Terms and Conditions

PLEASE READ THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THIS SITE

15 March 2024

This website is owned and operated by Virtual Maritime Academy. www.virtualmaritime.academy (we or us).  We are a company registered in Quebec, Canada and have our registered office and main trading address is 11075 Boul Henri-Bourassa, CP 65054, Quebec, Quebec, Canada, G1G 3X0.

These terms and conditions apply to all orders you, the customer (“you”), place with us via this website and constitute the entire and only agreement between us. Please read these terms and conditions carefully before ordering any of the online courses and / or other services displayed on our website (“Services”). You should understand that by ordering any of the Services displayed on our website, you agree to be bound by these terms and conditions. Please understand that if you refuse to accept these terms and conditions, you will not be able to order any Services from our website.

Use of our Website

These terms of use (together with the documents referred to in them) tell you the terms of use on which you may make use of our website www.virtualmaritime.academy(our site), whether as a guest or as a registered user.  Use of our site includes accessing, browsing, or registering to use our site.

Please read these terms of use carefully before you start to use our site, as these will apply to your use of our site.  We recommend that you print a copy of them for future reference.

By using our site, you confirm that you accept these terms of use and that you agree to comply with them.

If you do not agree to these terms of use, you must not use our site.

“Services” means hosted internet accessible learning management solution service, under the name Virtual Maritime Academy , made available to you on a subscription term basis or one time purchase under the Agreement at a website address provided to you (“Portal”).

An authorized user means any customer employee, contractor, agent or any other individual authorized by customer to access and use the services, via customer’s purchased subscriptions, for the purpose specified herein. You are responsible for authorized users’ compliance with this agreement.

Virtual Maritime Academy reserves the right to update and change the Terms of Use from time to time without notice. Any new features that augment or enhance the current service, including the release of new tools and resources, shall be subject to the Terms of Use. Continued use of the service after any such changes shall constitute your consent to such changes.

Violation of any of the terms below will result in the termination of your account. While Virtual Maritime Academy prohibits such conduct and content on the service, you understand and agree that Virtual Maritime Academy cannot be responsible for the content posted on the service and you nonetheless may be exposed to such materials. You agree to use the service at your own risk.

Account terms

  1. You must be a human. Accounts registered by “bots” or other automated methods are not permitted.
  2. You must provide your legal full name, a valid email address, and any other information requested in order to complete the signup process.
  3. You must agree to our Privacy Policy. This policy is compliant to GDPR requirements.
  4. Your login may only be used by one person – a single login shared by multiple people is not permitted. You may create separate logins for as many people as your plan/contract with us allows.
  5. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account and password. Virtual Maritime Academy cannot and will not be liable for any loss or damage from your failure to comply with this security obligation.
  6. You are responsible for all content posted and activity that occurs under your account (even when content is posted by others who have accounts under your account).
  7. One person or legal entity may not maintain more than one account.
  8. You may not use the service for any illegal or unauthorized purpose. You must not, in the use of the service, violate any laws in your jurisdiction (including but not limited to copyright laws).
  9. You are responsible for and can be held liable for infringements of our copyrights by account users.

Payment, refunds.

  1. A valid credit card is required for paying accounts. Only when agreed to such in a separate agreement, other financial arrangements can be made.
  2. All fees are exclusive of all taxes, levies, or duties imposed by taxing authorities, and you shall be responsible for payment of all such taxes, levies, or duties.

Non-Refundable Courses

Once a course has been started, no refunds, credits, or transfers will be permitted under any circumstances. Starting a course is defined as accessing any course content, including but not limited to videos, reading materials, quizzes, or assignments.

Transferable Courses

If the course has not been started, you may transfer the course registration to another individual within the registration period. The registration period is defined as the time between your initial registration and the official course expiration date.

Credit Notes

If the course has not been started and the course registration has not expired, you may request a credit note equal to the value of the course paid. This credit note has no expiry date and can be applied toward the registration of any other course offered by Virtual Maritime Academy.

Conditions for Issuing Credit Notes

  • The course must not have been started.
  • The course registration must not have expired.

Additional Information

To request a transfer or a credit note, please contact our customer support team at course@virtualmaritime.academy. Please include your registration details and reason for the request.

Cancellation and termination

  1. You are solely responsible for properly canceling your account.
  2. Virtual Maritime Academy , in its sole discretion, has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the service at any time and without prior notice in case of (a) fraudulent, criminal, grossly negligent, willful, or otherwise intentional misconduct, or violation of any law or regulation, in connection with the performance of your obligations hereunder and/or (b) demonstrated usage negatively impacting the performance of the service and/or (c) breach of the herein service terms and conditions.
  3. Such termination of the service will result in the deactivation or deletion of your account or your access to your account, and the forfeiture and relinquishment of all content in your account or any other similar action deemed appropriate.

Modifications to the service and prices

  1. Prices of all services, are subject to change upon 30 days’ notice from us. Such notice may be provided at any time by posting the changes to the service itself.
  2. Virtual Maritime Academy shall not be liable to you or to any third party for any modification, price change, suspension or discontinuance of the service.

