Terms of business of Graduate Study Options Ltd trading as UK Study Options (registered in England and Wales under company number 06951809)
Where to find information about us and our services
You can find information about us, Graduate Study Options Ltd trading as UK Study Options, our services and our charges on our website or in any materials describing our services which we have provided to you before you contract with us.
By completing this form, you are requesting a free “Fee Status Appraisal” of your fee status eligibility in the universities of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
By completing this form, you are not signing up to our “Fee Status Complete” service and there is no obligation for you to do so. However, should you wish to take up to our “Fee Status Complete” Service following a “Fee Status Appraisal”, you agree to the terms of the “Fee Status Complete” Service set out here. Therefore, by ticking to accept these terms of business you will be agreeing to enter into a legal binding contract with us on your behalf and as agent for any other person (such as another parent or student) benefitting from our services. You are also entering into an obligation to pay us for our “Fee Status Complete” Service (should you later wish to proceed with that). Before you do so, you should read these terms of business carefully.
When you contract to purchase services from us you are agreeing that:
- You accept our payment terms.
- If you contract with us online or by other distance means, you have a legal right to change your mind unless you instruct us to commence services right away.
- You accept our refund policy.
- We are not responsible for delays outside of our control.
- You are responsible for making sure that any information you supply to us is accurate.
- You have rights if there is something wrong with our services.
- We can change our services and these terms.
- We can end our contract with you.
- We reserve our intellectual property rights.
- We do not compensate you for all losses cause by us or our services.
- We use your personal data and any personal data of others that you provide to us as set out in our Privacy Policy.
- You have several options for resolving disputes with us.
- Other important terms apply to our contract.
1. You accept our payment terms
Our charges are set out in the materials describing our services which we have provided to you before you contract with us. We reserve the right to change our prices before you contract with us. Please ensure you have the most up-to-date materials from us with our current prices.
1.1 We charge you before we supply services
1.1.1 Our “Fee Status Appraisal” services is currently free.
1.1.2 For our “Fee Status Complete” services, unless otherwise agreed between us in writing, we charge £5,990 in full, upfront.
1.1.3 Alternatively, for our “Fee Status Complete” services we offer the option of a payment plan at your request. As part of our payment plan, we charge 50% upfront and 50% on 1st August of the application year (being the academic year prior to starting university and prior to delivering the rest of services which remain to be performed at that point). This is unless you take up our “Fee Status Complete” services from 1st July of the application year, in which case the services will be charged in full, upfront.
1.2 We charge interest on late payments
If we are unable to collect any payment you owe us, we charge interest on the overdue amount at the rate of 4% a year above the Bank of England base rate from time to time. This interest accrues on a daily basis from the due date until the date of actual payment of the overdue amount, whether before or after judgment. You pay us the interest together with any overdue amount.
2. If you contract with us online or by other distance means, you have a legal right to change your mind unless you instruct us to commence services right away
Your legal right to change your mind: you have 14 days after entering into this contract (by way of accepting the terms) to change your mind, but you lose the right to cancel where you instruct us to commence services right away (meaning before this 14-day period has expired). If you change your mind, contact our Team: hello@ukstudyoptions.com.
3. You accept our refund policy
In certain circumstances, we may offer you a partial refund, on a pro rata basis for example, if your circumstances have changed and you/your child are/is no longer applying to UK university and does not require support. We will take into consideration how much of our service you have used up to that point. Any refund and the amount refunded is completely discretionary and does not affect your consumer rights. If you would like to discuss a refund with us, contact our Team: hello@ukstudyoptions.com.
4. We are not responsible for delays outside our control
If our supply of services is delayed by an event outside our control, we will contact you as soon as possible to let you know and do what we can to reduce the delay. As long as we do this, we will not compensate you for the delay.
5. You are responsible for making sure that any information you supply to us is accurate
If we have asked you for information relating to the services we are providing, you are responsible for making sure the information you supply to us is correct. Such information could be in respect of education history, qualifications, employment, residence, travel, property, immigration or family. You are also responsible for making sure that you are transparent with us and recognise that the quality of the services we are able to provide is directly linked to the quality and transparency of the information that you provide to us. To be clear, we do not accept responsibility for you not achieving home fee status as a result of you not providing information relevant to our services to us or you not adhering to our advice.
