Terms of Service

01 Acceptance of these Terms

By accessing or using PathFinder (the "Service"), you confirm that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms of Service ("Terms"). If you do not agree, please do not use the Service. If you use the Service on behalf of another person, you confirm you are authorised to accept these Terms for them.

02 Eligibility

You must be at least 16 years old (or the age of digital consent in your country, if higher) to use the Service. By using PathFinder you represent that you meet this requirement and that the information you provide is accurate.

03 What PathFinder is — and is not

PathFinder is a free, largely self-service platform that helps Sri Lankan students plan a master's or a PhD in New Zealand: an eligibility assessment, a personalised roadmap, a research/proposal studio, the NZQA postgraduate course catalogue, a directory of universities, labs, supervisors and scholarships, a Cost & Payback calculator, a visa-process guide, settlement tools, application tracking, and an optional mentorship marketplace.

PathFinder is not:

• a licensed immigration adviser or legal practitioner;
• an education or recruitment agent acting for any university;
• a guarantee of admission, scholarship, funding, employment, or a visa;
• a substitute for the official information published by universities, scholarship bodies, or Immigration New Zealand.

Because we are not licensed, neither PathFinder nor any mentor on it will advise you on your own immigration matter — what visa you qualify for, how to answer a question on a form, whether your documents or funds will satisfy Immigration New Zealand, what your partner or children are entitled to, or what happens after you finish studying. Our visa material describes the process INZ publishes and is the same for every reader. Questions about your own situation belong with Immigration New Zealand or a licensed immigration adviser, and we will not charge you for pointing you to them.

All figures, deadlines, rules, and costs shown are indicative and may change. Always verify them with the official source. See our Disclaimer.

04 Accounts

You can use most of PathFinder anonymously. Creating an account (via Google or email) lets your data sync across devices. You are responsible for keeping your sign-in credentials secure and for activity under your account. Tell us promptly at support@pathfinder.app if you suspect unauthorised use. Mentor and administrator accounts are invite-only and subject to approval.

05 Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• break any law or infringe anyone's rights while using the Service;
• submit false, misleading, or someone else's personal information;
• misuse the mentorship marketplace — e.g. harass mentors or students, solicit payment off-platform to avoid fees, or impersonate anyone;
• upload malware, attempt to breach security, scrape at scale, or disrupt the Service;
• reverse-engineer, resell, or commercially exploit the Service without our permission;
• use the Service to provide regulated immigration or legal advice without proper licensing.

We may suspend or remove access for conduct that breaches these Terms.

06 The mentorship marketplace

PathFinder connects students with independent mentors (typically current Sri Lankan postgraduates in New Zealand). The first 15 minutes of an intro are free; any follow-on session may be paid.

• Mentors are independent; they are not employees or agents of PathFinder. We provide the platform that connects you, not the mentoring itself.
• We do not guarantee the accuracy, quality, or outcome of any guidance a mentor gives. Mentors share personal experience, not professional immigration or legal advice.
• A mentor request you submit shares the contact detail you provide with the mentor who claims it, so they can reach you.
• You interact with mentors at your own discretion. Do not share sensitive documents (passports, financial records) unless you are comfortable doing so.

07 Payments & refunds

Paid mentor sessions and premium unlocks can be paid via PayHere (local Sri Lankan methods — cards, HelaPay, eZ Cash, mCash, Genie, online banking), PayPal (international cards / PayPal balance), or a manual bank or mobile-wallet transfer that you report in the app. By paying through a provider you also agree to that provider's terms. PathFinder does not store your full card or banking credentials. PayPal amounts are charged in a PayPal-supported currency (PayPal does not transact in LKR), so the foreign-currency amount shown is indicative and the exact figure is set by PayPal at checkout.

• Prices are shown before you pay and are in Sri Lankan Rupees (LKR) unless stated otherwise.
• PathFinder may charge a platform fee on paid sessions; the price you see is the total you pay.
• You are responsible for any taxes that apply to you.

