Terms and Conditions

These terms and conditions govern your use of the Getadoc website at getadoc.co.za and the services we provide through it. They are written in plain language, as the Consumer Protection Act requires. Sections 9, 10 and 11 set out our cancellation, refund and delivery policies. Sections 14 and 15 contain provisions that limit our liability — please read them carefully.

1. Who we are

Getadoc is operated by GetaDoc (Pty) Ltd, a private company incorporated in the Republic of South Africa (referred to in these terms as “Getadoc”, “we”, “us” or “our”).

Physical address: 18 Hampstead Road, Claremont, Cape Town, 7708, South Africa
Website: https://getadoc.co.za
Email: hello@getadoc.co.za

Getadoc is registered for VAT. Our company registration number, VAT number and the other particulars contemplated by section 43 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 (“ECTA”) are available from us on request at the email address above.

2. These terms, and when they apply

By browsing the site, submitting a review or enquiry, creating a practitioner account, or subscribing to a paid plan, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the site.

Where you use Getadoc on behalf of a practice or another person — for example, a practice manager administering a practitioner’s profile — you confirm that you are authorised to bind that practice or person to these terms.

You must be at least 18 years old to submit a review or enquiry, create an account, or subscribe to a paid plan. A parent or guardian may submit an enquiry or review on behalf of a child in their care, and is then responsible for the information they share. The site is not directed at children.

Nothing in these terms takes away rights you have under South African law that cannot be excluded by agreement, including rights under the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 (“CPA”), ECTA and the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (“POPIA”).

3. What Getadoc is — and what it is not

Getadoc is a directory of healthcare practitioners in South Africa. We publish practitioner listings, patient reviews, and a health library of articles and condition guides. We help patients find and contact practitioners; we do not provide healthcare.

In particular:

• Getadoc does not provide medical advice. Listings, articles, condition guides and reviews are for general information only. They are not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, and you should not delay seeking medical care because of anything you read on the site. Always consult a registered healthcare practitioner about a medical concern.
• Getadoc is not for emergencies. If you or someone else needs urgent medical help, call your nearest emergency department, or phone 10177 (ambulance) or 112 from a mobile phone.
• We are not a party to your consultation. Any appointment, consultation, treatment or other engagement you enter into with a practitioner is between you and that practitioner. Getadoc is not responsible for the services practitioners provide, their availability, their fees, or the outcome of any treatment.
• A listing is not an endorsement. Practitioners are listed with information from public sources and from the practitioners themselves. Where a profile shows a “Verified” badge, it means we confirmed the practitioner’s registration with the relevant statutory health council — for most professions the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) — at the time of checking. It is not a recommendation, and it is not a statement about the quality of their care. The absence of the badge does not mean a practitioner is unregistered.

Search results and listing pages order premium (paying) practitioners above free listings within a specialty and area, and premium listings carry a “Featured” badge. Paid placement never changes review scores or review ordering, and it never removes a free practitioner from the directory.

4. Using the site

You agree not to:

• use the site for any unlawful purpose, or in a way that infringes anyone’s rights;
• submit content that is false, defamatory, abusive, discriminatory, or that discloses another person’s private information (including their health information) without authority;
• impersonate any person, or claim a practitioner profile that is not yours to claim;
• scrape, harvest or bulk-download listings, reviews or other content, or use the site to build or train a competing directory or dataset without our written permission;
• probe, overload or interfere with the site’s operation or its security measures, or attempt to bypass the bot checks on our forms.

We may remove content, refuse submissions, and suspend or close accounts involved in any of the above (see section 16).

5. Patient reviews and other content you submit

Reviews on Getadoc are written by patients and moderated by us. They are independent of the practitioners they describe: practitioners cannot write, edit or remove reviews of their own practice, and paying us does not change a practitioner’s reviews or ratings.

When you submit a review or any other content, you confirm that:

• it reflects your own genuine, first-hand experience with the practitioner;
• it is truthful, and does not contain anyone else’s personal information;
• you were not paid or otherwise incentivised to write it, and you do not work for, compete with, or have a family relationship with the practitioner that you have not disclosed.

You keep ownership of the content you submit. By submitting it you give Getadoc a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to publish, reproduce, adapt (for example, to excerpt or format), and distribute that content on the site and in search results, for as long as it remains published. You can ask us to remove your review at any time by contacting us.

Reviews are published when submitted. We moderate published reviews — on our own initiative and in response to reports — and will remove any review that breaches these terms or our guidelines. If you believe a review is false, defamatory or otherwise breaches these terms, report it to us at hello@getadoc.co.za — anyone may report a review this way, on any tier. Moderation decisions are ours; we do not accept payment from anyone — including practitioners — to remove a lawful review. A practitioner with a premium profile may additionally request moderation of a review from their dashboard, and may post a public reply to a review of their practice; replies are subject to the same rules as reviews.

