Vendor Agreement

1. Who this is between

This agreement is between GigSona and you, the business or individual listing services on GigSona (“you” or “the vendor”). It applies from the moment you accept it and for as long as you have an account.

It sits alongside the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, which also apply to you. Where this agreement and the Terms of Use say different things about vendors, this agreement applies.

2. You run your own business

You are an independent business, not a GigSona employee, partner, or agent. You decide what you offer, what you charge, which enquiries you take, and how you do your work. Nothing here creates an employment relationship, and you are responsible for your own taxes, insurance, licences, equipment and staff.

The contract for the event is between you and the customer. GigSona is the platform you meet on and the service that processes the payment. GigSona does not perform at events and does not promise the customer that you will.

What GigSona is, and is not. GigSona introduces customers and vendors to each other, and facilitates the booking, the payment, and the record of what was agreed and delivered. GigSona does not buy your services and is not your customer. GigSona does not guarantee that a customer will pay, or that a payment will stay paid, and does not insure you against fraud or against a customer's bank reversing a payment. Section 10 says what that means in practice.

3. What you agree to do

• Keep your profile accurate — your business name, services, prices, service area, and photos or videos of work you actually did.
• Reply to customer messages and quote requests within a reasonable time.
• Honour every quote a customer accepts and pays for, on the agreed date, for the agreed price, as described.
• Keep communication and payment on GigSona until a quote is accepted (see section 8).
• Hold the licences, permits and insurance your work requires, and follow the law that applies to it.
• Keep proof that you performed at every GigSona event — dated photos or short videos of the service being delivered, and anything the customer signed — and give it to us when we ask for it in a chargeback (section 10). This is the evidence that wins disputes, and it can only come from you.
• Not list a business that is not yours, and not accept bookings you do not intend to perform.

4. What GigSona charges you

GigSona takes a commission from the price you quote. Your current rate is shown in your vendor dashboard, and is the rate that applied when you joined.

GigSona can change commission rates in the future. If your rate is going to change, GigSona will tell you in writing at least 30 days before the new rate applies to you. A rate change never affects bookings already made — a booking keeps the rate that applied when it was paid for.

The commission is never invoiced to you and you never send GigSona money for it. It is simply held back from what is paid out to you: if you quote $5,000 and your rate is 5%, you are paid $4,750.

Customers separately pay GigSona a service fee on top of your price. That fee is GigSona's, is not part of your quote, and does not reduce what you are paid.

5. How and when you get paid

Customers pay GigSona, not you directly. GigSona holds the money and pays your share to your connected Stripe account on this schedule:

• Until you have completed your first GigSona event: everything — deposit and balance — is paid to you 3 business days after the event.
• After your first completed event: your share of the deposit can be paid earlier — once the customer's refund window for it has closed and at least 3 business days have passed since their payment settled. Your share of the balance is still paid 3 business days after the event.

This hold protects customers from fraudulent listings, which is what makes the platform worth booking through. Once money reaches your Stripe account, when it lands in your bank is governed by your own Stripe payout settings.

A booking is marked completed — and your remaining payout released — 3 business days after the event, provided no problem has been reported and nothing is on hold. Either side can report a problem up to 48 hours after the event; a report pauses all payments on that booking while GigSona hears both sides.

Payment can also be paused where there is an open dispute, a chargeback, a bank inquiry about a payment (even before any money has been taken back), a suspected fraud signal from our payment processor, a cancellation being worked out, or a legal requirement. If we pause a payment we will tell you why.

6. If the customer cancels

Each quote you send carries a cancellation policy that you choose. The customer sees it before they pay, and it is fixed to that booking once they do. What the customer gets back — and what you keep — follows that policy.

Where the policy on a booking means a cancelling customer does not get part of their payment back — the deposit under the Standard policy, or the balance inside 30 days of the event — your share of that money is yours to keep. It is paid to your Stripe account after the event date, on the same schedule as a completed booking, and GigSona keeps its commission on it as on any booking.

7. If you cancel or do not perform

You may need to cancel, and there is a process for it. But a cancelled or unperformed booking is serious: a customer has usually planned a once-in-a-lifetime event around you.

If you cancel, fail to appear, or do not deliver what the accepted quote described:

• The customer is refunded in full, including the service fee they paid GigSona.
• You are paid nothing for that booking, and any payment already scheduled to you for it is cancelled.
• If you have already been paid for that booking, that money must come back. GigSona may reverse the payment from your Stripe account, or hold it back from money owed to you on your other bookings.
• If your Stripe balance does not cover what is reversed, your Stripe account goes into a negative balance. Stripe then clears it in one of two ways: from money you earn on later bookings, before it reaches you, or — because your account is set to allow it — by debiting the bank account you connected to Stripe. If neither clears it, you agree to repay the difference.
• GigSona may also recover what your cancellation actually cost it — the service fee refunded to the customer on your behalf, and the payment-processing costs that are not returned when a refund is issued. These are real costs GigSona bears because of the cancellation; they are not a fine, and GigSona does not profit from them.

None of this applies where you cancel because the customer asked you to, breached the booking, or behaved unacceptably. Tell us and we will look at what happened. Cancellations caused by genuine emergencies are also considered — contact us rather than simply not appearing.

8. Keeping bookings on GigSona

If GigSona introduces you to a customer, that booking — and further bookings that customer makes with you for the same celebration — belong on GigSona. Do not ask a customer to pay you outside the platform, and do not share contact details before a quote is accepted in order to arrange a booking elsewhere.

