[BRAND] Provider Terms of Service

Version: 0.1-draft · Last updated: 8 July 2026 · Status: DRAFT FOR ATTORNEY REVIEW — NOT LIVE, NOT LEGAL ADVICE.

⚠️ Draft for attorney review — not legal advice. This draft was produced per `PROVIDER_TERMS_BRIEF.md` to answer compliance finding C1 (`reviews/2026-07-07-fable-compliance-review.md`). The clauses marked [ATTORNEY REVIEW] — liability, indemnity, independence/worker-classification, the POPIA responsible-party split, and the CPA cancellation/refund/renewal terms — must be settled by a qualified South African attorney before these Terms go live.

The short version

What [BRAND] is: a booking and profile tool. Clients find you, book you, and pay you directly. We take 0% commission — you keep 100% and your clients are yours, always. What [BRAND] is not: your employer, your agent, or a party to your appointments. We don't vet, background-check, or endorse providers — the "Verified" badge only reflects your track record on the platform. Your side of the deal: you're an independent business. You're responsible for your services being safe, legal and properly qualified/permitted; for treating your clients' personal information lawfully; and for keeping your profile honest. No fake reviews, no fake bookings, no gaming the badge. Money: Free is free forever. Pro is a flat subscription (no commission, ever). Subscriptions aren't being charged yet; when they are, the price, renewal and cancellation rules in section 9 apply. If something goes wrong at an appointment, that's between you and your client — our liability is limited as set out in section 12, and you cover us for claims arising from your services (section 13).

The short version is a summary only. The full Terms below are what you agree to.

1. Who we are, and definitions

"[BRAND]", "we", "us" — `[Jake Surname], trading as [BRAND]` <!-- PLACEHOLDER: real legal identity; becomes the (Pty) Ltd on incorporation -->, contactable at `[support@BRAND.co.za]` and the address published on our website's legal/contact page.

"Provider", "you" — the independent service business (solo professional or salon) that creates a profile and accepts these Terms at sign-up.

"Client" — a person who books a Provider's services through the platform.

"Platform" — the [BRAND] website and software, including your booking page, studio, calendar and discovery listing.

"Services" — the hair, beauty or related services you deliver to Clients. The Platform itself is not the Services.

"POPIA" — the Protection of Personal Information Act, 4 of 2013. "CPA" — the Consumer Protection Act, 68 of 2008. "ECTA" — the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, 25 of 2002.

2. What [BRAND] is — and is not

2.1 [BRAND] is a booking and profile tool only. We provide software that lets Clients find you, request appointments, and lets you manage your calendar and profile.

2.2 We are not a party to the contract between you and your Client. Every appointment is a direct agreement between you and the Client. We do not deliver, supervise, direct, inspect or guarantee the Services.

2.3 We do not handle Client payments. Clients pay you directly, by whatever method you and they agree. We never hold, route or take a cut of the money a Client pays you. The only money we ever collect is your own subscription fee (section 9).

2.4 We do not vet, background-check, endorse or guarantee Providers or Clients. Listing on the platform is not a recommendation.

2.5 The platform is provided on a reasonable-efforts basis. We do not guarantee uninterrupted availability, that Clients will find or book you, or any level of bookings or income.

3. Your relationship with us — you are independent [ATTORNEY REVIEW: worker-classification wording]

3.1 You are an independent business. Nothing in these Terms makes you an employee, worker, agent, partner, franchisee or joint-venturer of [BRAND], and neither of us may represent otherwise.

3.2 You control your business. You set your own prices, services, working hours, service areas and availability. You decide which booking requests to accept or decline. We do not roster you, set your prices, or discipline how you work.

3.3 You keep 100% of what Clients pay you and you own your client relationships and your client list (see section 6). Nothing in these Terms gives us ownership of your client relationships.

3.4 You are responsible for your own tax, statutory registrations and business compliance.

4. Verification and badges

4.1 The "Verified" badge is earned from your activity on the platform (such as real reviews, repeat clients and a complete profile). It is not an identity check, criminal background check, qualification check or endorsement, and you must not describe it as one.

4.2 Where we offer a separate ID-verification tier, we will describe exactly what was checked and by whom. Until then, no badge means we have checked who you are.

4.3 We may adjust, suspend or remove a badge if the conduct that earned it turns out to be false or manipulated (section 7).

5. Your warranties and obligations

By using the platform you warrant (promise) that:

5.1 You are 18 or older and legally able to enter into contracts.

5.2 You hold all qualifications, registrations, municipal or health permits, and (where relevant) insurance that the law requires for the Services you offer, and you will keep them current. Checking what your specific services require is your responsibility, not ours.

5.3 You are responsible for the quality, safety and legality of the Services you deliver, including at a Client's home.

5.4 Your profile information is accurate and kept up to date — services, prices, service areas, availability and photos. Photos of your work must be your own work.

5.5 You will show up for accepted bookings or cancel/reschedule with reasonable notice, and treat Clients lawfully and respectfully, without unfair discrimination.

