Student Plan Terms

1. About these terms

These terms apply to the Student plan offered by BlinkFix Ltd (company no. 13505930), 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX, United Kingdom. They add to the Terms of Service, the Merchant Terms and the Subscriptions and Credits Terms.

2. Who can use it

• You must be 18 or older (like every BlinkFix user) and currently enrolled as a student at a university, college, school or other recognised educational institution.
• One Student plan per person. You must not share your account or let someone else run your establishment.

3. What it includes

• One Local Cook establishment free of charge for as long as you are a verified student. You can sell home-cooked food for pickup (delivery is not included).
• One confirmed staff member (as a chef).
• The same service fee for your customers and the same commission on your orders as any other establishment: see the Merchant Terms. The Student plan only waives the monthly plan fee.
• Any further establishment, of any type, is paid at the normal plan price.
• You must follow the food safety, allergen and registration rules in the Merchant Terms, including registering as a food business with your local authority where the law requires it (in the UK, this includes most people who sell home-cooked food regularly).
• A Local Cook establishment cannot be opened where the law does not allow home-cooked food to be sold. Where the law allows it on conditions (for example a licence or a hygiene rule), you must meet them. If Local Cook establishments are not available where you live, the Student plan cannot give you a free one.

4. Checking student status

4.1 Two steps. To get the Student plan you do both of the following, within 90 days of each other:

• Confirm your university email. You enter the email address your university, college or school gave you, we send a 6-digit code to it (valid for 15 minutes), and you type the code in. The address must be on a domain we know belongs to a university, college or school, and one university email can confirm only one BlinkFix account.
• Add a photo of your student card. The front of a valid student ID card, and the back if the validity date or sticker is there, or another document from your institution that shows your name, the institution and a current date. You can cover any information we do not need, such as ID numbers or barcodes, as long as your name, institution and validity date can be read.

4.2 How the card is checked. You choose how your card is checked: an AI model reads it, or a member of our team checks it instead. If you choose the AI, you agree first; then we send the photo to our AI provider (Google Gemini, paid tier, no training on your data), which we use through Google Cloud's Vertex AI. Google may process the photo outside the UK and the European Economic Area; the safeguards are in the Privacy Policy and the Sub-processors list. The model only reads what is printed on the document: your name, the institution and the validity date (or the academic year). Our system then checks that the name matches the name on your BlinkFix account, that the institution matches your university email or a real university, college or school, and that the card is valid today. We do not compare your face with the photo on the card and we do not use biometric data. You can have a card checked a limited number of times a day (currently 5).

4.3 The decision and your right to a human review. The AI can only confirm a card that matches. When both steps pass, you are verified automatically and your Local Cook establishment becomes free straight away. The AI never rejects: a card it cannot confirm waits for a member of our team, and only a member of our team rejects a card. If a card is rejected, we tell you why (for example, the name does not match your account or the card has expired), and you can add new photos and try again. If you think the result is wrong, write to [email protected]. A member of our team then reviews your case, can look at your photos, and decides, giving you the reason. This is your right under Article 22 of the UK and EU GDPR to have a person look at a decision made automatically, to give us your point of view and to contest the decision.

4.4 Valid until 30 November, checked again every November. Student status is valid until 30 November. If you are first verified on or after 1 September, it is valid until 30 November of the next year, so we never ask you to check again within about three months. Every year from 1 November you can verify again with the same two steps, and your establishment stays free. We remind you by push notification and email on 1, 15 and 25 November. If you have not verified again by the end of 30 November, your Student status ends and your establishment moves to the normal paid plan (see section 6); if you verify again later, the free establishment comes back. We check every November because people who have finished their studies can no longer confirm a university email.

4.5 A plan you already pay for. If your Local Cook establishment already has a paid plan when you are verified, it becomes your free Student establishment and the paid plan stops. A plan paid by card on the website is cancelled automatically at the end of the period you have already paid for (an overdue one at once), so you are not charged again. A subscription bought through the App Store or Google Play can only be cancelled by you: the app and the website tell you to cancel it in your store account, and the store keeps charging you until you do. Refunds of store charges are handled by Apple or Google.

4.6 False documents. If a document is false or belongs to someone else, we end the Student plan and may close your account.

5. How your student check data is handled

• Purpose. Only to check that you are eligible for the Student plan and to prevent abuse of it. Our legal basis is the contract (the plan you asked for) and our legitimate interest in preventing fraud.
• Card photos. Stored in a private storage area (Cloudflare R2, in a bucket that is not public) and opened only through links that expire after a few minutes. They are sent to the AI model only to be read (see 4.2). We delete them 30 days after you upload them, and sooner when you leave the Student plan, delete your account, ask us to, or our team rejects your case on review. A verification that has already passed stays valid after the photos are deleted.
• What we keep. The university email address you confirmed, its domain and the institution it belongs to; what the AI model read from your card (the type of document, your name, the institution, the validity date or academic year), how confident it was, the result and the reasons; and, after a review, our team's decision and reason. We keep these while you are on the Student plan and delete them when you leave it or delete your account, whichever is first. A newer check replaces the result of an earlier one.
• The 6-digit code. Stored only as a hash and valid for 15 minutes. The record of the code is removed when you confirm it, or one hour after the last code we sent.
• Who sees them. You; the AI model that reads the card (see 4.2); and members of our team when they review your case or look into abuse. Every time a member of our team views your photos, it is logged. We do not share them with establishments, other users or anyone else, except where the law requires.
• Your rights. You can ask us to delete your photos earlier at any time, and you have the other rights described in the Privacy Policy.

6. When the plan ends

6.1 The Student plan ends when 30 November passes without you verifying again (see 4.4), when you switch your account from Student to another account type, when you ask us to end it, when our team decides on review that you are not eligible, or if you break these terms.

6.2 When it ends, your establishment moves straight away to the normal paid plan for a Local Cook establishment: it is hidden from customers until you subscribe, or you can close it. We tell you the end date of your verification when you are verified; from 1 November your Student status page lets you verify again, we remind you by push notification and email on 1, 15 and 25 November, and we email you when it has ended. If you are still a student, verifying again brings the free establishment back.

6.3 You can end the plan at any time in your profile. When you switch your account away from Student, your card photos and check results are deleted straight away.

7. Changes

We may change or end the Student plan offer with at least 30 days' notice. Changes do not affect orders already placed.

8. Contact

[email protected] · BlinkFix Ltd, 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX, United Kingdom.