General Terms and Conditions

Disclaimer of Warranty

This site and all services provided through it are provided "as is" with no warranties whatsoever! Best Exchange Student Ltd. cannot in any way be held responsible for the accuracy or truthfulness of any of the information provided in any profile / provided by any member or family.

Any arrangements made between the parties are solely at each party's discretion, expense and risk. All express, implied, and statutory warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement, are expressly disclaimed. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Best Exchange Student Ltd. disclaims any warranties for the security, reliability, timeliness and performance of this site.

Also Best Exchange Student Ltd. disclaims any warranties and cannot be made liable for any picture or data abuse by third parties. But Best Exchange Student Ltd. guarantees, that no personal data from members or photos are being sold directly: neither to exchange agencies nor to advertisement companies, but Best Exchange Student Ltd. has no means to detect if agencies or other organizations join the portal "in disguise as a family" and then harvest data from other members. Accordingly Best Exchange Student Ltd. cannot be made liable for data abuse or picture abuse through third parties of any sort.


No endorsement of member content

You, the user, acknowledge and agree that Best Exchange Student Ltd. does not endorse the content of any member and is not responsible or liable for any content, even though it may be unlawful, harassing, libelous, privacy invading, abusive, threatening, discriminatory, harmful, vulgar, obscene, or otherwise objectionable, or that it infringes or may infringe the intellectual property or other rights of another. You acknowledge, that Best Exchange Student Ltd. does not pre-screen all content, but that Best Exchange Student Ltd. and its designees have the right (but not the obligation) in their sole discretion to refuse, edit, move or remove any content that is publicly available via the service. This might include any text, link,  mail address etc. containing words like d e v i l , S a t a n, h e l l,  s e x, a b u s e, r a p e, d r u g s, f u c k, s h i t  etc..

 

Limitation of Liability

You, the user, acknowledge and agree that Best Exchange Student Ltd. will not be liable for any harms which lawyers and courts often call direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or exemplary damages, including but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, goodwill, data abuse, or other intangible losses (even if Best Exchange Student Ltd. has been advised of the possibility of such damages), resulting from:
- the use or the inability to use the service
- the cost of getting substitute good and services resulting from any products, data, information
  or services purchased or obtained or messages received or transactions entered into, through
  or from the service
- the download or upload of any material from a Best Exchange Student Ltd. web site
- unauthorized access to or alteration of your data or transmissions
- statements or conduct of anyone using the site or on the service or
- any other matter relating to the service.

The foregoing disclaimers, waivers and limitations shall apply notwithstanding any failure of essential purpose of any limited remedy.


Indemnification

You, the user, agree to protect and fully compensate Best Exchange Student Ltd. and its service providers from any and all third-party claims, liabilities, damages, expenses and costs (including but not limited to reasonable attorney's fees) arising from your use of the services of the Best Exchange Student web site, your violation of the terms or your infringement, or infringement by any other user of your account, of any intellectual property or other right of anyone.


General and Code of Conduct

You can list your profile or search the Best Exchange Student site for free, without a paid membership. After you registered you can choose to purchase a full membership to use the enhanced features of this web-site and to have access to other full member family's contact data.
 

By posting a personal profile (information about you and your family) on this site or communicating with Best Exchange Student Ltd., you grant a royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive right to Best Exchange Student Ltd. and subcontractors of Best Exchange Student Ltd. to store, publish, use, reproduce and modify your profile information or your communication, including the right to use the name which you submit in connection with publication throughout the world in any media.

Using this site and the service offered by Best Exchange Student Ltd. you agree, that you will not:
- enter your personal contact information (contact information of any kind,
   such as e-mail addresses, phone-numbers, personal web-page addresses
   or chat addresses etc.) in any free-text field, which does not specifically request
   such information.
- upload any information or advertisement which could be considered competitive to the 
   service offered by Best Exchange Student Ltd..
- attempt to subvert the membership system or direct other users / members to any other
   web site, location or directory, where your contact information or competitive services
   could be obtained.
- "harvest" and commercially re-use e-mails from this site from other members.'
   Solicitation for services by any means, other than those offered or directly approved 
   by Best Exchange Student Ltd., to its registered members and users is absolutely
   and strictly forbidden.
- post, mail or upload any content, which is unlawful, threatening, harmful, harassing,
  obscene, defamatory, hateful, vulgar, discriminatory, invasive of another's privacy or
   in any other way objectionable.
- share your membership or contact information with any other person or disclose
  your password to any third party or share it with any third party. If you lose control
  of your password you may be subject to legally binding actions taken on your
  behalf.
- post, mail or upload any content for which you have no right to transmit this 
  information under any law or that infringes any patent, trademark, trade 
  secret, copyright or other proprietary rights of any party.
- interfere with or disrupt this site or servers or networks connected to this site;
  upload or transmit any material containing software viruses or any other 
  computer code, files or programs which interrupt, destroy or limit the 
  functionality of this site or connected servers or networks.
- disobey any requirements, policies or regulations of networks connected
  to this site
- exhibit expressions of abuse, obscenity or pornography of any kind or any
  other material that could give rise to any civil or criminal liability under 
  British, German or European Law. 
- suggest or solicit any relationship other then implied by this site
   (e.g. student exchange, pen friends, house exchange, travel companionship)
- harm other members / users in any way.
 

Also you must not use the service of this site if you, or any member of your family involved in a possible exchange, have ever been convicted of any sexual or criminal offense in front of any court worldwide.

Best Exchange Student Ltd. has the right to close down and/or remove accounts/registrations of offending users from its service, without notice and without refund, at its sole discretion, if any of the Terms of this agreement are found to have been violated. Best Exchange Student Ltd. has no obligation to monitor the profile content for any purpose and accordingly all content provided by you or any other user of this site is the sole responsibility of you or of that user!

 

Use of private information & personal contact information/ Data protection

By accepting these Terms & Conditions of Service, you acknowledge and grant permission to Best Exchange Student Ltd. to use, display and sell your private & personal contact information as intended on the Best Exchange Student web site.

Of course you have the full right, to view, modify, hide or delete your private information & your personal contact information. No representations or warranties are made regarding the legitimacy of the claims of those who have paid for membership to access your personal contact information. You are urged to validate the identity of anyone who contacts you, before making any commitments or arrangements.

We reserve the right to contact any member at any time regarding membership renewals or other membership related problems or questions. Also we at Best Exchange Student Ltd.   take the protection of your personal data very seriously and have taken technical as well as organisational measures to ensure, that the regulations on data protection are observed both by Best Exchange Student Ltd. as well as by all users, free members and Full Members.

This is also the reason why we only offer PayPal for membership payments, so that we do not
even get into contact with your bank data or any credit card information/data, to give you the extra protection needed against internet fraud!


Cookie Technology

We offer the use of cookie technology to help members move faster through our site. A cookie is a string of information that is sent by the web site and stored on your hard drive or temporarily in your computer's memory. This avoids the potentially time-consuming task of entering your user name and password each time a page is requested.


Refund Policy

There are no refunds on memberships and memberships cannot be put on hold or be benched for a later use in time. If your profile is not published / hidden your membership will still expire based on the number of consecutive months from the date your membership started. All membership sales are final. Best Exchange Student Ltd. will not automatically charge you for membership renewal. If you wish to renew your membership you will have to pay online via PayPal prior to the expiration of your active membership.
 

IMPORTANT: Should the portal shut down for whatever reason (for example, but not limited to: company shutting down for good, termination of business, or simply part time failure of the IT infrastructure), Best Exchange Student Ltd. will NOT pay any refunds, neither partially, nor in full to reimburse Full Member families. 

Account De-activation

After your paid membership expired your account will be set to a "free member status". After 1 year in free membership status, your account will be de-activated, and your data will automatically be deleted completely from the Best Exchange Student Ltd.'s database and web site.  


Final Statements

By using the Best Exchange Student web site you acknowledge that you agree to these Terms and Conditions of Service and are bound by the content set forth herein. All legal issues arising from or related to the use of this site or Best Exchange Student Ltd.'s services shall be construed in accordance with English law. Exclusive jurisdiction is the court of Birmingham, England, UK.

Best Exchange Student Ltd. may change these Terms and Conditions of Service without individual notification of members/users using the Best Exchange Student  site and services. Please check back periodically. 

The name "Best Exchange Student" and "Best Exchange Student Ltd." are property of Best Exchange Student Limited and a registered trademark.

Last but not least we encourage every Full Member to answer to e-mails he or she receives from other Full Members. Even if you are not interested in an exchange with the other family it is only polite to let the other family know that you are not interested.


These Terms and Conditions of Service constitute the entire agreement between you and Best Exchange Student Ltd. in regards of the use of the Best Exchange Student site. If a court should find that one or more rights or provisions set forth in these Terms and Conditions of Service are invalid, you agree, that the remainder of the Terms and Conditions of Service are enforceable and that the invalid provision shall be enforceable to the fullest extent and closest to its original meaning as possible and as permitted by law.
 

Version 2.0
last up-date: 2012.08.21