Terms & Conditions

1. WHO WE ARE These terms are between you and Karua Pty Ltd (ABN 69 693 206 629, "Karua", "we", "us"), a company based in New South Wales, Australia. You can reach us at info@karua.com.au for any question, complaint or claim. 2. WHAT KARUA DOES Karua arranges managed property services in Sydney. We scope your job, price it, schedule it, arrange a vetted contractor, manage your booking and handle any issue afterwards. Karua arranges your job. A contractor does the work. When you book, you appoint Karua as your agent to select and engage a contractor for you, and to enter into the contract for that work on your behalf at the price and scope we have shown you. YOUR CONTRACT FOR THE WORK IS WITH THAT CONTRACTOR, NOT WITH KARUA. They carry out the work, they are responsible for it, and they owe you the guarantees and statutory warranties that apply to it directly. Every contractor Karua engages is vetted, and holds a current licence where the trade requires one. What Karua is responsible for is its own service, and we are the supplier of that: sourcing and verifying the contractor, pricing your job, taking the booking, handling payment, being your single point of contact, and the Karua Service Guarantee in section 10. Every promise we make to you sits here. Your appointment of us has limits, and they are real. We cannot commit you beyond the price you approved, we cannot change the scope without your approval, we do not direct or supervise how the work is carried out, and we cannot settle any claim you have against the contractor without your instruction. Karua is not a marketplace. There is nothing to browse, no bidding, and contractors do not set or negotiate prices with you. 3. YOUR PRICE AND WHAT IT COVERS How the price is set. You describe the job, we ask a few questions, and we give you a single price including GST. Karua sets that price, and the contractor agrees it when they accept the job. They do not price your job, and they will not negotiate with you or ask you for more on the day. What your price is made up of. The single price you approve covers two separate things: the contractor's price for the work, and Karua's service fee for scoping and pricing your job, selecting and engaging the contractor, scheduling, handling your payment and standing behind our own service. You can see the split before you book, on the confirmation screen. How the money moves. You pay once, to Karua. We hold the payment, release the contractor's share to them on your behalf after you have approved the work, and retain our service fee. What your price covers. Your job summary sets out the scope of work, what is included, what is excluded, the assumptions we have made, and the circumstances in which the price could change. READ THE ASSUMPTIONS AND EXCLUSIONS. They define the job you are agreeing to. The price is the price, for the scope described. It will not change because a job took longer than we expected or because our costs were higher than we thought. It can only change through the variation process in section 6, which needs your approval every time. A price and scope can be withdrawn or revised before you book if the information we were given turns out to be inaccurate or incomplete, if the job falls outside what we can safely or lawfully do, or if it needs review by our team. If we revise something you have already approved, you will be asked to approve it again before anything proceeds. 4. BOOKING AND WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR CARD Read this section carefully. It describes money. How a booking is confirmed. When you request a booking it is pending while we engage a contractor for you. Once one accepts, your booking is confirmed and we tell you who they are, their licence number where the trade requires a licence and we hold it, and when they will attend. If a contractor does not respond in time we offer the job to another. If we cannot fill it we will contact you, and you can cancel with the hold released in full. At booking, we place a hold on your card for the full amount of your price. A HOLD IS NOT A CHARGE. No money leaves your account. Your bank will usually show the amount as pending, or as reduced available funds, until the hold is captured or released. We capture the payment only after the work is complete and approved (see section 8). That is the only point money moves. If an approved variation increases the price, we place a second, separate hold for the additional amount before that extra work begins (see section 6). We release the hold if you cancel, if we cancel, or if we cannot complete the job. Your bank may take a few business days to show the released funds. Holds expire. Card networks generally expire an authorisation after about a week. If your job has not gone ahead by then we may need to place a fresh hold before it can proceed. We use Stripe to process payments. Karua never sees or stores your full card number. 5. CANCELLING You can cancel for free before a contractor has been assigned to your job. The hold on your card is released. Once a contractor has been assigned, you can still cancel. If they have not yet started, there is no cancellation fee. If they have already begun, the work done to that point is payable, and we will tell you the amount before charging anything. If we cancel, for example because the job is unsafe, unlawful or outside what we can deliver, we release the hold in full and you pay nothing. 