📜 Terms of Service

1. Who we are

Merik Sokoni is a Kenyan online marketplace for local services. It is run by Merik, at sokoni.merikagency.com. In these terms, "we", "us" and "the platform" mean Merik Sokoni. "You" means anyone using the site, whether you are booking a service or selling one.

2. What Merik Sokoni is (and is not)

We are an introduction platform. We help customers find local service providers, agree a price, talk to each other and keep a record of the job. That is all.

• Providers are independent businesses and individuals. They are not our employees or agents.
• Prices, availability, timing and quality of work are set and delivered by the provider.
• We review provider applications before approving them, but approval is not a guarantee of skill, honesty, licensing or insurance. Please use your own judgement.

3. Your account

• You must be at least 18 years old to create an account.
• Your Merik account is shared across Merik websites, so the same email and password work on other Merik services that use it.
• Give real details. A wrong phone number or address usually means the job cannot be done.
• Keep your password to yourself. Anything done from your account is treated as done by you.
• If you tick "remember me" when logging in, we keep you signed in on that device for 30 days. Log out to end it. Do not tick it on a shared phone.
• You can sign in with Google instead of a password. If you do, Google tells us your name, email address and profile picture.

4. How a booking works

1. You book. You pick a service, fill in the details the provider asks for, give a location and a phone number, and send the order. Some services have a fixed price. Others are bargainable.
2. You bargain (optional). On a bargainable service either side can send a counter-offer. You can go back and forth up to 5 rounds. After that you either accept the offer on the table or let the order go.
3. The provider accepts or declines. A booking is only confirmed once the provider accepts it. Until then nothing is agreed.
4. The provider starts the job and marks it in progress. While a job is in progress the provider may share their live location with you so you can see them coming.
5. You confirm with an OTP. When the provider says the job is done, we email a six digit code to the email address on your account. You give that code to the provider and they enter it. That is what marks the job complete.
6. You review. Once a job is complete you can leave one rating and comment.

5. Paying for the job

You pay the provider directly. Providers say on their profile which methods they take — usually cash, M-Pesa or bank transfer. Settle it between yourselves in the way you both agree.

• Merik Sokoni never collects, holds or forwards the money for a job.
• We take no commission or cut from the job price.
• The price shown on a listing is the provider's own price. Any deposit the provider asks for is between you and them.
• Receipts, invoices and any tax on the job are the provider's responsibility, not ours.
• Because we never held the money, we cannot refund a job. See the Cancellations & Refunds page for what we can do.

6. Rules for customers

• Give a correct address, phone number and description of the job.
• Be reachable at the time you agreed, and make sure someone can let the provider in.
• Pay the agreed price once the work is done. Do not use the OTP as leverage to pay less.
• Treat providers with respect. Abuse, threats or discrimination will get your account closed.
• Do not ask a provider to do anything illegal or unsafe.
• Keep the conversation in Sokoni chat. It is the record we can look at if something goes wrong.

7. Rules for providers

• List only work you can actually do, and describe it honestly. No fake listings, no fake photos, no prices you do not intend to honour.
• Hold whatever licence, permit, certification or insurance your trade requires by law. That is on you, not on us.
• You are responsible for your own tax, including any VAT or income tax on what you earn.
• Do the job at the price and time you accepted. If you cannot, say so early in chat and decline or close the order with a clear reason.
• Only ask for the OTP once the job is genuinely finished.
• Customer details — name, phone number, address and location — are given to you for that one job. Do not save them for marketing, do not resell them, do not pass them to anyone else, and do not contact the customer for anything other than that job.
• Only share your live location while a job is in progress, and stop when it is done.
• Do not ask customers to move off Sokoni to avoid the platform, and do not chase them for payment before the work is done.
• Your business name, profile and listings must not copy another provider or pretend to be a brand you do not represent.

8. Provider plans and boosts

Listing on Sokoni is free. Providers who want more listings, better placement or extra features can buy a subscription plan or a one-off boost. Prices are on the Pricing page.

• This is the only money that flows through the platform. You pay it to us, not to a customer.
• We accept card payments through Paystack, M-Pesa through Safaricom Daraja, and cryptocurrency through NOWPayments.
• A plan is paid up front for a fixed period. We do not store your card and we do not charge you again automatically. When the period ends the plan simply lapses until you pay again.
• A boost runs for the number of days shown on the package and then stops.
• Paying for a plan does not buy you orders, rankings, approval, or protection from suspension.
• Refunds for plans and boosts are covered on the Cancellations & Refunds page.

9. Reviews and ratings

• Only a customer with a completed order can review, and only once per order.
• Write about the job you actually received. Do not post personal attacks, other people's private details, or anything untrue.
• Providers may reply once to a review, in public.
• Buying, selling, swapping or pressuring people for reviews is banned. So is reviewing your own business.
• We can hide or remove a review that breaks these rules. We will not remove a review just because a provider does not like it.

10. What you may not do

• Offer or request anything illegal in Kenya — including drugs, weapons, sexual services, stolen goods, or work that needs a licence you do not hold.
• Impersonate another person or business.
• Use the platform to scam, phish, or collect people's details.
• Send spam, chain messages or unsolicited marketing through chat.
• Scrape, copy or bulk-download listings, profiles or customer data.
• Try to break, overload or get around the security of the site.
• Upload malware, or photos and text you do not have the right to use.

11. Location and tracking

When you book, you can share your exact location so the provider can find you. We save those coordinates with the order and show them to that provider only. While a job is in progress the provider can share their own live location back with you.

Location sharing is optional on your side — you can type an address instead. Full detail of what we store and who sees it is in the Privacy Policy.

12. Suspending or closing accounts

• We can hide a listing, suspend an account or close it if these terms are broken, if we are told to by law, or if we believe someone is being put at risk.
• We normally give the reason. A suspended provider can send us an appeal from their dashboard, and can reapply.
• If we suspend a provider for breaking these rules, we do not owe a refund of a plan or boost.
• You can stop using Sokoni at any time. To have your account and data deleted, see the Privacy Policy.

13. What we are responsible for

We will run the platform with reasonable care. But we are the noticeboard, not the workman, so please be clear about the limits:

• We do not promise that any provider will turn up, do good work, be honest, be insured, or be licensed.
• We do not promise that the site will always be available or free of faults.
• We are not responsible for loss, damage, injury, theft or bad workmanship caused by a provider or a customer. That claim is against the person involved.
• We are not responsible for money you paid outside the platform.
• Where the law allows us to limit our liability, our total liability to you is limited to the amount you actually paid Merik Sokoni in the six months before the problem. For customers that is normally nothing, because customers pay us nothing.
• Nothing here removes rights you have under Kenyan consumer law that cannot be signed away.

14. Complaints and disputes

1. Talk to the other person first, in the order chat. Most problems are a misunderstanding about price, time or scope.
2. Then tell us. Use the support chat on any page, or email support@merikagency.com with the order reference. We can read the order record and the chat, mediate, warn, hide a listing or suspend an account.
3. What we cannot do is take money from one side and give it to the other. We never held it.
4. These terms are governed by the laws of Kenya, and the courts of Kenya have jurisdiction.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the platform changes. The date at the top always shows the current version. If a change is important we will tell you on the site or by email. Carrying on using Sokoni after a change means you accept the new version.

16. Contact

Questions about these terms? Email support@merikagency.com or open the support chat from the Contact page.