terms and conditions

visumPOINT GmbH General Terms and Conditions

The following is for informational purposes only, the German original version shall be legally binding

1 Contracting parties

Contracting parties shall be visumPOINT GmbH (hereinafter referred to as visumPOINT) and a natural or legal person (hereinafter referred to as Customer). 

2 Object of the contract

2.1 visumPOINT shall provide services associated with the relocation and change of residence of natural persons.  This shall include, amongst other things, support services for procuring a visa, immigration and relocation management, posting workers within the EU (registration & notification requirement), A1 certificates and translations.

2.2 The specific scope of services shall comply with the respective contract awarded. A contract shall become legally effective when the Customer sends a binding offer to conclude a contract in return for payment on the visumPOINT website, by email, in writing, by fax or by sending any documentation provided by visumPOINT, and visumPOINT accepts this offer by means of an express declaration or conclusive behaviour (e.g. beginning to execute the contract). The presentation of services from visumPOINT on the website or on other leaflets or advertising materials shall not constitute a binding offer to conclude a contract. 

2.3 visumPOINT shall by no means perform any out-of-court legal services, which are not already permitted by the Act on Out-of-Court Legal Services or on the basis of other laws, independently in commercial activities and within the area of application of the Act on Out-of-Court Legal Services.

2.4 Insofar as visumPOINT makes declarations to third parties, in particular to government authorities or administrative bodies, declarations of intent that are based solely on instructions from the client shall be transmitted. In this respect, visumPOINT acts as the declaration and receipt messenger of the client. The messenger position also applies to payment transactions, i.e. insofar as visumPOINT disburses payment amounts to third parties or collects payment amounts from third parties, the function of an intermediary is merely exercised in payment transactions (transitory items). A legal relationship arises exclusively between the client as the person obliged to pay and the third party as the recipient of the payment. visumPOINT is not obliged to pay the third party as the payee and has no claim to payment against the third party.      

3 Customer’s obligations to cooperate

3.1 The Customer shall provide visumPOINT with all of the information required to perform the agreed services without delay. In order to properly conduct the services, it shall be necessary for the Customer to promptly inform visumPOINT of any amendments to personal data. Further information, of which the Customer is aware or must be aware that it is of importance to the services being performed, shall also be communicated to visumPOINT by the Customer without request. The Customer shall bear responsibility for ensuring that documents and information are complete and correct.  

3.2 Insofar as is necessary, particularly when the Customer is a legal person, the Customer shall provide visumPOINT with a contact person authorised to make decisions which are required in the course of performing the agreed service in each case.

4 Payment, maturity, offsetting, right of retention

4.1 visumPOINT shall receive from the Customer a fee appropriate to the respective agreement reached plus statutory VAT. Additional services which are requested and performed beyond the scope of services originally agreed by the Customer shall be invoiced separately.  The Customer's obligation to pay shall also exist if a visa requirement or other requirement was not met, given that visumPOINT shall not be liable for any success in this respect.   

4.2 Additional services which are not contractually agreed but are required to realise the purpose of the contract shall be performed and paid in coordination with the Customer. 

4.3 The Customer undertakes to reimburse visumPOINT for any expenses required to execute a contract, insofar as they are not compensated for within the agreed fee.  

4.4  Payment shall fall due upon issuance of the invoice. Direct debits or charges to bank cards shall be processed one day after the invoice is issued. visumPOINT shall be entitled to raise the invoice amount by returning documentation subject to cash on delivery.

4.5 The Customer can only set such receivables off against claims from visumPOINT which are deemed accepted or legally binding. The Customer shall have no right of retention.

4.6 visumPOINT shall initially be entitled to credit payments made by the Customer against previous receivables, against expenses incurred thereafter, and lastly against principal claims.

5 Liability

5.1 The requirements and provisions specified by visumPOINT to execute the contract shall be based upon public information available from state authorities and administrative offices. Legal foundations and authorities' administrative practice can be modified at any time without this information being made publicly available in a timely manner or the existence of another reasonable means of awareness.

5.2 An essential contractual obligation of visumPOINT shall be, for the purpose of executing the contract, to identify information which is currently publicly available in accordance with what is considered reasonable, and to transfer the information required for the Customer. visumPOINT shall, in this respect, assume no liability for publicly available information from authorities or administrative offices being complete and correct. visumPOINT shall equally assume no liability for decisions made by authorities and administrative offices. It shall be noted that public authorities often have discretionary power over their decisions which can neither be confidently predicted nor verified by visumPOINT. 

5.3 visumPOINT shall be liable for damages incurred, insofar as such damages are due to a violation of an essential contractual obligation or intentional conduct or gross negligence on the part of visumPOINT or its vicarious agents. In the event that an essential contractual obligation is violated and caused by slight negligence, visumPOINT's liability shall be limited to the foreseeable damages typical of the contract. Any additional liability for damages shall be excluded. Liability on account of culpable injury to life, limb or health in accordance with statutory provisions shall remain unaffected. visumPOINT shall not be liable for incorrect information transferred by the Customer and visumPOINT shall have no obligation to check that the information provided is correct.

5.4 visumPOINT shall not be liable for disruptions to services and adverse consequences for the Customer in the event of force majeure. Force majeure events shall include, most notably, strikes, industrial action, war, terrorist attacks, riots, forces of nature, fire, sabotage attacks by third parties or the expiration of permissions through no fault of one's own.

5.5 visumPOINT's liability shall be excluded if measures are taken on instructions given by the Customer. 

6 Amendments to the General Terms and Conditions and prices

6.1 The General Terms and Conditions may be amended provided that this does not affect core provisions of the contractual relationship and that this amendment is necessary in order to adjust to developments that were unforeseeable when the contract was concluded and would significantly disrupt the balance of the contractual relationship if ignored. Core provisions are, most notably, those concerning the type and scope of the services agreed under the contract. Furthermore,

adjustments or additions to the General Terms and Conditions may be made insofar as this is necessary to resolve difficulties in the execution of the contract caused by loopholes arising after the contract is concluded. This can, in particular, occur when jurisdiction changes and one or more clauses of these General Terms and Conditions are affected.

6.2 The agreed costs may be increased in order to offset increased costs. For example, this shall be the case if third parties, from whom visumPOINT obtains preliminary work required to perform services owed in accordance with this contract, increase their prices. Moreover, increases shall be possible to the extent which initiates an increase in VAT. 

6.3 In accordance with paragraphs 6.1 and 6.2, amendments to the General Terms and Conditions as well as price increases, which are not solely conditional upon a VAT increase, shall be communicated to the Customer in text form (e.g. by letter or email) at least six weeks prior to entering into force. The Customer shall be entitled to a right of special termination at the time of these amendments entering into force.  In the event that the Customer does not terminate the contract within six weeks from receiving notification of the amendment in text form (e.g. by letter or email), the amendments shall become an integral part of the contract at the time of entering into force.  The Customer shall be specifically advised of these consequences in the notification of the amendment.

7 Objections

The Customer must check the services and invoice immediately upon receipt to ensure that they are complete and correct.  Objections must be made to visumPOINT within eight weeks of performing the services or receiving the invoice. Failure to object in a timely manner shall be considered an approval. Legal claims asserted by the Customer in the event of objections after the deadline shall remain unaffected.

Term and termination of the contract

8.1 The contract shall be concluded for an indefinite period.

8.2 The contract may be terminated by the Customer at any time in text form (e.g. by letter or email). visumPOINT has the right to terminate the contract in text form with a notice period of three months to the end of a half-year period. The right to terminate this contract for good cause shall remain unaffected.

8.4 The costs incurred up until the time of termination shall be borne by the Customer.

8.5 In the event that visumPOINT terminates the contract for good cause for which the Customer is responsible, the Customer undertakes to pay compensation in a lump-sum payable to visumPOINT in the amount of half of the total price of the agreed services. The compensation amount must be set higher if visumPOINT proves any greater damage. It must be set lower or omitted if the Customer proves that substantially smaller or no damages, whatsoever, were incurred.

