Terms of Service

01About these terms

These terms apply every time you use the Sugbo Rentals website or app — browsing, listing a vehicle, making or accepting a booking, or handing over keys. By creating an account you accept them on your own behalf, and if you are acting for a company or fleet, on that organisation’s behalf as well.

Two other documents form part of this agreement: the cancellation policies, which set the refund rules for every booking, and the privacy notice, which explains how we handle personal data under the Data Privacy Act of 2012 (RA 10173).

02Our role in your rental

Sugbo Rentals is a marketplace. We do not own the vehicles, employ the drivers, or rent anything to you ourselves. The rental contract is between you and the host organisation that owns the vehicle. Every listing, driver, and payout belongs to a host organisation — a fleet operator, or a single owner who is the only member of their own one-person organisation.

What we do provide: verification of both sides, all-in pricing in pesos, the booking and calendar system, payment collection and payout, the handover checklist, deposit custody, claims mediation, and reviews.

03Accounts and eligibility

You must be at least 18 to hold an account, give accurate information, and keep your credentials to yourself. One person, one account. Everything done through your account is treated as done by you.

Renting a vehicle

• Minimum age 21 and at least one year holding a licence — this is a platform floor. An owner may set a higher minimum on a listing (25 is suggested for luxury vehicles), never a lower one.
• Age is checked against your verified date of birth, not what you type into a form.
• Your licence and permits must be valid for the whole trip, including the drop-off date — not only on the day you collect the car. A licence that expires mid-rental means the booking cannot be made at all.
• Foreign licence holders may self-drive only within 90 days of arrival in the Philippines, and only if the licence is in English or accompanied by an International Driving Permit or certified translation. The entire trip must fall inside that 90-day window.

Listing a vehicle

Hosts must be legally entitled to rent the vehicle out, hold current registration (OR/CR) and compulsory third-party liability insurance, and be registered for business and tax purposes as their structure requires — DTI or SEC registration, a Cebu LGU mayor’s permit, and BIR registration.

04Verification

Nobody transacts on Sugbo Rentals unverified. What we ask for depends on your role.

Verification status is derived from your documents and recomputed whenever one changes. An expired document is recoverable — replace it and you are verified again. A suspension is not: only an administrator can impose or lift one, and it is never automatic.

A change in your status never cancels a booking that is already confirmed. It stops new bookings, and it stops a handover from proceeding. It does not reach backwards and strand anyone mid-trip.

05Booking and confirmation

A booking becomes binding when the host accepts it and payment is captured — not when you submit the request. Until then the slot is held, not sold.

1. You request. Dates, location, drive mode and add-ons are quoted all-in. Your rental payment is authorised, not charged.
2. The slot is held. A pending request blocks the same vehicle for the same dates so two people cannot both be told yes.
3. The host responds — or the request expires. Instant Book listings confirm immediately.
4. Confirmed. The authorisation is captured, the meeting protocol is issued, and the deposit is scheduled.

Minimum lead times

A booking cannot start sooner than the listing’s lead time, because a host has to physically bring the car to you. Owners may raise these, never lower them.

Request to book

2 hours before pick-up, plus the delivery zone's travel time

Instant Book

1 hour before pick-up, plus travel time

Bring your own driver

12 hours before pick-up — see §06

Walk-up rentals are deliberately not possible. If you are standing at arrivals with no booking, no vehicle on this platform can reach you in twenty minutes, and pretending otherwise produces cancellations.

Approval expiry

A request left unanswered expires by itself: 2 hours if pick-up is within 48 hours, otherwise 12 hours, and never later than 30 minutes before pick-up. An expired or declined request costs you nothing — the authorisation is voided, not charged.

06Drive modes

Each listing declares which of the three modes it offers, and you are shown only the modes you are actually eligible for.

Self-drive

You drive. Your own verified licence governs eligibility, and only you — or another person expressly recorded on the booking — may drive the vehicle.

With driver

A professional driver employed by the host organisation. There is no platform driver pool: the host directs, schedules, and pays their own drivers, and remains responsible for them. A standard driver day is 10 hours, with overtime billed hourly, and meals and lodging on longer trips are passed through to you at cost.

Bring your own driver

You nominate someone — a family driver, or a local you have hired — and we verify their licence before the handover.

