, a stock error meaning the item is not actually available, or a claim made in breach of these terms - for example over a per-person limit, through more than one account, or by automated means. This is a correction right, not a change-of-mind right for stores: it never applies to items you have already collected.

5. Prices, fees and payments

Stores set their own product prices. Where online payment is available, the store adds a platform fee to your order, and it is included in the total shown to you before you pay - the price you see at checkout is the full amount you pay, with no surprises added later. You pay that total to the store, and your receipt shows the platform fee as its own line. Payments are processed by Stripe; TCG Drop never sees or stores your card details.

The platform fee is part of the store's price for your order. The store uses it to cover its card-processing costs and to pay TCG Drop for the platform, at a rate agreed between them. That payment is worked out using a modelled card-processing cost (currently 1.5% + 20p per transaction) rather than the exact fee charged for each individual card, and the store, as the seller, bears the actual card-processing costs. None of this affects the price you pay.

6. Memberships

Where offered, store memberships are sold by TCG Drop and billed monthly through Stripe. Benefits (such as early access to drops and reduced platform fees) are shown at purchase. You can cancel at any time from your account settings, effective at the end of your paid month, and move up to a higher tier at any time, paying the difference for the rest of the month you have paid for - see our Refunds & Cancellations policy for how upgrades are charged and for cooling-off rights. Each store's membership terms - the key facts, renewals, cancelling, price changes and complaints - are on its membership terms page, and we email them to you before your benefits start. Cancelling a membership, or a membership refund, never cancels orders you have already placed: they are separate purchases from the store.

Membership improves your chance of securing items - it does not reserve or guarantee any product, at any tier. Drops have limited stock, set by each store, and items can sell out at any time, including during an early-access window. Early access applies to drops a store schedules in advance - a store can also release items immediately, with no early-access window. Membership fees pay for the benefits of your tier, not for any particular product, so missing out on an item because it sold out is not a fault in the membership and does not by itself entitle you to a refund of membership fees. Your cooling-off rights, set out in the Refunds & Cancellations policy, are unaffected.

We may change a membership's monthly price or its benefits from time to time. If we make a material change - a price increase or a meaningful reduction in benefits - we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email or another direct notification to your account (community announcements, such as Discord, may be made in addition), with the date it starts, and it applies to every member from that date. A new price is only taken from your first renewal after that date, so you can cancel before then and never pay it - you will never be charged a new price you have not had the chance to decline. If a reduction in benefits starts partway through a month you have already paid for and you cancel because of it, we will refund the days after it started. Improvements and additions to benefits may be made at any time without notice. Some tiers have a limited number of places: we may raise or lower that limit at any time, without notice. A lower limit never removes anyone who already holds the tier - it only stops new members joining until a place opens up.

7. Your account and acceptable use

• Keep your account details accurate and your sign-in email secure.
• One account per person; claims are for genuine buyers.
• No automated claiming, scraping, exploiting of bugs, or interference with drops or other users.
• Display names appear to other members (for example on leaderboards) - keep them appropriate.

We may suspend or close accounts that break these rules, abuse stores or members, or attempt fraud. You can delete your account at any time from your settings: unpaid claims are cancelled and their stock returned to the store, and records of completed transactions are kept (with your identity removed from them) for as long as legal and tax rules require, as described in our privacy policy. If you have paid items still waiting to be collected, deletion is paused until they are collected or refunded.

8. Service and liability

We run TCG Drop with reasonable care and skill, but it is provided as-is and no online service can promise uninterrupted availability. If a problem with TCG Drop means you miss out on an item, you'll get back anything you paid for it, and we're not liable beyond that. We are not liable for indirect losses (such as lost profits), and our total liability to you is limited to £100, or the amounts you have paid to TCG Drop (not to stores) in the 12 months before a claim arises, whichever is higher. Nothing in these terms limits liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or affects your statutory rights.

9. Changes and law

We may update these terms as the platform develops; material changes will be flagged on the site, and continuing to use TCG Drop after a change means you accept it. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales.