Terms & Conditions

Please read this first

Not an emergency service. We do not monitor accounts or messages for emergencies, and consultants are not available between scheduled consultations. If you are in immediate danger or at risk of serious harm, contact your local emergency services or a local crisis service now.

We are a booking platform, not a healthcare provider. Consultants on Dar al-Shifaa are independent professionals. They — not us — provide your wellbeing consultation, and they are responsible for it.

Your Wellbeing Consultant may not be licensed where you are. Dar al-Shifaa deliberately connects people across borders. That is how you can reach a consultant who shares your language, your faith tradition, or a specialism that may not exist where you live. It also means the professional you see may hold no licence, registration or authorisation in your country or state — which affects insurance, regulators and complaint routes. Section 7 explains this in full, and you confirm you understand it before every booking.

Your consultations happen remotely, and you consent to that. Everything is delivered by secure video — never in person. Section 8 sets out what that means, including what your consultant cannot do at a distance, and you can withdraw that consent at any time.

If you are in the United States, disputes go to arbitration. Section 43 sends US disputes to individual arbitration instead of court and gives up class actions — and gives you 30 days to opt out of that, with no effect on your account. It never stops you complaining to a regulator. If you are anywhere else it does not apply to you.

Cancelling: you get a Credit, not your money back. Cancel 48 hours or more before your consultation and we hold the value as a Credit for a future booking — a Credit cannot be exchanged for cash. Cancel later than that, miss it, or join more than 15 minutes late, and the consultation is not refundable. The full policy is Part Two of this document.

These Terms are the same for everyone. You accept them by ticking the acceptance box. No signature is needed.

Part One: Terms & Conditions

1. About these Terms 1.1These Terms govern your use of the Dar al-Shifaa website, apps and services (the “Services”).

1.2 These Terms are an agreement between you and us about the platform. They are not an agreement for any wellbeing consultation. When you book a consultation, you enter a separate agreement for that professional service with the consultant who provides it.

1.3 Our Privacy Policy and our Cancellation Policy — which is Part Two of this document — form part of these Terms. Where a particular course or programme has its own terms, those apply to it in addition, and take priority for that service.

1.4 Consultants agree to a separate Wellbeing Consultant Agreement. Where these Terms describe what consultants must do, it is so that you know what to expect; those duties are made binding through that separate agreement.

2. Words we use Client — You, if you book or receive services.

Wellbeing Consultation — A scheduled session with a Wellbeing Consultant booked through Dar al-Shifaa — the service we provide access to, and the thing you book and pay for. We also say consultation for short. A Wellbeing Consultation may be a licensed wellbeing consultation or a general wellbeing consultation; section 4 explains the difference, and the name does not decide which it is.

Wellbeing Consultant — An independent professional who provides Wellbeing Consultations through Dar al-Shifaa. We also say consultant for short.

Home jurisdiction — The country, state or region where a consultant holds the licence or registration we have verified under section 11.

Your location — The country, state or region where you are physically present during a consultation.

Cross-jurisdiction consultation — A consultation where your location is outside your consultant’s home jurisdiction.

Licensed wellbeing consultations — Any wellbeing consultation involving the assessment or treatment of a mental-health condition — whatever it is called on the listing.

General wellbeing consultations — Coaching, mentoring, general wellbeing guidance, and spiritual or faith-based support that is not treatment.

Educational services — Courses, programmes and content that are not personal professional advice.

Credit — The value of a cancelled consultation, held for you to use on a future booking. A Credit is not a cash refund.

3. What we do, and what we don’t 3.1We provide the technology that lets you find a consultant, book and pay for a consultation, communicate, and meet online.

3.2 We do not provide wellbeing consultations ourselves, or any assessment, diagnosis or treatment. We are not a healthcare provider. We do not supervise or direct any consultant’s clinical judgment.

3.3 Consultants are independent professionals. They are responsible for their own qualifications, licensing, clinical decisions, notes and professional obligations. They are not our employees.

3.4 We do not choose your consultant for you. Our search and filter tools work from the criteria you select and from information consultants give us. They are not a clinical assessment and not a recommendation that a particular consultant is right for you. A consultant appearing in your search results is not a statement by us that they are licensed, registered or authorised to work with someone in your location — see clause 7.4. Choosing is your decision, and if the fit isn’t right you can change consultant at any time. We will help you.

3.5 We do not promise: any particular result from a wellbeing consultation; that a consultant will suit you; that you will work well together; that a consultant will remain available; that a consultant is authorised to work with someone where you are; or that our services are available everywhere.

3.6 Where we clearly say we provide something ourselves — such as a course published by Dar al-Shifaa — we are responsible for it on the terms given for that service, and clause 3.2 does not apply to it.

4. The three kinds of service 4.1Licensed wellbeing consultations. Provided by Wellbeing Consultants who hold a current licence or registration in their home jurisdiction, verified by us under section 11. Your consultant’s home jurisdiction may be different from your location. Section 7 explains what that means and what you are agreeing to.

4.2 General wellbeing consultations — coaching, mentoring, general wellbeing guidance, spiritual and faith-based support. These are not licensed wellbeing consultations. They do not involve assessing, diagnosing or treating a mental-health condition, and they are not a substitute for a licensed wellbeing consultation. If you need treatment for a mental-health condition, please book a licensed wellbeing consultation or seek care locally.

4.3 Educational services — courses, programmes, articles and videos. These are general information, not personal advice, and they do not create a professional relationship with anyone.

4.4 Faith-integrated consultations follow the same rules. Where a consultant works with Islamic or other religious frameworks as part of a licensed wellbeing consultation, every licensing and professional requirement applies to it in full. Spiritual support that does not involve assessing or treating a mental-health condition is a general wellbeing consultation. We decide which category a service belongs to based on what is actually provided — not on what it is called — and we may reclassify or remove a listing that does not comply. Calling something a Wellbeing Consultation does not change what it actually is. Every consultation is a Wellbeing Consultation, because that is the name of what you book. Whether a particular consultation is a licensed wellbeing consultation or a general wellbeing consultation depends entirely on what happens in it, and where it is a licensed wellbeing consultation, every licensing, insurance and professional requirement applies to it in full.

5. Your account 5.1You need an account to book. Please give accurate information and keep it up to date — including your name, date of birth, contact details and location.

5.2 Keep your login details private. You are responsible for what happens on your account. Tell us at info@dar-al-shifaa.com if you think someone else has accessed it.

5.3 Accounts are personal. Don’t share or transfer your account.

5.4 Verifying your phone number. When you register we send a one-time code by text to the number you give us, to confirm it is yours. By giving us the number you agree to receive that code. We pay for the message; your own network may still charge you for receiving texts.

6. Who can use Dar al-Shifaa 6.1You must be 18 or over. By registering, you confirm you are.

6.2 You must not be in a place we exclude. Dar al-Shifaa is open to clients in most countries and regions. There are some places where we do not accept bookings at all; the current list is on our availability page. If you are in one of them, you can read our free content, but you cannot book a consultation. See also clause 7.9 and section 39 on sanctions.

6.3 You must be able to enter a binding agreement. If you are acting for another adult under a legal authority such as a power of attorney, please tell us and be ready to show it.

6.4 Please don’t give false information about who you are, how old you are, or where you are. Doing so can make a consultation unlawful, can prevent anyone reaching you in an emergency, and puts you at risk.

6.5 What Dar al-Shifaa is not suitable for. Our services are scheduled, remote consultations. They are not suitable for: emergencies or crisis care; hospital, residential or day-patient care; active management of a mental-health crisis; medication management; or anything needing in-person assessment or urgent physical help. If you need that kind of care, please seek it locally — see section 16.

6.6 We may decline a registration or a booking where we don’t think we can safely or appropriately provide the service.

7. Where you are, and cross-jurisdiction consultations This section is the most important one in these Terms. Please read all of it.

7.1 Please tell us where you will be. You give your location when you book, and confirm it at the start of your consultation if asked. It must be accurate, and it must be the place you will physically be sitting during the consultation.

7.2 How Dar al-Shifaa works. Wellbeing Consultants on Dar al-Shifaa are licensed or registered in a particular country, state or region — their home jurisdiction. Many of our clients are somewhere else. We connect you with consultants whether or not their licence covers the place you will be sitting during your consultation. This is deliberate, and it is the point of the platform: it is how you can reach a consultant who shares your language, your cultural context or your faith tradition, or who has a specialism that may not be available where you live.

7.3 What that means. Licensed wellbeing consultations are regulated in the place where you are during the consultation, not only where your consultant is. A consultant licensed in one place

is usually not automatically authorised by the regulator of another. So, in a cross-jurisdiction consultation:

(a)your consultant may hold no licence, registration or authorisation in your location, and we do not require them to; (b)the regulator that licenses your consultant supervises them in their home jurisdiction — it may take no interest in a consultation delivered to you where you are, and your local regulator may have no jurisdiction over your consultant at all; (c)your consultant’s professional indemnity insurance may not cover work with someone in your location, which may affect your ability to recover compensation if something goes wrong; (d)local complaint routes, ombudsman schemes, health service pathways and compensation schemes may be closed to you; (e)in some places, the law prohibits providing licensed wellbeing consultations to a person located there without a local licence. A consultation may therefore be unlawful in your location even though you and your consultant both agreed to it, and the consequences of that fall primarily on your consultant; (f)records, confidentiality protections and legal privilege may work differently, or may not apply, across the two places. 7.4We do not check this for you. Our verification under section 11 confirms a consultant’s licence in their home jurisdiction only. We do not check, and we do not represent, that any consultant is licensed, registered or authorised to work with someone in your location. The fact that a consultant appears as available to you is not a statement by us that they may lawfully work with you where you are. Every consultant profile shows their home jurisdiction. Please look at it.

