Western Boot World Terms of Service

1. What Western Boot World is (and isn't)

Western Boot World ("WBW," "we," "us") is a community marketplace where people who love western boots can list boots for sale, browse listings, and connect with each other. We are a venue, not a party to any sale. We do not own the boots listed, we do not process payments, we do not hold funds, and we do not ship anything. Every transaction is arranged and completed directly between the buyer and the seller. You are responsible for exercising your own judgment when you buy from or sell to another member.

The site is operated by Cornerstone Technology Group LLC dba Ergon Insights, 102 E. Main St, Suite 211, Johnson City, TN 37604, and these terms are an agreement between you and that entity. Contact: support@westernbootworld.com.

2. Who can use the site

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account or transact here, and you confirm this when you sign in. You may keep one account per person. Sellers must verify a real, personal phone number before posting listings. Providing false account information, using a disposable identity, or creating multiple accounts to evade a restriction is a violation of these terms.

3. Listing rules

• List only western boots and closely related items you actually possess and have the right to sell.
• Describe items honestly: condition, flaws, sizing, and materials. Use your own photos of the actual item.
• Identify materials truthfully. Selling embossed or printed leather as genuine exotic skin is misrepresentation and grounds for removal and banning.
• Exotic skins: you are solely responsible for ensuring any exotic-skin boots you list (alligator, python, sea turtle, elephant, and similar) comply with all applicable wildlife laws, including CITES, the U.S. Endangered Species Act, the Lacey Act, and your state's laws. Some materials are legal only as documented pre-ban or vintage items; some may not be sold across certain state lines. California Penal Code §653o prohibits selling or shipping products made from many of these species into or within California regardless of age or documentation, so do not offer such items to California buyers. If it isn't legal to sell, don't list it.
• Mark items as sold when they sell, and keep your listings current.
• International shipping: know the destination country's import rules before you agree to ship abroad. In particular, Mexico treats pre-owned boots as used textiles, so shipments may be seized or returned. When in doubt, ship domestic only.

4. Prohibited conduct: zero tolerance

The following will get content removed and accounts suspended or permanently banned, at our sole discretion, with or without prior warning:

• Adult or sexually explicit content of any kind, anywhere on the site (listings, photos, profiles, chat, or usernames). This is a boots community; it stays family-friendly.
• Scams and fraud: fake listings, taking payment without shipping, misrepresenting items, bait-and-switch, phishing, off-platform payment tricks, or any deceptive scheme targeting members.
• Counterfeits: selling replica or counterfeit boots as authentic.
• Stolen goods: listing items you do not lawfully own.
• Illegal wildlife products: listings that violate wildlife-protection laws (see Section 3).
• Harassment, hate, or threats toward any member, in any channel.
• Spam and manipulation: bulk junk listings, fake accounts, review or engagement manipulation, scraping, or interfering with the site's operation or moderation systems.

We may remove any content and suspend or terminate any account at any time to protect the community. Banned members may not create new accounts. If we believe unlawful activity has occurred, we may report it to law enforcement and cooperate with investigations.

5. Payments, holds, and disputes between members

Buyers and sellers agree on payment and shipping directly. When you hold a pair with the buy button, you agree that we send that seller your name, username, account email address and profile phone number (if any) so the two of you can arrange the sale. As a seller, you may use a buyer's contact details only to complete that sale, never for marketing, and you must not share them with anyone else. We strongly recommend payment methods with built-in buyer/seller protection (for example, PayPal Goods & Services), especially for high-value pairs, and keeping records of your conversation and the listing. Because we are not a party to the transaction, disputes are between the buyer and the seller. We don't mediate, refund, or guarantee any transaction, though we do act on reports of fraud by removing bad actors.

Buy button holds. Pressing "Buy boots" places a non-binding reservation on a pair for 48 hours so the buyer and seller can arrange the sale. A hold is not a contract, a payment, or a guarantee of sale: either party may walk away, the seller may release it, and it expires on its own after 48 hours. A member may hold up to three pairs at a time. Marking a pair sold and confirming a purchase are each member's own statements; WBW does not verify them.

6. Your content and member content

You keep ownership of the photos and text you post. By posting, you give WBW a non-exclusive license to display, resize, and distribute that content as needed to operate and promote the site (for example, showing your listing in search results or link previews). Don't post content you don't have rights to.

Member content is the member's own. Listings, seller reviews, Saloon threads and replies, Corral talk comments, collection pairs, and profile text are written by members, not by WBW. We are an interactive computer service and, consistent with 47 U.S.C. §230, we are not the publisher or speaker of what members post and we do not endorse it. We may, but are not obligated to, screen, remove, or restrict any member content at any time.

Seller reviews can only be written by a member the seller has confirmed as the buyer of a specific pair. That confirmation comes from the seller, not from WBW: we do not verify that a sale took place, that the price or condition described is accurate, or that the reviewer is who they say they are. Reviews are opinions of the members who write them.

Dusty is an automated AI assistant. The @dusty account in the Saloon, the help chat, and Dusty's voice are generated by an AI model (OpenAI), not written by a person. Dusty's replies can be wrong and are not statements of fact by WBW.

