Refund and Cancellation Policy

Effective date: 19 September 2026

Read this first

Five things decide what happens to your money. They are all explained below, but they are the ones people are surprised by:

1. You are charged when you confirm your technician has arrived — not when the work is finished. Section 2.
2. After your technician marks the job finished, you have 48 hours to accept or reject the work. If you do nothing, it is treated as accepted, and after that there is no way to get a refund through KarKar. Section 5.
3. If you reject the work, a KarKar employee decides — and there are only two possible answers: the technician is paid in full, or you are refunded in full. There is no middle outcome. Section 6.
4. Between about 48 hours before your appointment and the appointment itself, the app does not give you a cancel button. Section 4.
5. KarKar holds your money and does not release it to your technician until the work is confirmed — but 48 hours of silence confirms it. KarKar does not guarantee the work itself. KarKar publishes a standard 12-month / 12,000-mile workmanship warranty and technicians can opt in to it; where one has, it is that technician's promise, shown to you by KarKar — not a KarKar guarantee. Sections 5 and 10.

1. What this policy covers

1.1 This policy explains when you are charged, when you can cancel, and when you get your money back. It applies to every service booked through KarKar and forms part of the KarKar Terms of Service.

1.2 Where this policy and the Terms of Service disagree about payments, refunds or cancellations, this policy governs.

1.3 Words used here. "You" means the Client — the person booking a service. "Technician" means the independent mechanic performing it. "We" and "KarKar" mean KarKar Ops LLC.

2. When your card is charged

There are three separate moments, and the differences matter.

2.1 When you accept a quote — nothing is charged. We save your card on file. No money moves.

2.2 About 48 hours before your appointment — we place a hold. We place an authorisation hold on your card for 100% of the quoted total. A hold is not a charge: your bank reserves the money, but it has not been taken. If your appointment is less than 48 hours away when you book, we place the hold shortly after you book.

If the hold fails, we tell you and you can update your payment method. If no hold has succeeded by 24 hours before the appointment, the booking is cancelled automatically and you are charged nothing.

2.3 When you confirm your technician has arrived — we take the money, and the job starts. When you confirm in the app that your technician has arrived, we charge the full amount to your card. The money leaves your account at that moment and is held by KarKar. It is not paid to your technician then. There is no separate "work has started" step in the app: your confirmation takes the money and starts the job in one action.

If you never confirm, we take nothing. The booking closes 24 hours after the appointment start time and the hold is released — and your technician is not paid, even if they came and did the work.

We do not release it to your technician until the work is confirmed — and if you say nothing for 48 hours after your technician marks the job finished, it is confirmed for you and the money goes to them. That is section 5, and it is the single term most people are surprised by.

2.4 If the price changes during the job. If your technician finds extra work and sends you a revised quote, and you accept it:

• where the price goes down, we refund the difference straight away;
• where the price goes up, we charge the difference to your card straight away.

You do not have to accept a revised quote. If you reject it, or if you do not respond within 24 hours, the job continues at the original price and the original amount.

3. When your technician is paid

3.1 We hold your money for 7 days after the job closes, and then pay your technician their share. The 7 days is a fixed period, not a minimum.

3.2 A job "closes" when you accept the work, or when the 48-hour review window in section 5 runs out, or when KarKar support resolves a rejected job in the technician's favour.

3.3 Because the review window runs before the 7-day hold begins, a technician whose customer says nothing is paid about 9 days after finishing the work. The 7 days runs from the job closing, not from the work being done.

3.4 KarKar may hold a payout longer than 7 days only in the limited circumstances listed in clause 7.10 of the Technician Agreement — suspected fraud, an open or likely chargeback, an open dispute or damage claim, or a technician in breach — and it must tell the technician which one applies. That list is exhaustive. Nothing in those circumstances affects you: your money has already left your account, and where it comes back to you it comes back under section 8 of this policy.

4. Cancelling before the appointment

4.1 More than about 48 hours before the appointment. You can cancel from the booking screen at any time. No charge, no fee, nothing withheld — nothing has been taken.

4.2 Inside the last 48 hours — there is no cancel button. Once the hold is in place, the app does not offer you a way to cancel. Your options in the app are to confirm your technician arrived, or to report that they did not.

If you need to cancel inside this window, contact us at info@kar-kar.com.

4.3 After work has started. Once your technician has arrived and you have confirmed it, you have no cancellation right. Only your technician can end a job that is under way. Your remedy is the review window in section 5.

4.4 If your technician cancels. If your technician cancels at any point, before or during the job, you get 100% of your money back, automatically. There is nothing for you to do and no fee.