7.5 Your acknowledgment — given before every booking. Each time you book a Wellbeing Consultation, you confirm that you have read and understood clauses 7.2 to 7.4, and that:

(a)you understand your consultant may be licensed only outside your location, and may hold no licence, registration or authorisation where you are; (b)you have seen your consultant’s home jurisdiction and have chosen them freely knowing it, and you are not relying on Dar al-Shifaa, or on your consultant, to have confirmed their standing in your location; (c)you are not relying on any local regulator, insurance policy, complaint scheme, ombudsman or compensation scheme being available to you; (d)you have considered whether receiving this service where you are is lawful and appropriate for you, and you accept responsibility for that decision; (e)you understand that you may instead choose a consultant licensed in your own location, or seek care locally, and that you are choosing not to; (f)you will not hold this against your consultant or against Dar al-Shifaa — meaning you will not later say you were misled about it, or treat the licensing position as a reason the service was not what you agreed to buy. 7.6You agree not to bring a claim founded on the licensing position. To the fullest extent the law allows, you agree not to bring, and you release and waive, any claim, demand, action or proceeding against Dar al-Shifaa or against your consultant that is based on the fact that your

consultant was not licensed, registered or authorised in your location — including any claim that the service was for that reason invalid, unlawful, unauthorised, void, or wrongly provided, and any claim for a refund, damages or compensation on that basis alone. This applies to the licensing position and nothing else; please read clause 7.8(c), which is as important as this one.

7.7 Your indemnity. To the fullest extent the law allows, you agree to cover the reasonable losses, costs, penalties and legal fees that Dar al-Shifaa or your consultant suffers as a result of:

(a)a location you gave us being false, inaccurate or out of date; or (b)a claim, penalty, fine, proceeding or regulatory action brought by anyone — including a regulator, licensing board or authority — arising out of your having booked or attended a consultation while in a place where the service was prohibited or restricted, in each case only to the extent the loss was actually caused by your booking or by information you gave us, and only as far as the law allows. This does not apply to anything you are not legally responsible for, it does not apply where the loss was caused by our own or your consultant’s act or omission, and it does not affect your rights as a consumer.

7.8 What clauses 7.5 to 7.7 cannot do — and we want you to know this.

(a)They do not make lawful anything the law prohibits. Licensing rules exist to protect the public, and an agreement between you and us cannot set them aside. If the law where you are prohibits a consultation, your agreement does not change that. (b)They do not affect your right to complain to a regulator. You may complain to any regulator, licensing board, professional body, ombudsman or data protection authority, in any country, at any time. We will never treat a complaint made in good faith as a breach of these Terms, and clause 7.6 does not apply to it. (c)They do not release anyone from responsibility for the care you actually receive. Clause 7.6 covers the licensing position alone. It does not cover negligence, incompetent or improper practice, misconduct, dishonesty, breach of confidentiality, or harm caused by how the service was delivered. If your consultant harms you through poor or improper practice, your rights against them are untouched, and nothing in clause 7.6 or 7.7 limits them. (d)They do not remove your rights under consumer law where you live, and they do not limit our responsibility under clause 33.1. (e)If a court finds any part of clauses 7.5 to 7.7 goes further than the law allows, that part applies only as far as it lawfully can, and the rest still stands. In particular: if the indemnity in clause 7.7 is unenforceable, the release in clause 7.6 is unaffected; and if the release in clause 7.6 is unenforceable, your acknowledgment in clause 7.5 is unaffected and remains a full and accurate record of what you were told and what you chose. 7.9Places we do not accept bookings. There are places where we do not offer consultations at all, whatever the acknowledgment says — because the legal position is clear enough, or the risk high enough, that we are not willing to.

7.10 Please give your real location. Don’t give a false location, and please don’t use a VPN, proxy or similar tool to appear to be somewhere you are not in order to book a consultation you could not otherwise book. We understand many people use a VPN for ordinary privacy reasons, and that is fine — this clause is about deliberately misstating where you are. A false

location can put a consultation inside a place we exclude, can void your consultant’s insurance, can expose your consultant to regulatory action, and — most seriously — can mean that nobody is able to reach you or send help if you are in danger. If a consultation was booked on a false location, we may cancel it, and clause 7.7(a) applies.

