Refund & Cancellation Policy

1. Who this policy applies to

This policy applies to everyone who books and pays for transport through the Doskiiey Connect app or website — riders, parents and account holders alike. It forms part of our Terms of Service, and it is read together with our Privacy Policy.

Doskiiey Connect is the supplier you contract with when you book a trip: we are responsible for the service, for customer support, for resolving disputes, and for the refunds described here. The software and infrastructure behind the platform are built and maintained by DiKarabo Technologies (Pty) Ltd, our technology partner, which is not a party to your booking.

2. Your rights under South African law

Nothing in this policy takes away a right the law gives you. Where this policy and the law disagree, the law wins. In particular:

• You may cancel an advance booking. Under section 17 of the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008, you may cancel a reservation for any reason. We may keep a reasonable cancellation charge — but "reasonable" is measured against the length of notice you gave us, our realistic chance of re-selling the seat, the nature of the service, and what the industry ordinarily does. That is why our charges go down the more notice you give: a flat forfeit would be the unreasonable design, not the safe one.
• You are never charged a cancellation fee after a death or hospitalisation. Where a booking cannot be honoured because the person it was made for has died or been hospitalised, we charge nothing and refund what you paid. This is your right under section 17(5) of the Act, and we apply it across every service.
• You may cancel an ongoing subscription. Wherever the law treats a subscription as a fixed-term agreement, section 14 of the Act gives you the right to cancel it on 20 business days' notice. We do not argue about whether it applies: we give you that right either way, on every scholar subscription. We may charge a reasonable cancellation penalty, but we can never take away the right to cancel.
• You are entitled to a service performed properly.Section 54 of the Act gives you the right to timely performance, to notice of any unavoidable delay, and to a service of the quality people are generally entitled to expect. If we fall short of that, you choose the remedy: you may require us to put it right, or to refund a reasonable portion of what you paid, judged against how badly we fell short. The choice is yours, not ours.

The Act reaches us squarely: it defines a "service" to include the transportation of an individual, so every ride, shuttle and scholar trip we sell is covered by it.

3. The seven-day cooling-off right, and why trips are different

The Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 gives consumers a seven-day cooling-off right on many things bought online. It does not apply to a ride.

The Act itself carves out two things that describe exactly what we sell: transport that the supplier undertakes to provide on a specific date or within a specific period, and services that begin, with your agreement, before the seven days are up. A booked trip is both. So when you book a ride — whether it arrives in four minutes or on Friday at 06:00 — the seven-day cooling-off right does not attach to it.

This does not leave you without protection. Your cancellation rights come from the Consumer Protection Act instead, and they are set out in full below, service by service. In practice they are more useful to you than a cooling-off period would be: you can cancel a ride two minutes after a driver accepts it and pay nothing at all.

4. On-demand rides

Free to cancel

Any time before a driver is assigned — and for 2 minutes after

Driver waits

5 minutes at your pick-up point

You pay nothing if

The driver is late, is not coming, or the vehicle is wrong

Cancelling before you ride

• Before a driver is assigned — free. Cancel as often as you like. Nobody has been dispatched, so nobody has lost anything.
• Within 2 minutes of a driver accepting — free. This is your window to change your mind.
• After that — a cancellation fee may apply. By then a driver has turned toward you and is spending fuel and time getting there, and the fee covers that. It reflects the distance the driver has already travelled and the time spent. We show you the exact amount before you confirm the cancellation — you will never discover the fee only after it is charged.

If you are not there — the no-show fee

If the driver reaches your pick-up point and waits 5 minutes and you do not appear, and we cannot reach you, the trip may be cancelled and a no-show fee charged. It is the same amount as the cancellation fee — we do not charge a higher penalty for a no-show. If waiting time was already charged on that trip, we do not also charge a cancellation or no-show fee.

