Terms & Conditions for Event Hosts

Introduction

These terms should be read alongside our Website Terms, Community Guidelines, and Privacy Policy. For detailed information about how we collect, use, store, and process personal data, and to understand your rights and responsibilities concerning this data, please refer to our Privacy Policy.

We recommend that you regularly visit our website to stay informed of any updates to these terms to ensure ongoing compliance.

By engaging Decibel’s services, you agree to adhere to our Terms of Use.

Please note that terms like “include”, “including”, and “in particular” are intended to provide examples and do not limit the scope of any preceding words.

Event or Booking Hosts Data Protection Commitment

By using our services, you agree to comply with all applicable South African laws, including data protection regulations, and adhere to our Privacy Policy, which outlines our commitment to safeguarding personal data.

To ensure compliance, you must:

  • Data Protection: Handle all personal data obtained through Decibel’s platform in strict accordance with applicable data protection laws and our Privacy Policy. This involves obtaining necessary consents, ensuring data accuracy, and implementing appropriate security measures to prevent unauthorized access, disclosure, or breaches.

  • Cooperation with Decibel: Support Decibel in maintaining compliance with data protection laws, including collaborating with us during data breaches or investigations by regulatory authorities.

  • Legal Compliance: Adhere to all relevant South African regulations, particularly those concerning consumer protection, electronic communications, and data privacy.

  • Privacy Policy Familiarity: Ensure you have thoroughly reviewed and understand our Privacy Policy. This policy details how we store, use, collect, and protect personal data, as well as the rights of data providers and our responsibilities as a data controller and processor.

  • Transparency with Users: Clearly communicate your data processing practices to users, including how their personal data will be used, shared, and protected. Obtain explicit consent from users when required, and honor their rights to access, correct, delete, or restrict the processing of their personal data.

  • Security Measures: Implement and maintain appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect personal data against unauthorized or unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction, or damage.

We require all third parties and event or booking hosts we work with to have adequate data protection policies in place.

Failure to comply with these obligations may result in the suspension or termination of your access to our platform and services. You may be held liable, to the fullest extent permitted by law, for any damages, costs, expenses, liabilities, or losses suffered by Decibel or any user due to your non-compliance, including those arising from data breaches, loss of personal data, or penalties incurred as a result.

Event or Booking Service Listings

When using the Decibel platform to promote your event or booking service, you must only list genuine events or booking services. Misleading, inaccurate, or false information is strictly prohibited, and your event or booking service must comply with all applicable South African laws, rules, and regulations, as well as these terms.

By posting a listing, you confirm that:

  • You are duly authorized to promote the event or booking service

  • You are not infringing any intellectual property or other rights.

  • You are acting legally and in compliance with all applicable laws.

  • You are responsible for any losses we incur due to inaccuracies in these warranties.

If your event or booking service is not suitable for younger audiences, ensure your listing clearly indicates the appropriate age restriction.

While we are not obligated to review or decline listings, we reserve the right to do so at our discretion, particularly in cases where:

  • The listing appears to serve an illegitimate purpose.

  • Insufficient information about the event or boking service is provided.

  • The event or booking service violates our Website Terms, Community Guidelines, or Privacy Policy.

  • The event or booking service is over-booked or unavailable.

You must not oversell tickets beyond the venue’s or booking service’s capacity and are responsible for ensuring the venue’s or booking service’s availability on the designated date(s).

Decibel’s Functions and Responsibilities

When you sell tickets for an event or booking service, your contract is with the consumer, not with Decibel.

We act as your limited payment agent, responsible for collecting payments from consumers and passing them to you (or the relevant beneficiary) in line with our Privacy Policy.

You authorize us to:

  • Collect, hold, disburse, and retain proceeds on your behalf but do not issue invoices as that responsibility rest with the Event Host and not Decibel.

  • Issue refunds where we determine a consumer is entitled provided funds have not already been paid out to the Event Host

  • Enable consumers to transfer or upgrade event or booking service tickets, if this function is enabled.

  • Provide EFT payments into the Event Hosts bank accounts when a withdrawal request is made by the Event Host from their wallet at a fee of R20 per request

  • In accepting this role, we do not assume liability for any of your actions or omissions.

