Terms of Service

By creating an account or using Trots Oudtshoorn, you agree to these terms. If you don't agree, please don't use the app.

You're responsible for keeping your login details secure and for all activity under your account.

You must provide accurate information when registering, especially for a Business account.

One account per person or business. Creating multiple accounts to bypass pricing, free-tier limits (such as free Monday/Sunday daily promotions), or a previous suspension is a violation of these terms and may result in all related accounts being suspended.

You're responsible for anything you post — business listings, adverts, daily promotions, reviews, job postings, weather alerts, events, community notices, and photos (including your business gallery), including comments on adverts.

Most content types are reviewed before appearing publicly. Business listings go live immediately but may be reviewed and rejected retroactively. Advert comments and likes are posted instantly and are NOT pre-moderated — you're responsible for what you post there. You can report any comment or review you believe breaks these terms, and delete your own comments and reviews at any time.

We may reject or remove content that is false, misleading, offensive, illegal, or unrelated to the Oudtshoorn community.

Weather alerts and community notices should only be submitted by those with accurate, trustworthy information, and must not impersonate an official body (such as the South African Weather Service or local municipality) unless you are authorised to represent it — submitting false alerts may result in immediate account suspension.

You can delete your account at any time from Profile → Delete Account. This deactivates your account immediately. If you don't log back in within 90 days, your account and personal data are permanently deleted and cannot be recovered after that point.

If you'd rather take a break without deleting anything, "Pause My Account" deactivates your account with no deadline at all — it stays paused for as long as you like, and nothing is ever automatically deleted. Log back in whenever you're ready to pick up exactly where you left off.

Either way, deactivating hides your account and its content immediately — reactivating (by logging back in) restores everything exactly as it was.

Fraudulent or non-existent items/services in jobs or adverts (bait-and-switch pricing, items that don't exist, fake job vacancies used to harvest applicants' personal information).

Impersonating a business, organisation, or person you're not authorised to represent.

Spam or repost abuse — reposting the same content repeatedly to bypass the weekly ad rotation, daily promotion limits, or the approval queue.

Fake, incentivised, or retaliatory reviews.

Abusive, harassing, or discriminatory comments on adverts or listings.

Attempting to manipulate view counts, likes, or search ranking through automated tools or coordinated activity.

We investigate reports of any of the above and may remove content and/or suspend accounts without a refund where a paid listing is involved — see our Refund Policy for exactly when a payment is and isn't refundable.

Standard business listings are free. Featured, Promoted, and Verified upgrades, and weekly/daily advertising, are paid.

Payments are processed manually via bank transfer — see Pricing & Upgrades for current details. There is no automatic card checkout.

Paid upgrades and ad slots are activated once payment is confirmed by our team, typically within a few business days.

Refunds and service-outage credits are handled under our separate Refund Policy.

We aim to keep Trots Oudtshoorn available at all times, but as with any online service, we can't guarantee uninterrupted access — outages can happen on our side or on the side of the infrastructure providers we rely on.

If the app is unavailable for an extended period during a paid ad's run, you may be entitled to a service credit under our Refund Policy. This is the exclusive remedy for downtime — we don't offer cash compensation beyond what was actually paid for the affected listing.

Planned maintenance that we announce at least 24 hours in advance does not count as an outage for this purpose.

Trots Oudtshoorn is a platform for listing and discovery only. We are not a party to, and take no responsibility for, any transaction, sale, or agreement made between users through a job listing.

Always exercise reasonable caution when meeting or transacting with someone you've connected with through the app.

No fraudulent, illegal, or deceptive listings.

No harassment, hate speech, or discriminatory content.

No attempting to bypass the content review process, or submitting content on behalf of a business you're not authorised to represent.

No creating multiple accounts to evade a suspension or circumvent pricing.

No scraping, automated data collection, or reverse-engineering the app.

We review submitted content and reserve the right to approve, reject, edit, or remove any listing, advert, review, comment, or other content at our discretion, without prior notice.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms. Where a suspension involves a paid, active listing, refund eligibility is governed by our Refund Policy, not this clause.

We don't guarantee the accuracy of business listings, or any user-submitted content, and we're not liable for any loss arising from your reliance on it.

To the maximum extent permitted by South African law, our total liability to you for any claim arising from your use of the app — including service outages — is limited to the amount you actually paid us in the 3 months before the claim arose. We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, such as lost business or lost profit.

We may update these terms from time to time. Continued use of the app after changes means you accept the updated terms.

These terms are governed by the laws of South Africa.