These Terms of Service (the "Terms") are a contract between you and VALUEMINT LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company with its registered office at 30 N Gould St Ste R, Sheridan, WY 82801, United States ("VALUEMINT", "we", "us"), trading as Diplomat Academy. They govern your use of diplomat.academy, its subdomains, apps, emails and every service we offer through them (together, the "Service").
By creating an account, starting a membership or otherwise using the Service you accept these Terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the Service.
1. What the Service is, and what it is not
1.1 Education only. Diplomat Academy is an independent online education platform about honorary consular and non-career diplomatic roles: how appointments are made under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (1963) and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961), how states in practice select and supervise honorary consuls, and how a candidate or a serving consul can prepare well. We sell courses, frameworks, tools, data and coaching for learning. Nothing else.
1.2 No placement, no brokerage, no promises. We do not arrange, broker, recommend or procure appointments, titles, passports, accreditations or introductions to officials. No payment to us buys, improves or accelerates any appointment. Every decision about a consular or diplomatic appointment is made solely by sovereign states according to their own law and discretion. We make no representation about whether, when or how any state will decide anything, and nothing on the Service may be read as such a representation.
1.3 No government affiliation. VALUEMINT and Diplomat Academy are private and independent. We are not part of, endorsed by, or acting for any government, ministry, embassy, consulate or international organisation. References to states, ministries and official documents describe public facts and do not imply a relationship.
1.4 No legal, tax or immigration advice. The Service provides general educational information. It is not legal, tax, financial or immigration advice and does not create a lawyer-client or adviser relationship. Rules differ between states and change without notice. Before you act, verify the position with the relevant foreign ministry and, where your situation requires it, with a qualified lawyer licensed in the relevant jurisdiction.
1.5 Meridian, the AI coach. Meridian is an automated assistant built on large language models provided by Anthropic. It generates text from patterns in data and from the materials we give it. Its answers can be incomplete, outdated or wrong, including when they sound confident. Meridian is not a person, not a lawyer and not an official. You are responsible for checking anything you rely on against official sources. Meridian will decline requests that conflict with the rules in these Terms, and we review flagged conversations for safety and quality (see our Privacy Policy).
1.6 Data, directories and "open posts". Our data products (maps, coverage, registries, open calls, open spots, the consul directory) are compiled from official public sources and verified against government data. They describe representation as published at a given date. A gap in representation, an "open spot" or a listed vacancy is a research lead and never an offer, a vacancy we control, or an indication that a state intends to appoint anyone. Our methods are described on the Methodology page; sources can change or be withdrawn at any time, and we do not promise completeness or currency.
1.7 Translations. English is the language of the Service and of these Terms. Other language versions of the Service, including of these Terms, the Privacy Policy, the Refund Policy and the Imprint, are produced by machine translation and are provided for convenience only. If a translation differs from the English text, the English text governs.
2. Eligibility and accounts
2.1 You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter into a binding contract. The Service is not directed at minors.
2.2 You must provide accurate information and keep it current. You are responsible for all activity under your account and for keeping your sign-in email secure. Accounts are personal and may not be shared, sold or transferred. Tell us at once at office@diplomat.academy if you suspect unauthorised use.
2.3 We may refuse, suspend or close an account where these Terms are breached, where the law requires it, or where we reasonably believe the account is being used to harm others or the integrity of the Service. Where we close an account without breach on your part, we refund any prepaid fees for the unused part of the current period.
2.4 If you use the Service for a company or other organisation, you confirm that you are authorised to bind it, and "you" includes that organisation.
3. Memberships, prices and payment
3.1 Plans. We offer a free plan and the paid memberships Candidate and Consul, each monthly or yearly. What each plan includes is described on the Pricing page at the time you subscribe; we may change what is included in future periods, but not to your material detriment during a period you have already paid for.
3.2 Payment. Paid memberships are billed in advance through our payment processor Stripe. Prices are shown in US dollars. Applicable VAT, GST, sales tax or similar taxes are calculated and added at checkout according to your billing address (Stripe Tax); where tax is not collected by us, you are responsible for it. Your bank may apply exchange rates and fees.
3.3 Automatic renewal. A membership renews automatically at the end of each monthly or yearly period for a further period of the same length, and the payment method on file is charged, until you cancel. We remind you by email before a yearly renewal.
3.4 Cancellation. You can cancel at any time in your account settings or by emailing office@diplomat.academy. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current paid period; you keep access until then and are not charged again. Deleting your account also ends the membership.
