Who we are
Settl Abroad Ltd. is a private company registered in England and Wales (company no. 15820341), registered office at 14 Little Alma Street, London EC2A 4HP, United Kingdom. In these terms, "Settl Abroad," "we," "us," and "our" mean Settl Abroad Ltd.
When we say "you," we mean the person or entity using Settl Abroad. When we say "the service" or "Settl Abroad," we mean settlabroad.com, the Settl Abroad web app, our WhatsApp support, and any features we add.
By creating an account or using the service, you agree to these terms. If you don't agree, please don't use Settl Abroad.
What we do (and don't)
What we do
Settl Abroad helps international students plan and execute a move to Germany. The service includes:
- A 24/7 AI chat trained on student-visa, housing, and paperwork topics for the India–Germany corridor.
- Verified consultants and German-resident students you can book sessions with.
- An encrypted document vault.
- WhatsApp-based human support.
- Programme matching for users still picking a university.
What we don't do
Specifically, we do not:
- File visa applications on your behalf.
- Guarantee a visa, an admission, an apartment, a blocked-account approval, or any other outcome.
- Hold, transfer, or invest your money. (Stripe processes your subscription payment; that's it.)
- Sell consultancy packages of any kind. Consultant sessions on Settl Abroad are priced per booking, paid directly through the booking flow, and the consultant — not Settl Abroad — is responsible for the advice they give.
Your account
To use Settl Abroad, you need an account. To create one, you must:
- Be at least 16 years old.
- Give us a real name, a working email, and a working mobile number for WhatsApp support.
- Verify your email and phone before continuing.
- Accept these terms and the Privacy Policy.
You're responsible for keeping your account credentials safe. If you share your password, you share your account, your documents, and your chat history. Tell us at help@settlabroad.com immediately if you suspect someone else has accessed your account.
One person, one account. Don't create multiple accounts to game free trials or referrals. We can suspend accounts that do this.
Subscription & billing
Settl Abroad is a subscription service. Two tiers, no hidden ones:
How billing works
- Payments are processed by Stripe. We don't see your full card number.
- Your first charge is at signup. Subsequent charges happen every 90 days at the same price.
- VAT and GST are added where required by your country of residence.
- If a charge fails, we retry over 7 days. After that, we suspend access until you update your card. See §12.
- Receipts are emailed automatically. Download VAT-compliant invoices from your profile.
Price changes
If you're on Early Access, we will never raise your price. If you're on Standard, we'll give you at least 60 days' notice by email before any price change. You can cancel before it takes effect.
Cancellation & refunds
Cancellation
Cancel any time from your profile. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period — we don't end your access mid-quarter. Your chat history, documents, and context are preserved for 12 months in case you resubscribe.
7-day full refund
We refund your most recent quarterly payment in full if you ask within 7 days of that charge. No reason needed, no friction.
Beyond 7 days
We don't refund partial quarters beyond the 7-day window. If something went genuinely wrong on our end — extended outage, lost documents, support that never replied — write to help@settlabroad.com and we'll make it right.
Returning after cancellation
Early Access pricing is locked for as long as you stay subscribed. If you cancel and resubscribe, you join at the price tier available at that moment — usually Standard. We do this so the lock has real meaning.
Account deletion
Cancelling is not the same as deleting. To erase your data entirely, use the delete-account flow in your profile. See the Privacy Policy for retention details.
Acceptable use
By using Settl Abroad, you agree not to:
- Use the service to violate any law — including immigration, tax, or anti-money-laundering law in your country or Germany.
- Upload documents you don't have the right to upload, or documents that misrepresent your identity or qualifications.
- Scrape, mass-export, or build a competing product from Settl Abroad content.
- Reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract the source code of the service.
- Run bots, scripts, or other automated access against the service.
- Resell access to your account, share it with people who haven't signed up, or use it as a "shared family account."
- Harass our support team, our consultants, or other users.
- Probe, scan, or test the service for vulnerabilities without prior written consent (see our bug bounty at help@settlabroad.com).
If you do any of the above, we can suspend or terminate your account — see §12.
Your content
The documents you upload and the messages you send remain yours. We don't claim any ownership of them.
By using Settl Abroad, you grant us a limited licence to process your content solely to provide the service — show it to you, send it to OpenAI to generate a reply, and store it encrypted on our servers. This licence ends when you delete the content or close your account.
You confirm that:
- You have the right to upload everything you upload.
- Your content doesn't violate anyone else's rights — including copyright, trademark, or privacy.
- You will not upload illegal content, content that targets a minor, or content designed to defraud.
Our content
Everything we create — the app interface, the AI replies you receive, our guides, our checklists, our brand — is owned by Settl Abroad or licensed to us. We grant you a personal, non-transferable, non-exclusive licence to use it for your own move while your subscription is active.
You can screenshot what's useful for your own records. You can quote our content to friends. You cannot republish substantial portions of it, build a derivative product, or train another AI on it without written permission.
The Settl Abroad name, the Settl Abroad mark, and the "Trust in motion" tagline are our trademarks. Don't use them to suggest endorsement we haven't given.
Third-party services
Settl Abroad integrates with third-party services to deliver the experience:
- Stripe — payments. Governed by Stripe's terms.
- OpenAI — powers the AI chat. Our enterprise agreement prohibits training on Settl Abroad customer data.
- AWS (Frankfurt) — hosting and storage.
- Twilio — phone OTP.
- Postmark — transactional email.
- WhatsApp Business — human support channel.
We choose these providers because we trust them. We don't control them. If they break, we'll work around it as best we can.
Links from Settl Abroad to external sites (VFS, Fintiba, AWS, a university's portal) are for your convenience. We don't endorse, monitor, or control what those sites publish.
Disclaimers
Settl Abroad is provided as is, with all faults. To the maximum extent allowed by law, we disclaim all warranties — express, implied, statutory, or otherwise — including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement.
Specifically:
- The AI can be wrong. Always verify high-stakes decisions against the official source we cite.
- We can't guarantee that the service will be available without interruption, secure against every threat, or free of bugs.
- Information about visa policy, immigration rules, university admissions, blocked accounts, or housing markets reflects what we know at the time of writing. These change. Always confirm with the relevant authority before acting.
If you live in a jurisdiction that doesn't allow some of these disclaimers, they don't apply to you.
Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent allowed by law:
- Settl Abroad is not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, including lost profits, lost data, or lost opportunities — even if we've been told they're possible.
- Our total liability for any claim under or relating to these terms is capped at the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose, or (b) €100.
None of the above limits liability for: death or personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or anything else that can't be limited under English law.
Termination by us
We can suspend or terminate your account if:
- You materially breach these terms, the Acceptable Use rules in particular.
- Your subscription payment has failed for more than 7 days and you haven't updated your card.
- We're required to by law or a regulator.
- We discontinue Settl Abroad as a product (we'll give 90 days' notice and refund unused subscription time).
If we suspend you for non-payment, your data is preserved for 12 months in case you come back. If we terminate you for breach, we may delete the account after a 14-day grace period; you can export your data during that window.
Disputes & governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Any dispute is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.
If you are a consumer based in the EU, this clause does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory provisions of your local consumer law.
If you're based in India, you may also bring a claim before a court in your jurisdiction under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.
Before going to court — talk to us
If something's gone wrong, write to help@settlabroad.com with the heading "Dispute — [your name]." We try to resolve every complaint within 30 days. Most are settled in a single email exchange.
Changes to these terms
We update these terms when we add features, change the law, or fix language that's unclear. When we make material changes, we'll:
- Bump the version number at the top of this page.
- Email you at least 30 days before they take effect.
- Post a plain-language summary of what changed.
Continuing to use Settl Abroad after the effective date means you accept the new terms. If you don't, cancel within the 30-day notice window for a pro-rated refund of unused subscription time.
Previous versions are kept at settlabroad.com/terms/archive.
Contact
Everything legal goes to one address.
If you've read this far, thank you. Most of these terms exist because someone, somewhere, tried something unpleasant. The rest exist because we want you to know exactly what kind of company you're dealing with.