When you pay nothing at all

You are not charged a cancellation or no-show fee — and any fee already taken is refunded — when:

• the driver never moved toward your pick-up point;
• the driver is more than 5 minutes later than the arrival time we showed you when the trip was matched;
• the driver cancels, or the driver arrives and leaves without waiting the full 5 minutes;
• the vehicle that arrives is not the vehicle you booked, or is not fit to carry you;
• the driver refuses the payment method the app accepted, or refuses to accommodate a disability or an assistance animal;
• the trip never happened, or you were charged for a trip you did not take;
• the person the trip was booked for has died or been hospitalised.

If the ride itself went wrong — the driver took a route that was plainly not reasonable, the trip was abandoned part-way, or you were charged more than the fare you were quoted — tell us and we will put it right, by refunding the difference or the whole fare depending on what happened.

5. Long-distance & airport shuttle

To book

A deposit now, the balance when the trip is done

Free cancellation

Within 1 hour of booking

After that

The more notice you give, the more you get back

A long-distance or airport seat is held for you, which means it is held away from someone else. You pay a deposit to confirm the booking — the amount is shown to you before you confirm — and the balance is settled when the trip is completed.

What it costs to cancel

The cancellation charge falls as the notice you give rises, because the more warning we have, the better our chance of putting someone else in that seat. This is the sliding scale required by section 17 of the Consumer Protection Act:

• The charge is taken off what you have already paid. If the charge is less than your deposit, we refund the difference. We will not invoice you for the balance of a trip you cancelled.
• If we re-sell your seat, you get more back. Even inside the last three hours, if someone else takes the seat you gave up, we refund you accordingly — we do not charge twice for one seat.
• Death or hospitalisation: no charge, full refund. Always, at any notice.

Airport pick-ups and waiting

Flights slip, and we plan for it. For an airport collection, your driver waits up to 60 minutes after a domestic flight lands and up to 90 minutes after an international one, at no extra charge. Beyond that a waiting charge may apply, and it is shown to you before it is charged. If your flight is cancelled or diverted, tell us as soon as you know and we will move or refund the booking — we do not treat an airline's cancellation as your no-show.

If we cancel

If we cancel a shuttle, or cannot get you there — no vehicle, no driver, a breakdown we cannot cover — you choose: a seat on the next departure that suits you, or a full refund of everything you have paid. No charge, no argument.

And a refund is the floor, not the ceiling. If you cancel late, you carry a cost — so it would not be fair for us to cancel late and simply hand your money back as though nothing happened. Where our cancellation leaves you out of pocket — a night you had to book, another way home you had to pay for — tell us and we will cover the reasonable cost of it. The obligation runs both ways or it is not a fair one.

6. Scholar transport

How it is billed

A monthly subscription, or a once-off trip

To cancel

20 business days' notice, any time

Then

Billing stops. No further charges.

Scholar transport is sold as a monthly subscription — a seat on a route, every school day of the month — or as a once-off trip. A subscription renews and is charged each month until you cancel it.

Cancelling a subscription

• You may cancel at any time, for any reason, by giving us 20 business days' notice — in the app, or by emailing support@doskiieyconnect.co.za. We do not ask for a reason, and we never require more notice than this.
• The service runs through the notice period, and is payable for it. Your child keeps their seat until the cancellation takes effect, and then billing stops. There are no charges after that.
• We do not refund a month we have already run for you. The seat was reserved for your child, the route ran, and it could not be given to another family. If you believe that is unfair in your circumstances, tell us — the law requires us to be reasonable, and we will look at it.
• But any money you have paid that we have not yet charged for is yours, and we refund it. If you are ever in credit with us when you cancel, that credit comes back to you. We do not keep a prepaid balance we have not earned.

Days your child does not travel

A subscription buys a reserved seat on a route, not a count of trips, so an occasional missed morning — illness, a school event, a family day — is not refunded and does not earn a credit. The vehicle still ran and the seat was still held. If, on the other hand, we miss the trip — no vehicle arrived, or the route did not run — that is on us: tell us and we will credit or refund those days.

A once-off scholar trip is cancelled like any other pre-booked trip: cancel with a clear day's notice and you pay nothing.

