Terms of service

1.1These terms form a binding agreement between you and WrenchVerse (Pty) Ltd, registration number 2025/397258/07, of 95 Panorama Road, Rooihuiskraal, Centurion, 0154 ("WrenchVerse", "we", "us").

1.2You accept them when you create an account or otherwise use the Service. If you do not accept them, do not use the Service.

1.3Our Privacy Policy forms part of these terms. If you hold a business account, our Terms and Conditions also apply, and where they conflict with these terms on a commercial matter, they prevail.

1.4We may change these terms. If a change is material we will give you at least one calendar month’s notice by email or in the Service before it takes effect. Continuing to use the Service after that is acceptance. If you do not accept, you may close your account, subject to clause 8.

1.5Clauses 16, 17 and 18 limit our liability to you. They are drawn to your attention here because they are the clauses most likely to matter if something goes wrong.

3.1You must be 18 or older and resident in South Africa to open an account. The Service is offered to the South African market and we make no claim that it is appropriate or lawful anywhere else.

3.2The information you give us when registering must be accurate, and you must keep it up to date. Registering under a false name, or as a workshop you do not work for, is a breach of these terms and may be a criminal offence.

3.3Roles matter. An account registered as a mechanic or workshop carries weight on a passport that an owner account does not. We may ask you to verify a trade role before we grant it, and we may withdraw it if the basis for it falls away.

3.4Keep your password confidential and do not let anyone else use your account. You are responsible for everything done through it until you tell us it has been compromised.

3.5We may calculate and display a trust score reflecting your history on the platform. It is our assessment, based on your submissions and their audit outcomes. It is not a credit score, it is not a statement about your character, and it carries no meaning outside the Service.

4.1WrenchVerse records and audits what people tell us about vehicles, and attaches evidence to it. That is genuinely useful. It is also all it is.

4.2WrenchVerse is not:

4.3A passport with no adverse entries means we hold no audited record of a problem. It does not mean no problem exists. Absence of a record is not evidence of absence.

4.4If you are buying a vehicle, look at it. Take a mechanic. The passport is a reason to ask better questions, not a reason to stop asking them.

5.1When you add a vehicle you warrant that you own it, or that you are authorised by the owner to manage its record.

5.2A VIN can be held by only one owner account at a time. We may ask for proof of ownership - a registration certificate, a purchase invoice - before granting or transferring a claim.

5.3Where two people claim the same VIN, we will suspend the claim, ask both for evidence, and decide on the balance of what we are shown. That decision is administrative, about who controls a record on our platform. It decides nothing about who owns the vehicle in law.

5.4Claiming a vehicle does not erase what is already on its passport. History attaches to the VIN, not to the account.

6.1When you submit a record for audit you warrant that the work described was actually carried out, that the details - date, mileage, parts, workshop - are accurate to the best of your knowledge, and that the evidence you attach is genuine and unaltered.

6.2Do not submit a document you have edited, a photograph taken of a different vehicle, or an invoice for work that was quoted but not done. We hash every evidence file on receipt, and we record the device and approximate location it was submitted from. Fabrication tends to leave marks.

6.3You may correct or withdraw a submission at any time before it is sealed. After sealing, clause 8 applies.

6.4Submitting a record you know to be false is a material breach of these terms. It may also constitute fraud under South African law, and we will report it where the circumstances warrant.

7.1An auditor reviews the submission against the evidence attached, the vehicle's existing history, and the signals we hold about who submitted it and from where. They may approve it, reject it, or come back to you for more.

7.2An audit is a review of a paper record by a person at a desk. It is not a physical inspection of the vehicle, and no auditor sees the car.

7.3What approval means: an auditor, exercising reasonable care, found the submission internally consistent and adequately supported by its evidence. What it does not mean: that the work was done competently, that the parts were genuine, that the vehicle is now sound, or that the underlying document was not an expert forgery.