6. VARIATIONS Sometimes work uncovers something the agreed scope did not cover: a fault behind a wall, a part that is not the type we assumed, or extra work you ask for on the day. When that happens: 1. The contractor stops and describes what is needed. 2. Karua prices it, from the rates already agreed for this job. The contractor does not price the variation and cannot agree a price with you directly. 3. We tell you what it is, what it costs and why, and send it to you for approval. 4. Nothing proceeds until you approve it. If you decline, we complete the original scope where it is safe to do so, or we stop and you pay only for what was done. 5. Once approved, we place a second hold for the extra amount. YOU WILL NEVER BE CHARGED FOR EXTRA WORK YOU DID NOT APPROVE. 7. GETTING ACCESS, AND KEEPING THE SITE SAFE You agree to give us accurate information about the job and the property, to tell us anything that affects safety or access, and to provide safe and lawful access at the booked time. If you give us access information such as a gate code or where a key is kept, we pass it only to the assigned contractor, and only after they have accepted the job. If we cannot get access, section 9 applies. 8. COMPLETION AND YOUR REVIEW WINDOW When the work is done the contractor submits it as complete with photos, and we notify you. You then have 12 hours to raise a completion issue. If those 12 hours would end between 9pm and 8am Sydney time, you have until 8am instead. If you do not raise an issue in that time, the job is treated as approved and we capture the payment. We email you reminders before the window closes, but never between 9pm and 8am, so a window that falls almost entirely overnight may have none. When no night falls in the window, they come 4 hours and 8 hours after the contractor marks the work complete. THIS DOES NOT TAKE AWAY ANY OF YOUR RIGHTS. If something is wrong and you did not spot it in 12 hours, you can still raise it under section 10 and under the Australian Consumer Law. The 12-hour window decides when we take payment, not whether you can complain. Completion issues are things visible at the time: work not finished, work done incorrectly, or scope items missed. Problems that appear later are dealt with under section 10. 9. IF SOMEONE DOES NOT TURN UP If your contractor does not arrive during the booked window, tell us. You are not charged for the visit, we release or adjust the hold, and we will offer you a new time. If we cannot get access when the contractor attends, they will wait a reasonable period and try to contact you before leaving. Karua does not currently charge a fee when this happens. If we ever introduce one, we will publish the amount and the circumstances in these terms before it can apply to you, and it will never be charged automatically. 10. IF SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THE WORK Your rights under the Australian Consumer Law come first. Karua's service comes with consumer guarantees that cannot be excluded: it must be provided with due care and skill, must be fit for the purpose you told us about, and must be supplied within a reasonable time. The work itself comes with those guarantees too, and the contractor who carries it out owes them to you directly, along with any statutory warranty that applies to that kind of work. NOTHING IN THESE TERMS EXCLUDES, RESTRICTS OR MODIFIES THOSE RIGHTS. If anything here conflicts with them, the law wins and that part does not apply. What Karua will do. If the work is defective or does not match the agreed scope, tell us. We will arrange for it to be put right at no cost to you. Depending on what is wrong, that means the same contractor returning to redo the work, a different contractor attending, or a refund. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO CHASE THE CONTRACTOR. Managing that for you is part of the service you are paying us for, and it is a promise we make in our own right. The Karua Service Guarantee. For 90 days from the date the job is completed, if the work is not right, contact us at info@karua.com.au or through the platform with your job number and a description of the problem. We will take it up with the contractor and arrange for it to be repaired or redone at no cost to you. That may mean the same contractor returning, or a different contractor attending. Where the work has not yet been paid out, we can hold payment to the contractor while a claim is open. Between us and the contractor, the cost of putting defective work right is theirs, under the guarantees and warranties they owe you. Where Karua funds a rectification, we do so as part of our own service to you, and the contractor remains responsible to us for it. This is a promise about what Karua will do. It is not a warranty by Karua of the work itself. What we spend under this Guarantee on any one job is capped at the price you paid for that job. The cap applies to the Guarantee only. It does not limit your rights under the Australian Consumer Law, and it does not limit your rights