Terms of use

Trustline is a directory. It helps somebody who needs work done find a business that does that work, and it lets them talk to each other.

Trustline does not do the work and is not part of your agreement. When you hire someone you found here, the agreement is between you and them. We do not employ them, supervise them, guarantee their work, hold your money, or set their prices. If the job goes wrong, your claim is against the business you hired, not against us.

We check that a business owner is a real person with a real identity document before we put a verified mark on their listing. That is a check on who they are. It is not a judgement that they are good at their trade, insured, licensed, or honest.

Trustline is operated by Trustline, Harare, Zimbabwe. You can reach us through the contact details on the site.

• You must be 18 or older.
• Your phone number is your username. Use a number that is actually yours — we send a code to it, and it is how we reach you.
• Keep your password to yourself. Anything done from your account is treated as done by you.
• One person, one account. You may run several businesses from one account, but you may not open a second account to get around a suspension or to leave reviews of yourself.

If you list a business here, you are telling us and everyone who reads it that:

• the business is real and you are entitled to represent it;
• the trades you list are trades you actually do;
• the photos are of your own work, or you have permission to use them;
• where a licence, registration or certificate is legally required for your trade, you hold it.

We may ask you to prove your identity with a government-issued document before you can be verified, appear in some places, or keep listing at all. What happens to that document is set out in our privacy notice.

We can edit or remove a listing, a photo, or a price that is misleading, offensive, or not what it claims to be.

Reviews are the reason a directory is worth anything, so the rules are strict.

• Only review a business you have actually dealt with.
• Do not review your own business, a business you work for, or a competitor.
• Do not pay for reviews, offer anything in exchange for one, or ask a customer to change or remove one in exchange for anything.
• Say what happened. Do not post anything you know to be untrue.

A review is marked as verified when the person leaving it made contact with that business through Trustline first. An unverified review still shows, and still counts.

A business can complain about a review. We will look at it and either leave it, remove it, or ask the reviewer about it. We do not remove a review simply because it is bad, and we do not sell review removal. A business found buying or faking reviews can be suspended and will lose the credit on its account.

A customer can post a job for free and receive quotes. Businesses pay to see who posted a job and to quote on it. That charge is taken from the credit on the business account, at the price shown before you take the lead.

• A lead is limited to a small number of businesses, so paying for one means a real chance of the job rather than a place in a queue of thirty.
• You are paying for the introduction, not for the job. We do not promise you will win it, or that the customer will reply.
• If a lead turns out to be fake, a duplicate, or nothing like what was described, tell us and we will put the money back on your account. That is our judgement to make, and we make it in your favour where it is close.
• Credit on your account is for use on Trustline. It does not expire, and it is not exchanged back into cash.

The top three positions in a trade are sold by auction, one week at a time, and are always marked as sponsored. The bid board is public — anyone can see what is being bid.

• Bidding closes before the week starts. If you win, you owe what you bid.
• If you do not pay by the deadline, the slot goes to the next bidder. The first time this happens you get a warning.
• After that, not paying for a slot you won costs a fine of 10% of the slot price, and you cannot bid again until it is paid.
• Paid placement moves where a listing appears. It does not change its rating, its reviews, or anything else a customer reads.

We may give free placement or free leads to a business — usually a new one being signed up. A free slot never displaces a paying bidder.

Trustline does not currently take or hold payment for the work itself. You pay the business directly, on whatever terms the two of you agree. Agree the price and what it includes before the work starts — most of the complaints we see are about something that was never agreed out loud.

• Post anything false, abusive, obscene, or that is not yours to post.
• Collect other people's phone numbers from the site for any other purpose.
• Scrape, copy or republish the directory, or use it to build a competing list of businesses.
• Request verification codes you do not need, or do anything else that runs up our costs.
• Try to get around a suspension.

We can suspend an account that breaks these rules. Where an account is linked to another by the same identity document, a suspension applies to all of them — otherwise a suspension means nothing.

If you are suspended you will be told why. You can write to us and we will look at it again. Unused credit on a suspended account is not refunded where the suspension was for fraud, fake reviews, or something similar.

We will run the site with reasonable care. We do not promise it will always be available, or that everything on it is accurate — most of what is on it was written by other people.

We are not liable for the work anybody does or fails to do, for anything you agreed with a business, or for loss of profit or business opportunity. Where we are liable, our total liability to you is limited to what you have paid Trustline in the twelve months before the claim.

Nothing here limits liability that cannot legally be limited, including for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud.

We may change these terms. If a change matters to you — the price of a lead, how placement works, what we do with your information — we will say so on the site before it takes effect. Continuing to use Trustline after that means you accept the change.

These terms are governed by the law of Zimbabwe, and the courts of Zimbabwe have jurisdiction over any dispute about them.

If we disagree, write to us first. Almost everything is settled faster that way than by anyone going anywhere near a court.