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PhoneCity

Terms of Service

Effective date: August 14, 2026

Last updated: August 14, 2026

These Terms govern your access to and use of PhoneCity. By creating an account, accessing the service, or using any PhoneCity feature, you agree to these Terms and the Privacy Policy.

1. About PhoneCity

PhoneCity is operated by PHONECITY TECHNOLOGIES, Registration No. 9338297. PhoneCity provides a moderated online classifieds marketplace focused strictly on mobile phones. Sellers publish listings, buyers discover listings, and registered buyers may reveal seller contact details to continue discussions off-platform.

PhoneCity is not the seller, buyer, owner, manufacturer, distributor, payment processor for goods, broker, agent, escrow provider, inspector, authenticator, shipper, delivery provider, insurer, or warranty provider for any mobile phone listed through the service. PhoneCity does not process payment for listed phones.

2. Eligibility and Minors

You must be at least 18 years old and legally capable of entering a binding agreement to create an account or use transactional features, including contact reveal, listing creation, reviews, reports, and purchases of Boosts or Featured listings. Minors may view public PhoneCity content only under the supervision of a parent or legal guardian and may not create accounts or transact through PhoneCity.

3. Accounts and Verification

  • You must provide accurate, current information and keep it updated.
  • You are responsible for safeguarding your credentials and for activity under your account.
  • You must notify PhoneCity promptly if you suspect unauthorized access.
  • One verified phone number is required before posting a listing. Verification confirms control of a phone number; it does not certify identity, honesty, ownership, product quality, or trustworthiness.
  • PhoneCity may require further information, restrict features, revoke verification, or suspend an account to protect users, investigate misuse, or comply with law.

4. Marketplace Scope

PhoneCity is strictly for listing mobile phones. Accessories, tablets, laptops, other electronics, services, and unrelated goods may not be listed unless PhoneCity expressly changes the permitted marketplace scope.

Users anywhere may browse and create an account, but marketplace supply is Nigeria-only, prices are in NGN, and a verified phone number is required to post.

5. Seller Obligations

By creating or maintaining a listing, you represent, warrant, and agree that:

  • You own the phone or are lawfully authorized by the owner to sell it.
  • The phone is not stolen, counterfeit, unlawfully obtained, fraudulently acquired, subject to an undisclosed finance obligation or security interest, unlawfully carrier-locked, or fitted with an altered, cloned, removed, or tampered IMEI or other identifier.
  • The listing is accurate, current, not misleading, and clearly discloses material condition, defects, locks, repairs, refurbishment, ownership limitations, and included items.
  • Images and Reels show the actual phone offered, and you have all rights and permissions needed to upload them.
  • The asking price, contact details, location, and availability are accurate.
  • You will comply with all applicable laws and will not use PhoneCity to facilitate fraud, theft, money laundering, or other unlawful conduct.
  • You will promptly mark a phone Sold, Inactive, or delete the listing when it is no longer available.

PhoneCity may require edits, return listings to moderation, decline, suspend, or delete listings, and may warn, suspend, ban, or report users where PhoneCity reasonably believes these obligations are breached.

6. Buyer Responsibilities and Transaction Safety

Buyers are responsible for evaluating sellers, listings, and phones before agreeing to a transaction. A listing, moderation approval, verification badge, review, Boost, or Featured placement is not a PhoneCity endorsement or guarantee, and a verification badge confirms only that a check passed at a point in time, not a seller's honesty or that any transaction is safe.

  • Inspect the phone physically before paying.
  • Independently verify ownership, IMEI status, authenticity, locks, functionality, condition, repair history, and any warranty.
  • Meet in a safe public place and avoid unsafe or suspicious arrangements.
  • Do not send advance payment unless you independently accept the risk.
  • Use your own judgment and stop the transaction if information is inconsistent or suspicious.

Transactions, communications, payment for phones, delivery, inspection, returns, and disputes happen outside PhoneCity and are solely between users. PhoneCity is not responsible for completing, reversing, or enforcing them.

7. Contact Reveal and Off-Platform Communications

Authenticated users may reveal a seller's Call or WhatsApp contact for an Active listing, subject to rate limits and block rules. PhoneCity records contact reveals for abuse prevention, audit, and review eligibility. You must not scrape, harvest, sell, publish, spam, threaten, harass, or misuse contact information obtained through PhoneCity.

After contact reveal, communications occur outside PhoneCity. PhoneCity cannot monitor or control those communications and is not responsible for statements, promises, files, links, payments, or conduct exchanged there.

8. User Content and Licence

You retain ownership of content you submit, including listings, images, Reels, profile content, reviews, and reports. You grant PhoneCity a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable licence to host, store, process, reproduce, adapt for formatting, display, distribute, and use that content as reasonably necessary to operate, moderate, secure, promote, and improve PhoneCity, including on listing and Reel share pages.

You represent that your content is lawful, accurate where it states facts, and does not infringe intellectual property, privacy, publicity, confidentiality, or other rights. PhoneCity may remove or restrict content at any time.

9. Prohibited Conduct

You must not:

  • List anything other than a permitted mobile phone or list a prohibited device described in these Terms.
  • Commit or facilitate fraud, theft, impersonation, deception, money laundering, unlawful trade, or unsafe conduct.
  • Post false, misleading, duplicate, manipulated, infringing, abusive, hateful, obscene, threatening, or unlawful content.
  • Misrepresent identity, ownership, verification, phone condition, price, location, availability, or transaction terms.
  • Circumvent moderation, rate limits, blocks, access controls, payment verification, or other safeguards.
  • Scrape, harvest, copy, resell, or commercially exploit PhoneCity data, contact details, or content without permission.
  • Interfere with, reverse engineer, probe, overload, introduce malware into, or attempt unauthorized access to PhoneCity.
  • Use another person's account, create accounts to evade enforcement, or encourage others to violate these Terms.