3.5 Price changes. We may change prices for future periods. We will notify you by email at least 30 days before a changed price applies to you. If you do not agree, cancel before the change takes effect; continuing after that date means you accept the new price.
3.6 Failed payments. If a renewal payment fails, we retry and notify you. If payment is not received within 14 days, the membership ends and the account returns to the free plan.
3.7 Refunds are governed by section 4 and by our Refund Policy, which forms part of these Terms.
4. Right of withdrawal (EU, EEA and UK consumers) and refunds
4.1 Your statutory right. If you are a consumer in the European Union, the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you have the right to withdraw from a distance contract within 14 days of concluding it without giving a reason.
4.2 Immediate access and loss of the right. Membership content is digital content and digital services that we supply immediately after payment. At checkout we ask for your express consent that we begin supplying the content at once, and for your acknowledgement that you thereby lose your right of withdrawal (Article 16(m) of Directive 2011/83/EU; regulation 37 of the UK Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013). If you give that consent, the 14-day withdrawal right does not apply once access has been provided. If you do not give it, you may withdraw within 14 days, and if you asked us to begin the service during that period we may charge a proportionate amount for the period you had access.
4.3 How to withdraw. Send an unambiguous statement (for example an email to office@diplomat.academy stating your account email and that you withdraw from the contract) before the 14-day period ends. A model form is in the Refund Policy. We confirm receipt and refund within 14 days using the original payment method.
4.4 Other refunds. Beyond the statutory right, membership fees are not refundable once access has been provided, except where the law of your place of residence gives you a right to a refund (for example because content is defective and we have not remedied it), or where section 2.3 or 3.5 applies. Partial periods are not refunded on cancellation.
5. Acceptable use
5.1 You agree not to use the Service, its content, its data or its members to:
- (a) offer, seek, advertise or arrange the sale, purchase or brokerage of an appointment, title, accreditation, passport, "diplomatic" document or access to officials, or any payment, gift or success fee connected with obtaining one or influencing a decision;
- (b) impersonate a state, ministry, embassy, consulate, official, consul or any other person, or claim a status you do not hold;
- (c) scrape, crawl, harvest or bulk-download content, data or member information, or use the Service to build or train a competing dataset, directory or model;
- (d) use directory, network or registry data to contact people for commercial solicitation, to compile marketing lists, or for any purpose other than the one for which that person made the information available on the Service;
- (e) upload content that is unlawful, defamatory, fraudulent, discriminatory or that infringes rights of others, or that discloses another person's personal data without authority;
- (f) attempt to bypass access controls, plan limits, safety rules or Meridian's instructions, or interfere with the Service's security or operation;
- (g) resell, sublicense or share your access, or use the Service to provide a paid service to third parties without our written agreement.
5.2 Enforcement. We may remove content, restrict features, suspend or close an account and refuse future registration where we reasonably believe this section has been breached. Where we see an attempt to buy, sell or broker an appointment or to impersonate a state's representative, we may preserve the relevant records and report the matter to the affected state's foreign ministry or mission and to the competent authorities.
6. Consul directory, claims and listings
6.1 The directory records honorary and career consular posts as published by foreign ministries and other official public sources, with the date and source of each entry. Serving consuls can claim a post. A claim is reviewed against official sources before it is marked verified; we may ask for additional evidence and we may decline a claim without giving detailed reasons. Verification states that we found the appointment in an official source on a given date. It is not an endorsement and not a confirmation of current status by any government.
6.2 A claimant must be the person appointed to the post, provide truthful information, and tell us when the appointment ends. Profile contents and the decision to be findable are the claimant's own choice and can be changed or withdrawn at any time.
6.3 Corrections and removal. Anyone, including a listed consul and any government, can request a correction or the hiding of an entry by writing to office@diplomat.academy. We answer every request and act on it promptly where the official source has changed, the entry is inaccurate, or the person's interests outweigh the public interest in the entry. Details are in the Privacy Policy.
7. Your content
7.1 You keep ownership of what you post, upload or type into the Service (profiles, messages, posts, documents, coach conversations). You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, process, translate, display and transmit it as needed to operate, secure and improve the Service and to comply with law. This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies in routine backups (deleted within 30 days) and content you shared with other members that they have already received.
7.2 You are responsible for your content and confirm that you have the rights needed to post it. We may moderate, hide or remove content that breaches these Terms or the network rules shown in the Service.
7.3 We do not use your content, conversations or data to train our own or any third party's machine-learning models.
8. Partner programme
Members who refer new members under our partner programme are bound by the separate Partner Terms published on the Service. The Partner Terms prevail over these Terms for the partner relationship. Partners may never promise or imply appointments, benefits or relationships with governments.
