Pricing, Refunds and Cancellation

1. Buyers and tenants pay nothing

Searching, the AI assistant, price fairness, investment scoring, neighbourhood dashboards, comparisons, alerts, the bond calculator and the buyer dashboard are free and stay free. There is no plan that unlocks a listing you cannot already see, and there is no charge for making an enquiry.

Propalot takes no commission and no success fee on a sale or a lease. What a property sells for is between the seller and the buyer.

2. What a seller pays

• Free: no charge, no card required. 2 listings at a time, each live for 30 days, after which it returns to your drafts with its photographs and its enquiries and the slot frees up.
• Pro: R249 a month, or R2 739 a year. 25 listings, none of which expire.
• Premium: R499 a month, or R5 489 a year. 50 listings, none of which expire.

Both yearly figures work out to twelve months for the price of eleven, exactly. There is no setup fee, no listing fee, no featured placement to buy and no per-enquiry charge.

Propalot is not currently registered for VAT. No VAT is charged and the documents on your billing page are receipts rather than tax invoices. If registration becomes compulsory we will say so on the pricing page before it affects a renewal of yours.

3. How billing works

Payments are taken by PayFast, a South African payment provider. They hold your card details; Propalot never sees them and cannot store them. What we hold is which plan you are on, when it renews, and a reference for each payment.

A paid plan is a subscription. The first payment is taken when you subscribe, and the next on the same day of the following month or year until you cancel. Every payment produces a receipt on your billing page and an email copy.

A plan only becomes active when PayFast confirms the payment to us directly, not when your browser returns from their checkout. If you close the tab at the wrong moment, nothing is lost: the confirmation arrives on its own and the plan switches on.

4. The cooling-off period

Section 44 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 gives a consumer seven days to cancel an electronic transaction without reason and without penalty.

We apply it, and we go further. If you subscribe to a paid plan and change your mind within seven days, tell us and we refund the payment in full, whether or not you published anything in the meantime. We do not require a reason and we do not deduct a handling fee.

The seven days run from the day the payment is taken. After that, section 6 applies.

5. Cancelling

Cancel from Billing in the portal, in one click. You may also email billing@propalot.co.za from the address on the account and we will do it for you the same working day.

Cancelling does three things and no more:

• it stops the next payment;
• it leaves the plan running to the end of the period you have already paid for, so you keep every listing and every feature until that date;
• on that date the account returns to Free, with 2 live listings.

Nothing is deleted. Listings over the Free allowance stop showing to buyers and wait in your account with their photographs, their enquiries and their statistics. Resubscribe and they come straight back.

You will not be billed again after cancelling. If you are, that is a fault on our side and section 6 covers it.

6. When money comes back

We refund in these circumstances:

• Within seven days of subscribing. In full, no reason needed, under section 4 above.
• A duplicate or double charge. In full, as soon as we see it. We usually see it before you do.
• A charge after you cancelled. In full.
• A failure on our side that made the plan unusable for a meaningful stretch. Pro rata for the affected period, and section 10 sets the threshold.
• We closed your account for something you did not do. In full, plus an apology that is not a form letter.

We do not refund in these:

• Part of a period after the seven days. Cancelling in the third week of a month does not produce a refund of the remaining week; the plan simply runs to the end of what you paid for.
• Because a property did not sell. Propalot sells advertising and intelligence, not an outcome, and section 10 of the Terms of Service says so plainly.
• Because you did not use it. A subscription you forgot about is still a subscription. If that has happened, write to us anyway. We would rather deal with it than argue about it.
• Where an account was closed for fraud or for publishing property the holder had no mandate over.

An approved refund goes back to the card that paid, through PayFast. We start it within five working days of agreeing it; how long it then takes to appear is your bank's business, and is usually another three to ten.

7. If a payment fails

A card expires or a debit bounces. Nothing dramatic happens.

• We email you, and the billing page says what is wrong in plain language.
• Your listings stay up for fourteen days while PayFast retries. An expired card should not take a seller off the market.
• If it has not gone through by then, the account returns to Free. Nothing is deleted. Listings over the allowance stop showing and wait.
• Update the card and pay, and everything returns exactly as it was.

We do not charge a fee for a failed payment and we do not add interest.

8. Upgrading and downgrading

Upgrading takes effect immediately. The new allowance is available at once, and moving up also clears the thirty-day clock off everything you already have live, so nothing lapses under you after you start paying.

Downgrading takes effect at the end of the period you have paid for. Moving down does not retro-expire anything already published: you keep what is live until it lapses on its own schedule, and you simply cannot publish more until you are inside the new allowance.

9. If we change a price

We may. If we do, we email every affected account at least 30 days before it applies to a renewal of yours. The price you are on holds until then, and cancelling before the new price takes effect costs nothing.

A price change never applies to a period you have already paid for, including a full year bought in advance.

10. If the platform is down

We do not promise uninterrupted service, and no honest platform does. But a paid plan is a paid plan.

Where a failure on our side puts the seller portal or your published listings out of action for more than 24 consecutive hours, or for more than 72 hours in a calendar month, write to us and we will credit or refund that share of the period. Interruptions caused by scheduled maintenance we told you about beforehand, or by something outside our reasonable control, do not count.

11. Chargebacks

If something is wrong with a charge, email us first. We would genuinely rather refund you in a day than argue with a bank for three months, and a chargeback costs more than the month it reverses.

An account with an unresolved chargeback may be suspended until it is settled. That is not a penalty; it is what our payment provider requires of us.

12. Closing your account

Closing an account on a paid plan cancels the subscription under section 5. Within the first seven days you get the payment back in full; after that the plan runs to the end of the paid period unless one of the grounds in section 6 applies.

What happens to your data is set out in the Privacy Policy. In short: it goes, except payment records, which the Tax Administration Act requires us to keep for five years.

13. How to ask

Email billing@propalot.co.za from the address on the account. Tell us the payment reference from your billing page and what you would like done. We answer within two working days and we do not send you a form.

Propalot (Pty) Ltd, 12 Fredman Drive, Sandton, 2196, South Africa
+27 10 001 0001

Nothing in this policy limits your rights under the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 or the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002. If we have not sorted it out, section 14 of the Terms of Service says where to go next.