Cancellations & Refunds

Payments run through Stripe. Your card will be charged as described at checkout. The model below is what the Service implements and what will apply once card payments are live.

Understanding one thing makes the rest of this page obvious:

Money is held, not taken. Nothing is captured until a rental completes.

• When a request is made: nothing happens to the renter's card. A request is an offer, not a booking.
• When the owner accepts: we place an authorisation hold on the renter's card for the rental subtotal and the renter's service fee — plus, only where the listing states a security hold, that amount too. The hold is shown as its own refundable line before you request; the price of the rental never includes it. The money has not moved.
• When the rental completes: the hold settles for the rental and fee only. Any security-hold portion is released, not captured — you never actually paid it, so there is nothing to refund — unless a damage claim was agreed or unanswered, in which case that amount is captured and the rest released (see Damage and loss). If the hold has lapsed by then — card authorisations last about seven days — the amount due is charged to the card instead; either way the renter pays exactly the settled amount, once.
• When a rental is declined or cancelled: the hold is voided in full. Nothing is captured and there is nothing to refund.

A hold may still show as a pending item on a statement for a few days after it is voided, depending on the bank. That is the bank releasing it, not us holding it.

A pending request can be withdrawn by the renter or declined by the owner, at any time, for any reason.

• Cost: nothing, to anyone. No hold has been placed, no units were reserved, and no fee is charged.
• Effect on standing: none. Neither withdrawing nor declining is recorded against you. Owners are expected to decline requests that do not suit them.

Once accepted, either party can still cancel until the handoff is confirmed. The units go back into availability immediately.

• The authorisation hold is voided in full. The renter is charged nothing — not the rental, not the service fee.
• The owner receives nothing, because nothing was captured.
• No cancellation penalty is charged by us to either side.

A booking whose card confirmation is never finished cancels itself. When a bank asks the renter to confirm the payment and the confirmation is left unanswered, no money is ever held. The renter is emailed a warning with a deadline at least a day out; if the confirmation is still unanswered at the deadline, the booking is cancelled automatically, the dates are released, and nothing is charged to anyone.

This is deliberately generous, and it depends on people not abusing it. A free cancellation right is worth having; an owner who accepts and then cancels the night before, repeatedly, costs renters real days. Repeated late cancellation and no-shows are handled as a conduct matter under the Community Guidelines, not as a fee.

Owners and renters may agree their own terms for a specific rental — a non-refundable arrangement for an item held for a wedding, say. Put it in the message thread. Such an agreement is between the two of you, and we do not enforce or collect it.

Returning early

The rental was priced for the dates agreed and the item was withheld from other renters for that whole period. Returning early does not automatically reduce what is owed. An owner may choose to agree a reduction — do it in the thread.

Returning late

A late return is a breach of the rental agreement. It can also strand the next renter, because the availability engine reserved those dates for someone else.

• Message the owner before you are late, not after.
• The owner may charge for the extra days at the daily rate on the listing. Agree it in the thread.
• The Service does not automatically extend a rental or automatically charge for extra days. Anything beyond the original authorisation is between the two of you.
• An item not returned at all is not a late return. It is a loss — see Damage and loss.

Extending

Ask before the rental ends. An extension means a new request for the additional dates, so availability is checked and the price is computed properly.

Security holds are optional, and most listings set none. An owner may require one on their own listing — never more than $500, and never more than the replacement value they themselves stated. It is disclosed on the listing and shown as its own refundable line before you request. It is a hold on your card, not a charge: you are not debited, and when the item comes back as it went out, the hold is simply released.

A security hold is not insurance, and we do not adjudicate. There is no cover of any kind on this Service — see Safety. The hold is a fixed sum one owner asked for, and the only way any of it moves is the renter agreeing, or saying nothing. We never take a fee from it: every cent an owner recovers reaches the owner.

Claiming against a security hold

On a rental that carried a hold, an owner who gets the item back damaged can file one claim before confirming the return. A claim names an amount — never more than the hold — and a written reason, which the renter sees in full.

• The renter has 72 hours to accept or decline. Accepting means the amount is captured from the hold when the rental closes out, and the rest is released.
• No answer within 72 hours counts as accepting. Stated here because it is a term that costs money: a claim left unanswered stands, and is collected. If you disagree with a claim, decline it — do not ignore it.
• The 72 hours start when we have actually emailed you, not when the claim is filed. If the notice fails to send, no deadline runs and nothing can be collected on silence.
• Declining releases the hold in full and ends claims on that rental — an owner cannot file a second one. We do not weigh evidence and we do not take contested money; the disagreement is then a civil matter between the two of you.
• A claim must be filed within seven days of the return, and the rental cannot be completed while one is unanswered. Damage found later is between the two of you directly. A rental that closes itself never shortens this window: the automatic close-out cannot happen before those seven days are up, and it does not run at all on a rental with a claim against it.

On a rental with no hold — most rentals

1. Raise it immediately — at the return, in the thread, with the photographs you both took at handoff.
2. Open a dispute before confirming the return if you cannot settle it on the spot. That pauses completion and preserves the record.
3. Agree a remedy between you, in writing in the thread. Payment of an agreed amount is between the two of you, outside the Service.
4. If you cannot agree, it is a civil matter: an insurer, a small claims court, or letting it go. We provide the full rental record to either party, or to a court, on a valid request.

Owners: the hold is a tool, not the protection. Your real protections are the handoff photographs, the renter's history and verification badge, your own judgement — and, for anything genuinely valuable, your own insurance. Setting a hold trades some conversions for security; setting none is the default for a reason. You are never obliged to accept a request either way.

Reasonable wear is not damage. A blunted blade, a scuff on a case, a fraction of a tank of fuel: these are the cost of renting a thing out.

Withholding a release as leverage is a violation. Conditioning it on a favourable review, or on an unagreed extra payment, is grounds for removal.

A renter who arrives to find the item missing, broken, materially different from the listing, or nobody there at all should:

• Not confirm the handoff. Confirming starts the rental. Until it is confirmed, either party can cancel and the hold is voided in full.
• Cancel the rental, which releases the hold entirely. This is the fastest and cleanest remedy, and it costs the renter nothing.
• Photograph what they found and put it in the thread.
• Report the listing if it was materially misdescribed, so it is not repeated on the next person.

If the handoff was already confirmed before the problem came to light, open a dispute rather than completing the rental.

We charge 5% to the renter on top of the rental subtotal. We also withhold 5% from the owner's payout.

• Cancelled or declined rental: no fee is charged to either side. The fee is part of the authorisation, and the authorisation is voided.
• Completed rental: both fees apply.
• Disputed rental resolved as cancelled: the hold is voided, so no fee is charged.

We do not keep a fee on a rental that did not happen. If you believe you have been charged for one that did not, email support@loctarim.com with the rental and we will look at the record.

Nothing on this page reduces rights you have under consumer law where you live — including any right to cancel a contract within a statutory cooling-off period, and any right to a remedy where a service is not as described. Where this policy and your statutory rights differ, your statutory rights win. See the Terms of Service for how disputes with us are handled.