Terms and conditions

These terms

These terms are an agreement between you and Intwined (Pty) Ltd, which operates Intwined. They apply whether you are browsing the marketplace, contacting a business, or running a business on the platform.

By creating an account or using the marketplace you accept these terms. If you are accepting on behalf of a company, you confirm you are authorised to bind it.

What the platform is

Intwined is two things. It is a public marketplace where visitors discover local businesses and contact them directly. It is also a private workspace where a business manages its storefront, customers, quotes, invoices, bookings, stock, staff and records.

We provide the platform. We are not a party to any agreement between a visitor and a business, and we do not sell the goods or services listed on it.

Accounts

• Business accounts require a real email address, which must be verified.
• You are responsible for keeping your password secure and for everything done under your account.
• Tell us promptly if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission.
• You may not share a single account across people who should have their own. Businesses can invite staff with their own logins and permissions.
• Visitors do not need an account to browse or to message a business. An account is only needed if you want your conversations saved.

Listing a business

We vet businesses before their storefront goes live. We may ask for information to confirm the business is real and that you are entitled to act for it.

• Everything you publish must be accurate: your trading name, what you sell, and your prices.
• You must have the right to use every image, logo, banner and description you upload.
• You must comply with the law that applies to your trade, including any licensing, health, safety or consumer protection requirements.
• You are responsible for fulfilling what you sell, for your own tax, and for handling your customers' complaints and refunds.
• We may decline, suspend or remove a listing that breaches these terms, misleads customers, or damages trust in the platform.

Fees

Listing a business on the platform is a paid service. The current fee, what it includes, and the billing period are shown before you commit, and we will tell you in advance of any change to them.

Fees are payable in South African Rand. If a payment fails we may suspend the storefront and workspace until it is settled. Your data is retained during suspension and restored when payment is brought up to date.

You can cancel at any time and the cancellation takes effect at the end of the period already paid for. We do not pro-rate part periods unless the law requires it.

Acceptable use

You may not use the platform to:

• Publish anything unlawful, misleading, hateful, or infringing on someone else's rights.
• Sell goods or services you are not legally permitted to sell.
• Send unsolicited bulk messages, or misuse contact details obtained through an enquiry for anything other than replying to it.
• Attempt to access another business's records, probe the platform's security, or interfere with its operation.
• Scrape or bulk-extract listings or contact details.

Enquiries and customer contact

A visitor can message a business without an account, providing their name, email address and phone number. Those details are given to that business for the purpose of replying to that enquiry.

If you are a business, you must use those details only to respond to the enquiry and to serve the customer. Adding a person to a marketing list without their consent is a breach of these terms and of POPIA.

Your content and your data

You keep ownership of everything you upload: your logo, banner, catalogue, documents and records. You grant us the licence we need to host, display and back up that content for the purpose of running the service, and nothing more.

You can export or ask us to delete your data. On cancellation we retain it for a limited window so you can retrieve it, then delete it, except where law requires us to keep it.

Availability

We work to keep the platform available but we do not guarantee uninterrupted service. We may take it down for maintenance, and we will give notice where we reasonably can.

Liability

Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including under the Consumer Protection Act where it applies.

Subject to that, we are not liable for a dispute between a visitor and a business, for the quality of anything sold through a storefront, or for indirect or consequential loss. Where we are liable, our total liability is limited to the fees you paid us in the twelve months before the claim.

Suspension and termination

You may close your account at any time. We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms, that is used unlawfully, or where fees are unpaid. Where the breach is capable of being fixed, we will normally give you the chance to fix it first.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top shows when they last changed, and we will notify account holders before a significant change takes effect. Continuing to use the platform after that means you accept the updated terms.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of the Republic of South Africa, and the South African courts have jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them.