Stopping the payment itself

To end a subscription, cancel it with us — that is what stops the billing and closes the agreement. You may also withdraw the recurring payment authorisation with your bank or card provider, and you are entitled to. Be aware that doing only that stops the money without ending the agreement, which can leave an unpaid balance behind. Cancelling with us does both.

7. Corporate accounts

Where a company books and pays for trips on a corporate account, the trips are billed to that account rather than to the individual rider, and cancellations and refunds are handled under the corporate agreement between us and that company.

• Refunds are settled as adjustments to the account — a credit against the account, or an adjustment on the next invoice — rather than as a payment back to an individual rider's card.
• A rider on a corporate account is not charged personally for a cancellation or a no-show on a corporate trip. Any charge sits on the corporate account.
• Where the corporate agreement is silent on something, the rules in this policy apply.

Account holders should raise billing queries through their account contact, or email support@doskiieyconnect.co.za.

8. University & institution shuttle

A university residence shuttle is paid for by the institution, not by you. You are not charged to ride it, so there is nothing to refund — and there is no cancellation fee for missing one. If you miss the shuttle, you have missed a free ride, not a paid booking.

If you then book an on-demand ride to get where you were going, that is an ordinary paid trip and the on-demand rules in section 4 apply to it in full, including any discount your institution has arranged for you.

9. When the service fails, or a charge is wrong

The rules above are about you changing your plans. This section is about us getting it wrong. In every case here, you get your money back.

• The trip never happened — no driver, no vehicle, or we cancelled: full refund.
• We turned up somewhere else, or at some other time. If we offer you the trip at a place, on a date, or at a time other than the one you booked, you may cancel it — with no cancellation fee, and we refund everything you have paid. This is our commitment to you, whatever else this policy says.
• You were charged for a trip you did not take: full refund.
• You were charged twice for the same trip, or charged the wrong amount: we refund the difference.
• We took your booking and then had no seat for you. Where we accepted a reservation for a specific date and could not supply it because we did not have the capacity, you get everything you paid back, with interest at the rate prescribed by law, and we cover the costs you directly incurred because we let you down.
• The trip was materially not what you paid for — it was abandoned part-way, or the service fell short of a reasonable standard: under section 54 of the Consumer Protection Act you may require us either to put it right or to refund a reasonable portion of the fare. Tell us which you want.

Tell us within 30 days of the charge appearing, so we can check it against the trip record while that record is fresh. We will still look at anything reported later — the 30 days is not a cut-off on your rights, it is simply when we can be most useful.

10. How refunds are paid

• Back to the way you paid — and only there. A card refund is returned to the same card you paid with, through our payment provider. We cannot send it to a different card or account, and we will never ask you for your card details to process one. A refund also never exceeds what you originally paid.
• You get a receipt for it. Every refund we process generates a refund receipt, and we send you a copy. If you did not get one, ask us and we will resend it.
• How long it takes. We process an approved refund immediately. Your bank then takes its own time to show it — typically 5 to 10 business days, depending on the bank and the card. That last stretch is out of our hands.
• What you get back. The amount refunded, in South African Rand — the same currency you paid in. We do not deduct an administration fee from a refund. The only amount ever withheld is a cancellation charge set out in this policy.
• Where a service is unavailable and we cannot provide the trip you paid for, we refund you in full, and well within 30 days.

11. How to cancel, or ask for a refund

For a refund request, give us the booking reference and a short description of what happened. We acknowledge every request, and we will tell you the outcome and the reason for it.

12. If you disagree with our decision

Come back to us first — most disputes are a missing detail, and we would rather fix it than have you fight for it. If you are still not satisfied, you are entitled to take it further, and we will not stand in your way:

• The National Consumer Commission, which enforces the Consumer Protection Act, or the relevant provincial consumer affairs office.
• Your bank or card provider, through their dispute process.

This policy is governed by the law of South Africa, and nothing in it limits a right the Consumer Protection Act or the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act gives you.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as our services change. When we do, we update the Last updated date above, and where a change materially affects you we will tell you before it takes effect. The policy that applies to a booking is the one published when you made it.

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