Ustaz Terms and Refund Policy
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These terms are the agreement between you and USTAZ LTD when you create an account or book lessons on Ustaz. In short: cancel more than 24 hours before a lesson for a full refund; if your teacher cancels, anything you paid is refunded in full; if something goes wrong in a lesson, report it and a real person replies within 2 UK working days. Your legal rights as a consumer always apply.
Who we are and what we sell
Ustaz is run by USTAZ LTD, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17524861). Registered office: Flat 41 Lawson House, White City Estate, London W12 7PZ.
We sell live one-to-one online Arabic lessons. You buy each lesson from USTAZ LTD. The teachers are independent teachers we contract to teach on Ustaz; they are not our employees.
Contact us at [email protected]. A real person replies within 2 UK working days. A reply may ask for more details, and sorting out a problem can take longer.
How we handle your personal data is in our Privacy Policy.
Your account
- You must be 18 or over to have an account, and you confirm this when you sign up. One account is for one person.
- Keep your password to yourself. After 5 wrong passwords an account locks for 15 minutes.
- Children do not get their own account. A parent adds a child to their own account (a nickname and an age band only) and books lessons for them. The parent stays with the child for the whole lesson.
- You can ask to delete your account at any time in the app (Account, then Delete account). The app may first ask you to settle a lesson that is under way or disrupted, a paid lesson 24 hours or less away, or (for teachers) a finished lesson not yet marked complete. Once accepted, sign-in stops and future lessons are cancelled under the refund rules below. Our Privacy Policy explains what is deleted and what we must keep.
Booking and paying
- Length. Every lesson, trial lessons too, is 45 minutes.
- When. You book an open time in the teacher's teaching hours, at least 30 minutes ahead. The app shows the next two weeks. You can also book the same time each week for several weeks.
- Price. Prices are in US dollars (USD). The price on the teacher's page is the price you pay: no booking fee and no other charge on top. Your bank may charge its own fee to change currency.
- Trial lesson. A trial is a paid 45-minute lesson at half the teacher's usual price, rounded to the nearest cent. The booking shows the exact amount.
- Paying. You pay by card on Stripe's secure payment page, right after booking or later from Lessons. The card types you can use are shown on that page. Your card is charged the full price when you pay. Until you pay, the time stays reserved for you, and you can cancel it for free before its scheduled start.
- Receipt. A paid lesson shows where your money went: what the teacher receives, the card and payment fees, and the Ustaz fee.
- Test payments for now. Until we announce on ustaz.io that real payments have started, payments in the app are test payments and no real money is taken.
Your lesson
Lessons happen live in the Ustaz lesson room in your web browser, at the time you booked. An Ustaz iPhone app is in public testing through Apple's TestFlight: see ustaz.io/iphone. Nothing is sent by post.
- You can join the lesson room from 10 minutes before the start until 15 minutes after the scheduled end.
- You need an internet connection and a microphone. Your camera is optional.
- Lesson notes are optional. They run only when both adults say yes for that lesson, and never when a child takes part. Our Privacy Policy explains them.
- After a lesson, the teacher may write a lesson card (book, page, new words and tasks) that you see in My Arabic journey.
Cancelling and refunds
Cancel a paid lesson in the app more than 24 hours before it starts and you get the full price back.
| Situation | What happens |
|---|---|
| You cancel a paid lesson more than 24 hours before it starts | Full refund to your card. Ustaz keeps no fee |
| You cancel a lesson you have not paid for yet | Free, at any time before it starts |
| 24 hours or less before a paid lesson | You cannot cancel it in the app. Your 14-day right below still applies. If something goes wrong, see the next section |
| Your teacher cancels before the lesson starts | Anything you paid is refunded in full, automatically |
| You delete your account | Future lessons that can still be cancelled are cancelled, and paid ones refunded in full |
How refunds work. Under our usual policy a refund is the full lesson price, back to the card you paid with. Once issued, a card refund usually appears within 5-10 working days. If it is delayed, write to us and we will trace it.
