Terms of use

CouC is operated by Stephan Oosthuizen, trading as CouC, a sole proprietor in South Africa. A sole proprietor has no separate company registration number, so there is none to publish.

Address for service: Unit 220, The Vineyards, Nooitgedacht Village, Koelpark, Stellenbosch, South Africa.

You can reach us at stephan@couc.co.za.

CouC is an introduction service. We list contractors who issue property compliance certificates, and we pass your request to the ones you choose.

We do not carry out inspections, we do not issue certificates, and we are not a party to the agreement between you and the contractor. That agreement - what work is done, what it costs, when it happens, and what happens if something goes wrong - is between you and them directly.

We also never handle the money for the inspection work. You pay the contractor directly. The only payment CouC ever charges is the monthly listing fee, and only contractors pay that.

Submitting the request form is a request, not a booking. The contractor contacts you to arrange a time, and either of you may decide not to go ahead.

Several certificate types have different regulators, and one business often cannot issue them all. Where your request needs more than one trade, you choose a contractor for each, and each receives a separate request covering only what they are registered for. The form shows you which certificates each contractor can and cannot issue before you submit.

Please give accurate details, and only enter another person's details - a seller, purchaser, or the person giving access - if you may share them for this purpose.

Listing costs R250 a month. You appear in search only for the certificate types we have approved, and only while your registration for that type is current.

You confirm, and must keep true, that:

• the business details and documents you give us are yours, genuine and current;
• you are lawfully registered to issue every certificate type you apply for, with the relevant regulator;
• you will tell us immediately if a registration lapses, is suspended or is withdrawn - customers rely on our check, so a stale registration is the most serious thing that can go wrong here;
• you will respond to requests we pass you, or tell us you cannot cover an area so we stop sending them.

Approval means we checked the documents you sent against the certificate type you applied for. It is not a warranty of your work, and we do not supervise it.

We may hide or remove a listing - including without notice where a registration appears to have lapsed or a document appears not to be genuine. Where we remove a listing for something less urgent, we will tell you why and give you a chance to put it right.

R250a month keeps a contractor's profile visible in search. It is the only charge CouC makes, to anyone.

Card billing is not switched on yet. Until it is, listing is free and nothing is owed; we will tell you clearly, in advance, before any charge is ever made. When it does start, you will be able to cancel at any time and your listing will simply stop at the end of the month you have paid for. We do not refund part months.

We will take reasonable care to keep the site working and the listings accurate, and to check every contractor's registration before listing them for a certificate type.

We cannot promise the site is never unavailable, and we are not responsible for the work a contractor does, what they charge, whether they arrive, or the outcome of an inspection. If a contractor lets you down, tell us - it matters to us and it affects whether they stay listed - but the claim itself is against them.

Nothing in these terms limits any right you have under South African law that cannot lawfully be limited, including under the Consumer Protection Act.

How we handle personal information is set out in our privacy notice, which forms part of these terms.

We may change these terms. When we change them materially we publish a new version and record which version applied to each request and each contractor application. This is version 2026-08-01.

These terms are governed by the law of the Republic of South Africa, and the South African courts have jurisdiction.