5.6 You will not provide Services to a Client you know or reasonably suspect to be under 18 and unaccompanied — a parent or guardian must have made the booking and be present (this mirrors the Client Booking Terms).

5.7 We strongly recommend you carry your own public liability / professional indemnity insurance appropriate for in-home work. <!-- Attorney: consider whether "recommend" should become "require" per compliance review §5(5). -->

6. Your Clients' personal information (POPIA) [ATTORNEY REVIEW: confirm the responsible-party split matches POPIA]

6.1 Your client list is yours. For the personal information of your own Clients (names, phone numbers, addresses, booking history), you are the "responsible party" under POPIA for how *you* use it in your business. [BRAND] processes booking data in order to operate the platform — our handling and security controls are described in our privacy notice at `[/privacy]`.

6.2 You may use Client personal information only to fulfil bookings and run your own business with those Clients. You must:

• keep it secure (don't share logins; don't leave client details lying around; use your own devices responsibly);
• not sell, rent, trade or leak it, or share it with anyone who has no role in delivering the booking;
• get a Client's own consent before sending them marketing (POPIA section 69 restricts unsolicited electronic marketing — a booking is not marketing consent);
• not record sensitive ("special") personal information — like health conditions or allergies — in booking notes or reviews beyond what the Client volunteers and the appointment genuinely needs;
• tell us promptly at `[privacy@BRAND.co.za]` if you lose Client data or suspect it has been accessed by someone who shouldn't have it.

6.3 You are responsible for your own conduct with Client data, and you indemnify us for claims arising from *your* misuse of it (section 13). Our security of the platform itself remains our responsibility, as described in the privacy notice.

6.4 When you leave the platform you can export your client list and booking history (section 14). Owning your clients is the point.

7. Acceptable use and platform integrity

You must not:

7.1 create, solicit or incentivise fake or misleading reviews (including reviewing yourself or trading reviews);

7.2 create fake client accounts or fake bookings, or otherwise game the Verified badge, ratings or discovery ranking;

7.3 put unlawful, harmful, discriminatory, deceptive or infringing content on your profile (including services you may not lawfully offer, or photos you don't have rights to);

7.4 misrepresent your identity, qualifications or the nature of your business;

7.5 use the platform to harass anyone, to spam, to scrape data, or to interfere with the platform's operation or security;

7.6 use platform data (including other providers' or clients' information) for any purpose outside your own bookings.

8. Suspension and removal

8.1 We may suspend or remove your profile if you breach these Terms, if we reasonably believe a Client or the platform is at risk, or where the law requires it.

8.2 Fair process: where practical we will give you notice, tell you the reason, and give you an opportunity to respond before removal. For serious risks (e.g. safety, fraud, data misuse) we may suspend first and hear you afterwards.

8.3 Section 14 explains what happens to your page and data on removal.

9. Fees, subscriptions and the commercial deal [ATTORNEY REVIEW: CPA cancellation / refund / auto-renewal — settle before charging begins]

9.1 0% commission on every tier, always. We never take a cut of what your Clients pay you. Our only revenue from you is the flat subscription below.

9.2 Free tier: free forever, and genuinely usable — booking page, calendar, discovery listing (once eligible), reviews, and safety check-in.

9.3 Pro tier: adds automation and growth features as described on the pricing page. Subscription billing is not yet active. When it is switched on, the following applies:

<!-- Prices from src/lib/pricing.ts — that file is the single source of truth; keep this table in sync. -->

9.4 Plain-language billing rules (drafted now, activate with billing):

• The price, billing interval and renewal date are shown before you subscribe and in your studio account page. Prices do not include VAT because [BRAND] is not VAT-registered; if that changes we will say so clearly.
• Auto-renewal: subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each interval. We will make the renewal date visible in your account, and for yearly plans we will remind you before renewal.
• Cancelling: you can cancel at any time in your studio account (or by emailing us) — no phone calls, no penalties. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for; you keep Pro until then. You drop to Free — your profile and data stay.
• Refunds: amounts already paid for a completed period are not refunded; where the CPA or ECTA gives you a cancellation or cooling-off right (e.g. ECTA section 44's 7-day cooling-off on electronic transactions, where applicable), we honour it. [ATTORNEY REVIEW: exact refund/cooling-off position]
• Price changes: we will give you at least 30 days' notice before any price increase; if you don't accept it, you may cancel before it takes effect.

9.5 Pass-through costs: where a feature uses a third party you choose to switch on (e.g. WhatsApp message delivery, payment processing for your own deposits), those third-party costs are passed through at cost, with no [BRAND] markup, and will be shown before you enable the feature.

9.6 Founding members: if you joined the pilot cohort, your account is grandfathered at the founding terms you were promised (Pro features at no charge during the pilot, and thereafter the R79 per month founding rate for as long as you keep the subscription). We honour founding terms; they don't expire because we change our pricing later. <!-- Keep in sync with plan_status='grandfathered' handling in code. -->

9.7 Deposits and online payments (when launched) are provider-direct: money flows into your own account, never through [BRAND].