Your 14-day right. If you are a consumer in the UK or the EU, you can cancel a booking within 14 days of making it, as long as the lesson has not started, even when it is less than 24 hours away. Email [email protected] with your name, the lesson's date and teacher, and the words "I cancel this booking". We refund the full price within 14 days of your email.
Your other legal rights. We provide every lesson with reasonable care and skill. Nothing in these terms limits your legal rights, for example to have a lesson repeated or the price reduced if it was not.
When something goes wrong
Your teacher did not come, or you could not connect. For a paid lesson that has started and has not been cancelled, disrupted, rescheduled or refunded, press Report a problem on the lesson. You can make one report, until the teacher's payment is released (normally 48 hours after the teacher marks the lesson complete). The teacher's payment is held while your report is open, and the teacher can reply once. A real person at Ustaz then decides: a full refund to you, or the teacher is paid. If you cannot see Report a problem, email [email protected].
The connection drops during a lesson. The room keeps trying for 2 minutes, then offers a free reschedule. Either of you can also mark a paid lesson as disrupted, from 2 hours before it starts to 2 hours after it ends, while it is confirmed or under way and has not already been reported; if the option is not shown, email [email protected]. You then rebook it with the same teacher, already paid, with no new charge, up to 2 times. If a disrupted lesson has not been rebooked within 14 days after it was marked disrupted, a person at Ustaz reviews it; email [email protected] if you are waiting.
You did not come. If you miss a lesson your teacher was ready to teach, you pay for it. If you think that is wrong, write to [email protected] and a person looks at it.
Card payments, security and disputes
- Card payments are handled by Stripe, which meets the card industry's security standard (PCI DSS). You type your card details on Stripe's page; Ustaz never sees or stores your card number.
- Web and app traffic uses HTTPS, and live lesson audio and video are encrypted on the way (WebRTC security).
- If you think a charge is wrong, please write to [email protected] first; we can usually fix it faster than a bank dispute. Your rights with your card issuer stay the same either way.
Using Ustaz fairly
- Treat teachers and students with respect. No harassment, threats, hate or anything illegal.
- Use only your own account, and do not try to break, overload or misuse Ustaz.
- We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms. If we end your access, we will contact you about your upcoming lessons and refund paid lessons we will not provide.
- We follow UK sanctions law: we will not take payments from, or pay, anyone on a UK sanctions list, and every teacher is checked before being paid.
For teachers
- Your profile is listed after we approve it. You set your own price per lesson, from $1 to $500.
- From each lesson price, Ustaz keeps a 10 % fee, and card and payment fees (2.9 % + $0.30) also come out of it. You receive the rest, rounded to the cent: for a $12 lesson, $10.15. A trial lesson is half your price, with the same fees.
- The price and fees of a booking are fixed when it is made.
- You can mark a lesson complete from 15 minutes after its start. Your money is then held for 48 hours and becomes available, unless the student reports a problem: then it stays held until we decide.
- Available money is paid out by us in payout batches. Being available is not the same as money reaching your bank.
- We pay only to an account in your own name, after identity and sanctions checks. Contact us to add or change your payout method; every change starts a 72-hour hold.
- If you cancel a lesson, the student gets a full refund and you are not paid for it.
Our responsibility, the law, complaints and changes
Our responsibility. We take reasonable care to run Ustaz well. Lessons depend on the internet and on people, so we cannot promise every lesson runs without problems; when one does not, the rules above say what happens. We are responsible for losses you suffer that are a foreseeable result of us breaking these terms, not for losses no one could foresee. Nothing in these terms limits our responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not let us limit.
Complaints. Write to [email protected]. A real person replies within 2 UK working days.
The law. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. If you live in another country, you keep the consumer protections of that country. You can bring a claim in the courts of England and Wales or in the courts where you live.
Changes. If we change these terms, we update the date at the top and tell you about important changes before they apply, by email or in the app. Changes apply to bookings made after them: a lesson you have already booked keeps the terms in force when you booked it.