• The nomination must be made at least 12 hours before pick-up. Inside that window the mode is not offered at all.
• Swapping the nominee later is refused. A substitute at six hours out is not an entitlement — your options are the with-driver mode if the listing offers it, or cancelling under the listing’s policy.
• If verification has not come back approved by pick-up, the handover does not go ahead. That failure is ours: you get a full refund with no penalty to either side.

07Prices, fees and VAT

Every price you see is the price you pay. Delivery, driver fees, add-ons, surcharges and 12% VAT are all inside the quote before you commit — there is nothing added at the kerb.

Amounts are in Philippine pesos and rounded to the centavo on each line item, so the breakdown you see adds up to the total you are charged. Rates are configuration and may change; the rate in force when you book is the rate that applies to that booking.

Deposits are not part of the price. A security deposit is your money, held and returned — it is not revenue, is never commissioned, and never forms part of a host payout.

08Payments and deposits

We accept GCash, Maya, and Visa, Mastercard and JCB cards. There is no cash on pick-up, by design — everything settles in-app so there is nothing to negotiate at the kerb. Card details are handled by our payment provider; we never store raw card numbers.

The rental

1. 1
   At requestAuthorised, not charged

   We place a hold for the rental total. If the host declines or the request expires, the hold is released and nothing is taken.
2. 2
   On acceptanceCaptured

   The booking is confirmed only once capture succeeds. If capture fails, the booking stays pending and we contact you — the host is never asked to accept twice.
3. 3
   Pick-up − 48hDeposit placed

   Separately from the rental, on its own clock, because card authorisations lapse in about a week and bookings are often made months ahead.

The deposit

• Typical bands: ₱5,000 – ₱20,000 for self-drive and own-driver by vehicle value, ₱0 – ₱5,000 for with-driver, often waived.
• Split tender is allowed. You may pay the rental by e-wallet and post the deposit as a card pre-authorisation, where no money actually moves.
• Returning renters post less. Bands reduce by 30% after two completed bookings with no upheld claims, and by 50% at five completed bookings with a strong review history. An upheld claim or chargeback resets that standing for 12 months. See deposits & claims.
• An optional non-refundable damage-protection fee may be offered in place of a cash deposit.
• If the deposit hold fails, we retry across the 48 hours before pick-up with reminders. If it still fails, the booking is cancelled under the listing’s policy and attributed to you, because the instrument that failed was yours.

09Cancellations and no-shows

Each listing carries one of three cancellation policies — Flexible, Moderate or Strict — chosen by the owner and shown on the listing before you book. The refund tables, the owner-cancellation penalty, no-show rules, and how flight delays are treated are all set out in full on the cancellation policies page, which forms part of these terms.

10Handover and the trip

Both handovers — collection and return — are recorded through the in-app checklist, with photographs, fuel level, odometer reading and both parties’ sign-off. That record is the evidence for any later claim, so complete it honestly and completely. The checklist works offline and syncs when you have signal.

While you have the vehicle

• Observe the listing’s mileage cap and fuel policy. Excess mileage and fuel shortfalls are charged at the rates published on the listing.
• Stay within the allowed travel zones. Inter-island travel by RoRo requires the owner’s permission and, usually, a ferry permit fee.
• Traffic violations, tolls and parking during your rental are yours, including any that arrive after the trip ends.
• Report any accident, breakdown or theft to the host and to us immediately, and to the police where required — see roadside assistance.
• Late returns are charged, and may cascade into the next renter’s booking — tell the host as early as you can.

11Damage, claims and settlement

When the return checklist is signed, the booking is complete and two clocks start.

Owner claim window

48 hours from completion. No claim filed, and the deposit releases automatically.

Your response window

48 hours from the claim. Accept, or dispute it. No response counts as acceptance.

Mediation

If disputed, we mediate on the handover evidence — target of five business days.

Funds returned

Card holds void within 24 hours of release; e-wallet refunds take up to five business days from release.

Release and repayment are different events. Release is our decision that the money is yours; the movement afterwards is your provider’s timing, not ours. We show you both dates.

A claim is satisfied from the held deposit. Where a claim exceeds the deposit it becomes a matter between the host and you, escalated through us — we do not automatically claw money back from a host who has already been paid, and we do not take more than the deposit from you without your agreement or a mediated outcome.