7.11 A consultant may decline. Your consultant makes their own decision about whether to work with you where you are. If a consultant reasonably believes they cannot lawfully, safely or appropriately work with you from where they are, or where you are, they may decline the booking or end the consultation. If that happens, it counts as a consultant cancellation and you get a full refund or Credit, your choice.

7.12 General wellbeing consultations and educational services. Coaching, mentoring, general wellbeing guidance, faith-based support and courses are generally not regulated in the way licensed wellbeing consultations are, and clauses 7.3 to 7.7 will often have little practical effect on them. They still apply, because the boundary between a regulated and an unregulated service is decided by what is actually provided and by the law where you are — not by the label on the listing. See clause 4.4.

8. Telehealth consent 8.1What you are agreeing to. Every Wellbeing Consultation is delivered remotely — by video, and where offered by audio or messaging — and never in person. By booking one you consent to receiving the service that way.

8.2 You also consent to information about you being transmitted and stored electronically, including the clinical records your consultant keeps about you, and to us and your consultant communicating with you electronically as described in section 22.

8.3 What remote delivery gives you. It is how you can work with someone who shares your language, your cultural context or your faith tradition, or who has a specialism unavailable where you live, without travelling to them.

8.4 What remote delivery cannot do. Your consultant cannot physically examine you. They see and hear only what the connection carries, which is less than they would notice in a room with you. They cannot reach you, or send anyone to you, in an emergency — section 16 explains this, and clause 16.3 explains why distance makes it worse.

8.5 The specific risks. A connection can fail in the middle of a consultation, and clause 12.6 says what happens then. Video and audio can degrade enough to affect what your consultant understands. No electronic transmission can be guaranteed secure, however carefully we protect it — see clause 19.4. And if you are not somewhere private, someone at your end may see or hear what is meant for you alone, which is why clause 13.2 asks you to join from a private place.

8.6 Confirming where you are. You give your location before each consultation under clause 7.1, and your consultant may ask you to confirm it again at the start. This is part of your telehealth consent, not an administrative step: it determines what your consultant may lawfully do and it is what anyone would act on in an emergency.

8.7 You can withdraw this consent at any time. Write to us or tell your consultant. Because remote delivery is the only way we provide Wellbeing Consultations, withdrawing it means we can no longer provide them to you — so we will treat it as ending your bookings, and clause

37.4 applies to anything not yet delivered. It does not affect your right to seek care anywhere else, and we will help you end things properly.

9. Where we scope what a consultation may cover This section works with section 7. Section 7 tells you the licensing position and takes your acknowledgment; this section limits what may actually be delivered to you.

9.1 Why we scope some places. Some countries and states reserve particular activities — diagnosing a condition, treating it, using a protected professional title, providing regulated psychological services — to people holding a local licence. Accepting bookings from such a place, as clause 7.2 says we do, does not entitle your consultant to do those things there.

9.2 A scope binds your consultant, not just you. Where a scope applies, your consultant must work inside it whatever their own view, whatever the listing says, and whatever you ask them for. If what you need falls outside it, they must tell you and refer you on under clause 10.5 — and that counts as a consultant cancellation under section 52 if a booked consultation cannot go ahead because of it.

10. What we ask of Wellbeing Consultants Consultants agree to all of the following in their Wellbeing Consultant Agreement. We list it here so you know what is expected of them.

10.1 To hold and keep current every licence and registration required in their home jurisdiction, and to keep their profile accurate — including an accurate statement of where they are licensed.

10.2 To make their own assessment, for every client, of whether they may lawfully and appropriately work with someone in that client’s location — taking their own regulator’s rules, their insurance and their professional obligations into account — and to decline where they should. This assessment is the consultant’s, not ours. We do not make it for them and we do not check it.

10.3 To tell us immediately if any licence or registration is suspended, restricted, expired, surrendered or investigated, anywhere, and of any disciplinary proceeding or relevant criminal matter.

10.4 To hold professional indemnity insurance covering online work, to satisfy themselves as to whether and where that insurance covers cross-jurisdiction work, and to show it to us on request.

10.5 To work only within their lawful scope and their actual competence, and to refer you elsewhere when your needs go beyond what they can appropriately provide — including where distance, time zone or local law means someone closer to you would serve you better.

10.6 To follow the ethical code of their profession and all applicable law on telehealth, advertising, privacy and data protection.

10.7 To obtain your informed consent to treatment separately from these Terms, and to keep proper clinical notes.

10.8 To maintain professional boundaries — never a romantic, sexual, financial or exploitative relationship with a client, and no soliciting or accepting gifts, loans or business opportunities from clients.

10.9 To have proper procedures for risk and safeguarding, to know your location and, where appropriate, an emergency contact, and to act as the law requires where someone is at serious risk — including knowing what emergency and crisis services are available where you are, which may not be where they are.