Decibel’s Fees

Creating an account, listing an event or booking service, and accessing the platform are free. However, we charge fees when processing payments on your behalf. These fees may vary based on individual agreements between hosts and Decibel and typically include either a percentage-based fee or a fixed fee based on our sliding scale under fees. These fees generally include booking or ticket fees, banking and merchant fees as well as Decibel’s commission.

Hosts decide whether these fees are charged to consumers and displayed on the booking or payment pages or absorbed into the ticket or booking price.

Our fees may change from time to time and can vary based on factors such as product type, price, country, payment method, and currency. Detailed information about our fees is available on the Decibel website under the relevant product section.

Please note that our commission fee is non-refundable, even if a consumer receives a refund into their Decibel Wallet due to an event or booking service being cancelled or postponed

Payments

Your Decibel account will display the balance of amounts collected on your behalf, which may include personal data such as transaction history or payment details, processed in accordance with our Privacy Policy. This balance represents a general unsecured claim against Decibel, not a store of value or a deposit/current account.

We strive to pay out amounts collected on your behalf within 3 business days after the event, but this is not guaranteed.

We are only required to pay you once we have received full payment from the consumer and the event or booking service has been completed in full.

If we suspect a transaction is potentially fraudulent or part of a phishing attack, we may, at our discretion, cancel and fully refund the transaction to the relevant cardholder.

Refunds

All transactions are between you and the consumer, and you must handle all refund requests appropriately.

Your refund policy must be fair, reasonable, and compliant with all applicable laws, including the Consumer Protection Act, 2008 (“CPA”) in South Africa. You must respect consumer rights under the CPA, particularly regarding refunds and the “cooling-off” period.

You grant us the right to:

  • Determine, at our discretion, whether a consumer should be refunded

  • Refund consumers on your behalf, where we hold proceeds and believe a refund is warranted.

  • Reflect the refund in the consumers Decibel wallet on our Platform to be used for future events or booking services listed with Decibel

  • A user may request a refund into their bank accounts 10 days after their wallet has been credited with the refund amount less any fees or commissions levied by Decibel or its payment partners

You have no right to demand payment for any amount we have refunded to a customer unless we have acted with gross negligence or wilful misconduct.

In the event of a cancellation, you must refund all consumers less commissions and fees charged by Decibel into their Decibel wallets upon instruction to Decibel

If an event or booking service is cancelled or we believe there is a risk of cancellation or non-performance, and we have facilitated the transaction via one of Decibel’s payment processing partners, we will initiate a refund to consumers for the transaction value (minus our fee), directly into the consumer’s Decibel Wallet

If we have already paid you the ticket proceeds, you are responsible for processing consumer refunds.

You must reimburse us for any losses incurred due to chargebacks or refund claims against Decibel related to your event. We reserve the right to set off the amount against any future payments due to you.

You will be responsible for any losses we suffer due to your failure to comply with legal obligations to a consumer.

Merchandise or Value-Added Product Sales

Decibel’s Platform is capable of allowing the addition or Event Merchandise or Value-Added Product sales in conjunction with a booking or ticket purchase

Decibel merely facilitate the ability for you to add merchandise or products to your offering but do not facilitate any delivery mechanisms or courier integrations. All purchased Merchandise or Products must be supplied by the Event or booking service Organiser at the event or booking service with clear instructions on how they are to be collected.

  • Decibel is in no way responsible for non-delivery of Merchandise or Products by event or booking service hosts

  • Decibel levies a fee for all merchandise or products sold on our platform which are incorporated into the final sales price of the item with the relevant payment gateway fees, details of which can be found under our Fees page of our website

  • Funds held by Decibel or its gateway partners will be paid over to the event or booking host within 3 business days after the event or booking service has been provided

  • Any discrepancies by consumers about non-delivery or faulty Merchandise or Products must be handled by the event or booking service host directly and Decibel will not be held liable in any shape or form regarding those instances

  • All refunds for merchandise or product sales will be handled by the event or service host directly and will never come from Decibel or its payment gateway partners

  • We may withhold payment to you until the merchandise or products are delivered in good working order and condition to the consumer and they have confirmed this in writing to us or a refund has been issued by you

Promotional Tools and Networks

Decibel offers various promotional tools that must be used in line with our Privacy Policy. Any misuse of these tools, including for malicious purposes, illegal activities, mass marketing, spamming, or data selling, will result in account suspension.

