Terms and Conditions - Mystery Creative Writing Training Institute

Terms & Conditions

Version: 1.03.2021

Last updated: 08 June 2021

Your use or access of any part of this website signifies your acceptance of these Terms of Use. PLEASE READ THESE TERMS OF USE CAREFULLY.

Welcome to Mystery Writing Academy (www.academy.mysterypublisherslimited.com) site (“site”). The site includes all digital properties operated by Faculty and staff on behalf of Mystery Writing Academy, a division of Mystery Publishers Limited. From here on in, we will refer to Mystery Writing Academy as “the Academy”, to you as “you” or a “student” (or where applicable “an applicant”) and to these Terms and Conditions as the “Terms”.

These terms shall be applied alongside Mystery Publishers Limited Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, and Terms of Use. The site shall contain links to Mystery Publishers Limited and its other businesses.

These Terms and Conditions apply to all visitors to and users of the site, including any mobile version. By accessing or using the site, you signify that you have read, understand and agree to be bound by these Terms of Use. You also agree to be bound by these Terms of Use, if you post the site links on your site.

Please read these Terms and Conditions and the documents detailed within carefully before applying to the Academy, accepting our offer and again before enrolling with us. It is not possible to provide the full detail of every policy or procedure that may apply to your studies or the services offered by the Academy within the text of these Terms and Conditions.

The Academy reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to change, modify, add or delete portions of these Terms at any time. Your continued use of the service or the site after any such changes are posted constitutes your acceptance of the new Terms. It is your responsibility to regularly check this page to determine if there have been changes to these Terms of Use and to review such changes.

Disclaimers

The Academy strives to ensure that information on its website is accurate and current. However, the information is subject to change from time to time, without notice, as deemed appropriate by the Academy. The site and the content are provided on an “as is, as available” basis, without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including but not limited to warranties of merchantability, non-infringement or third party rights and fitness for a particular purposes, and any warranties that access to the site is uninterrupted or error free, that the site is free of viruses or other harmful material or that information on the site is complete, accurate or timely. You use the site at your own risk.

The Academy does not accept any liability for the consequences of inaccurate or incomplete information on the site. If visitors to the site are in doubt on any details they should contact the Academy. The Academy is not responsible for any technical malfunction or other problems of any communications network or service, computer systems, servers or providers, computer or mobile phone equipment, software, or email including injury or damage to user’s or to any other person’s computer, mobile phone, or other hardware or software, related to or resulting from using or downloading materials.

All messages and comments posted in forums express the views of the author and the Academy will not be held responsible for the content of any message. Although the Academy provides rules for user conduct, it does not control, is not responsible for what users may post, transmit or share on the site and is not responsible for any offensive, inappropriate, obscene, unlawful or otherwise objectionable content you may encounter on the site. The Academy is not responsible for the conduct, whether online or offline, of any user of the site.

Course Information

Our printed prospectus is intended to provide an overview of our courses of study and the Academy. It is developed well in advance of the start of the training periods and therefore the information within the printed prospectus reflects the courses as they are at that time. Our online courses prospectus contains the most up to date information on courses, so please check back regularly including before you apply/enrol for a course and again before you accept your offer.

Course Changes

Please note that our courses are subject to review and development on an ongoing basis. Changes may sometimes be necessary. For example, to comply with the requirements of professional or accrediting bodies or as a result of student feedback or external examiners reports. In addition, we also need to ensure that our courses are dynamic and current and that the content and structure maintain academic standards and enhance the quality of the student experience. We only make changes where we consider it necessary to do so and/or where we feel that certain changes are in the best interests of students. Occasionally, we have to make changes for reasons outside of our control. We may make changes to your course under the following circumstances:

to keep our course content and delivery up to date and relevant, implement technical adjustments and/ or improvements, for example: to reflect developments in academic teaching, research and/or professional standards/requirements, to address any tutor feedback received as part of their annual reports and/or results from our regular student feedback sessions;
from continuous review every year for each course;
to reflect changes in relevant laws, statutory, regulatory and/or professional body requirements and/or sector regulation; and
to review and refresh free courses and bonus modules as shall be offered from time to time subject to change. We do not guarantee that free courses and bonus modules will always be available in any given training period, as such are offered on promotional basis.