10.10 To keep what you share confidential, subject to the legal limits in section 18; to work from a private, secure place on a secure device; and to protect your information.

10.11 Not to make false or unsupported claims about their qualifications, experience or likely results, not to suggest they are licensed or authorised somewhere they are not, and to use only professional titles they are lawfully entitled to use.

10.12 Not to prescribe or change medication. Prescribing is not offered through Dar al-Shifaa.

10.13 To tell us promptly about any serious incident, safety event, complaint or suspected data breach.

10.14 Clinical responsibility stays with the consultant. Nothing we provide — tools, templates, guidance — moves it to us.

11. Wellbeing Consultant profiles and our checks 11.1Profiles contain information consultants give us. How they describe their approach, specialisms and experience is their own wording. Every Wellbeing Consultant profile states their home jurisdiction — the place where they hold the licence or registration we have verified. Please read it before you book.

11.2 What we require before anyone may offer a licensed wellbeing consultation. Every Wellbeing Consultant offering a licensed wellbeing consultation must: hold a relevant academic qualification in their field; hold a current, unrestricted licence or registration from the regulator or professional body of their home jurisdiction; have completed the education, examinations, supervised practice and other requirements that body sets; have at least three years of practice since qualifying; and hold professional indemnity insurance covering online work. For a general wellbeing consultation we require qualifications and experience appropriate to what is being offered, and the listing says what they are.

11.3 What we check. Before a consultant can offer licensed wellbeing consultations on Dar al-Shifaa, we check, with the body that issued it, that their licence or registration in their home jurisdiction is current and unrestricted. We confirm their identity. We ask for evidence of professional indemnity insurance. We review any disciplinary history their regulator publishes. We re-check licence status at least once a year and when a recorded expiry date approaches. Full details are on our verification page.

11.4 What we do not check. We do not check whether a consultant is licensed, registered or authorised to work with someone in your location, and we do not check whether their insurance covers doing so. That assessment belongs to your consultant under clause 10.2, and your decision to proceed is yours under clause 7.5. This is the most important limit on our checks and we want it stated plainly rather than buried.

11.5 What our checks are not. We confirm the specific things listed in clause 11.3, at the time we check them. That is not an assessment or endorsement of anyone’s clinical skill, quality or suitability for you, it is not continuous, and it cannot reveal something a regulator has not published and a consultant has not disclosed. We do not guarantee that everything on a profile is accurate.

11.6 We can ask for more documents at any time, and we may suspend or remove a consultant who does not provide them.

12. Booking a Wellbeing Consultation 12.1You choose a Wellbeing Consultant and a service, confirm where you will be, tick the cross-jurisdiction acknowledgment in clause 7.5 where it applies, tick the acceptance box, and authorise payment. Your booking is confirmed when we send you a confirmation email. Until then there is no booking.

12.2 Times and time zones. Every time is shown in the time zone set on your account, and repeated in your confirmation. Please check it. All the deadlines in our Cancellation Policy are measured from your consultation’s start time.

12.3 Consultation length. Shown on the listing and in your confirmation. Consultations end at the scheduled end time.

12.4 If you are late. Your consultation still ends at its scheduled end time, and lost time is not made up or refunded. If you have not joined within 15 minutes of the start time and have not been in touch, your consultant may end the consultation and treat it as a missed consultation. A missed consultation is not refundable — see clause 49.1 and section 51.

12.5 If your consultant is late. If they are more than 10 minutes late, you can carry on with the time remaining, ask them to extend the consultation if they can, or end it and take a full refund or Credit — your choice.

12.6 If the technology fails. If a consultation can’t really go ahead because of a technical problem — ours, yours, your consultant’s, or a third party’s — please both try to reconnect, including by phone if that is available. If less than half the consultation happened, you get a full refund or Credit, your choice. If more than half happened, the consultation counts as delivered, though we may still use our discretion.

12.7 If your consultant cancels. Full refund or Credit, your choice, and we will help you rebook.

12.8 If we cancel. Where the reason is not something you have done, full refund or Credit, your choice.

13. Your consultations 13.1Consultations take place by secure video. We will tell you before you book if a service is delivered any other way.

13.2 You’ll need your own device and internet connection. Please join from a private, safe place where you can speak freely. A public place, a shared room, or a moving car is not suitable — for your privacy and your safety.

13.3 We can’t promise the platform will always be available or error-free. We may take it offline for maintenance or security, and we’ll give notice where we can.

13.4 Please don’t try to interfere with the platform, or access anyone else’s account or information.

14. Cancelling, rescheduling and missed consultations 14.1The full Cancellation Policy is Part Two of this document and forms part of these Terms. In short:

—​ 48 hours or more before your consultation: reschedule free, or cancel and receive a Credit. A Credit is held for a future booking — it is not a cash refund. —​ Less than 48 hours before your consultation: a late cancellation. What you paid is not refundable — see section 51. —​ Not attending, or joining more than 15 minutes late: a missed consultation. What you paid is not refundable — see section 51. 14.2Credits last 12 months, are meant to be used with the same consultant, and cannot be exchanged for cash.

