- Status of These Terms
- Welcome to Michanic! Michanic is a platform for linking independent mechanics with customers looking for auto services. Michanic does not provide the auto services – it helps connect the customer and the mechanic. The customer buys auto services from the mechanic who accepts their booking – not from Michanic.
- These terms and the documents referenced in them create a legal agreement between you and Michanic Ltd, a company registered in South Africa under company number 2018/449072/07 whose registered office is at 13 Sloane street, Bryanston (referred to as “we”, “us” or “our” in these terms) in relation to the Michanic auto services booking platform (“Platform”). You agree that by accessing and/or using the Platform, you are agreeing to these terms, our Booking Policies and our Privacy Notice.
- Your attention is in particular drawn to:
- the fact that additional charges may be incurred by you in the circumstances specified in our Booking Policies;
- the way that we limit our liability to you under section 3.d, section 9.a and section 13 below;
- the fact that, because the Mechanic, not us, provides the Auto Services, we are not responsible for any issues with the carrying out of the Auto Services (or any failure to carry them out). – see section 19.c
- The repair (including parts), diagnostic and inspection services listed on the Platform are provided by the Mechanic you book by means of the Platform. Not by us. Our role and responsibility is limited to listing details of Auto Services (and related pricing information), and arranging bookings and collecting payment on behalf of the independent Mechanics who use us to connect with customers. We cannot be responsible for the actions or failures of any Mechanic with whom a Booking is made, nor any repair (including parts), diagnostic and inspection services they provide.
- You can access these terms at any time at https://www.michanic.co.za/terms-and-conditions/. We reserve the right to update these terms from time to time by posting the updated version at that URL. We may do so because we change the nature of our products or services, for technical or legal reasons, or because the needs of our business have changed. You agree that if you do not accept any amendment to our terms then you shall immediately stop accessing and/or using the Platform.
- Every time you order Auto Services by means of the Platform, these terms as they are in force at that time (and available for view on our website) will apply to the contract between you and us for provision of Booking and payment processing services in respect of the Auto Services you book. You can find the date on which these terms were last updated at the bottom of this page.
- By using the Platform, you agree that you are a private individual at least 18 years old and are present in the South Africa at the time you use the Platform. Our site is directed to people residing in the South Africa only. We do not represent that our site is appropriate for use or available in other locations. If you are under 18 years old, you must arrange for your parent or guardian to use the Platform on your behalf.
- Definitions
For ease of reference the following terms shall having the following meanings in these Platform Terms of Use:
- “Auto Services” means any repair (including parts), maintenance, diagnostic and inspection services provided by a Mechanic under a Booking;
- “Booking Policies” means the policies set out here https://www.michanic.co.za/booking-policy/ which contain terms applicable to all Bookings including as to minimum labour charges, cancellations, cancellation charges, collection/towing fees, and other extra charges;
- “Booking Request” means a request from you made by means of the Platform, for the supply of Auto Services;
- “Booking” means a contract for the provision of Auto Services entered into between you and the Mechanic by means of the Platform;
- “Charges” means the charges payable in respect of parts and labour under a Booking;
- “Mechanic” means a provider of Auto Services, independent of Michanic, which promotes its Auto Services by means of the Platform;
- “Mechanic Listing” means a listing in the Platform setting out a description of the Mechanic and reviews provided in respect of the Mechanic by other users of the Platform;
- “you” and “your” means you, any person who uses the Platform.
- Michanic is not an auto repair, maintenance, diagnosis or inspection service. It is a means for you to browse, book and pay for Auto Services from our partner Mechanics.
- The Platform is designed to enable users to make a Booking for Auto Services with a Mechanic. Auto Services are provided by the Mechanic, and not by us. We responsible only for listing Mechanic Listings, taking your Booking, processing payment – all on behalf of the Mechanic. The content of the Mechanic Listing on the Platform, and the provision of the Auto Services, are entirely the responsibility of the Mechanic.
- What this means is that when you use the Platform to make a Booking for Auto Services, it will create two legal contracts:
- one contract between you and us, under which we provide to you the means of browsing, booking, and paying for the Auto Services by means of the Platform. That contract is made on these Platform Terms of Use; and
- a further contract between you and the relevant Mechanic in respect of their provision to you of Auto Services to you at the price specified by you in your Booking Request.
- The Platform is used by a wide range, and a large number, of Mechanics – all of whom are independent traders, not employed directly by Michanic. Each Mechanic is responsible for the quality of their own advice and service. Michanic cannot be held responsible for work completed, nor can we endorse or recommend any Mechanic.
- The Mechanics are not our employees or workers. We have no involvement in the provision of the Auto Services. We require our Mechanics to ensure that all information provided by them in a Mechanic Listing is accurate and complete. We take what reasonable steps we can to ensure that the Mechanic is insured, has a trading history, and experience of providing Auto Services, but we cannot realistically vet all details of each Mechanic Listing. We are therefore not responsible for any inaccuracies in the Mechanic Listing.