6. Enquiries and appointment requests

Some profiles offer a contact form, WhatsApp link or appointment request. These are message channels to the practice: submitting an enquiry or appointment request does not book or confirm an appointment. The practice decides whether and how to respond, and we cannot guarantee a response or its timing. Do not use these forms for anything urgent — see the emergency note in section 3.

When you submit an enquiry we pass the details you provide to the practice concerned. The form will ask for your consent under POPIA before it accepts your information — see our Privacy Policy.

7. Practitioner listings, claiming and verification

Listings begin from public practitioner information. A practitioner (or a person authorised by the practice) can claim their listing by creating an account and confirming their identity; claims are reviewed by us before they are approved. Once approved, the practitioner can edit their profile — contact details, practice hours, services, biography and qualifications.

If you claim or manage a practitioner profile, you warrant that:

• the profile is yours, or you are authorised by the practitioner to manage it;
• the information you enter — including qualifications, registration details and areas of practice — is accurate, current and not misleading;
• you hold, and will maintain, any registration required to practise your profession in South Africa.

Misrepresenting your identity, qualifications or registration is a material breach of these terms. We may amend or remove listing information that we reasonably believe is inaccurate or misleading, suspend the profile pending clarification, and — where health-professional registration is misrepresented — report the matter to the relevant council.

Basic listing on Getadoc is free, and remains free. We do not remove a practitioner’s free listing because they decline to buy a subscription.

If you are listed and have not claimed your profile: the directory includes practitioners listed from public information. If you are listed and your details are wrong, claim the profile and correct them, or email us and we will correct them. If you do not wish to be listed at all, email us from your practice address and we will remove or unpublish your listing — see also our Privacy Policy for your rights under POPIA.

You are responsible for keeping your account credentials confidential and for activity on your account. Tell us immediately at hello@getadoc.co.za if you suspect unauthorised access, and we will help you secure it.

8. Premium subscriptions and payment

Practices can subscribe to a paid plan that adds features to their profile — such as patient enquiries, WhatsApp contact, a photo gallery, analytics, and priority placement in results. The current plans, and what each includes, are shown on our pricing page. The current paid plans are:

• Premium Profile — R999 per year, excl. VAT (R1 148.85 incl. VAT)
• Premium + Custom Website — R595 per month, excl. VAT (R684.25 incl. VAT) (payment only due once your website goes live)

The price that applies to you is the price displayed when you subscribe. Prices are quoted excluding VAT; Getadoc is registered for VAT, and the amount collected is the VAT-inclusive amount, which is shown alongside the price wherever a plan is offered. A VAT tax invoice for each collected payment is available in your dashboard under Subscription → Invoices.

• Billing is recurring. Subscriptions are collected by Payfast, our payment processor, as a recurring subscription (debit order/card mandate) on the billing cycle shown for your plan — yearly or monthly. Your subscription renews automatically at the end of each period until you cancel.
• We do not see or store your card details. Payment details are captured and processed by Payfast on their secure platform.
• If a renewal payment fails and is not remedied, the profile returns to the free listing at the end of the period already paid for. Nothing is deleted — the profile keeps its reviews and details and can be upgraded again at any time.

9. Cancellation policy

You can cancel your subscription at any time, from your practitioner dashboard (Subscription → Cancel) or by emailing hello@getadoc.co.za from the address on your account. No reason is required and there is no cancellation fee.

Cancelling works like this:

• Cancellation stops the next renewal — we instruct Payfast to cancel the debit order/mandate, so no further amounts are collected.
• You keep your premium features until the end of the period you have already paid for — the remainder of the year on a yearly plan, or of the month on a monthly plan. When that period ends, the profile returns to the free listing automatically.
• Nothing is deleted when a subscription ends: the profile, its reviews and its details remain live as a free listing, and you can resubscribe at any time.

If we confirm your cancellation but a further amount is nonetheless collected, contact us — we will refund it (see section 10).

10. Refund policy

• 7-day money-back guarantee. If you subscribe to a paid plan, you may cancel within 7 days of subscribing, without giving a reason, and receive a full refund of what you paid. Email hello@getadoc.co.za within those 7 days from the address on your account. We offer this guarantee to every subscriber; where the cooling-off right in section 44 of ECTA also applies to your transaction, nothing here limits it.
• Billing errors. If you are charged in error — a double charge, a charge after a confirmed cancellation, or an amount different from the price displayed when you subscribed — we will refund the incorrect amount in full.
• If your profile is not approved. Where you pay for a subscription when creating a practitioner profile and we decline to publish that profile, we will refund your payment in full — regardless of whether the 7-day period above has passed. The recurring debit order is cancelled at the same time.
• After the first 7 days, cancellation works as described in section 9: the next renewal is stopped and you keep what you paid for until the period ends. Because you keep the full paid period, we do not prorate or refund the unused portion of a current period, unless a refund is required by law — including where the CPA gives you an early-cancellation right in respect of a fixed-term agreement — or the situation is covered above.
• How refunds are paid. Refunds are processed through Payfast to the payment method you originally used, within 30 days of your cancellation or refund request. We will confirm by email when the refund has been processed.