User Conduct

The site is available for your personal, non-commercial use only. You represent, warrant and agree that no materials of any kind submitted through your account or otherwise posted, transmitted, or shared by you will violate or infringe the rights of any third party, including copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity or other personal or proprietary rights; or contain libellous, defamatory or otherwise unlawful material.

In addition, and without limitation, you agree not to use the service or the site to:

harvest or collect email addresses or other contact information of other users for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails or other unsolicited communications;
solicit other users to join or become members of any commercial online service or other organization without from the site;
use the site in any unlawful manner or in any other manner that could damage, disable, overburden or impair the site;
upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available any videos other than those of a personal nature that:

are of you or your friends, family or colleagues,
are taken by your friends, family or colleagues, or
are original art or animation created by you or your friends, family or colleagues
upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available content that would constitute, encourage or provide instructions for a criminal offence, violate the rights of any party, or that would otherwise create liability or violate any municipal, provincial, federal or international law;
upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available content that, in its sole judgment, is objectionable or which restricts or inhibits any other person from using or enjoying the site, or which may expose us or its users to any harm or liability of any type.

Payment of Fees

You are responsible for making payment for your courses in line with the available payment options. Your financial commitment at commencement of your studies is for the full course not for a module or modules although you may be offered an instalment payment plan.

Course Fees

The fee for your course will be displayed on our website and will be detailed within our printed course prospectus. The course duration will also be displayed, and the course fee will remain the same for training duration provided you complete within the specified duration. Where your studies exceed the standard course timeframe you will be expected to pay the current published course fee at that time which may be an increase from the preceding period of study.

The course fee includes all study materials for the course and any other material (like Academy t-shirts, caps, writing materials, etc.) as the Academy shall determine from time to time. Please note that you will be expected to cover your own costs of undertaking the course, for example, transport costs to on-site in-person classes, any software required to complete the course, for photocopying or printing of own study materials or accessing the Internet and course content.

Payment Terms

Following your registration, you will receive an email confirming your registration, be issued with a student ID number and you will be directed to our preferred third party payment provider, Safaricom M-Pesa or payment gateway, DPO Payments, to make payment of your fees.

Alternatively, if you purchase a course directly from the website, the payment will be processed via the DPO payment gateway either through a credit/debit card or mobile money transfer system. All payments shall be in Kenya Shillings for M-Pesa payments; however, for other currencies, DPO Payments gateway shall convert to Kenya Shillings.

Course fees are payable in advance in full, or where you are paying in instalments, a minimum of 10 working days before the next instalment is due. For your first instalment, where the instalment is for the commencement of the course, payment will be required 10 working days before the course start date. Please note that when you accept your offer you are committing to make payment for the whole course notwithstanding that the Academy will allow you to pay in instalments.

The provision of the online courses is contingent upon Mystery Writing Academy having received funds from you in respect of the fee for the relevant course. Without prejudice to the Academy’s rights and remedies under these Terms, if any sum payable for a course is not paid in full on or before the due date (being 10 working days prior to commencement of a module) the Academy reserves the right to suspend the provision to you and refuse you access to the relevant course or to terminate this contract (although we will act reasonably at all times in making any decision to terminate). You are personally responsible for paying your course fees, regardless if you are self-sponsored, funded by another person(s), agency, organisation, or your employer and they do not pay your fees as planned.

Withdrawals from Study

If you decide to leave your course with no intention of returning to the course at a later date, your fees will be re-calculated based on the modules commenced. This means that if you withdraw during a module no pro-rata refund of fees for that module will be provided. If you have paid fees for the course in full, fees will be re-calculated on the basis of the modules commenced and where you are entitled to a refund this will be processed in line with our Fees Refund Policy.

Fees Refund Policy

The Academy shall refund fees for any withdrawn course, less transaction fees and 10% inconvenience charge, as follows:

Refund periods for long courses (more than 10 weeks):-

first refund period: 100% refund through the second week of classes,
second refund period: 50% refund – third week of classes through eighth week of classes, and
no refund: after 10^th week of classes.