7.4Audit decisions are made in our reasonable discretion. We do not undertake to audit within any particular time unless we have agreed one with you in writing, and we may decline to audit a submission at all.

7.5If your submission is rejected we will tell you why. You may resubmit with better evidence. If you think a rejection was wrong, clause 19.1 tells you how to take it further.

7.6Auditors do not audit their own submissions, or those of a business they are connected to.

8.1When a record is approved we compute a cryptographic hash of it and sign that hash. The record is then sealed onto the vehicle's passport.

8.2A sealed record cannot be edited or deleted - not by you, not by a later owner, and not by us. A history that the interested party can quietly revise is worth nothing to the person who needs to rely on it, and we would rather build something that is occasionally inconvenient than something that is never trustworthy.

8.3Understand what that means before you submit. Once sealed, a record showing that a vehicle you own had a particular repair at a particular mileage stays on that vehicle's passport, and a prospective buyer will see it.

8.4Corrections are made by addition, never by substitution. If a sealed record is wrong you may submit a correcting record, which is audited in the ordinary way and appears alongside the original. Both remain visible. The passport shows the correction, not a rewritten past.

8.5Where you dispute a sealed record and we do not agree, we will attach a notation recording your objection, as section 24(2)(d) of POPIA contemplates, and display it with the record.

8.6Where we determine a sealed record was obtained by fraud or material misrepresentation, we will annul it. An annulled record is struck through and marked as annulled with the reason. It is not removed - the fact that someone attempted it is itself part of the history.

8.7Closing your account does not unseal your records. Clause 10 of the Privacy Policy explains exactly what is removed from a sealed record when you leave, and what stays.

9.1The Bond is the other half of the platform, and it plays by opposite rules on purpose. Nothing in it is audited, nothing in it is sealed, and nothing in it forms part of a vehicle's provenance.

9.2Care logs, photographs and milestones are yours. You may edit them, delete them, and keep them private. They are for the cars you keep for love rather than resale, and they are nobody else's business unless you decide otherwise.

9.3Because Bond content is unverified, it must not be presented to a buyer as though it were audited history, and we display it clearly marked as unaudited wherever it is shared.

9.4Milestones are decorative. They are not certifications and they mean nothing outside the Service.

10.1We may run checks against third-party vehicle data providers for indicators such as theft, write-off, or outstanding finance, and display the result on the passport.

10.2That data is not ours. We pass on what the provider returns, at the moment it returns it. We do not verify it, we cannot correct it, and we do not warrant that it is accurate, complete or current.

10.3Databases lag. A vehicle stolen this morning may not be flagged this afternoon. A write-off may never have been reported. A finance settlement may not have propagated.

10.4If a check returns something you believe is wrong, take it up with the provider. We will tell you which provider returned it and re-run the check once they have corrected their record.

11.1When you sell a vehicle you may transfer its passport to the buyer through the Service. The audited history goes with it. Your Bond does not.

11.2A transfer on WrenchVerse records a change of custody of the passport. It does not transfer ownership of the vehicle, which happens through the ordinary registration process, and it is not a sale agreement between you and the buyer.

11.3We are not a party to any sale. We do not hold funds, we do not act as escrow, and any dispute about the vehicle or the price is between buyer and seller.

11.4Your period of ownership remains recorded on the vehicle, in the de-identified form described in clause 10 of the Privacy Policy, so that a future buyer can see how many hands the vehicle has passed through.

12.1You must not:

12.2If you find a security vulnerability, report it to [email protected] and give us a reasonable chance to fix it. We will not pursue you for good-faith research that respects other people's data.

13.1Everything you submit stays yours. We claim no ownership of your photographs, documents or descriptions.

13.2You grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, reproduce, adapt for display, and communicate that content, solely to operate the Service - to audit it, to show it on the passport to those entitled to see it, and to keep the sealed record intact. For sealed records this licence continues after your account closes, to the extent needed to keep the record legible; it ends for everything else when you delete it.

13.3We will not use your photographs in marketing without asking you first.

