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unKeep Community and Safety Guidelines

Last updated: 17 June 2026

unKeep is a marketplace where people sell second-hand items for collection in person, near where they live. Because every sale ends with two people meeting and handing over goods for cash, safety and good behaviour matter more here than on a platform where everything happens by post. These guidelines explain how to stay safe when you collect or hand over an item, how we expect everyone to treat each other, what we show and hide to protect your privacy, and how to report a problem. Please read them before your first collection.

These guidelines apply to everyone who uses unKeep, whether you are a buyer, a seller, or both. They form part of, and should be read with, our Terms of Service, our Buyer Terms, our Seller Terms, our Privacy Policy, our Acceptable Use Policy, our Prohibited and Restricted Items Policy, our Illegal Content and Takedown Policy, our Reservation Fee Policy, and our Complaints and Dispute Resolution Policy. Where any of those documents and these guidelines disagree, the other document takes priority on the subject it covers; these guidelines are about conduct and personal safety. The rules on acceptable behaviour live in the Acceptable Use Policy; these guidelines explain in plain terms how to put that good behaviour into practice and how to stay safe at an in-person collection.

unKeep is operated by AllMumsTalk Limited (company number 08233578), registered office 5 Golden Mede, Waddesdon, England, HP18 0NG. If anything here is unclear, contact us at connect@unkeep.co.uk.

1. The short version

1.1. Meet in a public, well-lit place in daylight where you can. Bring someone with you if you can.

1.2. Only share the personal details you actually need to share to complete a collection, and no more.

1.3. unKeep shows only an approximate area before a reservation. After a reservation the buyer sees the street and full postcode; the exact address and precise pin unlock only at the start of the collection day (00:00 UK time).

1.4. Treat the other person with respect. No abuse, harassment, discrimination or threats.

1.5. If something feels wrong, walk away. Your safety comes before any single item.

1.6. Report bad behaviour and block users you do not want to deal with. We act on reports.

1.7. unKeep cooperates with the police and other lawful authorities.

1.8. unKeep cannot guarantee how other people will behave. We give you tools and guidance; you stay in control of your own safety.

2. Who these guidelines are for

2.1. These guidelines are for every unKeep user. Selling and buying both involve meeting a stranger, so the safety advice applies whichever side of the handover you are on.

2.2. You must be 18 or over to use unKeep. The handover happens in person and we cannot verify anyone's age at a doorstep or a car park, so the service is for adults only.

2.3. If you are helping someone else collect or hand over an item, you are still responsible for following these guidelines, and the account holder remains responsible for what happens on their account.

3. Before you arrange a collection

3.1. Look at the listing carefully. unKeep listings are drafted and priced with AI help and then confirmed by the seller. The seller, not unKeep, warrants that the item is described accurately, is legal to sell, is genuine, is theirs to sell and is safe. If a listing looks too good to be true, or the description does not add up, ask questions before you reserve.

3.2. Check the listing carefully before you reserve. Listings are AI-drafted to describe the item, its condition, and any faults, you inspect the item in person at collection before you pay, and items are sold as seen, so read the description and photos closely. unKeep has no in-app messaging; never arrange a deal, share contact details, or pay off-platform, and you never have to hand a stranger your phone number or email.

3.3. Agree the basics before you set off: what the item is, the cash price, and a rough time. Remember that the goods price is paid in cash, in person, at collection, and that unKeep is not a party to that sale. Goods are sold as seen; inspect on collection; there are no returns through the app.

3.4. Do not feel pressured to commit. You can ask questions without reserving, and you can change your mind before you reserve. Reserving an item charges unKeep's 1.00 GBP reservation fee immediately, a platform service fee for facilitating the reservation (see the Reservation Fee Policy); it does not oblige you to go ahead if you later feel unsafe.

4. Meeting in person: collection safety

This section is the heart of these guidelines. The advice is the same whether you are collecting or handing over.

4.1. Meet in public where you can. A busy, well-lit place is safer than a private home. Many people meet at a supermarket car park, a high street, a cafe, a station forecourt or a community "safe exchange" point. Some police stations offer designated safe-exchange areas in their car parks; use one if there is a convenient one near you.

4.2. Meet in daylight where you can. Arrange the handover for a time when it is light and there are other people around. If that is not possible, choose somewhere that is well-lit and not isolated.

4.3. Bring someone with you if you can. There is no rule against bringing a friend or family member to a collection, and it is a sensible thing to do. Tell someone you trust where you are going, who you are meeting, and when you expect to be back.

4.4. Some items must be collected from a home, for example large furniture or white goods. If you are buying, take someone with you and stay near the door where you can. If you are selling from home, have someone with you, only let the buyer reach the item, and do not give a tour of your home. You never have to let anyone past your doorstep.