14.3 If something serious happened, please tell us. We look at late cancellations and missed consultations case by case where there was illness, a bereavement, an emergency, or a safety concern. Write to info@dar-al-shifaa.com. This is in addition to your legal rights, not instead of them.

14.4 Nothing in this section or in the Cancellation Policy takes away any right you have under consumer law where you live. Where such a right applies, it comes first.

15. Paying 15.1Prices are set by consultants and shown on their listing. The price shown when you book is the price for that booking.

15.2 How we take payment. We take the full amount from you and pass the consultant’s share to them, keeping our fee. We collect on the consultant’s behalf, so paying us settles what you owe them.

15.3 Currency. Prices are shown and charged in the currency displayed on the listing and at checkout. If your card is in a different currency, your bank sets the exchange rate and may add its own fees. Those are between you and your bank.

15.4 Tax. Prices may include or attract VAT, sales tax or similar depending on where you and we are. Any tax we must collect is shown before you pay.

15.5 Payment processing. Payments are handled by a regulated third-party payment processor. We do not store your full card details.

15.6 Authorising payment. When you book, you authorise us to charge your payment method for the amount shown, and for any late-cancellation or missed-consultation amount properly due. If a payment fails we may try again and may pause your bookings.

15.7 Refunds go back to the card or account you paid from. How quickly they appear is up to your bank.

15.8 If something is wrong with a payment, please tell us first at info@dar-al-shifaa.com — we can usually sort it out quickly. Going straight to your bank for a chargeback doesn’t affect your legal rights, but where a chargeback is raised for a consultation that was properly delivered, we may pause the account and recover the amount.

15.9 We may decline or investigate any payment we reasonably suspect is fraudulent or unlawful.

15.10 Discount codes have their own terms, can’t be exchanged for cash, may be limited or withdrawn, and are not transferable.

16. Emergencies 16.1Dar al-Shifaa is not an emergency service. We do not provide emergency, urgent or crisis care, and we do not watch accounts, bookings or messages for emergencies. Please do not use Dar al-Shifaa to get help in an emergency.

16.2 If you or someone else is in immediate danger, or at immediate risk of serious harm — contact your local emergency services now, go to your nearest emergency department, or contact a local crisis service. Numbers differ by country; the resources for each place we accept bookings from are on our crisis resources page. If you can’t find a local service, call your local emergency number or go to the nearest hospital.

16.3 Distance matters in an emergency — please read this. Your consultant is often in a different country from you. That means they may be many time zones away, may be unable to call emergency services on your behalf, may have no standing with the services where you are, and may not know the local system. A consultant in another country cannot send help to your door. This is one of the real trade-offs of a cross-jurisdiction consultation, and it is a reason to make sure you also know where to turn locally.

16.4 Online consultations are not a substitute for emergency or in-person care.

16.5 Your consultant is not on call. Consultants are available during your scheduled consultations. They are not available between consultations, may be away for long periods, and are not obliged to reply outside those times.

16.6 Messages are not monitored. Messages on Dar al-Shifaa are not read continuously or in real time, and may not be seen outside your consultant’s working hours. Never use a message to report an emergency.

16.7 Please give an accurate location and, if asked, a local emergency contact. If there is a serious worry about your safety, neither your consultant nor we can help without knowing where you actually are. See clause 7.11.

16.8 What a consultant may do. If your consultant reasonably believes you or someone else is at immediate risk of serious harm, they may do what the law and their professional duties permit or require — which may include contacting emergency services, your emergency contact, or the authorities, and sharing what is necessary to keep someone safe.

16.9 What we may do. If we become aware of a serious and immediate safety concern, we may take reasonable steps — contacting your consultant, contacting you, or where we think it necessary and lawful, contacting emergency services or the authorities. We do not undertake to look for safety concerns or to detect them, and please do not rely on us to do so.

17. Safeguarding 17.1Consultants must follow the safeguarding law and professional standards that apply to them and to where you are.

17.2 Where a consultant is reasonably concerned that a child or an adult at risk is being harmed or is at risk of harm, they must act as the law and their professional code require — which may include reporting to the authorities and sharing information without consent.

17.3 Reporting duties differ from country to country and profession to profession, and in a cross-jurisdiction consultation two different sets of duties may be in play at once — your

consultant’s, and those of the place where you are. We do not suggest that one universal rule applies. Consultants are responsible for knowing and following the rules that bind them.

