Shipping & Returns

Last updated: 26 August 2026

In plain terms

  • Delivery: usually 5 to 7 days, to your door. Your pool is already in South Africa — it doesn’t travel from overseas after you order.
  • Prices are in US dollars (USD) and include VAT. The total you’re shown before you pay is the total you pay.
  • No customs to pay, no import VAT on delivery. Your pool was imported and cleared before you ordered it — you are not the importer.
  • Changed your mind? You have fourteen days from delivery to cancel, no reason needed. You pay the direct cost of sending it back — and it’s a big box, so read §5 before you decide.
  • Faulty within six months? You choose — repair, replacement or refund. At our risk and our expense.

1. Where we ship, and where from

Where your order ships from: stock we already hold in South Africa. Your pool is imported and cleared through customs before you order it, and sent to you from within the country. That’s the honest answer to the two questions everyone asks first: it’s already here, and there’s nothing to pay at the border.

2. How long delivery takes

Estimates, given honestly. If your order is going to be late, we tell you.

3. What you actually pay

  • Delivery cost is shown before you pay. Delivery is charged; it isn’t free.
  • All-inclusive: nothing to pay on delivery. No customs duty, no import VAT, no clearance fee. You are not the importer — your pool cleared customs before you bought it, and it ships to you from inside South Africa.

4. Delivery day: what to expect

One large, heavy box. Have a second pair of hands available. Check the box before you sign if you can; if it’s visibly damaged, note it and photograph it.

5. Cancelling within fourteen days

Because you bought online, the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 gives you the right to cancel without giving a reason and without penalty.

You have fourteen days from the day your pool is delivered. The Act’s standard window is seven days (section 44). It runs to fourteen days where an online supplier hasn’t made every piece of information the Act requires available on its website (section 43(6)) — and fourteen days is the window we apply. We’d rather give you the longer one and say so than quietly hold you to the shorter one.

  1. Tell us within fourteen days of delivery — email contact@hippool.com with your order number. No reason needed. We answer within 48 hours.
  2. Send the goods back to us. The law puts the direct cost of returning the goods on you, and we’re not going to pretend that’s small: a Hippool is a large, heavy parcel.

A word about pools that have been filled. You’re entitled to open the box, unfold the pool and inspect what you’ve bought. Setting it up, filling it with water and using it goes beyond inspection — and a pool that’s been filled and used can’t be sold again as new.

6. Damaged, missing or wrong on arrival

  1. Email us at contact@hippool.com with your order number.
  2. Send photos — of the damage, and of the box.
  3. We reply within 48 hours and tell you what happens next.

Missing a part? Tell us which one — we hold spare parts in stock, including pumps, battery-powered electric inflators and seal fittings.

7. If your pool is faulty

Under the Consumer Protection Act, what we sell you must be safe, of good quality, in working order, free of defects and durable for a reasonable time (s. 55).

If it fails, is unsafe or is defective within six months of delivery:

  • You return it without penalty, at our risk and our expense — not yours;
  • and you choose the remedy: repair, replacement or refund. That choice is yours, not ours (s. 56(2)).
  • If we repair it and the same failure recurs within three months, we must replace or refund — we don’t get a second repair.

Full detail: Warranty.

8. Pool safety in South Africa

Supervision first, whatever the by-law says. Drowning is a leading cause of accidental death among young children in South Africa. Active adult supervision at all times, children within arm’s reach, never unsupervised in or around the pool.

  • South Africa has a national duty on property owners to control access to a swimming pool (National Building Regulations, Regulation D4, under Act 103 of 1977), and failing to comply is an offence.
  • Whether that duty covers a portable, seasonal, above-ground pool is not settled in the sources we can verify. At least one major municipal by-law defines a swimming pool as a permanent excavation or structure. Rules differ from one municipality to the next, and they are tightening.

Water restrictions. Filling and topping up a pool is restricted — and in some municipalities prohibited or subject to penalties — depending on where you live and on the water situation at the time. Check your municipality’s rules before you fill. A pool cover is the single most effective way to cut evaporation.

9. Contact

Email us: contact@hippool.com — we answer within 48 hours, Monday to Friday.

Write to us: BME Consulting (Hippool), 113 rue Marietton, 69009 Lyon, France.

Related pages: Warranty · Terms of Sale