Refund periods for short courses (less than 10 weeks):-

first refund period: 100% refund through the first week of class,
second refund period: 50% refund – second week of class through fourth week of class, and
no refund: after the fifth week of classes.

Obligations

The Academy expects you to play a full and active role in progressing your studies at the Academy. Although the Academy would like to draw your attention to the obligations, it is not intended to be legally binding or to form part of the key contract documents.

Hybrid learning requires you to be self-motivated and comfortable with independent learning. Having a flexible schedule is a benefit of hybrid, but you need to be able to meet deadlines, so strong time-management skills are advantageous.

The online classes are reading intensive and you are expected to absorb large amounts of information from the materials presented. Basic computer literacy is an essential component of online learning.

Your obligations

You are required to:

comply with these Terms and all other terms described on the site;
keep all information provided to us up to date and notify us promptly of any changes in your information;
meet any conditions set out in these Terms and continue to satisfy these conditions (where relevant) throughout the duration of your course and use of the site;
pay all fees and other charges when due.
register/enrol with us before the start of your course and re-enrol/re-register with us each time you enrol for another course;
as it is the Academy’s policy to use your email address to communicate with you, you must ensure that you provide us with up to date contact information. You are required to check your emails regularly to make sure you stay up to date; and
engage with your course in a timely manner and complete all required assessments by the dates set, unless, exceptionally, a variation is approved through the appropriate Academy procedure.

Our obligations

We will:

provide or facilitate the provision of the services to you with reasonable care and skill;
make an award to you where you have met all of the requirements of the course;
notify you of any material changes to the Terms as soon as reasonably practicable.

Except as set out in the description of the courses you undertake, no additional tuition (either online, face to face, or classroom based) will be provided by the Academy.

The receipt of your course is personal to you and you may not transfer your rights to access the course to any other person.

You may suspend your course study for any period up to six (6) months. The cumulative total of all suspensions and/or deferrals may not exceed one calendar year. A suspension may only commence at the end of a module and therefore re-commencement of studies following a period of suspension will be at the start of the next relevant module.

User Content Posted on the Site

You are solely responsible for the photos, profiles (including your name, image, and likeness), forum messages and comments, notes, text, information, music, video, listings, and other content that you upload, publish or display on the site, or transmit to or share with other users. You may not post, transmit, or share user content on the site that you did not create or that you do not have permission to post.

The Academy reserves the right to review the site and may edit, delete or remove (without notice) any content or user content in its sole discretion, at any time and for any reason or no reason, including content that in its sole judgment violates these Terms of Use or Privacy Policy, or which might be offensive, illegal, or that might violate the rights, harm, or threaten the safety of users or others.

By posting user content to any part of the site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Academy an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, not paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such user content for any purpose. You waive any and all claims you may now or later have in any jurisdiction to “moral rights” or equivalent rights of authorship with respect to the user content. You may remove your user content from the site at any time. If you choose to remove your user content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Academy may retain archived copies of your user content.

Systems Requirements, Technical Support and Access

To complete your online course, you will have access to the Academy’s online learning environment. Your login details are personal to you and should not be shared with or transferred to others. You must notify us immediately upon becoming aware of any breach of security or unauthorised use of your account.

If for any reason, you withdraw from or suspend your course or a module then access to your online course will cease.

Please note that it is your responsibility to check that the computer you plan to use to access your online course is compatible with the minimum specification requirements. The Academy does not make any commitment that the online course will be compatible with or operate with your software or hardware. You will be responsible for all Internet service provider and associated charges. It is your responsibility to set up or configure your personal equipment.

Technical Support

We will provide reasonable technical and content support to you for your online course content.

Access

You accept and acknowledge that periods of downtime may be required in respect of the information technology infrastructure supporting your online course and that technical support may not be available during such periods of downtime. Although the Academy will use reasonable endeavours to make the online course available we cannot guarantee uninterrupted, timely or error free availability.

The Academy reserves the right to suspend access to an online course for the purpose of scheduled or emergency maintenance, repairs or upgrades to improve the performance or functionality.

The Academy is not responsible to you for any data that you lose during completion of your online course. It is your responsibility to ensure that you regularly save and back up all data.

