Promotion Terms for mechanics and shops

Version 2026-09-26.2 · These terms add to the Service On Scene Terms of Service. If they conflict on promotion, these terms apply.

1. What you can buy

Product	What it does	How it's charged
Pay as you go	You may be pinned in a Sponsored spot in searches you already match, and you hear ordinary SOS requests and quote requests a little earlier (see 6).	Per profile open, per request, or per completed job — you choose — within a daily budget.
Area sponsorship	For one service, the ZIP codes around your base (up to 10 miles, never beyond your own service radius). At most two sponsors per service per ZIP code. Comes with a written exposure guarantee (see 4).	A monthly price per service, charged at the start of each month.
Spotlight hour	For 60 minutes you hold a Sponsored spot near you (after area sponsors, ahead of pay as you go) and hear requests first. Sold only while a spot is free.	A fixed price per hour, higher when requests nearby are running well above normal.
Deals	Your own offers ("$129 front brake pads, installed") in Deals near you. While a promotion covers a deal's service, that deal can go first, labelled Sponsored (see 10).	Posting a deal is free. A sponsored deal is charged as part of your promotion.

Current prices are shown on the Promote screen before you buy. We may change prices; a change never affects a sponsorship month you already paid for.

2. Your promotion balance

• Promotion is paid from a prepaid promotion balance. You add money by card on Stripe's secure payment page ($20 to $1,000 at a time) or by a payment we record for you.
• Cards: Stripe processes card payments. Service On Scene never sees or stores your card number; we keep the card's brand, last four digits and expiry so you can tell which card it was. If you tick Save this card, you allow us to charge it later only for the auto top-ups you turn on.
• Auto top-up (optional): when you turn it on you allow us to charge your saved card the amount you chose whenever your balance drops below the level you chose while a promotion is running on it — at most 3 times in 24 hours. We tell you in the app each time. You can turn it off, or remove the card, at any time on the Promote screen, and it stops at once. If a charge is declined or your bank asks you to confirm it, auto top-up turns itself off and we tell you.
• The first time you promote, we add a one-time free credit. It is spent before your own money, has no cash value and can't be transferred.
• A charge for a completed job is taken even if it takes your balance below zero; nothing is promoted until the balance is back above zero.
• Refunds: unused money you paid in is refunded on request — a card payment back to the card it came from. Free credit and credits we added are not refunded.
• Disputes: if you dispute a card payment with your bank, the disputed amount comes off your balance (it may go below zero) and auto top-up is turned off; if the dispute is resolved in your favour, we put it back.

3. Pay as you go

• Profile open: charged the first time a driver opens your profile from a Sponsored spot on a given day. More opens by the same driver that day are free.
• Request: charged when a driver sends you a request from a Sponsored spot they saw in the last 24 hours — the quick-job price for jump starts, lockouts, tire changes, flat repairs and fuel delivery, the repair price for everything else. One charge per driver per day.
• Completed job: a share of the agreed total (with a minimum and a maximum) for a job you won through promotion, charged only when the job is completed — never when it's accepted, never if it's cancelled or you drop it.
• Daily budget: spread through your day (your working hours, or 6 am to 10 pm), so a busy morning doesn't use up the evening. On a busy day it may spend up to twice the daily budget, using budget left unspent earlier in the month. It never spends more than 30.4 times the daily budget in a calendar month.
• Only while you can take work: you're shown, and charged, only while you're online — or, on Browse, another provider's page and a car's reminder, inside the working hours you set.
• Share, not position: Sponsored spots left after area sponsors are shared among everyone paying as they go, in proportion to daily budget and quality score. Pay as you go has no guaranteed position or number of views.

4. The area sponsorship guarantee

Matching search: a driver's search on Browse, the map, an SOS waiting screen, another provider's page or a car's reminder, for the sponsored service, located in one of your sponsored ZIP codes, in which you appear (you offer the service, you're in range, and the driver hasn't blocked you), at a time you can be shown (online; or inside your working hours on the non-urgent lists above).