13.4You warrant that you have the rights to whatever you upload, and that uploading it does not infringe anyone else's rights.

13.5The Service itself - the software, the design, the WrenchVerse name and logo - belongs to us. Using the Service gives you no rights in it beyond permission to use it under these terms.

14.1You may close your account at any time from your account settings, or by asking us.

14.2We may suspend or close your account if you materially breach these terms, if we reasonably suspect fraud, if we are legally required to, or if you have been inactive for [INACTIVITY PERIOD].

14.3Except where doing so would prejudice an investigation or breach the law, we will tell you why, and give you a fair chance to respond before we act permanently.

14.4On closure, your Bond content is deleted and your personal information is handled as set out in clause 10 of the Privacy Policy. Sealed records remain on the vehicles they belong to.

14.5Clauses 8, 13.2, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 survive termination.

15.1We try to keep the Service running, but we do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free. Maintenance, failures and things outside our control all happen.

15.2We may add, change or withdraw features. Where a change materially reduces what the Service does for you, we will give you reasonable notice.

15.3If we ever discontinue the Service, we will give you at least [WIND-DOWN NOTICE] notice and a way to export your vehicle passports and Bond content before it closes.

16.1To the fullest extent the law allows, the Service is provided as it stands, and we give no warranties beyond those expressly set out in these terms.

16.2We do not warrant that any record on the platform is true. We warrant only that audited records have been reviewed by an auditor exercising reasonable care, on the evidence submitted.

16.3Nothing in these terms excludes any right you have under the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 or the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 that cannot lawfully be excluded, and nothing here limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for our own fraud.

17.1Subject to clause 16.3, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of opportunity, or loss arising from a decision you took in reliance on a record on the platform.

17.2In particular, and without limiting clause 17.1, we are not liable for loss arising from a record submitted by another user that turns out to be false, from a third-party status check that was wrong or out of date, from a vehicle turning out to be in worse condition than its passport suggested, or from a dispute between a buyer and a seller.

17.3Our total liability to you for all claims in any twelve-month period is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us for the Service in that period and [LIABILITY FLOOR]. Personal accounts are free, so for most users this cap is the floor amount.

17.4This clause allocates risk between us in exchange for a service that is free to individuals. We think that is a fair trade, and we would rather say so than hide it.

18.1You indemnify us against claims, losses and reasonable legal costs arising from your breach of these terms, from a record or file you submitted, or from your infringement of someone else's rights.

18.2This does not apply to a claim caused by our own breach, negligence or fraud.

19.1Talk to us first, at [email protected]. We will acknowledge within [ACKNOWLEDGEMENT PERIOD] and try to resolve it within [RESOLUTION PERIOD].

19.2If that fails, we will both try mediation before either of us litigates, unless urgent interim relief is needed.

19.3If you are a consumer under the Consumer Protection Act, you may refer the matter to the National Consumer Commission or an accredited consumer ombud instead. Nothing here takes that right away.

19.4Privacy complaints go to the Information Regulator, as set out in clause 16 of the Privacy Policy.

20.1Governing law. These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa.

20.2Jurisdiction. We both consent to the jurisdiction of the courts of Gauteng, and to the Magistrates' Court where a matter falls within its jurisdiction.

20.3Whole agreement. These terms, the Privacy Policy and, where applicable, the Terms and Conditions are the whole agreement between us about the Service.

20.4Severability. If a clause is found unenforceable, the rest stands.

20.5No waiver. If we do not enforce a right straight away, we have not given it up.

20.6Assignment. You may not transfer your rights under these terms. We may, on notice to you, to a company that acquires our business.

20.7Notices. We will send notices to the email address on your account. You send notices to [email protected]. Our address for service of legal documents is 95 Panorama Road, Rooihuiskraal, Centurion, 0154, as section 43(1)(g) of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act requires.

20.8Force majeure. Neither of us is liable for a failure caused by something genuinely outside our control.