4.5. Inspect the item before you confirm the handover. You are entitled to look at what you are collecting, check it matches the listing, and decide whether to go ahead. The handover is confirmed by a QR code: the buyer shows a single-use code and the seller scans it. Do not show or scan a code until you are happy and the cash has changed hands.

4.6. Keep the cash handling simple and discreet. Bring the agreed amount, ideally close to the exact sum. Do not flash large amounts of cash, and do not count it in the open if you can avoid it. If a price is renegotiated at the meeting, you are free to walk away rather than feel pressured.

4.7. Trust your instincts. If a person, a place or a situation feels wrong, you do not have to go through with it. Leave. No item is worth your safety. The reservation fee is a service fee, not a penalty, and unKeep never charges you anything extra for cancelling a collection because you felt unsafe. If a collection does not complete because you felt unsafe, that is a buyer cancellation, and the reservation fee rules in the Reservation Fee Policy apply. Where the seller is at fault, the reservation fee is refunded.

4.8. Have an exit in mind. Park where you can leave easily, sit or stand where you can move away, and keep your phone charged and to hand.

4.9. Do not collect or hand over while affected by alcohol or drugs, and do not arrange handovers in a way that puts you on the road late at night in an unfamiliar area if you can avoid it.

4.10. If you ever feel in immediate danger, call 999. Your safety comes before completing a collection, before the item, and before any fee.

5. Protecting your personal information

5.1. Share as little personal data as you can. To complete a collection you generally need only a meeting point and a rough time. You do not need to share your home address (unless you are collecting from or handing over at a home), your date of birth, your bank details, your workplace, your daily routine, or details about who you live with. Do not ask another user for more than the collection needs, and do not feel obliged to answer if you are asked.

5.2. What unKeep shows, and when. To protect everyone's privacy and safety, unKeep deliberately limits what is visible:

  • Before a reservation, only an approximate area is shown for a listing (for example a neighbourhood or district), never a precise address or pin.
  • After a reservation, the matched buyer sees the street and full postcode with an approximate area pin; the exact address (house number and second line) and the precise pin unlock only at the start of the collection day (00:00 UK time).
  • Photos uploaded to unKeep have their EXIF and GPS location data stripped on upload, so the place a photo was taken is not exposed through the image.

5.3. This means a seller's exact location is not on display to the world, and a buyer's identity is not shared with anyone other than the seller they are matched with. Please respect that design: do not try to work around it, and do not publish, screenshot or pass on another user's location or contact details.

5.4. Keep everything on unKeep. There is no in-app messaging and no need for it: the listing carries the item details and the reservation carries your collection slot and address, so you never have to hand your personal phone number or email to a stranger. Anyone asking you to move off the app, swap contact details, or pay outside unKeep is a red flag - do not, and report them.

5.5. Do not record people without consent, do not photograph another user or their home beyond what a listing needs, and do not post anyone's personal information publicly. How unKeep itself handles your data is set out in the Privacy Policy.

6. Respectful conduct

6.1. Treat other users the way you would want to be treated. unKeep only works if people feel safe and comfortable meeting strangers, and that depends on everyone behaving decently. The binding rules on what you may and may not do are in our Acceptable Use Policy; this section sets out the same standards in plain terms.

6.2. We do not allow, and you must not engage in:

  • harassment, bullying, intimidation, stalking or repeated unwanted contact;
  • threats of violence, or actual violence, against any person;
  • abuse, hate speech or discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion or belief, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, or any other protected characteristic;
  • sexual harassment or any unwanted sexual conduct;
  • scams, fraud, deception, or attempts to take an item or money without paying or delivering;
  • pressuring, manipulating or coercing another user into a deal, a price, or anything else;
  • abusing listing or offer-note text to spam, advertise off-platform, or send unwanted material;
  • impersonating another person, unKeep staff, or any authority.

6.3. Be honest and reliable. Turn up when you say you will, or cancel in good time so the other person is not left waiting. After a completed collection the buyer and the seller rate each other; these two-way ratings help everyone decide who to deal with. If you do not turn up to a collection (a no-show), an automatic downvote is applied to your rating, on whichever side you are on. This is a reputational consequence, not an extra charge. Describe items truthfully. Do not write fake or misleading ratings, and do not offer or accept incentives in exchange for ratings; ratings on unKeep must be genuine and based on real collections.

6.4. Disagreements happen. If a deal falls through or an item is not as expected, stay civil. Use the reporting tools rather than retaliating, and never take a dispute into threats or abuse.