9. Intellectual property
9.1 The Service and its content (courses, lessons, texts, videos, audio, frameworks, software, data compilations, trade marks including "Diplomat Academy" and "Meridian", and the design of the Service) are owned by VALUEMINT or its licensors and are protected by copyright, database and trade mark law. Texts of international treaties and official government publications remain in the public domain or belong to their issuing bodies.
9.2 We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access and use the content for your own learning for as long as your plan includes it. You may not copy, publish, redistribute, sell, modify, create derivative works from, or use the content or data for commercial purposes without our written permission, beyond what mandatory law allows.
9.3 If you believe content on the Service infringes your rights, write to office@diplomat.academy with the location of the content, your rights and your contact details. We respond to every notice.
10. Availability and changes to the Service
We aim for continuous availability but do not promise it. We may change, add or discontinue features, content and data products, and perform maintenance. If we discontinue a paid feature that is material to the plan you paid for, we tell you and refund the unused part of the period on request. We may close the Service as a whole on 60 days' notice, refunding prepaid fees for periods after closure.
11. Disclaimers
11.1 To the extent permitted by law, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available". We disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy and non-infringement.
11.2 In particular, we do not warrant that any content, data, coach answer or translation is complete, accurate, current or suitable for your situation, or that using the Service will lead to any appointment, status, recognition or other result.
11.3 Consumers. Nothing in this section limits rights that the law of your country of residence grants you as a consumer and that cannot be excluded by contract, including statutory rights relating to digital content and digital services that are not as described, not fit for purpose or defective.
12. Limitation of liability
12.1 What is not excluded. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for wilful misconduct or gross negligence, for breach of obligations whose fulfilment is essential to the contract where mandatory law so requires, or for any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law. For consumers in the EU, EEA and UK, the liability rules of their country of residence apply where they are more protective.
12.2 Business users. Subject to 12.1, if you use the Service for business purposes, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill or data, and our total liability arising out of or in connection with the Service in any twelve-month period is limited to the fees you paid us in that period.
12.3 Consumers. Subject to 12.1, we are liable to consumers for losses that are a foreseeable result of our breach of these Terms or our failure to use reasonable care and skill. We are not liable for losses that were not foreseeable, that were caused by your own breach of these Terms, or that result from your reliance on content, data or coach answers without verification against official sources, or from the decision of any state.
13. Indemnity (business users only)
If you use the Service for business purposes, you will indemnify VALUEMINT, its members, managers and staff against claims, damages and reasonable costs arising from your content, your breach of these Terms or your unlawful use of the Service. This section does not apply to consumers.
14. Governing law and jurisdiction
14.1 These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Wyoming, USA, excluding its conflict-of-law rules, and the courts located in Sheridan County, Wyoming have jurisdiction over disputes, subject to 14.2.
14.2 Consumer carve-out. If you are a consumer, this choice of law does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of the country in which you habitually reside, and you may bring proceedings in, and may only be sued in, the courts of that country. For consumers in the European Union this follows from Regulation (EC) 593/2008 (Rome I) and Regulation (EU) 1215/2012 (Brussels I recast); for consumers in the United Kingdom, from the equivalent UK rules.
14.3 The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.
15. Resolving disputes
15.1 Write to us first at office@diplomat.academy. We answer every message and try to resolve disputes informally within 30 days.
15.2 EU consumers may use the European Commission's online dispute resolution platform (ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr). We are not obliged, and do not undertake, to participate in proceedings before an alternative dispute resolution body, but we will consider any request in good faith.
15.3 Nothing in these Terms prevents either party from seeking injunctive or other urgent relief in any competent court, or from bringing a claim in a small-claims court where available.
16. Changes to these Terms
We may amend these Terms. For material changes we give at least 30 days' notice by email or by a prominent notice in the Service, with the new text and the date it takes effect. If you do not agree, cancel before that date; your membership then ends at the end of the current period. Changes required by law or that only add new features may take effect immediately. The "Last updated" date at the top shows the current version.
17. General
17.1 These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, the Refund Policy, the Partner Terms (for partners) and the plan description at the time of purchase, are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service.
17.2 If a provision is held invalid, the remainder stays in force and the provision is applied to the extent the law allows.
17.3 We may assign these Terms to a successor of our business; you will be notified. You may not assign them without our consent.
17.4 Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including 1, 5.2, 7, 9, 11 to 15 and 17) survive.
18. Contact
VALUEMINT LLC, trading as Diplomat Academy 30 N Gould St Ste R, Sheridan, WY 82801, United States Email: office@diplomat.academy