4.5 If your technician does not turn up, or the wrong person turns up. Report it on the arrival screen. The hold is released in full and you are charged nothing.

4.6 If you never confirm arrival. If you do not confirm within 24 hours of the appointment start time, the booking closes automatically and the hold is released. You are charged nothing.

4.7 Cancellation is free in both directions. There is no cancellation fee for you and no penalty for a technician who cancels, however late. KarKar may introduce cancellation fees or technician cancellation penalties in the future. If it does, it will give notice before they take effect, under section 23.2 of the Terms of Service, and this policy will say what they are, in which direction they run, in what window they apply, and who receives them. Nothing of the kind applies today, and no fee mechanism of any kind exists in the product.

5. After your technician says the job is done — the 48-hour window

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT SECTION IN THIS POLICY.

5.1 When your technician marks the job finished, you have 48 hours to review it. We notify you when the window opens — by push notification and text message — and send you an email reminder after 24 hours.

5.2 Within those 48 hours you have two choices:

• Accept the work. The job closes. Your technician is paid 7 days later.
• Reject the work. The job goes to KarKar support, who decide one of two outcomes: your technician is paid in full, or you are refunded in full. See section 6.

5.3 IF YOU DO NOTHING FOR 48 HOURS, THE WORK IS TREATED AS ACCEPTED. The job closes in your technician's favour, and you can no longer reject the work or get a refund through KarKar.

5.4 This is final within the platform. Once a job has closed this way, KarKar's systems provide no route by which the money can be returned to you — not by you, not by KarKar support, not by a KarKar administrator.

5.5 Nothing in this section affects any right you have directly against your technician, or any right that cannot be waived by agreement under applicable law.

6. When KarKar reviews a rejected job

6.1 If you reject the work, a KarKar support specialist reviews the job — the chat history, the quote, and what each side says — and decides one of exactly two outcomes:

• your technician is paid in full; or
• you are refunded in full.

There is no partial outcome. There is no appeal within the platform, and no second review.

6.2 While the review is open, your money stays with KarKar and is not paid to your technician.

6.3 How long it takes. We will respond to you within three (3) business days. Responding is not the same as deciding: we do not promise to resolve the dispute within any particular period. Your money stays with KarKar while we work the case, and it is not paid to your technician. Nothing happens automatically in either direction — the case does not lapse in your favour, and it does not lapse in your technician's favour, if it takes us a while.

6.4 KarKar is not neutral. KarKar makes this decision in good faith on the information available. But KarKar has a financial interest in the outcome: KarKar earns its commission where the technician is paid, and earns nothing where you are refunded. We tell you this so you do not mistake the process for an independent adjudication.

6.5 What the decision does and does not do. It decides only what happens to the money KarKar is holding. It does not decide your legal rights against your technician, and it does not prevent you from pursuing them directly. It is not arbitration. Section 17 of the Terms of Service deals separately with disputes between you and KarKar.

6.6 What we look at, and what your technician sees. The messages in the app's chat, and the photographs and files shared in it, may be used as evidence when we review a rejected job. We make that material available to both of you — you see what your technician relies on, and they see what you rely on. Anything you want us to take into account should be in the chat. Section 4 of the Privacy Policy explains how chat content is handled, including that it is automatically screened and that KarKar staff can read flagged messages.

The app requires neither side to submit anything today: a technician can mark a job finished with no photograph and no report. 6.6 settles what happens with the material that exists; it does not create a requirement to produce more.

7. Abandoned jobs

7.1 If a technician starts a job and never marks it finished, the job closes automatically after 90 days and you are refunded in full.

7.2 Nothing in the product currently alerts anyone before that point. KarKar has decided to add an earlier alert, so that somebody looks at an abandoned job long before day 90. The 90-day automatic refund stays as the final backstop.

8. Every way money comes back to you

This is the complete list. Nothing else exists.

8.1 Full refunds of money already taken — five ways

1. Your technician cancels after the job has started. 100% refunded automatically.
2. The job is abandoned and closes automatically after 90 days. 100% refunded.
3. A booking expires from a point at which money had already been captured. 100% of whatever was captured is refunded. (Rare — at most expiry points nothing has been taken.)
4. KarKar support resolves a rejected job in your favour. 100% refunded.
5. A KarKar administrator forces a refund. 100% refunded. This is available from any live state of a booking, but not after a job has closed successfully.

8.2 Partial refunds — two ways, and only two

1. Your technician lowers the price during the job and you accept the revised quote. The difference is refunded straight away.
2. KarKar refunds a specific amount through its internal tools. This is not something you can request in the app, and it is blocked once a job has closed successfully.

