Letting a stranger into your home is the hard part

A job on HomyZone has two gates, and you hold the key to each one.

The start PIN is how work begins. The professional cannot mark the job as started until you read it out. That confirms the right person reached the right address — and it means nobody can claim to have started a job they never attended. If someone arrives saying they are from HomyZone and cannot complete this step in their app, they are not your professional.

The completion PIN is how work ends. The job stays open until you have looked at the work and decided you are satisfied. Only then do you share the second PIN, and only then is the job closed. If you are paying in cash, that is the moment it changes hands.

Between those two gates, nothing about your job can move without you.

Before a professional is offered a single job, they verify their Aadhaar once. They scan the UIDAI-signed QR code on the card and take a selfie; HomyZone's server checks UIDAI's own signature on the code, and the name has to match their profile. Anything that does not match goes to a person, who checks the selfie against the card's photo. Only verified professionals are offered jobs, and you see an "Aadhaar verified" badge on the one who accepts.

We keep their name, photo and the last 4 digits of the card — never the full number. This is an identity check, and we describe it as exactly that: it is not a background or police verification, and we do not claim one.

When a professional accepts, the app shows the time they promise to reach you by — worked out from their distance to you, and never more than 90 minutes after they accept. For a booking in a later slot, on time means from 15 minutes before the slot to 10 minutes after. Once shown, the time is not moved later.

An arrival promise with nothing behind it is marketing. This one has three consequences. More than 15 minutes late, and HomyZone adds 30 coins to your wallet — paid by us, not the professional, whatever you paid with. Still not there 30 minutes after the promised time, and you can cancel free, with any online payment refunded in full. Never arrived at all, and it is a no-show against the professional — a penalty for them, never a charge for you — and you choose: another professional or a free cancellation, both at no cost.

While they travel you see how far away they are by road and when they will reach you, with a short list of what to keep ready for that job. We show the distance and the time rather than a map, and we do not quote a fixed arrival time on this site.

The price you book is the price of the listed job. If the professional finds more work once they are there, they cannot simply add it: they propose it in the app, priced from HomyZone's own rate card — with a photo of the fault for anything larger — and you approve or decline it on your phone. Only what you approve joins the bill, and the bill always shows exactly what to pay.

Some repair and check-up jobs are labour only. Their price covers the visit, the diagnosis and the repair; if a spare part is needed, the professional names it, you buy it, and they fit it at no extra charge.

Contact details are not handed out freely. Neither side can call the other while your request is still circulating, or at the moment someone accepts. Once the professional has covered half the trip to your address, a call button appears on the booking for both of you, and it stays for a short time after the job so a follow-up is possible.

Until then you can chat in the app from the moment they accept — and any phone number typed into that chat is masked before it is stored. A professional's own job history only ever shows the last 4 digits of a customer's number.

This is a rule about when a number is shared, not a claim that every call is routed through a masking layer. We would rather describe what we actually do.

Customers rate professionals and professionals rate customers. A marketplace where only one side is accountable ends up protecting only one side.

If something went wrong, you have a 7-day window after the job to raise a dispute. That is long enough to notice a repair that did not hold, and short enough that both parties can still remember the visit clearly.

What a cancellation costs depends on how far the job had progressed, and the ladder runs in one direction only.

Before a professional accepts, nothing has been committed on either side, and a cancellation costs you nothing.

There is a grace window immediately after acceptance where you can still change your mind without penalty — a wrong tap should not cost money.

Once the professional is en route, a share is retained, because someone has begun spending their day on your job. Once they have arrived, more is retained, for the same reason: their time was genuinely used.

If no professional was ever found, or the professional cancels or fails to arrive, you are made whole in full.

The exact proportions at each rung are written into the customer terms and quoted in the app before you confirm a cancellation, and they can be revised in the HomyZone admin — so this page describes the ladder's shape and the terms carry the current figures. The shape does not change: the further along the job, the more of the professional's time you are compensating.

If a professional accepts your job and never arrives, you are not the one who absorbs it. The booking is closed out in your favour and it counts against them.

If a customer books a job, a professional travels out, and nobody is there, that is protected too. The professional's time is compensated and repeated no-shows count against the customer's account.

Both of those have to exist. Protecting only customers produces a platform professionals leave; protecting only professionals produces one customers never trust.

It is always tempting to agree the next job directly and cut the platform out. What actually gets cut out is every mechanism on this page.

Off-platform, there is no start PIN confirming who turned up, no completion PIN putting you in control of when the job closes, no arrival promise with a consequence attached, no approval before extra charges, no rating that follows the professional, and no dispute window. If the work fails a week later, it is your word against theirs with nothing behind either.

That is the reason HomyZone discourages taking jobs off-platform, and it is the reason it matters to the customer at least as much as to us.