- Bookings
- Your Booking is subject to the terms of the Booking Policies. Among other things, the Booking Policies contain details of your right to cancel the Booking.
- By making a Booking Request for a particular date, you acknowledge that the Mechanic will commence provision of the Auto Services in advance of that date. For example, he/she may hire labour, order in parts, and research aspects of your car required in order to effectively carry out the relevant repairs, diagnosis and/or inspection. The cancellation provisions in the Booking Policies are intended to reflect the value of the Auto Services already provided in advance of the time of cancellation, and therefore the amount of your liability to pay to the Mechanic as a result of the cancellation.
- You acknowledge and agree that by making a Booking Request you are authorising us to present it to Mechanics for their review. If a Mechanic offers to fulfil the terms of the Booking Request, we will disclose to you the details of that Mechanic and you can either accept or reject that offer. If you fail to either accept or reject that offer within 1 hour of our notifying you of it, you will be deemed to have accepted it. Any such acceptance of the Mechanic’s offer to fulfil the Booking Request will form a binding contract under which you agree to pay for Auto Services as specified in the Booking Request.
- Once you book Auto Services through the Platform in accordance with these Platform Terms of Use and the Booking Policies, payment will be processed for it by or on behalf of the Mechanic.
- As a consumer, you will have legal rights against the Mechanic in relation to any Auto Services that is not provided in accordance with reasonable skill and care, or if the Auto Services is not as described in the Booking (including any changes to the Booking agreed between you and the Mechanic). Advice about your legal rights is available from the office of the Motor Industry Ombudsman Of South Africa. Nothing in these Platform Terms of Use will affect your statutory rights.
- It is your sole responsibility to notify your Mechanic in your Booking Request as to any circumstances affecting your car or its location which might affect the Mechanic’s provision of the Auto Services. If such circumstances arise after the Booking Request has been accepted, you must notify the Mechanic immediately. These circumstances may affect the Charges, and your failure to disclose any relevant circumstances might result in additional charges (see Booking Policies for further details).
- In the event that a Mechanic with whom you have made a Booking no longer has a current registration with the Platform, we will notify you.
- Charges and Payment for Auto Services
- We suggest Charges for Bookings on the basis of our own calculations as to what is a fair market price, based on a range of factors including the Auto Services you require, your location, your car model, type and age, the period between the Booking Request and the Auto Services being provided, the availability of parts locally and nationally, our calculations are based on data gleaned from a number of different sources. These include the industry leading parts supplier, and various government statistics.
- We do our very best to ensure that the Charges reflect the data as closely as possible, and to keep our pricing data as current as possible, but the Platform contains details of a large range of Auto Services and it is possible that, despite our efforts, some of the pricing information shown for certain Auto Services may not accurately reflect the up to most date pricing data available.
- Charges proposed for Auto Services may include VAT or sales tax.
- When we notify you that a Mechanic has accepted your Booking Request at the Charges specified, a binding contract is created between you and the Mechanic for delivery of the Auto Services in exchange for payment of the Charges.
- Payments are made to the Mechanic on completion of the Auto Services. By making a Booking you agree to the
- The Booking Policies set our circumstances in which you may be subject to additional charges in excess of those specified in a Booking Request.
- Warranty in respect of the Auto Services
- We require all Mechanics to provide a 6-month warranty as set out in our Warranty Requirements document available here Warranty
- Your statutory rights are not affected by the any such warranty.
- Use of the Platform
- Whilst you are in compliance with these terms (including our Acceptable Use Policy), we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, personal, revocable limited licence to access and use the Platform for your own personal private or (if you are a business) internal business use, in each case provided that such use is in accordance with these terms. You agree not to use the Platform, or any content of our website, for anything else.
- We have the right to suspend, withdraw or modify the Platform (in whole or in part) without liability to you at any time, including in the following circumstances: for technical reasons (such as maintenance, or technical difficulties experienced by us or on the internet); to allow us to improve the usability of functionality of the Platform; where we have legal reasons for doing so (including privacy or other legal objections to the content or functionality of the Platform); because it is no longer economically viable or efficient to provide the Platform.
- Accounts
- If you set up a user account with us, you agree that you shall take all steps necessary to protect your log in details and keep them secret. You agree that you shall not give your log in details to anyone else or allow anyone else to use your log in details or account.
- If you fail to keep your login details confidential, or if you deliberately or unintentionally share your login details or account with someone else, you accept full responsibility for the consequences of this and agree to fully compensate us for any losses or harm that may result.
- We will not be responsible to you for any loss that you suffer as a result of an unauthorised person accessing your account and using the Platform and we accept no responsibility for any losses or harm resulting from its unauthorised use, whether fraudulently or otherwise.
