Terms of Service

1. Who we are and how to contact us

merkel.academy ("we", "us", "our") is operated by Mohamed Ali, a sole trader based in London, United Kingdom. We provide self-paced online German-language courses to individual learners.

You can contact us at hello@merkel.academy. We aim to reply within one working day.

2. Definitions

Term	Meaning
Account	The account you create to buy and access courses on the Website.
Course	An online German course made up of lessons and downloadable resources.
Course Materials	Videos, audio, text, worksheets, phrase banks, templates and any other content supplied as part of a Course.
Website	merkel.academy and all pages, features and services made available through it.
Order	A request by you to purchase access to a Course.
You / Student	The person who registers an Account and/or purchases a Course.

3. These terms

By creating an Account, placing an Order, or otherwise using the Website, you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the Website.

You must be at least 18 years old to purchase a Course. If you are under 18, you may only use the Website with the involvement and consent of a parent or guardian.

4. Your account

• You must provide accurate, current and complete information when you register.
• You are responsible for keeping your password confidential and for all activity that takes place under your Account.
• Accounts are for a single named individual. You must not share your login details or let anyone else use your Account.
• Tell us promptly at hello@merkel.academy if you believe your Account has been accessed without your permission.
• We may suspend or close an Account that we reasonably believe is being misused (see section 10).

5. Courses and access

Courses consist of video lessons, reading lessons and downloadable resources. The contents of each Course are described on its course page. Lesson titles and the curriculum outline are visible before purchase; the lesson content itself is unlocked after a completed purchase.

When you buy a Course you receive lifetime access to it for as long as the Website continues to operate and the Course remains published. We may update, add to, or retire individual lessons to keep a Course accurate and current (see section 16).

We aim to keep the Website available at all times, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free access. We may carry out maintenance and may occasionally suspend access for technical reasons.

6. Licence to use course materials

When you buy a Course, we grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable licence to access and use that Course's materials for your own personal learning. The licence lasts for as long as you have access to the Course.

Under this licence you must not, and must not allow anyone else to:

• copy, resell, sublicense, rent, lend or otherwise make the Course Materials available to any other person;
• share your Account or download links, or use them to give others access;
• upload the Course Materials to any public or shared platform, or use them to create a competing course;
• record, download or re-publish video or audio lessons except where a download is expressly offered;
• remove or alter any copyright, trade mark or attribution notices.

Downloadable resources (such as worksheets and phrase banks) may be printed and used by you for your own study or for teaching your own students, provided you do not resell them or present them as your own published material.

7. Ordering and prices

• Prices are shown in pounds sterling (GBP) and include VAT where it applies.
• We may change prices at any time, but changes will not affect Orders you have already completed.
• Your Order is an offer to buy. A contract is formed only when we confirm your purchase and grant access to the Course.
• We may refuse or cancel an Order if the price was clearly wrong, if we suspect fraud, or if the Course is no longer available. If we cancel, we will refund you in full.

8. Payment

Payments are processed by Stripe. You enter your card details on Stripe's secure checkout page; we never see or store your full card number. By paying, you confirm that you are authorised to use the payment method provided.

Access to a Course is granted once our payment provider confirms that the payment has completed. The confirmation page shown by your browser is not, by itself, proof of payment.

9. Cancellation and refunds

As a consumer in the United Kingdom you normally have a legal right to cancel a distance contract within 14 days of entering into it, under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. For digital content supplied immediately, that right is lost once supply has begun where you gave your express consent to immediate access and acknowledged that you would lose the right to cancel.

Regardless of the above, we voluntarily offer a 14-day refund guarantee on Course purchases: if a Course is not right for you, contact us within 14 days of purchase and we will refund you. The full terms are set out in our Refund Policy.

Nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights in respect of digital content that is faulty, not as described, or not of satisfactory quality, under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

10. Acceptable use

You agree not to use the Website or Course Materials to:

• break any applicable law or regulation, or infringe anyone else's rights;
• gain or attempt to gain access to Courses you have not paid for, or circumvent any access control, paywall or security measure;
• scrape, harvest, spider or systematically extract content, or use automated tools to copy the Website;
• upload or transmit viruses, malware, or any code designed to disrupt or damage the Website or the systems of others;
• harass, threaten, abuse or discriminate against any person, including our staff;
• impersonate any person, or misrepresent your identity or affiliation;
• use the Website for any commercial purpose without our prior written permission.

If you breach this section we may suspend or terminate your Account and your access to Courses. Where a breach is serious, we may do so without a refund.

11. Intellectual property

All Course Materials and all content on the Website (including text, video, audio, graphics, design, logos and code) are owned by us or our licensors and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. "merkel.academy" and our logo are our trade marks.

Except for the limited licence in section 6, no rights are granted to you. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.

12. Your submissions

If you send us feedback, answers, questions or other material, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use, reproduce and adapt it for the purpose of operating and improving the Website and our Courses. You confirm that you own that material and that it does not infringe anyone's rights. Please do not send us information you wish to keep confidential.

13. Our liability

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for:

• death or personal injury caused by our negligence;
• fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;
• anything else that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded, including your statutory consumer rights.

Courses are provided for personal educational use. We do not promise any particular outcome, such as a specific exam score, CEFR level or level of fluency, since progress depends on your own effort and circumstances.

Subject to the paragraph above, and to the extent permitted by law:

• we are not liable for loss of profit, loss of business, loss of opportunity, or any indirect or consequential loss, where the Course was used for a business purpose;
• our total liability to you in connection with a Course is limited to the amount you paid for that Course.

The Website may contain links to third-party websites and services. We are not responsible for their content, availability or practices.

14. Events outside our control

We are not liable for any failure or delay caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including internet or hosting outages, power failures, or failures of third-party services such as our payment or email providers. Where such an event significantly affects your access, we will use reasonable efforts to restore it as soon as we can.

15. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the Website at any time and may ask us to close your Account by emailing hello@merkel.academy.

We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these terms, if we are required to do so by law, or if we reasonably believe your Account is being used fraudulently or unlawfully. When your access ends, the licence in section 6 also ends and you must stop using the Course Materials.

16. Changes to the website and courses

We may update the Website and our Courses to improve them, reflect changes in the language, or add new material. If we permanently discontinue a Course you have purchased within a reasonable time of your purchase, we will offer you a proportionate refund or access to an equivalent Course.

17. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms from time to time, for example to reflect changes in the law or in our services. We will publish the updated version on this page and update the "Last updated" date. Where a change is material, we will give you reasonable notice by email or by a notice on the Website. Changes do not affect the terms that applied to a purchase you have already made.

18. Other important terms

• Entire agreement. These terms, together with our Privacy Policy, Refund Policy and Cookie Policy, are the entire agreement between us in relation to the Website.
• Severability. If any part of these terms is found to be invalid or unenforceable, the rest will remain in full force.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce a right, that does not mean we have given it up.
• Assignment. We may transfer our rights and obligations to another organisation, but this will not affect your rights. You may not transfer your rights under these terms to anyone else.
• Third-party rights. No one other than you and us has any right to enforce these terms.
• Governing law. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you may bring proceedings in your local courts.

19. Complaints

If you are unhappy with any part of the service, please contact us first at hello@merkel.academy so we can try to put things right. We will acknowledge your complaint within five working days. This does not affect your statutory rights, and you are always free to seek independent advice or to take the matter further.