Community Guidelines.

1. Who these guidelines are for

Tripkoz is not a social network, but people do communicate through it. Administrators write notes and notifications, drivers file incident and breakdown reports, guardians report absences and reply to alerts, and everyone contacts our support team.

These guidelines set the standard for all of that. They apply to every user of the Service, and they form part of the Terms & Conditions alongside the Acceptable Use Policy. The AUP governs what you may do with the system; these guidelines govern how you treat the people in it.

2. The basic expectations

• Be accurate. What you record becomes the account of what happened, and someone will rely on it;
• Be respectful. Disagree with a decision, not with a person’s character;
• Be relevant. Record what is needed to run transport safely, and nothing more;
• Be timely. A late absence report or a delayed incident note is a safety problem, not a paperwork one;
• Be proportionate. Escalate a genuine concern; do not use a safety channel to make a point.

3. Writing about people

Free-text fields — passenger notes, driver notes, incident descriptions, absence reasons, maintenance remarks — are the ones that go wrong most often. When you use them:

• Describe behaviour and facts, not character. "Did not board at 07:42; guardian called" rather than a judgement about the family;
• Do not record a medical condition, disability, caste, religion, immigration status or family circumstance unless it is genuinely required for safe transport and you have a lawful basis for holding it;
• Do not record speculation about a person, an allegation you have not verified, or a complaint that belongs in your own HR or safeguarding process;
• Do not paste private conversations, screenshots of personal messages, or photographs of a person taken without cause;
• Assume the subject will read it. A guardian can request access to what is held about their child, and a driver can request access to what is held about them.

4. What is never acceptable

Regardless of role or provocation, do not use Tripkoz to:

• Harass, bully, threaten or intimidate anyone, including through repeated unnecessary alerts or notifications;
• Post or send content that is abusive, obscene, hateful, or discriminatory on the basis of religion, caste, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability, place of birth or any similar ground;
• Sexualise a child, or record anything about a child that is not necessary for their transport;
• Make a knowingly false allegation about a driver, guardian, passenger or colleague;
• Share another person’s contact details, home address or location with someone not authorised to have them;
• Impersonate another user, or write in someone else’s account;
• Send commercial or promotional messages to guardians or drivers through the platform.

5. Children come first

Most passengers on this platform are children, and they have no account and no voice in what is written about them.

Keep records about a child to what transport safety requires: who they are, where they are collected and dropped, who may collect them, and what happened on a trip. Nothing about their behaviour, family or circumstances belongs in a transport record unless it directly affects their safe carriage.

If you become aware of a safeguarding concern, follow your organisation’s safeguarding procedure. Tripkoz is not a safeguarding reporting system, and a note in a passenger record is not a referral.

6. Drivers and guardians

For administrators: a driver’s trip history, location trail and inspection record exist to run transport safely. Using them to build a case against someone, or to monitor them outside their working trips, is a breach of the Acceptable Use Policy as well as of these guidelines.

For guardians: alerts come from a driver doing a job, often while driving. Report a concern through the channels your organisation provides rather than confronting a driver, and do not share a live tracking link with anyone outside those authorised to see it.

For drivers: record what you see. An honest "check not completed — no time before departure" is worth more than a completed checklist that is not true, and it protects you.

7. Talking to our team

Our support and engineering teams will always be courteous with you, and we ask for the same in return.

We will end a conversation that becomes abusive, and we may decline to continue supporting an individual user who is repeatedly abusive to our staff. That is a decision about one person’s conduct, never about withdrawing service from your organisation.

8. Reporting a problem

If you see something in Tripkoz that breaches these guidelines:

• Raise it first with the organisation that owns the account — a school, company or fleet operator controls its own users and records;
• If that is not possible or appropriate, write to support@tripkoz.com with the organisation, the screen or record concerned, and what you saw;
• If it concerns the handling of personal data, our Grievance Officer at grievance@tripkoz.com will acknowledge within 24 hours and aim to resolve within 15 days;
• If a child appears to be at risk, contact the appropriate authority directly. Do not wait for us.

We treat reports in confidence so far as we are able, and we do not retaliate against anyone who raises a genuine concern.

9. What happens after a report

Content and user management sits primarily with the organisation that owns the account. Where we act ourselves, our response is proportionate: a request to correct or remove content, removal of a specific user’s access, removal of offending content, suspension where there is immediate risk, or termination for a serious or repeated breach.

Where content is unlawful, or a person appears to be in danger, we will act immediately and may report it to the police or a regulator.

Clause 9 of the Acceptable Use Policy sets out the enforcement process in full, and it applies here too.