Content and personal data

  1. You own all content (including personal data) that you and authorized users enter for the purpose of using the services (“Content”) and you are solely responsible for the legality, reliability, integrity, accuracy and quality of the content. Virtual Maritime Academy may suspend or terminate use of services and this agreement immediately upon receipt of any notice, which alleges that you and/or authorized user has used services for any purpose that violates any local, state, federal or law of other nations, including but not limited to the posting of information that may violate third party rights, that may defame a third party, that may be obscene or pornographic, that may harass or assault others, that may violate hacking or other criminal regulations, etc. You hereby acknowledge and agree that our performance of this agreement requires that we process, transmit and store personal data as further specified in the Privacy Policy.
  2. You hereby also acknowledge and agree that we process data related to your employees or representatives that is collected and used by us, as well as connection data created through the use and operation of the services, in order to administer or manage our delivery of services, or your account, for our business purposes, following the technical and organizational security measures. Such data may include personal data and information about the contractual commitments between us and you, whether collected at the time of the initial registration or thereafter in connection with the delivery, management or administration of services, including billing and collecting of payments. You hereby acknowledge and agree that we also process personal data that we collect, when you submit a request for support services or other troubleshooting, including information about the service, your portal and other details related to the support incident, such as authentication information, information about the condition of the services, and error-tracking files. We process such personal data in order to respond to the request and solve the problem eventually reported.
  3. We shall process the aforementioned personal data for our own business purposes for as long as it is necessary in relation to the purposes stated above, namely for the duration of agreement and until collection of the payments, unless processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation by mandatory statutory law or for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims.
  4. You hereby acknowledge and agree that we shall process your name and email address to communicate with you for the presentation and promotion of the services or of new services. You may at any time, free of charge, unsubscribe from such electronic communication, easily by clicking the button “unsubscribe” contained in the electronic communication.
  5. In case you use through our service any optional third-party service, such as YouTube, You explicitly agree to be bound by the respective Terms of Service (for YouTube). Regarding YouTube API Services in particular, our service does not share any personally identifiable information with YouTube and does not store, access or collect (or allows third parties to do so) information directly or indirectly on or from users’ devices, including by placing, accessing or recognizing cookies or similar technology on users’ devices or browsers.

Copyright and content ownership

  1. We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours.
  2. Virtual Maritime Academy does not pre-screen content, but Virtual Maritime Academy and its designee have the right (but not the obligation) in their sole discretion to refuse or remove any content that is available via the service.
  3. Inappropriate content is considered the posting, uploading, sharing, submitting, or otherwise providing content that:
    1. Infringes Virtual Maritime Academy or third party’s intellectual property or other rights, including any copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, moral rights, privacy rights of publicity, or any other intellectual property right or proprietary or contractual right.
    2. b) You don’t have the right to submit.
      c) Is deceptive, fraudulent, illegal, obscene, defamatory, libelous, threatening, harmful to minors, pornographic (including child pornography, which we will remove and report to law enforcement, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children), indecent, harassing, hateful; encourages illegal or tortious conduct or that is otherwise inappropriate.
    3. d) Attacks others based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or medical condition.
      e) Contains viruses, bots, worms, scripting exploits, or other similar materials.
    4. f) Is intended to be inflammatory.
    5. g) Could otherwise cause damage to Virtual Maritime Academy or any third party.
  4. The look and feel of the service is copyrighted. You may not duplicate, copy, or reuse any portion of the HTML/CSS, JavaScript, or visual design elements or concepts without express written permission from Virtual Maritime Academy.

General Conditions

  1. Your use of the service is at your sole risk. The service is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis.
  2. Technical support is only provided to paying account holders and is only available via email.
  3. You understand that Virtual Maritime Academy uses third party vendors and hosting partners to provide the necessary hardware, software, networking, storage, and related technology required to run the service.
  4. You must not modify, adapt or hack the service or modify another website so as to falsely imply that it is associated with the service.
  5. You agree not to perform misrepresentation of yourself, or disguising the origin of any content (including by “spoofing”, “phishing”, manipulating headers or other identifiers, impersonating anyone else, or falsely implying any sponsorship or association with Virtual Maritime Academy or any third party).
  6. You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell or exploit any portion of the service, use of the service, or access to the service without the express written permission by Virtual Maritime Academy .
  7. You agree not to violate the privacy of others, including publishing or posting other people’s private and confidential information without their express permission, or collecting or gathering other people’s personal information (including account names or information) from Virtual Maritime Academy .
  8. We may, but have no obligation to, remove content and accounts containing content that we determine in our sole discretion are unlawful, offensive, threatening, libelous, defamatory, pornographic, obscene or otherwise objectionable or violates any party’s intellectual property or these Terms of Use.
  9. We retain the right to contact you from time-to-time via email. You can remove yourself easily from the newsletter lists. You can also request to be removed from all communication emails by contacting our support from https://www.virtual-maritime-academy.com/contact-us/ or via our contact form.