You must not misuse or abuse any services or technology applications made available to you as part of your online course.

Monitoring

The Academy has the right to monitor the site and to disclose any information as required by law, regulation or any other governmental order, to operate the site or any of the services provided or to protect itself or its website users in accordance with its legal obligations. Check our Privacy Policy.

Complaints and Feedback

The Academy recognises there may be occasions where you may wish to raise legitimate complaints relating to your course, or the facilities and services provided by the Academy. It is important to you and staff to know that such complaints will be dealt with seriously and transparently, and without fear of recrimination. To ensure that this happens, the Academy is open for contact through the Contact Us form, email (admin@academy.mysterypublisherslimited.com), or by phone (+254 718 429 184).

The Academy shall, from time to time, request you to give feedback about your course. This shall be done through online forms which shall be send to you via email or via online survey platforms.

Mobile Services

By using the mobile services, you agree that the Academy may communicate with you regarding the Academy and other entities by SMS, MMS, text message or other electronic means to your mobile device and that certain information about your usage of the mobile services may be communicated to the Academy.

Third Party Websites and Content

The site contains (or you may be sent through the sites) links to other websites (“third party sites”), as well as articles, photographs, text, graphics, pictures, designs, music, sound, video, information, applications, software and other content or items belonging to or originating from third parties. Such third party content is not investigated, monitored or checked for accuracy, appropriateness, or completeness by the Academy, and the Academy is not responsible for any third party sites accessed through the sites or any third party content posted on, available through or installed from the sites. Inclusion of, linking to or permitting the use or installation of any third party sites or any third party content does not imply approval or endorsement by the Academy.

Intellectual Property Rights in Site Content; Limited License

All content on the site and available through the service, including designs, text, graphics, pictures, video, information, applications, software, music, sound and other files, and their selection and arrangement, are the property of the Academy, its users or its licensors with all rights reserved. You are granted a limited license to access and use the site and the site’s content and to download or print a copy of any portion of the site’s content to which you have properly gained access solely for your personal, non-commercial use, provided that you keep all copyright or other proprietary notices intact.

Study Materials

Where downloadable study materials accompany the course, these study materials will be made available to you. The Academy and/or its licensors, remain the owner of the intellectual property of the course, the study materials, and any course content. In consideration of receipt by the Academy of your fees (when due), we provide you with a personal licence to use the study materials and course content for the sole purpose of studying for your course; you may not allow anyone else to use the study materials or course content. Any use of the study materials or course content not permitted under these Terms is prohibited and any will infringe the Academy’s intellectual property rights and/or those of its licensors.

You may not modify, re-publish, sub-licence, sell, upload, transmit, make available, or disseminate in any way any of the study materials or course content. You may not modify, merge, translate, disassemble, decompile, recompile or reverse engineer any software forming part of our online learning platform, course content or the study materials or create derivative works based on the whole of or any part, or which incorporate, the study materials or course content. The Academy may withdraw use of any particular study materials or course content at any time where reasonably required.

Student Intellectual Property

If you create intellectual property rights (IPR) during your studies or research, the standard position is that you will own such rights, unless:

you become a tutor for the Academy in which case such IPR will be owned by the Academy subject to any alternative arrangements with you;
you are a member of the Academy or Mystery Publishers Limited and receive a scholarship from, or have your fees paid or subsidised by, a sponsor in which case ownership of such IPR will be subject to the arrangement between you, the Academy and the sponsor;
you generate IPR which builds upon existing IPR generated by, or is jointly invented with Academy employees or associates, in which case you will be required to assign such IPR to the Academy and in respect of revenue generated by that IPR, you may be entitled to apportioned income; or
you are also an employee of the Academy and developed the IPR in that capacity.

Rights

You or the owner of the content still own the copyright in the content you submit to us, but by submitting content to us, you are granting us an unconditional, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully transferable, perpetual worldwide licence to use, publish and/or transmit, and to authorise third-parties to use, publish and/or transmit your content in any format and on any platform, either now known or hereinafter invented.

