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How ServiceLink actually works

Several of this platform's rules are unusual enough to look like faults the first time you meet them. This page describes what the product does at each step and points to the document that governs it. Where a policy and this page disagree, the policy is right.

Things that look like faults and are not

Each of these is deliberate. Follow the link for the mechanic behind it.

From a posted job to a completed one

The step people report as a fault is the one in the middle, where an administrator reads the work agreement before anyone is assigned to anything.

  • A homeowner writes a brief: the category of work, a title and description, the suburb and postcode, an optional budget, and optionally photos and one walkthrough video. The brief carries no street address.
  • Publishing the brief records a listing-fee estimate against the account. It is a record. Nothing is charged, and no payment method is collected.
  • Trade businesses whose credential review is current, whose recorded categories match the job and whose recorded evidence covers the job's state or territory may submit a quote. A quote states an amount, what is included and excluded, indicative timing, GST treatment and a date it lapses.
  • The homeowner can ask a quoting business for a revised quote, hide a quote from their own list, or decline it. Hiding is private to the homeowner: the business is not told, and its quote stays pending.
  • The homeowner selects a preferred quote. This does not assign the job. It opens a work agreement and moves the job into contract review.
  • The trade business completes its half of the work agreement and the homeowner confirms theirs.
  • An administrator then reviews the agreement. Assignment happens in that review and nowhere else, which is why there is no one-tap hiring anywhere in the product. The review can also reject the agreement, which returns the quote to pending and the job to quoting.
  • Once the job is assigned it is booked: contact details may be shared, photos, video and voice notes can be attached to messages, and either side can propose a start time for the other to confirm.
  • The trade business can report the work finished and attach completion photos. That is informational — the job stays assigned until the homeowner confirms completion, records the final amount and whether it was paid outside ServiceLink, and writes the review.
  • A job left open with no activity closes itself, after one warning to the homeowner, and can be reposted from the job page as a fresh job.

Where this is written down

  • How it worksThe same sequence written from each side.
  • Marketplace termsWho contracts with whom, and what ServiceLink is not a party to.
  • Post a jobThe brief itself, including the fee estimate shown before publishing.

Why contact details are held back until a booking

Phone numbers, email addresses, links and messaging handles are refused in job briefs and quotes at every stage, and in messages until the job is assigned.

  • A job brief or a quote containing contact details is refused outright. There is no stage at which a brief or a quote may carry them.
  • Messaging opens when a preferred quote enters contract review. Until the job is assigned, message text carrying contact details is refused, the sender is shown what was detected, and the attempt is counted against their account.
  • Photos, video and voice notes can only be attached once the job is assigned. The check reads text; it does not read pictures or listen to audio, so media is held back rather than checked badly.
  • After assignment, sharing contact details in messages is allowed. The booking is the point at which the two parties are meant to be dealing with each other directly.
  • Detection is pattern matching on text, including spelled-out digits and disguised addresses. It has no image reading and no model behind it, so it will miss some attempts and occasionally stop an innocent one.
  • A job brief never carries a street address. A suburb and a postcode is what the marketplace sees.

Where this is written down

What money does, and does not do, here

No payment passes through ServiceLink at any point. Every money figure in the product is either an estimate of something never charged, or a record of something the two parties did elsewhere.

  • ServiceLink does not receive, hold, move or release the money for the work. Payment is arranged between the homeowner and the trade business, outside the platform.
  • Publishing a job records a listing-fee estimate. It is not an invoice, a receipt, a debt or a charge, and paying it is not possible.
  • Homeowner subscription tiers are a catalogue of proposed monthly prices and listing-fee rates. Subscribing is deliberately unavailable while billing is not configured, and the tiers differ in nothing except price and rate.
  • At completion the homeowner records the final amount and whether payment was reported as made, unpaid, disputed or unknown. That record is a note by one party, not evidence that anyone paid anyone.
  • Both ledgers — listing-fee estimates and completion records — sit on the account page, with a financial-year CSV export of each.
  • Because nothing is charged, the product contains no wallet, balance, credit, payout or deposit, and no card details are stored anywhere in it.

Where this is written down

What a credential review checks, and what it leaves alone

A verified trade business is one whose paperwork an administrator looked at on a stated date. It is not an opinion about the business or its work.