Guarantee: in each month of a sponsorship you are pinned in a Sponsored spot in at least 95% of matching searches.

Credit: if you were pinned in fewer, we credit your balance automatically at the end of the month:

monthly price × (95% − the share you got) ÷ 95%

We also credit, pro rata, any time we paused your sponsorship. If you fall below the quality bar (see 7) during the month, the searches you weren't shown in count as missed, so they are credited the same way. This credit is the only remedy for a shortfall.

What is not guaranteed: the number of searches, views, opens, requests, jobs or income. The forecast shown before you buy is an estimate from past searches, not a promise.

Renewal: a sponsorship renews each month from your balance unless you turn renewal off. If the balance can't cover the renewal we hold your spot for 3 days (shown in the app); after that the spot is released and providers on the waitlist are told.

5. Spotlight hour

A Spotlight lasts 60 minutes from purchase. If nobody sees you in a Sponsored spot during it, the price is refunded in full automatically. Otherwise it is not refundable.

6. Head starts

While you promote, you hear an ordinary SOS 30 seconds before providers who don't, and quote requests and bookings 2 minutes before them. Drivers are told their request went to sponsored providers first. There is no paid head start on an emergency or a tow from an unsafe place.

7. Quality bar

To start or keep promotion running you need, once there is enough history to judge:

• a rating of at least 4.0 stars (after 3 reviews);
• to answer at least 70% of the direct requests sent to you — accept, decline or quote (after 5 requests);
• to drop no more than 20% of the jobs you accept (after 5 jobs).

Below the bar you can't start promotion, running promotion isn't shown until you're back above it, and a sponsorship won't renew. The app tells you which rule and what to do.

8. Automatic credits

• A request charge is credited if the driver cancels within 2 minutes, before anyone answered.
• Opens and requests from a driver account we pause or remove for abuse are credited (up to 30 days back).
• Repeat opens and requests by the same driver on the same day are never charged.

9. What payment never buys

Payment never changes the order of other providers, ratings or reviews, badges or certification checks, and never gives you a driver's information before they contact you. Every paid spot is labelled Sponsored. See How matching and ads work.

10. Deals

• Free to post. Up to 5 running at a time, each for up to 90 days, always with its end date shown.
• Where they show: Deals near you, on Browse, nearest first; a "Deal" badge on your search results; and your page. While a promotion of yours covers a deal's service, that deal may be shown first, labelled Sponsored, under the same rules as other Sponsored spots — a sponsored deal a driver opens counts as a profile open, and a request from it as a request, for pay-as-you-go charging. Payment never changes the order of other deals.
• What every deal says (the app asks for it): the price or the discount; what's included (parts, labor, or a service); whether extra parts or labor are often needed — and, when they can cost more than a quarter of the price, that the extra cost may be substantial; any conditions; any limit on how many customers get it; and whether it's for new customers only.
• A "regular price" may be shown only if it is what you actually charged for that work within the last three months.
• A free offer says what the customer has to buy to get it, and you don't raise the price of that to pay for it. At most 3 free offers in 12 months, and 30 days between two for the same service.
• California repair dealers: every deal shows your firm name as registered with the Bureau of Automotive Repair, your BAR registration number and the phone number BAR has on file, as the Bureau's rules for online advertising require. Add them on your profile before posting.
• Honor it. Give the deal to every customer who asks for it while it runs, within its conditions — no bait and switch. A request made from a deal carries what the deal said into the job and its agreement, and if you price the job above a set deal price the driver is told before anyone signs. Drivers can report a deal that wasn't honored; we may remove a deal, and pause promotion for an account that keeps doing it.

11. Your listing must be accurate

What drivers see in a Sponsored spot or a deal is your advertising. It must be true and not misleading, show your business name and address as registered with the Bureau of Automotive Repair where you're required to register, and any price you show must not be a bait price — say when extra parts or labour are likely to be needed.

12. Changes and contact

We may change these terms; we'll show the new version in the app and ask you to accept it before you buy again. Questions: use Report a bug / suggest a feature in the app.

Service On Scene