7. Prohibited and restricted items, in brief

7.1. Some things must never be listed or handed over on unKeep. The full list is in the Prohibited and Restricted Items Policy, but in summary you must not deal in:

  • age-restricted items (such as alcohol, tobacco, vapes, knives, or any adult or 18-plus product), because we cannot verify age at an in-person handover, so these are banned at launch;
  • illegal, stolen, counterfeit or recalled goods;
  • weapons, or anything dangerous, hazardous or unsafe;
  • anything that is unlawful to sell or transfer to another person.

7.2. Listing or attempting to hand over a prohibited item is a serious breach of these guidelines and may be reported to the authorities. If you are offered a prohibited item in person, do not complete the collection, and report it.

8. Reporting, blocking and what we do about it

8.1. How to report. If a seller behaves badly, a listing breaks the rules, or you feel unsafe, report it in the app using Report listing or Report seller on the item page, or contact us at connect@unkeep.co.uk. You can also block a seller so you never see their listings again. Tell us what happened with as much detail as you can.

8.2. How to block. You can block another user from your settings. Blocking stops that user contacting you and reserving your items, and helps you avoid dealing with someone you do not want to. You do not have to explain why, and blocking someone is not, by itself, a report; if there is a safety concern, please report it as well so we can act.

8.3. Notice and takedown. unKeep operates a notice-and-takedown process. When we receive a report about content or a listing, we review it and remove or restrict anything that breaks our rules or the law. We do this as part of our responsibilities under the Online Safety Act 2023 and our duty to keep the service safe.

8.4. What we can do about behaviour. Depending on what we find, we may warn a user, remove a listing, restrict features, pause or suspend an account, or close an account permanently. Serious or repeated breaches, and anything that puts someone at risk, can lead to a permanent ban. We aim to act proportionately and to tell you what we have decided, subject to any legal limits on what we can share.

8.5. Emergencies are for the police, not the report queue. Reporting in the app is the right route for rule-breaking and after-the-fact concerns. If you are in immediate danger, or a crime is happening or has just happened, call 999 (or 101 for non-emergencies) first. Report it to us afterwards so we can take account action.

9. Cooperating with the police and other authorities

9.1. unKeep cooperates with law enforcement and other lawful authorities. Where we are required to by law, or where we receive a valid and lawful request, we may provide information we hold to the police or another competent authority, for example to help investigate a crime or to protect someone from harm.

9.2. We may also report serious matters to the authorities on our own initiative, including credible threats to a person's safety, suspected serious or organised crime, and prohibited items.

9.3. Any sharing of personal data with authorities is done in line with our Privacy Policy and applicable data protection law (UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018), relying on the lawful bases and exemptions those laws provide.

10. Our responsibilities, and the honest limits of them

10.1. What unKeep does. We design the service to make safe behaviour easier: limiting what location data is shown and when, stripping photo location data, blocking contact details in listings and offers, labelling AI-generated listing copy, operating notice-and-takedown, running a prohibited-items regime, banning age-restricted items, and giving you tools to report and block.

10.2. What unKeep cannot do. unKeep is a service that connects users to each other. The collection itself happens between two people, away from us, in the real world. We do not attend collections, we do not vet or background-check users beyond what the law requires and what is practical, and we cannot control or guarantee how any user will behave. We cannot promise that any user is honest, that any item is as described, or that any meeting will be safe. The advice in these guidelines reduces risk; it cannot remove it.

10.3. Your part. Because the handover is between you and another person, your own judgement is your most important safety tool. Please follow the advice in section 4, share as little personal data as you can, and walk away from anything that feels wrong. You will never be penalised by unKeep for protecting your own safety.

10.4. Nothing in these guidelines limits any rights you have under the law, including your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, or any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence or for fraud.

11. If something goes wrong

11.1. If you feel unsafe at a meeting, leave, and call 999 if you are in immediate danger.

11.2. If a deal goes wrong but no one is at risk, stop the handover, do not confirm the QR code, and report what happened through the app.

11.3. If you have been the victim of a crime, report it to the police and then tell us, so we can take account action and help where we lawfully can.

11.4. If you are worried about a listing or a user but nothing has happened yet, report or block them anyway. We would rather hear about a concern early.

12. Changes to these guidelines

12.1. We may update these guidelines, for example to keep the safety advice current or to reflect changes in the service or the law. If a change materially affects you, we will give reasonable notice through the app or by email before it takes effect.

12.2. The version that applies is the one published in the app at the time you use the service.

13. Contact

Questions about safety, conduct, or a report:

We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (the ICO), the UK's data protection regulator.

In an emergency, or if a crime is happening or has just happened, call 999. For non-emergency police matters, call 101.