Using Decibel’s Multi-Level Marketing capabilities, you can invite others to promote your event or booking service, and you determine the commission payable to the promoter. We will provide you with the tools to see the sales and commissions payable to each promoter but the actual payment must be done from the event or booking service hosts side once funds have been paid over to you.

We track promoter transactions using a unique URL generated by Decibel’s platform that must be supplied to them to use exclusively in order to attract commissions. Transactions outside this unique website URL will not be attributed to the promoter, and no commission will be reflected.

Event or booking service hosts will be responsible for any losses we suffer due to your failure to pay commission to a promoter.

We may remove anyone from a promoter network (resulting in the forfeiture of commission) if we suspect any of the following:

  • Cheating

  • Spamming

  • Unfair or illegal sales practices

  • Attempts to manipulate the platform

Disclaimer and Assumption of Risks by You

You are solely responsible for delivering the event or booking service and any merchandise or value-added products attached to them.

A payment processed by us on your behalf is equivalent to a payment made directly to you by the consumer. You have the same responsibility to deliver the goods/services listed on the platform as if you had received payment directly from the consumer, regardless of whether the funds have been received from Decibel.

We encourage consumers to deal with hosts directly. However, if a consumer complaint is not adequately addressed by you and the consumer continues to seek relief from us, we will seek legal counsel and take any reasonable actions we deem necessary to address the complaint. We are committed to upholding consumer protection, and we expect you to honour this commitment.

You are responsible for compensating us for any losses we incur due to your failure to fulfil your obligations to a consumer or adequately address a consumer complaint.

For physical events or booking services, you bear full responsibility for the health and safety of all employees, service providers, ticket holders, suppliers, performers, vendors, and other attendees. It is essential that you do not organize or host an event or booking services without obtaining the appropriate insurance, including public liability insurance. In the event of any injury, damage, or loss occurring at your event or booking service, we may require you to publicly clarify that Decibel is not associated with your event or booking service.

You (including your employees, contractors, representatives, agents, directors, and shareholders) agree to indemnify and hold Decibel harmless from any loss including reputational loss, costs, expenses, damages, liabilities, injury, and/or death, to the fullest extent permitted by law, arising in connection with or attributable to: ticket purchases, merchandise or product sales, usage, refunds and/or cancellations, event or booking service attendance (or non-attendance), exceeding venue capacity, venue or event or booking service unavailability on the scheduled date(s), event or booking service cancellation/postponement (unless explicitly stated otherwise in these terms), your breach of these terms, and/or any act or omission on your part (“Loss”).

If we incur such Loss, you will reimburse us in full upon request. Should you fail to do so within 7 business days of our request, we may deduct the amount of such Loss from any future payments due to you.

Ensuring that consumers have the best possible event experience is crucial. A negative experience reflects poorly on both the host and Decibel. An event or booking service will be deemed “diminished” under the following conditions:

  • If an event starts more than 30 minutes later than the scheduled time.

  • If any key performers, speakers, or individuals are absent during the event.

  • For virtual events, if the broadcast or pre-recorded video is delayed or interrupted for 30 minutes or longer, or if the video quality falls below a 720p bitrate.

In the case of a diminished event, we reserve the right (at our sole discretion) to:

  • Send an email to ticket or booking holders informing them of the diminished status, with the cost to be borne by the event or booking host.

  • Display a notice of the diminished status on the platform.

  • Offer refunds into the Decibel wallets of ticket or booking holders on your behalf.

Decibel shall not be liable for any indirect, special, or consequential losses arising from or related to your use of the platform or our services.

“Force Majeure” refers to circumstances beyond Decibel’s reasonable control, including (but not limited to) acts of war, civil unrest, political or civil disturbances, riots, insurrections, strikes, lockouts, transport disruptions, cyber-attacks, data breaches, labour disputes, boycotts, fires, explosions, floods, storms, infectious or contagious diseases, epidemics, pandemics, natural or physical disasters, sabotage, terrorism, government actions or omissions, laws or regulations, or any acts of God or forces of nature. Decibel shall not be held liable for any delays or failures in performance due to a Force Majeure event.

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