10. Moderation, Reports, Reviews, and Blocks

PhoneCity may moderate listings and Reels before or after publication and may investigate reports. PhoneCity may approve, decline, hide, suspend, delete, warn, restrict, or ban based on available information and platform judgment. PhoneCity does not guarantee that moderation will identify every illegal, unsafe, inaccurate, or prohibited item.

A user may review a seller only after revealing that seller's contact through PhoneCity. Reviews must reflect the reviewer's genuine experience and must not be manipulated, retaliatory, defamatory, or unlawful. PhoneCity may hide or remove reviews and does not guarantee their accuracy. Blocking prevents relevant authenticated users from seeing each other's public content or revealing contact details, but may not prevent all off-platform contact.

11. Boosts, Featured Listings, and Payments

Boosts and Featured listings are optional, paid, time-limited visibility upgrades for an eligible Active listing. Neither guarantees a sale, view count, contact count, ranking position, or outcome, and neither bypasses moderation, filters, blocks, reports, suspensions, or other trust and safety controls. These purchases are the only fees PhoneCity charges you; creating and maintaining eligible listings remains free.

Boosts. A Boost is a one-time, paid, time-limited visibility lift that promotes a listing inside the PhoneCity app.

Featured listings. Featuring is a one-time, paid, time-limited placement that promotes a listing on the PhoneCity website, including the homepage and the Explore page, for the featured period. A listing may be Boosted and Featured at the same time; the two are separate products, bought separately.

The following apply to both Boosts and Featured listings:

  • Pricing, duration, and eligibility are shown before checkout and may change for future purchases.
  • Checkout is processed by our third-party payment providers, currently Monnify with Paystack as a fallback. PhoneCity activates a Boost or Featured placement only after successful server-side payment verification.
  • They do not auto-renew. A later purchase of the same product may begin after existing active or future time for that product ends.
  • The purchased time continues to run even if a listing becomes Sold, Inactive, Pending, Suspended, Declined, or Deleted. The visibility upgrade applies only while the listing is Active and otherwise eligible.
  • All Boost and Featured payments are non-refundable. There is no self-service refund right. PhoneCity may record or apply a reversal, refund, chargeback, dispute outcome, or manual support adjustment where required by law, payment-provider action, or PhoneCity's written decision.
  • If a payment is reversed or charged back, PhoneCity may immediately cancel or reverse the related active or future Boost or Featured time and take account action.

12. Fees and Changes to the Service

Creating eligible listings is free and unlimited under the current service design. PhoneCity may add, remove, change, suspend, or discontinue features, limits, pricing, or marketplace rules. Changes will apply prospectively unless immediate action is reasonably required for security, legal compliance, or platform integrity.

13. Intellectual Property

PhoneCity and its licensors own the service, software, design, branding, trademarks, databases, and non-user content. Subject to these Terms, PhoneCity grants you a limited, revocable, non-transferable, non-exclusive right to use the service for its intended purpose. No other rights are granted.

14. Privacy

PhoneCity's Privacy Policy explains how personal data is handled. By using PhoneCity, you acknowledge that processing described in that Policy is necessary to provide and protect the service.

15. Suspension, Termination, and Account Deletion

You may delete your account through the available account flow. Deletion is immediate and irreversible from your perspective, removes public listings, logs you out, and frees your username, but certain financial, moderation, report, notification, safety, contact-reveal, and received-review records may be retained as described in the Privacy Policy.

PhoneCity may restrict, suspend, or terminate access, remove content, withhold publication, or take other reasonable action where you violate these Terms, create risk, expose PhoneCity or others to liability, or where required by law. Sections intended by their nature to survive termination will survive.

16. Disclaimers

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, PhoneCity is provided on an 'as is' and 'as available' basis. PhoneCity disclaims warranties not expressly stated in these Terms, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, uninterrupted availability, accuracy, safety, and transaction success.

PhoneCity does not warrant or guarantee any user, listing, phone, ownership claim, IMEI status, authenticity, condition, price, review, communication, transaction, delivery, refund, warranty, or legal compliance by another user.

17. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, PhoneCity and its officers, employees, contractors, and service providers will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive loss; loss of profit, revenue, opportunity, goodwill, data, or anticipated savings; or loss arising from user conduct, listed phones, off-platform communications, payments for phones, meetups, fraud, theft, injury, or disputes between users.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, PhoneCity's aggregate liability arising from the service or these Terms will not exceed the greater of the amount you paid directly to PhoneCity for Boosts and Featured listings during the six months before the event giving rise to the claim or NGN 10,000. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability or consumer rights that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.

18. Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, you will indemnify and hold PhoneCity harmless from claims, losses, liabilities, damages, penalties, and reasonable costs arising from your listings, content, transactions, conduct, violation of these Terms, violation of law, or infringement of another person's rights.

19. Governing Law and Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Before filing a claim, you and PhoneCity will attempt in good faith to resolve the dispute by written notice sent to support@phonecity.ng. Subject to any mandatory consumer right or jurisdiction that cannot lawfully be excluded, the courts located in Kano State, Nigeria will have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes arising from PhoneCity or these Terms.

20. Changes to These Terms

PhoneCity may update these Terms to reflect service, legal, safety, or operational changes. We will post the updated Terms and revise the effective date. Where required, we will provide additional notice. Continued use after the effective date of updated Terms constitutes acceptance, except where applicable law requires another form of consent.

21. General

If a provision is unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in effect. PhoneCity's failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms without PhoneCity's written consent. PhoneCity may assign them in connection with a restructuring, financing, merger, sale, or transfer. These Terms and the Privacy Policy form the agreement between you and PhoneCity concerning the service.