Additional Terms

  1. Verbal, physical, written or other abuse (including threats of abuse or retribution) of any Virtual Maritime Academy customer, employee, member, or officer will result in immediate account termination.
  2. Virtual Maritime Academy won’t allow:

(a) Compromising the integrity of our systems. This could include probing, scanning, or testing the vulnerability of any system or network that hosts our services.

(b) Tampering with, reverse-engineering, or hacking our services, circumventing any security or authentication measures, or attempting to gain unauthorized access to the services, related systems, networks, or data

(c) Modifying, disabling, or compromising the integrity or performance of the services or related systems, network or data.

(d) Deciphering any transmissions to or from the servers running the services.

(e) Overwhelming or attempting to overwhelm our infrastructure by imposing an unreasonably large load on our systems that consume extraordinary resources (CPUs, memory, disk space, bandwidth, etc.).

  1. You must not upload, post, host, or transmit unsolicited email, SMSs, or “spam” messages.
  2. You must not transmit any worms or viruses or any code of a destructive nature.
  3. You must not use meta-tags or any other “hidden text” including Virtual Maritime Academy ’ s or our suppliers’ product names or trademarks.
  4. You must not access or search any part of Virtual Maritime Academy by any means other than our publicly supported interfaces.
  5. Virtual Maritime Academy does not warrant that:

(i) the service will meet your specific requirements.

(ii) the service will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free, and

(iii) the quality of any products, services, information, or other material purchased or obtained by you through the service will meet your expectations.

  1. You expressly understand and agree that except of circumstances of gross negligence, willful misconduct, fraud, third party IP infringement and any liability which cannot be lawfully excluded or limited, Virtual Maritime Academy shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or exemplary damages, including but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, goodwill, use, data or other intangible losses resulting from:
    • the use or the inability to use the service;
    • the cost of procurement of substitute goods and services resulting from any goods, data, information or services purchased or obtained or messages received or transactions entered into through or from the service;
    • unauthorized access to or alteration of your transmissions or data;
    • statements or conduct of any third party of the service. Under no circumstances shall Virtual Maritime Academy ’ aggregate cumulative liability hereunder, whether in contract, tort, or otherwise, exceed the total amount of fees actually paid by customer during past 12 months as of the incident date giving rise to any liability.
  2. Virtual Maritime Academy (at its sole discretion) determines that a user has violated these Terms of Use. The failure of Virtual Maritime Academy to exercise or enforce any right or provision of the Terms of Use shall not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. The Terms of Use constitutes the entire agreement between you and Virtual Maritime Academy and govern your use of the service, superseding any prior agreements between you and Virtual Maritime Academy (including, but not limited to, any prior versions of the Terms of Use).

Liability

Save to the extent permitted by law, we (and any of our group companies and the officers, directors, employees, shareholders, sub-contractors or agents of any of them) exclude all liability and responsibility from any amount or kind of loss or damage arising out of or in connection with your use of the Services.

We do not exclude or attempt to limit in any way our liability:

  • for personal injury or death resulting from our negligence;
  • for any matter for which it would be illegal for us to exclude or to attempt to exclude our liability; or
  • for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.

Subject to the exclusions/limitations set out above, we shall not be liable to you for any indirect or consequential loss or damage of any nature whatsoever arising and whether caused in tort (including negligence), breach of contract or otherwise (even if foreseeable), any loss of income or revenue, loss of business, loss of profit of contracts, loss of anticipated savings, wasted third party costs, and/or loss of data, management or office time.

We will perform and deliver the Services with reasonable care and skill. We do not give any other representation, warranty or undertaking in relation to the Services. Any representation, condition or warranty which might be implied or incorporated into these terms by statute, common law or otherwise is excluded to the fullest extent permitted by law. In particular, we will not be responsible for ensuring that the Services are suitable for your purposes and do not guarantee any specific results from participating in the online learning courses.

Force Majeure

We will not be liable or responsible for any failure to perform, or delay in performance of, any of our obligations under an order that is caused by Force Majeure (an event outside our control).

Force Majeure means any act or event beyond our reasonable control, including without limitation server failures, software failures, strikes, lock-outs or other industrial action by third parties, 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.

Our Right to Vary These Terms

We may revise these terms from time to time in the following circumstances:

  • changes in how we accept payment from you;
  • changes in relevant laws and regulatory requirements; or
  • any other changes to our operating or delivery processes.

Every time you order Services from us, the terms in force at that time will apply to the contract between you and us.

General

We always try to ensure that our website is always available for you. In the event that our website is unavailable at any time and for any period (for whatever reason) we shall not be liable even if this means you cannot access the Services during that period.

If any provision within these terms and conditions is held by any competent authority to be invalid or unenforceable (in whole or in part) the validity of the other provisions of these terms and conditions and the remainder of the provision in question shall not be affected.

These terms and conditions (including in relation to any non-contractual obligations) shall be governed by and interpreted in accordance with Canadian law and subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Canadian courts.