10. Safety features

10.1 Safety features (such as the mobile safety check-in with a trusted contact) are free on every tier, always.

10.2 They are tools, not a guarantee. Alerts depend on networks, devices and the details you enter being correct. They do not replace your own judgment about accepting a booking or attending a location, and we are not an emergency or security service.

11. Your content

11.1 You keep ownership of the content you upload (photos, descriptions, prices). You give us a non-exclusive licence to host and display it on the platform and in reasonable promotion of the platform (e.g. showing your public profile in discovery). The licence ends when the content is deleted, except in backups for a short period.

11.2 Client reviews of you are the Client's content; we host them. We don't edit reviews to make you look better or worse, and we remove them only under our review-integrity rules.

12. Our liability [ATTORNEY REVIEW — highest stakes: do not launch this section without attorney sign-off]

12.1 The Services are yours, not ours. To the maximum extent South African law allows, [BRAND] is not liable for anything arising out of the Services or an appointment — including in-home visits — such as injury, damage to property, loss, theft, poor workmanship, no-shows, or a dispute between you and a Client.

12.2 The platform is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of uninterrupted operation or fitness for a particular purpose, except to the extent the CPA or other law gives you rights that cannot be excluded — nothing in these Terms takes away rights the law says you keep.

12.3 To the maximum extent the law allows, our total liability to you for anything connected to the platform is limited to the subscription fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose (or R1,000 if you paid nothing), and we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost profits or lost bookings.

12.4 Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded (for example, our own fraud or gross negligence to the extent the law does not allow its exclusion).

13. Indemnity [ATTORNEY REVIEW]

You indemnify (cover) [BRAND], its owner and staff against claims, damages and reasonable legal costs brought by any third party (including your Clients) to the extent they arise from: (a) the Services you delivered or failed to deliver; (b) your conduct at or around an appointment; (c) your breach of these Terms or of the law; or (d) your misuse of a Client's personal information. This indemnity does not cover claims to the extent they are caused by our own breach of these Terms or of POPIA in respect of the platform's own systems.

14. Termination and your data

14.1 You can leave any time — close your account in the studio or by emailing us. We can terminate as per section 8, or on 30 days' notice if we shut the platform down or stop serving your area.

14.2 On termination: your public page comes down; you may export your client list, booking history and reviews-of-you in a usable format (request within 30 days of closure); we then delete or de-identify your personal information within a reasonable period, except what we must keep by law (e.g. tax records) — as described in the privacy notice.

14.3 Sections that by their nature survive termination (6.3, 11–13, 16) survive.

15. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. For material changes we will give you at least 14 days' notice (email and/or an in-studio notice) before they take effect. Continuing to use the platform after the effective date is acceptance; if you don't accept, you may close your account under section 14 (with a pro-rata refund of any prepaid period affected by a material adverse change [ATTORNEY REVIEW]). Each version is numbered and dated; we keep prior versions available on request.

16. General

16.1 Governing law: South Africa. Disputes: we'll try to resolve informally first (email us; we respond within 10 business days). Failing that, disputes go to the courts of South Africa, and you retain any rights you have to complain to the National Consumer Commission or other regulators. Venue/jurisdiction: [attorney to confirm — Western Cape seat suggested].

16.2 ECTA disclosures: our legal name, contact details, and these Terms are published at the platform's legal/contact page as required by section 43 of ECTA.

16.3 If any clause is unenforceable, the rest stand. These Terms plus the privacy notice are the whole agreement about the platform. No waiver of a breach waives later breaches. You may not cede these Terms without our consent; we may cede them to the company on incorporation, with notice to you.

16.4 Contact: `[Jake Surname], trading as [BRAND]` · `[support@BRAND.co.za]` · `[privacy@BRAND.co.za]` (POPIA queries) · `[physical/postal address]`.

Annex A — Flags for the attorney (do not treat this draft as final)

1. Section 12 (liability) + Section 13 (indemnity) — highest stakes given the in-home service model; wording must be settled by counsel, including the liability cap figure and the CPA sections 48–51 fairness limits. 2. Section 9 (CPA/ECTA commercial terms) — cancellation, refunds, cooling-off (ECTA §44 applicability to subscriptions), auto-renewal disclosure, and CPA §14 fixed-term rules if a yearly plan counts as a fixed-term consumer agreement. 3. Section 3 (independence) — confirm the wording is sufficient against worker-classification risk (compliance review L3) and that nothing else in the Terms or product implies control. 4. Section 6 (POPIA split) — confirm the provider-as-responsible-party / platform-as-processor(-and-responsible-party-for-its-own-processing) analysis matches how POPIA treats the arrangement, and whether a separate operator clause is needed. 5. Section 15 — the pro-rata refund on material adverse change, and whether 14 days' notice is adequate. 6. Section 5.7 — recommend vs require provider insurance. 7. Confirm venue/jurisdiction wording (16.1) and the ECTA §43 checklist (16.2).