- If you notice an unauthorised use or breach of your user account, you must notify us immediately at [email protected].
- DISCLAIMER – No control over Auto Services or Mechanic Listings, No Warranty regarding the Platform
- Auto Services are not provided by us.
- Under no circumstances will we be liable in any way for any Auto Services, including any errors or omissions in the Auto Services, or any losses or harm of any kind resulting from the Mechanic’s provision of (or failure to provide) the Auto Services.
- Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers, or other information or content expressed or made available by Mechanics are those of the Mechanic and not those of us. We neither endorse nor are responsible for the accuracy or reliability of any opinion, advice or statement made either on the Platform or otherwise, by anyone other than authorised Michanic Ltd employee spokespersons while acting in their official capacities.
- The Platform is provided “as is” and without warranty of any kind. In particular, we cannot promise that the Platform will always be provided uninterrupted or error-free. You acknowledge that we cannot reasonably guarantee, and do not guarantee, that the Platform will always work properly.
- Uploading content to our site
- Whenever you make use of a feature that allows you to make submissions to our site (including reviews of any Mechanic) (“Submissions”), you must comply with the content standards set out in our Acceptable Use Policy.
- You promise that all your Submissions will comply with those standards, and you will be liable to us for any breach of that promise. This means you will be responsible for any loss or damage we suffer as a result of your breach of that promise.
- All Submissions will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. You retain all of your ownership rights in your content, but you are required to grant us and other users of our site a licence to use, store and copy that content and to distribute and make it available to third parties.
- By making any Submission, you grant us the worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free right and license to publish, display, reproduce, modify, create derivative works of and commercially exploit any Submission you make. We may freely use the Submission in any media (either currently known or developed in the future) and authorise others to do the same.
- We will not be responsible, or liable to any third party, for the content or accuracy of any Submission posted by you or any other user of our site. You are solely responsible for your Submissions you make.
- We have the right to remove any posting you make on our site if, in our opinion, your post does not comply with the content standards set out in our Acceptable Use Policy, or we receive a complaint about it.
- The views expressed by other users on our site do not represent our views or values.
- Your conduct in relation to the Platform
- You must comply with all laws applicable in the South Africa. If any laws applicable to you restrict or prohibit you from using the Platform, you must comply with those legal restrictions or, if applicable, stop accessing and/or using the Platform. You must ensure that in your carrying out of any Auto Services you comply with all applicable laws in relation to health and safety and disposal of hazardous waste.
- You must abide at all times by our Acceptable Use Policy.
- Your breach of these terms
- We reserve the right to suspend or terminate your access to the Platform (including by deleting your account) at any time. We will likely do so if we reasonably believe that you are in breach of these terms.
- You agree to compensate us, according to law, for all losses, harm, claims and expenses that may arise from any breach of these terms by you.
- LIMITATION OF LIABILITY – IMPORTANT – PLEASE READ CAREFULLY
- We accept liability for death or personal injury resulting from our negligence or that of our employees or agents (which does not include any Mechanic), and for losses or harm caused by fraud by us or our agents, or any other liability which it would be unlawful for us to exclude or restrict liability.
- We are not responsible for:
- any losses in relation to your receiving or not receiving the Platform or any Auto Services;
- any losses arising due to a breach of our obligations which arises due to circumstances outside our reasonable control;
- losses or harm not caused by our breach of these terms or our negligence;
- losses or harm which are not reasonably foreseeable by you and us at the time of you agreeing to these terms including those losses which happen as a side effect of foreseeable losses; or
- technical failures or the lack of availability of the Platform.
- Our Responsibility for Loss or Damage Suffered by You If You Are a Consumer:We only supply the Platform for your own individual domestic and private use. You agree not to use the Platform in the course of any business, or for any commercial, business or re-sale purpose. We therefore have no liability to you for any loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption, or loss of business opportunity.
- Our Responsibility for Loss or Damage Suffered by You If You Are a Business:
- Subject to section 13.a above:
- we shall not be liable to you, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, for any loss of profit, loss of anticipated savings, loss of revenue, or any indirect or consequential loss arising under or in connection with any contract between us; and
- our total liability to you for all other losses arising under or in connection with any contract between us, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, shall be limited to 100% of the total Charges paid by you to us in the 12 months preceding the event giving rise to liability.
- Intellectual property
- You acknowledge that all copyright, trade marks (including ‘Michanic’ and the Michanic logo), and other intellectual property rights in and relating to the Platform (other than the content of Mechanic Listings and Auto Services, which remain the property of the Mechanic) are owned by us or licensed to us by our partners.