8.3 Released holds — four ways, and these are not refunds

Where no money has yet been taken, the hold on your card is released. Nothing is refunded because nothing was charged.

1. You withdraw the booking before the appointment (or after a failed card hold).
2. You report that your technician did not arrive, or that the wrong person arrived.
3. You never confirm arrival and the booking expires 24 hours after the appointment start time.
4. Your technician cancels before work has started.

8.4 There is no way to request a refund in the app

Rejecting finished work (section 5) is a request for a KarKar employee to decide. It is not a refund request, and it is not available after the 48-hour window has passed.

9. How refunds are paid

9.1 Refunds go back to the card you paid with. We issue them immediately when they are triggered. Your bank decides how long they take to appear.

9.2 Released holds are not refunds. No money was taken, so there is nothing to return. The hold disappears from your statement on your bank's own schedule, which can take several days.

9.3 Where money was actually returned, we email you a credit note showing the exact amount. Where nothing actually moved — a released hold, a cancellation before any charge — we do not send a credit note for $0.

9.4 We deduct nothing from a refund, and we do not plan to. You get back the full amount that was taken, on every category of refund in section 8. The card-processing fee on the original payment is not returned to KarKar by Stripe, and KarKar absorbs that cost rather than passing it to you. The reason is simple: every refund route in this policy is one where you did not get what you paid for, and charging you the processing fee on top would punish you twice for someone else's failure.

10. What this policy does not cover

10.1 The quality of the repair itself. KarKar is a marketplace and a mediator. Your repair contract is with your technician. KarKar does not warrant the quality, safety or legality of the work. There is no KarKar service guarantee, and KarKar does not itself warrant any technician's work — including under the standard warranty in 10.1.1, which KarKar writes and displays but your technician, not KarKar, promises.

10.1.1 The standard workmanship warranty, and whose promise it is. KarKar publishes a standard workmanship warranty: 12 months or 12,000 miles from the day the work is completed, whichever comes first. It is a written, versioned document — Schedule 1 to the Technician Agreement.

A technician opts in to it. Where a technician has opted in, a badge saying so appears on their profile, and KarKar keeps a record of which version they accepted and when. That badge states your technician's warranty. It is not a KarKar warranty and does not mean KarKar guarantees the repair. Where a technician has not opted in, no warranty is offered through KarKar for their work.

What the warranty obliges your technician to do. Within the period, if the work fails or the problem they were paid to fix comes back because of their work, they must re-do it at no charge to you or, if they cannot or will not, refund you in full. It does not cover a part you supplied, unrelated pre-existing damage, your own misuse, ordinary wear, or work someone else did afterwards.

How you claim. Contact KarKar support. Support investigates, and where it concludes your technician did not honour the warranty, you are refunded and KarKar recovers the money from your technician — from their account, or as a debt they owe. KarKar does not pay warranty claims out of its own funds and does not promise you an outcome. You still cannot enforce the Technician Agreement yourself (10.2); your route is the complaint to KarKar, and whatever rights you have directly against your technician.

10.2 Damage to your vehicle, and why you cannot enforce the Technician Agreement. Your technician is responsible to KarKar, under the Technician Agreement, for damage they cause and for the quality of their work. You cannot enforce that obligation yourself: you are not a third-party beneficiary of it. It is a contract between KarKar and the technician. Your remedies are against your technician directly, plus the money-handling protections in this policy — the arrival charge, the 48-hour review window and the KarKar review of a rejected job.

10.3 What KarKar does assure you. Two things about your money, and no more. KarKar holds your money rather than passing it straight to your technician; and KarKar does not release it to your technician until the work is confirmed — with the 48-hour rule in section 5 meaning that silence confirms it just as acceptance does.

10.3.1 The standard warranty in 10.1.1 is not a third assurance about the repair. What KarKar does there is publish the standard, record which technicians have opted in, investigate a complaint that one of them did not honour it, and recover from that technician if it agrees with you. That is a process, and KarKar does not promise you its outcome.

10.4 Card chargebacks. If you dispute a charge with your bank instead of using this policy, your bank's process applies and this policy does not govern it. Please contact us first — we can usually resolve it faster.

11. Contact

KarKar Ops LLCRegistered office: 8 The Green STE B, Dover, Kent County, DE 19901, USA

For refunds, billing questions and complaints, and for any notice under this policy:KarKar Ops LLC, 4615 Arriba Dr, Tarzana, CA 91356, USAinfo@kar-kar.com

We reply to a rejected job within three business days (6.3). For everything else, write to the email address above.