9 Confidentiality, data protection

9.1 visumPOINT undertakes to maintain the secrecy of any confidential information, concerning the Customer or its employees, of which it became or becomes aware, unless the transfer of this information is required to perform the agreed service or visumPOINT undertakes to disclose such information as a result of sovereign measures or orders. There shall be no violation against the obligation to maintain confidentiality if the information is given to third parties which are committed to maintaining confidentiality.

9.2 The legal provisions surrounding data protection must be observed. In the event that the performance of a service by visumPOINT is associated with activities for which the conclusion of a processing contract is required in accordance with the relevant applicable data protection regulations (within the meaning of Article 28 of the European General Data Protection Regulation), such a contract must be negotiated and concluded.  Further information on the handling of personal data by visumPOINT shall be regulated in data privacy notices. 

Applicable law

10.1 Any legal relationships between visumPOINT and the Customer shall be subject to German law.

10.2 For lawsuits against Customers whose place of residence or habitual residence is in Germany at the time of concluding the contract, and who relocate abroad following the conclusion of the contract, or whose place of residence or habitual residence is unknown at the time of bringing about a lawsuit, Berlin shall have exclusive jurisdiction. For Customers without a place of general jurisdiction inland, including Customers who are business people, legal persons governed by public law or special assets under public law within the meaning of Section 38, paragraph 1 of the German Code of Civil Procedure (ZPO), Berlin shall have exclusive jurisdiction.

Other provisions

11.1 Should individual provisions of these General Terms and Conditions be void, invalid or unenforceable, this shall not affect the validity, effectiveness or feasibility of the remaining provisions. The void, invalid or unenforceable provisions shall be replaced with provisions which best reflect the economic content of the void, invalid or unenforceable provisions. This provision shall apply accordingly in the event of loopholes.

11.2 visumPOINT shall not be prepared to partake in dispute resolution procedures before a consumer arbitration board pursuant to Section 2 of the German Consumer Dispute Resolution Act. 

12 Right of revocation and notice of revocation for consumers

For the Customer who is a consumer within the meaning of Section 13 of the German Civil Code, meaning a natural person who completes a legal transaction for a purpose which cannot predominantly be attributed to either its commercial or independent professional activity, the consumer shall be entitled to a right of revocation.  visumPOINT shall instruct with regard to this as follows:

Notice of revocation

Right of revocation

You have the right to revoke this contract within 14 days without giving reasons. The revocation deadline is 14 days from the date of concluding the contract, however no later than upon receipt of this notice of revocation.

In order to exercise your right of revocation, you must inform us:

visumPOINT GmbH, Ruschestraße 70, 10365 Berlin, Email: visa@visumPOINT.com

of your decision to revoke this contract with a clear statement (e.g. with a letter sent by post, fax, or email, stating your case number). You may use the attached sample revocation form to do so, although this is not mandatory.

To meet the revocation deadline, it shall be sufficient to notify us that you intend to exercise your right of revocation before the revocation deadline.

Consequences of revocation

If you revoke this contract, we must refund all payments that we have received from you, including delivery costs (except for the extra costs resulting from your having chosen a different type of delivery from the cheapest standard delivery offered by us) without undue delay and no later than within 14 days from the day on which we receive notification that you are revoking this contract. To make this repayment, we will use the same means of payment that you used for the original transaction, unless otherwise expressly agreed with you; under no circumstances will you be charged any fees for this repayment.

If you made a request for the provision of services to begin during the revocation notice period, you must pay us an appropriate sum. This shall equate to the proportion of services already performed up until the time at which you informed us of your assertion of the right to revocation of this contract in comparison to the overall scope of the services included in the contract.

Special information

Your right to revocation shall expire prematurely if the service is performed by us in full and was only initiated following your express consent and you acknowledged, prior to performing the service, that you are aware that you will lose your right to revocation in the event of complete fulfilment of the contract on our part.

If you wish to revoke the contract, you can complete this form.

Sample revocation form

To:

visumPOINT GmbH

Ruschestraße 70

10365 Berlin

Email: visa@visumPOINT.com

I/we hereby revoke the contract I/we concluded on the provision of the following service

- Ordered on:

- Name of consumer(s):

- Signature of consumer(s):

- Date:

We hereby confirm receipt of your revocation with immediate effect.

End of notice of revocation