This is how GigSona is paid for the introduction. It does not stop you working with customers you already knew, or with customers who find you another way.

9. Your photos, videos and business details

You keep ownership of everything you upload. You give GigSona permission to display, resize and reformat it to show your profile on the site, in search results, and in GigSona's own marketing of the platform, for as long as your profile is listed.

You confirm you have the right to upload what you upload — including permission from photographers and from people who appear in it. If you remove content or close your account, GigSona will stop using it, allowing reasonable time for copies already published elsewhere.

For every video you upload you confirm, each time, that: you own it or hold a licence to it, including any music in it; everyone recognisable in it agreed to appear, and a parent or guardian agreed for anyone under 18; and it contains nothing unlawful, hateful, sexual, or private to someone else. You are responsible for what you upload. GigSona may refuse, remove or hide any upload at any time, with or without notice, and reviewing or approving a video does not move that responsibility to GigSona. If a claim is made against GigSona because of something you uploaded, you will cover the costs GigSona reasonably incurs dealing with it. Repeated uploads that break these rules end this agreement under section 11.

Videos you upload are hosted for GigSona by a video streaming provider and shown on your profile. GigSona reviews videos before they appear anywhere else on the site, such as its reels.

10. Chargebacks and disputes

A chargeback is when a customer's bank reverses a card payment. The bank takes the money back from GigSona's payment account immediately, together with a dispute fee charged by our payment processor (currently $15 per chargeback), and decides later whether the reversal stands. GigSona contests every chargeback with the evidence available to it, but GigSona does not decide the outcome — the customer's bank does — and GigSona does not guarantee the result.

What happens when a chargeback opens

• Every payment to you is paused — on this booking and on your other bookings — until the chargeback is decided and anything you owe under this section has been recovered. A bank inquiry about a payment pauses payments the same way, even though no money has been taken yet.
• We email you the day it opens, with the bank's deadline and what to send. You must send us your evidence — messages, the signed quote or contract, dated photos or videos of the event, timings, anything showing what was delivered — within 5 days, or by the earlier cutoff the email names when the bank's deadline is close. We remind you before the cutoff. GigSona submits the evidence to the bank ahead of the bank's deadline — normally about two days before it, on an automated schedule that cannot promise an exact hour — whatever you have sent by the cutoff, together with the platform's own records of the booking, which go in either way; nothing can be added after that. The outcome is yours either way.

Who bears a chargeback that is lost

• Caused by something on your side — you cancelled, did not appear, did not deliver what the accepted quote described, misdescribed your service, or broke the quote or its cancellation terms: you are responsible for the full amount the bank reversed, including the customer's service fee and GigSona's commission on that payment, plus the dispute fee.
• You performed, and the chargeback is lost anyway — the customer disputes a service you delivered, or the card turns out to have been used without its owner's permission and you had nothing to do with it: you bear it. You are responsible for exactly what the bank took back for that chargeback, plus the dispute fee, and nothing more — GigSona adds no penalty of its own. This is the consequence of section 2: GigSona is not the customer and does not insure you against a customer's bank.
• Caused by a GigSona error — a duplicate or incorrect charge made by the platform: GigSona bears the full amount and the fee, and you are paid what you would have been paid.

How GigSona recovers what you owe

As soon as a chargeback you are responsible for is lost, GigSona recovers the amount without waiting for a further step, in this order: first from money not yet paid to you on your other bookings; then by reversing the payment made to your Stripe account for the booking in question, which may leave your Stripe balance negative — Stripe then clears it as described in section 7, from later earnings or by debiting the bank account you connected; then from your future earnings. If none of that covers it, you agree to repay the difference.

Fees charged by third parties because of a chargeback — including the payment processor's dispute fee — are yours when the chargeback is lost and this section makes it yours to bear. When the chargeback is decided in your favour, or an inquiry closes without one, GigSona absorbs the processor's fee: you do not owe it, even though the processor does not return it.

If the bank later reverses its decision and returns the money after GigSona has already recovered it from you, GigSona pays the returned amount back to you.

What happens to the booking

• If the customer charges back any payment before the event — the deposit, or a balance already paid — the booking is cancelled: nothing further is charged, your date is freed, and both you and the customer are told that the booking was cancelled because the customer reversed a payment through their bank. Whatever the customer had paid on the other charge follows the quote's cancellation policy on that date, and your share of anything they do not get back is paid to you after the event date (section 6). A booking cancelled this way is not reinstated, even if the bank later returns the money.
• If the customer charges back the balance after the event, the booking stays completed; only the money is dealt with as above.

A first lost chargeback on your account is recorded. A second lost chargeback within 12 months suspends you from taking new bookings while GigSona reviews your account (section 11).

11. Suspension and ending this agreement

You can stop using GigSona at any time. If you do, you must still perform bookings customers have already paid for, or section 7 applies.

GigSona may suspend or remove a profile — including while we look into something — for cancelling or failing to appear, misrepresenting a business, taking bookings off-platform, abusive conduct, unpaid amounts owed to GigSona, a second lost chargeback within 12 months, or a legal requirement. Where a suspension is not urgent we will tell you why first and give you a chance to respond.

12. Changes, and the law that applies

GigSona may update this agreement. If a change affects money or your obligations, we will notify you and ask you to accept the new version before it applies to you — except a commission rate change, which follows the notice process in section 4 and does not require a new acceptance. The version and date at the top of this page always show what is current.

This agreement is governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada that apply there.

13. Contact

Questions about this agreement: vendors@gigsona.com.