17.4 You can raise a safeguarding concern with us at any time at info@dar-al-shifaa.com. We treat these as urgent and may escalate them, including to the authorities, where we think it necessary and lawful.

18. Confidentiality 18.1Your consultant’s duty. What you discuss in a consultation is confidential. That duty is owed to you by your consultant, under their professional obligations and the law. They should explain their confidentiality policy and its limits when they take your consent to treatment.

18.2 Confidentiality has limits. It can be broken where there is a risk of serious harm to you or someone else; where a child or adult at risk may be being harmed; where a court or the law requires it; in clinical supervision; and where you agree to it. Exactly which limits apply depends on your consultant’s profession and where you both are — and in a cross-jurisdiction consultation, the protections you would have locally, including any legal privilege, may not apply in the same way or at all. No one can promise absolute confidentiality, and we do not.

18.3 Our position is different from your consultant’s — please read this carefully. We handle information about you in order to run the platform: your account, bookings, payments, technical and support information, and we host your messages and, in some cases, records on your consultant’s behalf. How we handle your information is governed by our Privacy Policy — it is not covered by the clinical confidentiality duty your consultant owes you. We limit access to what is authorised and necessary — investigating a complaint, responding to a security incident, or meeting a legal obligation — and we log that access. But we are not your Wellbeing Consultant, and our duty is a data-protection duty, not a clinical one.

18.4 Look after yourself online. Please don’t send very sensitive information by email, text or social media. Use the messaging inside Dar al-Shifaa, or raise it in your consultation.

18.5 Group programmes. Other participants are not bound by professional confidentiality. Please treat what others share as private, and think carefully about what you share. Part Three sets out the group rules in full.

19. Privacy and your data 19.1We handle personal information, including information about your health and — because of the nature of our work — information that may reveal your religious beliefs. Both are treated as specially protected categories of data. Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect, why, the legal grounds we rely on, who we share it with, where it goes, how long we keep it, how we protect it, and your rights.

19.2 Who is responsible for what. In broad terms, we are responsible for your account, booking, payment, security and support information. Your consultant is responsible for your clinical records and what is discussed in your consultations. The Privacy Policy sets this out in full.

19.3 Where you live matters. Depending on where you are, different laws give you different rights — including the UK and EU GDPR and US federal and state privacy laws. Because consultations often cross borders, your information will often cross borders too; the Privacy Policy explains the safeguards we use for those transfers.

19.4 Security. We protect your information with measures suited to how sensitive it is, and we will tell you and the regulators about a data breach where the law requires. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot promise that unauthorised access will never happen.

20. Recording 20.1We do not record consultations.

20.2 Please do not record. Do not record, film, screenshot, or automatically transcribe any part of a consultation without the written consent of your consultant and everyone else present. In some places recording without consent is a criminal offence — and in a cross-jurisdiction consultation, the stricter of the two places’ rules is the safe assumption.

20.3 Consultants must not record without your written consent, given separately from these Terms. You can withdraw that consent for future recordings at any time.

20.4 If a recording is lawfully made with everyone’s consent, it must be stored securely, seen only by the people named when consent was given, never shared or used for anything else — including training or marketing — without your separate consent, and deleted when it is no longer needed.

20.5 Recording without consent may lead to your account being closed and to referral to a regulator or the police.

21. Messages 21.1We contact you by messages in Dar al-Shifaa, email and text for confirmations, reminders and support. Marketing only goes to people who have agreed to it, and you can stop it at any time.

21.2 Reply times. Consultants set their own and should tell you what they are. Messaging is not a conversation in real time, and time-zone differences can be substantial. Never use it for anything urgent — see section 16.

21.3 Messages outside Dar al-Shifaa are not covered by our security or our support, and we can’t help with disputes about them. Consultants must not move your care off the platform to avoid our fees or policies.

21.4 WhatsApp, text, personal email and social media are not suitable for anything clinical.

21.5 Consultants don’t have to share personal contact details, and please don’t contact them through their personal social media.

21.6 Please don’t send abusive, threatening, harassing or unlawful messages.

21.7 We don’t routinely read your messages. We may access them where it is necessary and lawful — to investigate a complaint, respond to a security incident, meet a legal obligation, or address a serious safety concern.

21.8 Please keep everything about your consultations on Dar al-Shifaa. Booking, messages, documents and payment all belong inside the platform. That is where your information is protected, where we can support you, and where there is a record if anything goes wrong. A conversation moved to personal email or a messaging app has none of that, and clause 33.2(d) applies to it.

22. Electronic communications 22.1You agree to hear from us electronically. We and your consultant may contact you by messages inside Dar al-Shifaa, by email and by text — for booking confirmations, reminders, scheduling, support, changes to these Terms or the Privacy Policy, and anything else connected with your consultations.

