Community Guidelines

The short version

Listings go live immediately — and that is why these rules matter

We do not hold new listings in a review queue. A seller who has photographed an outfit at nine in the evening can have it earning by ten, and waiting days for an approval is how a marketplace loses the people it needs most.

The trade is that moderation happens after publication and depends on people telling us. Every listing page has a Report this listing link. We read what comes in, and we act on it — see what happens when something is reported.

What you may list

Things you own outright, or are explicitly permitted to rent out on someone else’s behalf, and that are legal to possess and hire in India. In practice that is:

• Wedding and festival wear, including lehengas, sherwanis and chaniya cholis
• Jewellery, including imitation and costume pieces sold as such
• Children’s costumes and fancy dress
• Cameras, lenses, projectors, sound equipment and other electronics
• Furniture, appliances and household equipment
• Bicycles, scooters, motorcycles and cars, where you hold the papers and any permit the law requires
• Sports and fitness equipment
• Tools, event equipment, decorations and crockery
• Venues, grounds and turfs, listed by whoever operates them

What you may not list

This list is not exhaustive, and we will remove anything that is plainly against the spirit of it. If you are unsure, ask us before listing rather than after.

Illegal, or illegal to hire

• Anything whose possession, sale or hire is unlawful in India
• Drugs, controlled substances, and equipment intended for their use
• Stolen goods, or anything you cannot show you are entitled to rent out
• Items or services that require a licence, permit or registration you do not hold — including commercial vehicle hire without the correct permit

Dangerous

• Firearms, ammunition, air guns, explosives and fireworks
• Knives and blades offered as weapons rather than as tools or kitchenware
• Hazardous chemicals, industrial gases and radioactive material
• Medical devices and prescription equipment offered for hire to the public
• Live animals

Counterfeit and infringing

• Replicas or fakes described, or implied, to be genuine branded goods
• Pirated media, software or unlicensed copies of anything
• Photographs, text or logos taken from someone else’s listing, shop or website

Adult, hateful or harmful

• Sexual services of any kind, and adult products or content
• Anything sexualising a minor — reported to the authorities, without exception
• Material that attacks or demeans people for their religion, caste, gender, sexuality, disability or origin
• Anything promoting violence, self-harm or an illegal act

Not a rental at all

• Items for sale rather than hire — this is a rental marketplace
• Money, financial products, loans, lottery tickets and gambling
• Job adverts, matrimonial posts, personal advertisements and general services
• Human hair, bodily fluids, organs and tissue
• Duplicate listings of the same item, posted to occupy more of a page

Listing honestly

• Use your own photographs. A picture taken from a catalogue or another seller misleads the renter and infringes someone’s copyright.
• Show real condition. Say what is stained, torn, scratched or missing. Nearly every dispute we could have prevented starts here.
• Price what you will actually charge. A rate on the listing that becomes a different one on the phone is bait, and we treat it as such.
• Say what is included. If the helmet, the charger, the tripod or the jewellery set is not part of the hire, say so on the listing.
• Keep it available. Take a listing down, or switch it off, when the item is gone. A marketplace of unavailable items is worth nothing to anybody.

How to treat each other

• Answer messages like a person. You are dealing with a neighbour, not a ticket.
• Do not harass, threaten or abuse anyone, in chat or in person.
• Do not ask for, or share, anyone’s personal details beyond what a rental needs.
• Do not use the chat to spam, to advertise other businesses, or to move people to a channel where nothing can be checked.
• Return things on time and in the condition you received them. Tell the owner immediately if something is damaged.
• Do not write fake reviews, or press anyone to change an honest one.

Reporting something

Every listing page has a Report this listing link at the bottom. You will be asked what is wrong with it — a scam, a prohibited item, something inappropriate, a fake listing, wrong information, spam, or a copyright problem — and given room to explain.

You need an account to report something, so that we can follow it up and so the system cannot be used anonymously to attack a competitor. We never tell the other person who reported them.

What happens next

Reports land in a queue that an administrator works through, with the most serious reasons — fraud, prohibited items, inappropriate content — raised to the top automatically. Depending on what we find:

• We take the listing down. It stops being public, and the seller is shown the reason we gave, in their own dashboard.
• We unpublish it. Used when something is fixable — a missing photograph, a description that needs correcting — and the seller can put it back.
• We suspend the account. Every listing that account owns stops being public at the same time, and its sessions are ended.
• We do nothing. Not every report is well founded, and we will not remove a legitimate listing because someone disliked it.

Serious matters — anything involving a child, a credible threat, or a crime — go to the police as well, and we will co-operate with a lawful request for the records we hold.

Reporting in bad faith is itself a breach of these guidelines. Deliberately false reports, particularly against a competitor, are grounds for suspension.

If you think we got it wrong

Write to support@nearbyrents.com from the address on the account, quoting the listing and the reason you were shown. A person will look at it again. We would rather reverse a wrong decision than defend it — but we will not restore something that breaks the rules above, however politely we are asked.

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