Trademarks

The Mystery Writing Academy, Mystery Publishers Limited, Mystery Books, and other graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts and service names are registered trademarks, trademarks or trade dress in Kenya and/or other countries. The Academy’s trademarks and trade dress may not be used, including as part of trademarks and/or as part of domain names, in connection with any product or service in any manner that is likely to cause confusion and may not be copied, imitated, or used, in whole or in part, without its prior written permission.

Termination

The Academy reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to limit or terminate access to the site, delete your profile and any content or information that you have posted on the site and/or prohibit you from using or accessing the site (or any portion, aspect or feature of the site) for any reason, or no reason, at any time in its sole discretion, with or without notice.

Warranty

You warrant that the content you submit to us is not obscene, threatening, harassing, libellous, deceptive, fraudulent, invasive of another’s privacy, offensive, or defamatory of any person or illegal. You warrant that the content you submit to us does not infringe any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, or other intellectual or proprietary or privacy right of any party or individual.

We give no warranties of any kind concerning the Site content. In particular, we do not warrant that the Mystery Writing Academy site or any of its contents is virus free. You must take your own precautions in this respect as we accept no responsibility for any infection by virus or other contamination or by anything which has destructive properties.

Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold the Academy, its subsidiaries and affiliates, and each of their directors, officers, contractors, partners and employees, harmless from and against any loss, liability, claim, demand, damages, costs and expenses, including reasonable attorney’s fees, arising out of or in connection with any user content you post or share on or through the site, your use of the site, any loss or damage to any user content or personal injury or death, resulting from anyone’s use of the site, any user content or third party content posted on or through the site or transmitted to users, or any interactions between users of the site(whether online or offline), your conduct in connection with the site or with other users of the site, or any violation of this Agreement or of any law or the rights of any third party.

Limitation of Liability

The Academy will not be liable to you for any damages, harm or injury whatsoever including without limitation direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, lost profits, damages resulting from lost data or business interruption, arising from or relating to the use of or inability to use the site, whether based on warranty, contract, tort or other legal theory, regardless of whether any of The Academy has been negligent or advised of the possibility of such damages.

Governing Law

The Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Kenya, international private law, and the international copyright laws applicable therein. You hereby attorn to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the Republic of Kenya.

Our Liability to You

If we fail to comply with this contract, we are responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breach of this contract or our negligence, but we are not responsible for any loss or damage that is not foreseeable. Loss or damage is foreseeable if they were an obvious consequence of our breach or if they were contemplated by you and us at the time we entered into this contract.

We cannot accept responsibility and we will not be liable to you for:

any damage to your property (e.g. personal equipment such as mobiles, tablets and laptops)
work submitted for assessment that is not returned;
lack or loss of opportunity and loss of income or profit, however arising.

Events Outside of Our Control

We will not be liable or responsible for any failure to perform, or delay in performance of, any of our obligations under these Terms that is caused by an Event Outside Our Control i.e. any act or event beyond our reasonable control including but not limited to:

strikes, lock-outs or other industrial action by third parties;
strikes, lock-outs or other industrial action by our employees;
civil commotion, riot, invasion, terrorist attack or threat of terrorist attack, war (whether declared or not) or threat or preparation for war, fire, explosion, storm, flood, earthquake, subsidence, epidemic or other natural disaster, or failure of public or private telecommunications networks.

If an Event Outside Our Control takes place that affects the performance of our obligations under the Terms:

we will contact you as soon as reasonably possible to notify you; and
our obligations under these Terms will be suspended and the time for performance of our obligations will be extended for the duration of the Event Outside Our Control.

Should an Event Outside Our Control interfere with our ability to deliver your course, we will use reasonable endeavours to minimise the disruption caused to you.

Other

We may transfer our rights and obligations under these Terms to another organisation, including but not limited to our subsidiaries, and we will always notify you in writing if this happens, but this will not affect your rights or our obligations under these Terms.

This Contract is between you and us. No other person shall have any rights to enforce any of its terms.

The Academy’s failure to exercise or enforce any right or provision of these Terms shall not constitute a waiver of such right or provision in that or any other instance. If any provision of these Terms shall be deemed unlawful, void or for any reason unenforceable by any court of law under the jurisdiction of the Republic of Kenya, then that provision shall be deemed severable from these Terms and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.