This policy does not limit any right to a refund you may have under the CPA or ECTA.

11. Delivery policy — how our services are provided

Getadoc sells no physical goods, so nothing is shipped. Our services are delivered electronically:

• Premium profile features are activated on your existing profile automatically once Payfast confirms your payment — typically within minutes of subscribing. If your premium features are not active within 24 hours of payment, contact us and we will resolve it.
• The custom website plan includes the building of a practice website. We begin work after sign-up and agree scope and timing with you directly; billing for this plan only starts once your website goes live.
• Directory services for patients — search, profiles, reviews and the health library — are provided free of charge on the site itself, with no delivery step.

We aim to keep the site available at all times but do not guarantee uninterrupted availability; maintenance windows and factors outside our control (such as network or infrastructure failures) can cause interruptions. Where an interruption on our side materially deprives a subscriber of paid features for a sustained period, we will extend the subscription period or refund proportionately, as appropriate.

12. Intellectual property

The Getadoc name and logo, the site’s design and software, and the content we create — including articles, condition guides and generated location pages — belong to Getadoc or our licensors. You may view, share and print content from the site for personal, non-commercial use. You may not republish, sell or systematically copy site content without our written permission. Content you submit remains yours, licensed to us as set out in section 5; practitioner-supplied profile content remains the practitioner’s, licensed to us to display in the directory.

13. Privacy and personal information (POPIA)

We process personal information in line with POPIA. Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect, why, and the choices you have — including how to request access to or deletion of your information. Every form that collects personal information asks for your consent and records it.

14. Important disclaimers

The site and its content are provided “as is”. While we take reasonable care — listings are drawn from public sources and practitioner submissions, reviews are subject to moderation, and health-library articles are reviewed as described in our editorial policy — we cannot guarantee that every piece of information on the site is accurate, complete or current at the moment you read it. Practice details change; practitioners move, retire and change their registration status. Confirm important details (such as fees, medical aid arrangements and availability) with the practice directly.

Links to practitioners’ own websites and other external sites are provided for convenience. We are not responsible for the content of external sites.

15. Limitation of liability

To the extent permitted by law, Getadoc is not liable for loss or damage arising from: your reliance on information published on the site; the acts or omissions of any practitioner listed on it, including the services they provide or fail to provide; content submitted by users; or interruption or unavailability of the site. Where liability cannot lawfully be excluded but can be limited, our total liability to you in connection with the site or a subscription is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under South African law — including liability for gross negligence or wilful misconduct, or your statutory rights and remedies under the CPA, which apply notwithstanding anything to the contrary in these terms.

If you use the site in breach of these terms and that breach causes a claim against us by someone else, you indemnify us against the reasonable costs and damages arising from that claim, except to the extent we contributed to it.

16. Suspension and removal

We may suspend or close an account, remove content, or unpublish a profile where these terms are materially breached — for example, fake or incentivised reviews, misrepresented qualifications, abuse of other users, or interference with the site. Where practical and lawful we will tell you what the problem is and give you a chance to fix it first; deliberate fraud and safety issues we act on immediately. If we close a paid account for our convenience rather than for your breach, we will refund the unused portion of the current period.

17. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time — for example, when we add features or when the law changes. The current version, with its effective date, is always at getadoc.co.za/terms. For material changes that affect paid subscriptions we will give subscribers reasonable notice by email before the change takes effect. Changes are not retroactive: the terms in force when you subscribed govern that billing period.

18. Governing law, disputes and general provisions

These terms are governed by the law of the Republic of South Africa, and the South African courts have jurisdiction over disputes arising from them. This does not prevent you from referring a consumer dispute to the National Consumer Commission, the Consumer Goods and Services Ombud, or any other forum the law gives you access to.

• If any provision of these terms is found to be unenforceable, it is severed and the rest remain in force.
• These terms, together with our Privacy Policy and the plan details shown when you subscribe, are the whole agreement between you and Getadoc about the site.
• If we do not enforce a provision on one occasion, we may still enforce it later.
• You may not transfer your rights under these terms to someone else without our consent. We may transfer ours as part of a sale or reorganisation of the business, on notice to subscribers and without reducing their rights.
• We may send notices about your account or subscription to the email address on your account, and you consent to receiving them electronically. Service and transactional emails are part of the service and are not marketing.

19. Contact and complaints

Questions about these terms, cancellation and refund requests, corrections to listings, and complaints about the site all reach us at hello@getadoc.co.za. We aim to respond within two working days.

Complaints about a practitioner’s professional conduct or care are for the practitioner’s statutory council, not for us — for most professions the HPCSA (hpcsa.co.za). We are not able to adjudicate clinical care. You can, however, always report a listing or a review to us, and we will act on breaches of these terms.