Cancellation & refund policy

We would rather refund you than keep money for something you did not get. In plain terms:

• Cancelling before a session. Cancel a booked mentor session at least 24 hours before the agreed time and you get a full refund, no questions asked. Inside 24 hours we will still refund in full the first time it happens.
• A session that did not happen. If your mentor does not show up, or the session cannot go ahead for any reason on our side, you get a full refund — or a rebooking, whichever you prefer.
• Premium unlocks. A one-time unlock can be refunded in full within 14 days of purchase, provided you have not yet spent a mentor session or document-audit credit from it. If you have spent some, we refund the unused balance pro rata.
• A session that was delivered. Once a session has been delivered we do not refund it as a matter of course, because the mentor's time has been given. If you believe what you received was not what was described, tell us within 14 days and we will look at it properly — and where we agree with you, we refund.
• How to ask. Email support@pathfinder.app with your invoice number (it is on every receipt, and on your Billing page). We reply within 3 working days and pay approved refunds within 10 working days, by the same method you paid with wherever possible.
• What we do not refund. Bank charges or currency-conversion differences applied by your bank, wallet or PayPal, which never reach us.

08 Plans & credits

Explorer and Premium are one-time purchases that grant a fixed bundle of credits — mentor sessions, document/profile audits, and (Premium) priority queueing and interview prep — set out at the time of purchase and shown on your Billing page. Credits:

• are granted once we mark your order as paid, and are tied to your account — they are not transferable to another person;
• are spent when you redeem one against a mentor request; cancelling that request before it is delivered returns the credit to your balance;
• do not expire on a fixed schedule, but the Service and its plans may change over time, and we will give reasonable notice before retiring a plan you have unused credits on;
• are not refundable for a change of mind once granted, though the general refund right in Section 07 still applies if a paid session or audit you booked with a credit is never delivered.

Buying both plans stacks their credits. What each plan includes is described in full on the pricing page and your Billing page at the time you buy.

09 Your content

You keep ownership of the information you create or submit (assessments, drafts, notes, requests). You grant PathFinder a limited, non-exclusive licence to store, process, and display that content as needed to operate the Service for you (for example, to sync it or to pass a request to a mentor). You are responsible for the legality and accuracy of what you submit.

10 Intellectual property

The PathFinder name, design, text, code, and compiled datasets are owned by PathFinder or its licensors and are protected by intellectual-property laws. We grant you a personal, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the Service for your own non-commercial planning. You may not copy, redistribute, or create derivative products from the Service without our written permission, except where the underlying data is sourced from public providers under their own licences.

11 Third-party services & links

The Service relies on and links to third parties — including Google Firebase, PayHere, universities, Immigration New Zealand, scholarship providers, and public academic APIs. We do not control these third parties and are not responsible for their content, availability, or practices. Your use of them is governed by their terms and privacy policies.

12 Disclaimers

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, or non-infringement, to the fullest extent permitted by law. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that any information, figure, deadline, or outcome it presents is current or correct. Nothing in these Terms excludes rights you have under mandatory consumer-protection law that cannot lawfully be excluded.

13 Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, PathFinder and its operators will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of opportunity, savings, data, or goodwill, arising from your use of (or inability to use) the Service, reliance on its information, or your dealings with a mentor or third party. Where liability cannot be excluded, our total aggregate liability to you is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid PathFinder in the 12 months before the claim, or (b) LKR 10,000.

14 Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold PathFinder harmless from claims, losses, and reasonable costs arising from your breach of these Terms, your misuse of the Service, or your violation of any law or third-party right.

15 Suspension & termination

You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these Terms or to protect the Service or other users. Provisions that by their nature should survive termination (e.g. intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability) will continue to apply.

16 Governing law & disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of Sri Lanka, and the courts of Sri Lanka have non-exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute, without prejudice to any mandatory rights you have under the law of your own country of residence. We encourage you to contact us first so we can try to resolve any issue informally.

17 Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. We will update the "Last updated" date and, for material changes, give more prominent notice. Continuing to use the Service after changes take effect means you accept the revised Terms.

18 Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email support@pathfinder.app, or reach us on 071 270 7074 (WhatsApp).