Terms of use
Short, and worth reading once. This site is a set of notes written by private individuals about hiring and living with cars in and around Durban. Using it means you accept what follows, which is mostly about the difference between a well-informed opinion and professional advice.
What this site is
A reading site. The articles, the question list and the notes on the services page are our own experience and our own reading of documents, written for drivers in KwaZulu-Natal who are mostly past fifty. They are not an industry report, they are not neutral, and in several places they say plainly what we would do, which is an opinion and marked as one.
Nothing on the site is a public register of prices, a comparison service or an offer of any kind. The rand figures are indicative, gathered from what people in this circle have actually paid, and they move with the season and the branch.
Advice, not an agency
We read documents and we explain them. We are not brokers, agents, insurers or attorneys, and we hold no mandate from any rental company. We cannot reserve, hold, discount or cancel a vehicle for you, and any booking you make is a contract between you and the company you made it with.
Where a matter needs a professional, we will say so. A disputed claim of real size, an injury, or anything involving a criminal case number belongs with an attorney or your own insurer, not with four people who read agreements well.
The prices on the services page
Those figures are indicative starting points for the work described, not quotations. Before anything begins we will tell you what the job will cost and what it covers, and if a matter turns out to be larger than the figure assumed, we will tell you that before carrying on rather than afterwards.
Payment is for our time and the notes it produces. We do not guarantee a particular outcome with any rental company, because we have no authority over any of them.
Hire agreements are yours, not ours
Signing an agreement is your decision and the consequences of it sit with you. Our read-through tells you what the wording says and what we think of it; it does not transfer any part of your liability to us, and it cannot stop a company enforcing a clause you chose to accept.
If our reading of a clause turns out to differ from how a company applies it in practice, tell us, because that is useful and we will correct the article. It is not, however, grounds for us to carry a charge on your behalf.
What we will not do
We will not telephone a rental company pretending to act for you, write to anybody under your name, or sign anything on your behalf. Letters we draft for a dispute go out from you, with your name at the foot, and you are free to change a word of them.
We also will not recommend a company in exchange for anything, and we will not accept a hire or a discount from one. If that ever changes, this paragraph will change first.
Photographs and material on the site
The photographs are ours or are used with permission, and the text is ours. Quote a paragraph with a link back if it is useful to you, which we have no objection to at all; reproducing an entire article elsewhere is a different matter and needs a telephone call first.
Place names, road numbers, border posts and public processes are described as geography and procedure. Where a photograph happens to show a badge on a car, the picture is a picture, and the text makes no claim about any manufacturer.
Liability, in plain words
We take care with what we write and we still get things wrong occasionally, because policy at hire companies changes without notice and branches interpret their own rules differently. Use the notes as a well-informed starting point and verify anything that would cost you money if it were out of date.
To the extent the law allows, we accept no liability for a decision you take after reading this site. What we do accept is responsibility for the quality of a paid reading, and if we have plainly got one wrong, telephone and we will put it right or return the fee.