Terms of Service

1. Who we are and what this service is

Occupied.co.za (“we”, “us”, “our”) is an online platform that connects households looking for pet care and house care with independent sitters who advertise their services on the site. These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your use of the platform, whether you are just browsing, looking for someone to care for your home and pets, or offering your services as a sitter.

We operate the platform. We are:

Operator: Andre Nel — bookings@occupied.co.za
Postal address: Carlton Street, Jukskeipark, Johannesburg, 2188
Company registration number: 2001/034619/23

These Terms are governed by the laws of South Africa, including the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 (ECTA) and the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 (CPA). Your use of the platform is also covered by our Privacy Policy, which explains how we handle personal information under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA).

We provide the platform and the tools on it. We are not a party to any arrangement between a sitter and an owner, and we do not employ sitters.

2. Who can use Occupied

To create an account you must:

• be 18 years or older (we do not knowingly allow children to sign up);
• have one account only per person, your own, operated by you;
• give us accurate registration details — a valid email address, your name and display name, and a working South African contact number;
• keep your password safe and tell us promptly if someone else is using your account.

You must also be permitted by law to use the service. If you previously had an account closed for a breach of these Terms, you may not return without our written permission.

3. Sitter listings

Sitters can publish listings on the platform describing the services they offer, choosing from fixed service categories (such as pet sitting, house sitting and dog walking), set their own rates on rate cards, and add photos to their listings within the limits of their tier.

• You are responsible for your listing. Everything you publish must be accurate, current and lawfully yours (including photos you own or have permission to use).
• Be honest about your qualifications, experience and availability. Do not claim qualifications or clearances you do not have — we may ask to verify some assets before a listing is published.
• Keep it appropriate. Listings may not contain unlawful, offensive, misleading or exploitative content. What counts as acceptable conduct is set out in section 5.
• Moderation. We operate an admin moderation function. We may review, ask you to fix, reject, suspend or unpublish a listing that breaches these Terms or our listing guidelines. Rejections are communicated with reasons, and you can appeal a rejection through the appeals process within the stated window.
• Search visibility. Listings and sitter profiles can be found through the public search on the site; you can choose your service area by suburb or city to control where you appear.

4. Subscriptions, payments and cancellation

Offering services as a sitter works on a subscription model. New sitters are placed on the Free tier, which has limited features (for example, a limited number of photos and a single service category). You can move to a paid tier — Standard or Premium — which unlock more features as described on the pricing page for each tier. Feature limits, and which tier unlocks what, are set on the site and may evolve.

• Billing is by your payment provider. Paid subscriptions are billed through our third-party payment gateway. We do not receive or store your card number or payment credentials.
• Renewals. Where your tier bills on a period (for example monthly), it renews automatically until you cancel, so that your features stay switched on.
• Cancellation. You may cancel your paid subscription at any time by ending your subscription in your account or by contacting us. Where the CPA applies and you cancel within its cooling-off window, we will handle any refund reasonably and in line with the Act. Otherwise, features you have paid for generally remain active to the end of the period you paid for, and we set out refund handling in the pricing page terms.
• Failed payments. If a payment fails, we may suspend tier features until the subscription is in good standing. We will contact you before suspending anything.
• Price changes. If we change the price of a subscription, we will tell you before it starts applying to you, and if it is a material change we will give you a fair window to cancel.
• Discounts. We may offer discounts to selected groups (for example a reduced rate for sitters of retirement age), subject to verification.

5. Acceptable use and prohibited conduct

Everyone using the platform agrees not to:

• treat any person or animal cruelly, unlawfully or negligently, or behave in a way that puts homes or pets at risk;
• impersonate or defraud others, make false claims, or worm your way around account rules (such as maintaining more than one account);
• scrape, spam or hack — no automated harvesting of the site, bulk scraping of other users’ details, junk mail, reverse-engineering attempts, denial-of-service behaviour or unauthorised access;
• upload content that you do not own or have permission to use, that breaches someone’s privacy, or that is defamatory, discriminatory, obscene or unlawful;
• use the platform to offer prohibited services or trade in anything unlawful;
• interfere with the moderation of content, the site’s security systems or other users’ use of the service.

6. Intellectual property

Your listing content (text, photos) stays yours — you own it. By publishing it you give us a licence to display, store and adapt it on and through the platform (including in search results, emails and social previews), solely to operate and promote the service while your listing is active. You may ask us at any time to remove your listing content, and we will do so (backup/archival copies and content in past communications aside).

The platform itself — the Occupied name, logo, design, code and other branding — belongs to us or our licensors and may not be copied or reused without permission.

7. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

The platform is a meeting place, not a caretaker. We provide listings, profiles, search, dashboards and communication tools to help owners and sitters find each other and make their own arrangements.

• The platform enters arrangements between you. Whether you hire a sitter or take on a sit is a decision and a contract between users; you should exercise the same care, checks and judgement you would offline.
• We check identities to a reasonable extent and operate verification where advertised, but we do not guarantee that any sitter or owner is who they say they are, that any listing is accurate, or that a sitting will go as planned.
• Except as stated in these Terms (or where the law doesn’t permit limitation), the platform is provided “as is” and “as available”.
• To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss (such as lost profit, harm caused by another user, or loss from a sitting you arranged off-platform), and where the law allows liability to be capped, our liability to you is capped at the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim (or, if you paid nothing, at R1,000).
• Nothing in these Terms limits liability where this cannot be limited by law — for example, for gross negligence, fraud, or any rights you have under the CPA that cannot be waived.

8. Indemnity

You agree to stand behind the platform where you have caused the problem: if we get dragged into a claim because you breached these Terms, or because of something you published or did (like an unlawful listing or an incident your conduct caused), you will cover our reasonable costs, losses and expenses (legal fees included) that result. This does not apply where the law does not allow such an indemnity.

9. Suspension and termination

• You can stop whenever you like — cancel a paid subscription, remove your listing, and (if you wish) ask us to close your account.
• We may suspend or close an account if you breach these Terms repeatedly or seriously (for example, fraud, abuse of pets, harassment, or behaviour that puts the community or the service at risk). Where we can, we will tell you why, and give you a chance to respond; in serious cases we may act immediately.
• What happens on termination: listings go offline, tier features end, and content you published through the account is deactivated; we retain the records the law requires us to keep (see the Privacy Policy). Money owed to us at termination remains payable.

10. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of South Africa.

If something goes wrong, please contact us first (section 12) — we want to fix it and we take complaints seriously. If we cannot settle a dispute directly, it will be resolved in the South African courts (Johannesburg), except that either of us may use a consumer complaints process where it applies to you (for example the National Consumer Commission if the CPA applies, or the Information Regulator for privacy matters — see the Privacy Policy).

11. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms. The current version is published on this page with its revision date. For material changes we will notify registered users before the change takes effect (by email or a notice in the platform). Continuing to use the platform after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms; if you don’t agree with a material change, you can close your account or end your subscription before it starts.

12. Contact

For anything about these Terms, the service, your subscription or an account:

Occupied — Andre Nel
bookings@occupied.co.za
Carlton Street, Jukskeipark, Johannesburg, 2188

We aim to respond within a reasonable time and in any case within the periods required by South African law.