  • A trade business supplies its business identity, ABN, licence details for the states or territories it works in, insurance certificates and its trade categories. An administrator reviews that evidence before the account can quote at all.
  • The ABN entered is tested against the published check-digit algorithm. That is arithmetic on the number itself, not a lookup in the Australian Business Register, and the product does not claim otherwise.
  • Licence and insurance evidence is recorded with dates. When recorded cover ends, eligibility to quote ends with it; the business is reminded ahead of the expiry date and can submit renewed evidence.
  • Most categories require a current licence, and a business is eligible only for the categories and jurisdictions its recorded evidence covers. Cleaning and handyman work are the categories that do not generally require one.
  • Not checked, at all: the standard of past work, whether a licence class covers one particular task, whether an insurer would accept one particular claim, and whether anyone will turn up.
  • Homeowners are not checked. Anyone who can create an account with the sign-in provider can post a job, so a trade business should treat a brief as a claim by a stranger.

Where this is written down

What happens to photos and job records over time

Three separate clocks run on a closed job. Material disappearing on schedule is the product working, not data loss.

  • Nothing uploaded to a job is public. Photos and video are served through an authenticated request to the people on the job, and — while the job is still taking quotes — to trade businesses eligible to quote it.
  • Photos have embedded location and device metadata removed in the browser before upload. Video is not: it is stored as recorded, and both the job upload form and the message composer say so whenever a video is attached. Voice notes are stored as recorded as well, but a recording made in the composer carries no location metadata, so no such notice is shown for one.
  • Clock one, photos. A cancelled job — including one the platform closed automatically — has its photos deleted 30 days after closure; a completed job keeps them for 365 days. A homeowner can delete them sooner, and deleting job photos removes the completion photos with them.
  • Clock two, site details. Access notes, parking, property access, pets and power are cleared 30 days after a job closes, on every closed job.
  • Clock three, the record. 730 days after a job closes, its private record is minimised: the title and description are replaced with placeholder text, and the quotes, messages, appointments, notifications and attachments on it are deleted. A factual shell of the job remains.
  • Reporting a genuine dispute over a job's photos pauses the photo clock. An administrator reviews the hold; confirming it sets the next review 90 days later, and releasing it lets the scheduled deletion resume.
  • You can download an archive of your own data and request account closure from the account page. Closure has a grace period, can be cancelled during it, and cannot complete while an active job or a dispute hold exists.
  • There is no offline mode. Nothing is stored on the device for later reading, so every screen needs a live connection to show anything at all.

Where this is written down

  • PrivacyThe retention policy these clocks implement, and your access rights.
  • Your accountData export, photo deletion and account closure.
  • System statusWhat your browser and the live connection can actually observe.

How a review is created, and why there is no single number

A review can only come from a completed job, and the platform will not reduce a business to one figure or reorder a list by rating.

  • The only way a review exists is a homeowner confirming completion of a job that was assigned through ServiceLink. There is no separate write-a-review path, so an unsolicited or purchased review has nowhere to enter.
  • One review per job: a star rating and a comment, written by the homeowner about the trade business. Reviews of homeowners do not exist.
  • The author may edit their own review for 14 days. An edit is labelled as edited, and editing is refused while the review is under moderation or has an open report against it, so an edit cannot quietly undo a moderation decision.
  • The trade business can add one public reply to a review. It cannot remove one.
  • A trade profile shows the average of the reviews on it to one decimal place, how many reviews that average covers, and a live count of jobs completed through the platform. Beside the count sits a short descriptive band derived from that same count, which adds nothing the count does not already say.
  • The directory lists businesses by join date, most recently joined first, and says so on the page. Rating never changes that order, and the directory offers no way to sort or filter by rating.
  • Reporting a review sends it to moderation, where it can be restricted or removed with a recorded reason. It is not a delete button for a review someone dislikes.

Where this is written down

Where to get help, or complain

Reports are made from the thing being reported, and every report becomes a case with a reference you can follow.

  • Report controls sit beside the content they concern — a message, a job, a profile, a quote, a review or a reply to a review — and open a case with a reference.
  • The support centre is where a case is raised and where your own cases are listed with their current state.
  • Complaints about the platform or a job, copyright and content notices, and online-safety reports each have their own page, their own record and their own route to an external body.
  • This page states no turnaround of its own. Where a timeframe is published it belongs to the page that owns that process — the complaints page and the copyright and content complaints page each state their own service targets — and this page describes what happens to a report, in what order, and who sees it.
  • If the site itself is misbehaving, the status page reports what your browser and the live connection can observe. It is not an uptime statement.
  • Accessibility barriers have their own statement, their own complaint category and email and telephone routes beside the online form, and reporting one through the online centre returns a case number like any other report.

Where this is written down

Something on this page out of step with the product? Raise it as a case in the support centre and it will be corrected here.Support and reports