Skin identification requires you to be signed in to a free account. You may submit a listing URL alone for AI identification without claiming ownership of the seller’s photos or granting us reuse rights to them. For a new identification request using uploaded photos, you must own or have permission to submit the photos and explicitly allow us to reuse them for reference, evaluation, and training or improving skin-identification models. Public-display permission is separate and optional; requesting identification does not publish your photos. We record these permissions with each submission, and earlier submissions retain their original choices. For separate reference-only contributions, reference permission is required while training and public display remain optional.

Choosing Identify with AI sends your submitted photos or temporarily retrieved public listing images and boot details to OpenAI, together with relevant reference examples and matching Boot Lookup records. Identification starts automatically. Confidence percentages are withheld until their reliability has been measured against independently labeled examples. AI results can be wrong and do not establish authenticity or provenance. You may request human review; any human assessment remains separate from the AI result.

7. Moderation and automated tools

We use a combination of automated tools (including AI-based content moderation of listings, community posts, seller reviews, profile text, and buyer-to-seller messages) and human review to enforce these rules. Automated tools aren't perfect; if your content was removed in error, contact us and a human will take a look.

How to report: every listing, community discussion and reply, seller review, and public profile has a Report control. Choose a reason, add any details that help, and send it; reports go only to our moderators, and the member you reported is not told who reported them. You can also email support@westernbootworld.com with a link to the content. A moderator reviews every open report and removes content that breaks these terms. Repeat infringers: members who repeatedly post content that violates these terms or another person's rights, including intellectual property rights, will have their accounts terminated, and we may decline to reinstate them.

8. Copyright complaints (DMCA)

We respect the intellectual property of others and respond to notices that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If you believe content on Western Boot World infringes a copyright you own or control, send a written notice to our designated agent that includes: (1) a physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or a person authorized to act for them; (2) identification of the copyrighted work you claim is infringed; (3) identification of the material you claim is infringing, with enough information for us to find it, such as the listing or thread link; (4) your name, address, telephone number, and email address; (5) a statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and (6) a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorized to act on the owner's behalf.

Designated agent: Cornerstone Technology Group LLC dba Ergon Insights, 102 E. Main St, Suite 211, Johnson City, TN 37604, support@ergoninsights.ai. Registration with the U.S. Copyright Office's DMCA Designated Agent Directory has not yet been confirmed.

When we receive a valid notice we remove or disable access to the material and notify the member who posted it. That member may send a counter-notice containing: their physical or electronic signature; identification of the material that was removed and where it appeared; a statement under penalty of perjury that they have a good-faith belief the material was removed by mistake or misidentification; and their name, address, telephone number, and a statement that they consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for their address (or, if outside the United States, any judicial district in which WBW may be found) and that they will accept service of process from the person who filed the original notice. If we receive a valid counter-notice, we forward it to the complainant and may restore the material in 10 to 14 business days unless the complainant tells us they have filed a court action. Members who repeatedly infringe are terminated under Section 7.

9. Affiliate disclosure

WBW is free to use and charges no listing fees or commissions. The site may earn revenue from clearly marked affiliate links to outside retailers. We will never disguise affiliate content as member listings.

10. No professional advice

Everything on the site about boot care, the Boot Library and its histories, skin identification (whether from a member, an expert reviewer, or the AI assessment), Dusty's answers, and any statement about the legality of a material is general information, not professional, legal, veterinary-forensic, or appraisal advice. Skin identifications and AI assessments are opinions based on photographs and can be wrong; they are not a determination that a pair is genuine, valuable, or lawful to sell or ship. Consult a qualified professional or the relevant wildlife authority before you rely on any of it for a purchase, a sale, a shipment, or the care of a valuable pair.

11. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

The site is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied. We do not guarantee the accuracy of listings, the identity or conduct of members, the authenticity or legality of items, or uninterrupted operation of the site. To the maximum extent permitted by law, WBW and its operators are not liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages, or for losses arising from transactions between members. Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to the greater of $50 or the amount you paid us in the past 12 months (which, for a free site, is $0).

12. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold WBW and its operators harmless from claims arising out of your listings, your transactions, your content, or your violation of these terms or of any law, including wildlife-trade laws applicable to items you list.

13. Ending your account

You may stop using the site at any time and may delete your account as described on the data deletion page. We may suspend or terminate your account, remove your content, or refuse service as described in Section 4, and we may terminate accounts that have been inactive for more than 24 months after emailing the address on file. Termination does not affect sales you have already agreed with another member; those remain between you and them.

Survival. Sections 1, 5, 6 (the license you granted for content that remains on the site, such as anonymized reviews and Saloon replies), 10, 11, 12, this Section 13, and Section 14 survive the end of your account or of these terms, together with any other provision that by its nature should survive.

14. Changes, governing law, and contact

We may update these terms as the site grows. When we make a material change, we will update the "Last updated" date, post a notice on the site, and email members at the address on their account at least 14 days before the change takes effect, and we will ask you to accept the new version the next time you post or message. Continued use after the effective date means you accept the new terms; if you do not agree, stop using the site and you may delete your account. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Tennessee and applicable U.S. federal law, and any dispute with WBW will be resolved in the state or federal courts located in Tennessee.

Questions, reports, or appeals: support@westernbootworld.com.