6. You have rights if there is something wrong with our services
If you think there is something wrong with our services, you should contact our Team: hello@ukstudyoptions.com. For detailed information of your legal right please visit the Gov UK website at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/contents These are subject to certain exceptions.
Remember too that you have several options for resolving disputes with us.
7. We can change our services and these terms
7.1 Changes we can always make: we can always change our services to reflect changes in relevant laws and regulatory requirements.
7.2 Changes we can only make if we give you notice and an option to terminate: we can also make other changes to our services or these terms, but if we do so we will notify you and you can then contact our Team: hello@ukstudyoptions.com to end the contract before the change takes effect and receive a refund for any services you have paid for in advance, but not received.
8. We can end our contract with you
We can end our contract with you if:
- you do not make any payment to us when it is due, and you still do not make payment within 14 days of our reminding you that payment is due; or
- you do not, within a reasonable time of us asking for it, provide us with information, cooperation or access that we need to provide the services.
9. We reserve our intellectual property rights
All intellectual property rights (including copyright) in or arising out of or in connection with our services (other than intellectual property rights in any materials provided by you) shall, as between you and us, be owned by us. You have a right to use any information we provide to you. However, it is provided to you only and so please do not share it with others in circumstances where they may seek to rely upon it. Also, please do not film or record any meetings between us and you.
10. We do not compensate you for all losses caused by us or our services
10.1 You warrant to us that you have a legitimate United Kingdom university home fees status claim based on the rules and regulations on fee status available at: https://www.ukcisa.org.uk.
We in turn warrant to you that our services will be provided using reasonable care and skill based on the relevant rules and regulations at the time of supply. However, you acknowledge and agree that we are not providing you with legal or financial advice and that our services are informed by rules and regulations which may change over time as well as training and information given by the UK Council for International Student Affairs together with our own experience of working in the higher education sector. It follows that if any rules and regulations on fee status change and the advice we have previously given you as part of our services becomes invalid as a result, we will not be responsible for that and will have no resulting liability to you. You further acknowledge and agree that we make no guarantees in relation to any savings that you may obtain following us providing our services to you or that you will secure home fees status at a United Kingdom university. You agree that you place no corresponding reliance on our services.
10.2 We are responsible for losses you suffer caused by us breaking our contract with you unless the loss is:
- Unexpected. It was not obvious that it would happen and nothing you said to us before we contracted with you meant we should have expected it (so, in the law, the loss was unforeseeable).
- Caused by a delaying event outside our control. As long as we have taken the steps set out in these terms of business.
- Avoidable . Something you could have avoided by taking reasonable action, including following our reasonable instructions.
- A business loss
11. We use your personal data and any personal data of others that you provide to us as set out in our Privacy Policy
How we use any personal data you give us is set out in our Privacy Policy.
12. You have several options for resolving disputes with us
12.1 Our complaints policy: our Team: hello@ukstudyoptions.com will do their best to resolve any problems you have with us or our services.
12.2 Resolving disputes without going to court. Alternative dispute resolution is an optional process where an independent body considers the facts of a dispute and seeks to resolve it, without you having to go to court.
12.3 You can go to court. These terms of business are governed by English law and wherever you live you can bring claims against us in the English courts. If you live in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can also bring claims against us in the courts of the country you live in. We can claim against you in the courts of the country you live in.
13. Other important terms apply to our contract
13.1 We can transfer our contract with you, so that a different organisation is responsible for supplying the services. We will tell you in writing if this happens and we will ensure that the transfer will not affect your rights under the contract.
13.2 You can only transfer your contract with us to someone else if we agree to this.
13.3 Nobody else has any rights under our contract. Our contract is between you and us. Nobody else can enforce it and neither of us will need to ask anybody else to sign-off on ending or changing it.
13.4 If a court invalidates some of our contract, the rest of it will still apply. If a court or other authority decides that some of these terms of business are unlawful, the rest will continue to apply.
13.5 Even if we delay in enforcing our contract, we can still enforce it later. We might not immediately chase you for not doing something (like making payment to us) or for doing something you are not allowed to, but that does mean we cannot do it later.