- You must not copy, distribute, make available to the public or create any derivative work from the Platform or any part of the Platform unless we have first agreed to this in writing. You must not use any of our trade marks (including the ‘Michanic’ and the Michanic logo), or other intellectual property rights in and relating to the Platform without our prior written consent.
- If you submit comments, ideas, or feedback to us, you agree that we can use them without any restriction or compensation to you. If we accept your submission, we do not waive any rights to use similar or related ideas or feedback previously known to us, developed by our employees, or obtained from sources other than you.
- We are the owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights in our site, and in the material published on it. Those works are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved. You must not use any part of the content on our site for commercial purposes without obtaining a licence to do so from us or our licensors. If you print off, copy or download any part of our site in breach of these terms, your right to use our site will cease immediately and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made.
- Without limiting the scope of the rest of this section 14, the automotive data (including correlation of certain properties associated with a vehicle registration number) and the technology used to generate pricing information are proprietary to us or our licensors. You are not permitted to use the automotive data or pricing information other than for the purpose of obtaining Auto Services for your own vehicle by means of the Platform. You must not use a bot or an automated program (including any crawling, scraping technique) to collect any pricing or other information from the Platform. Doing so is prohibited and shall be a breach of these terms.
- Legal or Complaint Notices
- If you have a complaint regarding any Mechanic Listing, you may notify us by emailing us at [email protected]with the following information: name; street address; email address; full details of your complaint and the Mechanic Listing (or Mechanic Listings) you are complaining about. These requests should only be submitted by you or someone who is authorised to act on your behalf.
- Privacy
- Our registered information officer is Thabelo Mulelu and can be contacted at [email protected] as per the POPIA.
- We will only collect, process, use and share your personal information in accordance with our Privacy Policy and as set out in these terms. By using the Platform, you give your consent to us collecting, processing, using and sharing your personal data in this way. If you do not agree to our Privacy Notice, you should not access and/or use the Platform.
- We may use any feedback or comments you make in respect of the Platform or any Mechanic in our marketing material. We will not use your surname or full name unless we get your prior consent to do so. If at any time you would like us to cease any further use of your feedback or comments, please contact us at [email protected].
- Links
- We may link to third party products or services from the Platform, including to Mechanics’ websites. You understand that we make no promises regarding any content, goods or services provided by such Mechanics or other third parties. We are also not responsible to you in relation to any losses or harm caused by such third parties. You understand that when you provide data to such third parties you are providing it in accordance with their privacy policy (if any) and our own Privacy Notice does not apply in relation to that data.
- General
- We may wish to transfer all or a part of our rights or responsibilities under these terms to someone else without obtaining your consent. You agree that we may do so provided that the transfer does not significantly disadvantage you. You may not transfer any of the rights we give you under these terms unless we first agree to this in writing.
- These terms set out the entire agreement between you and us concerning the Platform and they replace all earlier agreements and understandings between you and us.
- If any part of these terms is held to be invalid or unenforceable under any applicable local laws or by the applicable court, that part shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with applicable law to reflect as nearly as possible our original intentions and the remainder of these terms shall remain valid and enforceable.
- Our failure to exercise or enforce any of our rights under these terms does not waive our right to enforce such right. Any waiver of such rights shall only be effective if it is in writing and signed by us.
- Complaints about the Platform, Auto Services or Mechanics
- If you have any concerns regarding the Platform itself (rather than any Auto Services or Mechanic) we hope we can resolve these quickly if you contact us at [email protected].
- We care about your experience with Mechanics using our Platform, and want to ensure they maintain the highest standards possible. If you are unhappy with any Auto Services you should speak to the Mechanic to try and resolve the issue. We would like to be kept informed of any issues or disputes.
- YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE TO YOU FOR THE AUTO SERVICES WHICH THE MECHANICS PROVIDE AND ARE UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE YOU WITH A REFUND OR CREDIT NOTE IN THE EVENT YOU ARE DISSATISFIED WITH THE AUTO SERVICES.
- In the unlikely event that legal action becomes necessary either by us or by you, these terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of South Africa and subject to the jurisdiction of the South African courts.
- If you have any complaints or objections of a legal nature to material or content (including Mechanic Listings) provided by means of our site, including if you believe that material or content on our site is defamatory or infringes your intellectual property rights (including copyright or trade mark rights), please contact us immediately with a statement by email to [email protected]. Your email statement must at a minimum contain the following details: the exact individual content you are complaining about; the way in which the content infringes your rights, or is defamatory; your name and street address; a declaration that your statement is true and acknowledgement that it may be used in any subsequent court proceedings relating to your complaint.
- Questions about these terms
- If you have any questions about these terms or the Platform, you may contact us by email at [email protected].
Michanic contact details
Company Physical Address: Epsom Downs Office Park, 13 Sloane Street, Process House
Email: [email protected]
Telephone: 087 803 9000
Agreement last updated 11 July 2021.