against the contractor, neither of which is capped by anything in these terms. The Guarantee does not cover fair wear and tear, misuse or neglect, damage caused by someone else, work altered by another party, or anything outside the agreed scope. It does not cover the goods themselves where a manufacturer's warranty applies, though we will help you make that claim. The Karua Service Guarantee is in addition to your rights under the Australian Consumer Law and to the guarantees and warranties the contractor owes you. It does not limit or replace any of them. If the problem is that Karua's own service fell short, for example if we failed to select a properly qualified contractor, your rights against us under the Australian Consumer Law apply in full and are not affected by this section. Our goods and services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. For major failures with the service, you are entitled to cancel your service contract with us, and to a refund for the unused portion, or to compensation for its reduced value. You are also entitled to be compensated for any other reasonably foreseeable loss or damage. If the failure does not amount to a major failure, you are entitled to have problems with the service rectified in a reasonable time and, if this is not done, to cancel your contract and obtain a refund for the unused portion of the contract. The benefits given by this warranty are in addition to other rights and remedies you have under a law in relation to the goods or services to which this warranty relates. 11. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT What Karua is responsible for. We are responsible to you for our own service: scoping and pricing your job, selecting and engaging a contractor who is vetted and licensed where the trade requires a licence, scheduling the job, handling your payment correctly, being your single point of contact, and honouring the Karua Service Guarantee in section 10. Those obligations carry consumer guarantees that cannot be excluded, and we do not attempt to exclude them. What the contractor is responsible for. The work itself. They carry it out, they control how it is done, and they owe you the consumer guarantees and statutory warranties that attach to it directly, including the cost of putting defective work right. Section 10 means you deal with us and not with them, and that we carry that cost for you up to the price of the job rather than leaving you to recover it. That is the point of using Karua. It does not take away any right you have against them. We are not responsible for: - loss caused by information you gave us that was inaccurate or incomplete - pre-existing defects or conditions we did not cause and could not reasonably have found - delays caused by things outside our reasonable control - anything you arranged directly with a contractor outside Karua Nothing in this section limits your rights under the Australian Consumer Law, and nothing in these terms attempts to limit liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. 12. IF WE DISAGREE Tell us first: info@karua.com.au, or through the platform. We will acknowledge you promptly and work with you to resolve it. If we cannot resolve it between us, you keep every external avenue open to you. Nothing in these terms prevents you from contacting NSW Fair Trading, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, or a court or tribunal including NCAT. We do not require you to give up those options, and we are not the final judge of our own conduct. 13. YOUR INFORMATION How we collect, use, store and disclose your personal information, including photographs taken inside your property and artificial intelligence used to scope and price your job, is set out in our Privacy Policy at karua.com.au/privacy. Please read it. It forms part of these terms. 14. CHANGES TO THESE TERMS Each published version of these terms carries a version number, shown with them on the Karua website, and takes effect from the day that version is published. THE VERSION YOU ACCEPTED WHEN YOU BOOKED GOVERNS YOUR JOB. A change never applies retrospectively to a job already booked. We may update these terms. If we do, we publish the new version under a new version number. Continuing to use Karua after that means the new version applies to your next booking. 15. COMPLAINTS Email info@karua.com.au with your job number. We aim to acknowledge within one business day and to resolve within ten. If you are not satisfied, section 12 sets out your external options. 16. USING THE PLATFORM Please do not give us false information, use Karua for anything unlawful, or misuse the platform. We may decline or cancel a job that is unsafe, unlawful, outside what we service, or that we cannot price reliably. If we do, you pay nothing and we release any hold. 17. GENERAL These terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, and the courts of New South Wales have jurisdiction. If any part of these terms is found to be unenforceable, that part is severed and the rest continues to apply. In particular, Karua's service and the fee payable for it are separate from the contract for the work, and remain effective if that contract is affected. Notices to Karua go to info@karua.com.au.