Terms and conditions of use

These terms are issued by Marine Match Ltd. Company Number: 17426292. Registered address: 2nd Floor College House, 17 King Edwards Road, Ruislip, London, HA4 7AE, United Kingdom.

Marine Match is an introduction platform. We verify engineer credentials to the standard described on the site and provide tools for posting jobs, requesting and sending quotes, messaging, booking, payment and record keeping.

We are not a party to the contract for the works. The contract for any job is between the boat owner and the engineer. Marine Match does not carry out marine engineering work, does not supervise it and does not warrant the workmanship, parts or advice of any engineer.

• You must be 18 or over and provide accurate information.
• You are responsible for activity under your account and for keeping it secure.
• Engineers must hold and maintain valid public liability insurance and any qualifications claimed, and must tell us promptly if either lapses.
• We may suspend or remove any account for misuse, misrepresentation, non-payment or conduct that puts other users at risk.

Verified status means our team has reviewed the documents supplied at the time of application. It is a documentation check, not an ongoing guarantee of competence, availability or quality of any particular job.

• Job posts must describe the scope, vessel and timeframe accurately. Quotes are offers to carry out that scope at the stated price.
• A binding contract between owner and engineer forms when the owner accepts a quote or confirms a booking.
• Any change to scope, price or dates must be agreed through a change order in the app before the additional work starts.

When the engineer marks a job as complete, the owner is asked to inspect the work and sign it off in the app.

• Responsibility for checking the quality and completeness of the works rests with the boat owner. You must inspect the work, and test or sea-trial where appropriate, before signing off.
• Raise any defect or shortfall with the engineer, in writing through the app, before sign-off or within the 7-day sign-off window.
• Sign-off confirms the scope has been delivered to your satisfaction and releases payment to the engineer. It does not remove statutory rights you may have against the engineer under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 or any warranty the engineer offers.
• Automatic release: if the owner neither signs off nor raises a problem within 7 days of the engineer marking the job complete, the job is treated as accepted and the funds release automatically to the engineer.
• Marine Match does not inspect, certify or accept liability for the quality of works recorded on the platform, including entries added automatically to a vessel log book.

• Payment through the platform: all bookings made on Marine Match must be paid through the platform. For jobs below the staged-payment threshold (currently £1,500) the full accepted quote value is taken at the point of booking.
• Staged payments on larger jobs: where the accepted quote is at or above the threshold, payment is taken in two stages. Stage one is a deposit (currently 40% of the accepted quote) taken at booking. Once the engineer confirms work has started, the materials share of that deposit is released to them so parts and materials can be bought, and the owner is asked to pay the stage-two balance, which is held by Stripe. All remaining held funds are released on sign-off or automatic release. If the booking is cancelled, any funds still held are refunded; amounts already released for materials are settled between the parties and may be recovered through the dispute process.
• How your money is held: those funds are held in a safeguarded account operated by our regulated payment provider, Stripe Payments UK Ltd (FCA-authorised electronic money institution, reference 900461). Marine Match does not receive, hold or control your money. Funds are released only on sign-off, on automatic release, on a staged materials release, or on refund, in line with these terms.
• Service fee: a service fee of 3% is added to each booking and is shown in full before you pay. This fee applies to all bookings, regardless of payment method. The total you pay (job total plus service fee) is held securely and released to your chosen professional once you mark the work complete.
• Platform commission: Marine Match charges the engineer 8% of the job value net of VAT. The commission is deducted at payout; it is not an additional charge to the owner.
• Payouts: the engineer's net funds are paid to their connected payment account after release, normally within a few working days.
• Additional work: agreed change orders are charged and held by Stripe on the same basis before the extra work begins.
• Payments off-platform: arranging payment outside Marine Match removes this payment protection and dispute support, and may result in account removal.
• VAT and invoicing: the engineer is responsible for issuing valid invoices and accounting for VAT on the works. Marine Match invoices its commission separately.

• The start date shown on the accepted quote is the agreed start. Engineers must start on that date or agree a new date with the owner through the app before it passes.
• 24-hour weather grace: marine work is weather and tide dependent. No fault attaches to an engineer who is delayed by up to 24 hours from the agreed start.
• No-show: if work has not started 24 hours after the agreed start and no new date has been agreed, the owner may cancel and receive a full refund of the balance Stripe is holding. No commission is charged and the job reopens to the owner's other quotes.
• A no-show is recorded against the engineer's profile. Repeat no-shows trigger review and may result in suspension from quoting.

• Cancellation by the owner more than 48 hours before the agreed start: full refund, including the customer service fee, less any parts already ordered or reasonable costs the engineer has incurred.
• Cancellation by the owner within 48 hours, or after work has started: the engineer may charge for work done and materials supplied, and the balance is refunded. The customer service fee is not refunded in this case, as the booking service has already been provided.
• Cancellation by the engineer, a reported no-show, or a problem resolved in the owner's favour: the owner is refunded in full, customer service fee included. Repeated cancellations may affect an engineer's listing.
• Partial refunds: where only part of the work is refunded, the customer service fee is refunded in the same proportion as the work amount returned. For example, on a £1,000 job with a £30 service fee, a £400 refund returns £400 plus £12 of the fee — £412 to the owner in total.
• What is not refunded is released to the engineer for the work covered, less our commission on that part only. On the example above, the engineer receives £600 less 8% commission (£48), so £552, and Marine Match retains £48 of commission plus the £18 of service fee that stayed with the refunded balance.
• Money already released to the engineer — for example a materials stage on a staged booking — cannot be refunded through the platform and must be settled directly.
• Refunds are returned to the original payment method, whichever method was used at checkout, and typically reach the owner within 5-10 business days.
• Platform commission is never charged on money refunded to the owner. Where a booking is cancelled in full, no commission is charged at all.

Owners and engineers should first try to resolve disputes directly through the job messaging thread. Where an owner raises a problem in the app before automatic release, the automatic release is paused and the funds stay held by Stripe while the dispute is reviewed. Marine Match may ask both parties for evidence and may instruct the payment provider to release or refund. We act as a facilitator only, and our decision on platform-held funds does not determine the parties' wider legal rights or your right to take the matter further.

Reviews must be honest, based on genuine completed work, and free from abusive or defamatory content. You keep ownership of content you upload and grant Marine Match a licence to display it on the platform. We may remove content that breaches these terms.

Owners must provide safe access to the vessel and disclose known hazards, including fuel, gas, electrical and structural issues. Engineers must work safely and in line with relevant standards and their own risk assessments.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, or any liability that cannot be excluded by law. Subject to that, Marine Match's total liability to you in connection with the platform is limited to the commission we received on the job in question. We are not liable for the acts, omissions or workmanship of any user.

We may update these terms and will change the date at the top of this page. Continued use after an update means you accept the revised terms. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales and are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of its courts.

Questions: hello@marinematch.co.uk.

You can ask us to delete your account and personal data by emailing privacy@marinematch.co.uk. We will delete data we no longer have a legal or insurance reason to keep, and confirm what has been retained and why within one month.