“Five business days” means Monday to Friday in Asia/Manila, excluding Philippine regular and special non-working holidays.

12Reviews

Only bookings that were actually completed produce reviews. Cancellations, no-shows and declined requests do not.

• Reviews are double-blind: neither side sees the other’s until both have submitted, or 14 days pass.
• Publication is not held up by a deposit dispute. The two run on separate clocks.
• Either party may reply once to a review about them.
• We remove a review only on stated grounds — personal data, abuse, extortion (“take this down or I file a claim”), or a factual claim the dispute record contradicts. Removals are logged with a reason.

13Host obligations

If you list a vehicle, you additionally agree that:

• Your listing is accurate — the actual vehicle, its real condition, working air-conditioning, and the equipment you claim.
• Registration, CTPL and any franchise are current for the whole booking. A vehicle whose papers lapse mid-rental cannot be dispatched.
• Your calendar is honest. Accepting a booking you cannot serve is the single most damaging thing on this platform, and it is priced accordingly — see owner cancellations.
• Any driver you supply is your employee. You direct, schedule and pay them; you carry the employer’s responsibility for their conduct, and vicarious liability for accidents sits with you.
• Payouts go to your organisation’s GCash, Maya or bank account after the trip completes, net of commission, and may be held while a dispute is open.
• You handle renters’ personal data only for the booking it was given for, and you delete nothing that belongs in an audit trail.

14Prohibited conduct

These end an account, and may end a booking mid-flight:

• Taking the transaction off-platform, or asking for cash at the kerb.
• Letting anyone drive who is not verified on the booking, or sub-renting the vehicle.
• Using a rented vehicle for ride-hailing, delivery, driving instruction, towing, racing, or anything the listing prohibits.
• Driving under the influence, or carrying anything illegal.
• Fitting or using an undisclosed tracking device.
• False documents, another person’s identity, or a payment instrument you are not entitled to use.
• Extortion around reviews or claims, in either direction.
• Scraping, reverse-engineering, or automating access to the platform.

15Insurance and liability

Every listed vehicle carries compulsory third-party liability insurance (CTPL) as Philippine law requires. That is a floor, not comprehensive cover. Whether a private comprehensive policy responds at all when a vehicle is rented out is a matter between the host and their insurer, and hosts must satisfy themselves on this before listing.

As a marketplace, we are not liable for the condition of a vehicle, the conduct of a driver, or an accident during a rental. Our responsibility is the platform: verification as described, correct pricing, custody of the deposit, and honest mediation. Nothing in these terms limits any liability that cannot be limited under Philippine law, including your rights under consumer protection rules on price disclosure and refunds.

16Suspension and termination

You may close your account at any time, provided no booking is in flight and no settlement is open. We may suspend an account for fraud signals, an upheld safety complaint, repeated cancellations, chargeback abuse, or a serious breach of these terms. Suspension is an administrator’s decision, taken by a person, and it is recorded.

A suspension does not cancel bookings already confirmed. Those continue; the suspended host’s payouts are held, and each open case is decided individually.

Financial and evidentiary records — bookings, payments, payouts, handover records, dispute decisions — are retained after an account closes, as tax law and the audit trail require. What that means for a data-erasure request is set out in the privacy notice.

17Disputes and governing law

Come to us first: most disputes are settled through in-app mediation on the handover evidence, and that is faster and cheaper than anything else available to either party.

These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of the Philippines. Where a dispute cannot be resolved between us, the courts of Cebu City have exclusive jurisdiction, without prejudice to any right you have to complain to the Department of Trade and Industry, the National Privacy Commission, or another regulator.

Agreements signed in the app — including the rental agreement — are concluded electronically and are intended to be valid and enforceable under the E-Commerce Act (RA 8792).

18Changes and contact

We will give notice in the app before these terms change materially. A change never applies retroactively to a booking already confirmed — the terms in force when you booked govern that booking.

Support

Help centre, or in-app messages on any confirmed booking

Legal notices

legal@sugborentals.ph (placeholder — company not yet registered)

Data protection

dpo@sugborentals.ph — see the privacy notice (placeholder — appointment pending)

Registered office

Cebu City, Cebu, Philippines (placeholder — registration pending)