22.2 Your contact details. When you give us an email address or a phone number you confirm it is yours and current. Please keep it up to date — notices we send to the address on your account count as given when we send them (clause 26.1).

22.3 What you can switch off. Marketing goes only to people who have agreed to it, and you can stop it at any time without affecting anything else.

22.4 What you cannot switch off while you have an account. Some messages are part of the service: booking confirmations, payment and billing notices, safety information, and notice of changes to these Terms. You cannot opt out of those and keep using Dar al-Shifaa. If you withdraw your consent to receive them, we will treat it as a request to close your account under clause 37.1.

22.5 Withdrawing consent does not affect the validity of anything already agreed electronically, including these Terms and any acknowledgment you gave under clause 7.5.

23. Artificial intelligence 23.1We may use AI tools to help run the platform — for support triage, drafting support replies that a person reviews, scheduling and reminders, fraud and abuse detection, moderation, and search.

23.2 AI is not a Wellbeing Consultant. No AI tool on Dar al-Shifaa provides wellbeing consultations, diagnosis or clinical advice, and no AI output is a substitute for a qualified professional.

23.3 AI is not used to make clinical decisions, to assess risk instead of a consultant, or to decide whether you are suitable for treatment. It is not used to decide whether a consultant may lawfully work with you where you are — no such decision is made by us at all; see clause 11.4.

23.4 We will tell you when you are dealing with an AI tool rather than a person. We do not use AI on the content of your consultations. If that ever changes, we will ask for your specific consent first, before any consultation, and you will be able to withdraw it.

23.5 AI can get things wrong. Please don’t rely on an AI answer as advice, and tell us if you see one that is wrong or harmful.

24. Conduct and boundaries 24.1What consultants must never do: any sexual or romantic conduct, comment or relationship with a client; harassment or intimidation; discrimination; exploitation of any kind, including financial; accepting loans, investments or significant gifts from clients; relationships that compromise their objectivity; working while impaired; claiming or implying a licence, registration or authorisation they do not hold.

24.2 What we ask of you: please don’t harass, threaten or abuse a consultant or our team; don’t behave in a sexual way towards a consultant or try to start a personal or business relationship

with them; don’t record without consent; and don’t try to obtain services by giving false information, including a false location.

24.3 Professional boundaries continue after consultations end. Many professional codes restrict relationships with former clients for a set period, or permanently.

24.4 What we do. We investigate any allegation, and may suspend an account immediately while we do. We may remove a consultant, close an account, hold back payment while we investigate, and refer the matter to a regulator or the police. Where someone’s safety is involved, we act first and investigate after.

24.5 We are not a regulator. We cannot decide whether professional misconduct has occurred as a disciplinary matter — that is for the consultant’s regulator. We can act on our own platform rules, and we will help you take a matter to the right regulator.

25. Complaints 25.1Tell us at info@dar-al-shifaa.com. Tell us what happened, when, who was involved, and what you would like to happen.

25.2 Where things go. Every route below reaches us at the same address, and we direct it internally.

Your concern Where it goes

Safety, safeguarding, risk of harm Treated as urgent and escalated immediately

A consultant’s conduct or ethics Us — and their regulator, for professional discipline

Your care or treatment Your consultant first if you feel able; their regulator for a formal decision

Licensing or authorisation Us — and see clause 7.8(b): you may also go to any regulator directly, at any time

Billing, refunds, Credits Us

Privacy Us — you can also complain to your data protection regulator

25.3 We acknowledge complaints as quickly as we can, and we will keep you updated on what is happening and when you can expect an answer. We will explain the outcome as fully as we lawfully can, bearing in mind other people’s privacy.

25.4 Anything involving immediate risk of harm is escalated straight away, and may result in a consultant being suspended before any investigation finishes.

25.5 What we cannot do. We cannot promise a particular outcome, decide clinical standards, rule on professional misconduct the way a regulator would, or award compensation for a consultant’s professional negligence. We can restrict or remove access to Dar al-Shifaa, refund or credit money where appropriate, and refer matters on.

25.6 We cooperate with regulators, professional bodies, safeguarding authorities and the police where the law requires, and where we think it necessary to protect someone from harm.

25.7 We do not tolerate anyone being treated badly for raising a concern in good faith. This includes a complaint to a regulator about a licensing matter — see clause 7.8(b).

26. Notices, and contacting a regulator 26.1Notices from us go to the email address on your account, or are posted in Dar al-Shifaa. A notice counts as given on the day we send or post it.

26.2 Notices to us should be sent to info@dar-al-shifaa.com.

26.3 Finding your consultant’s regulator. Every consultant profile names the place where they are licensed (clause 11.1). Ask us and we will tell you which body licenses them there and how to contact it, as far as we know it. We will not ask you why.

26.4 Going to a regulator is always open to you. You may complain to any regulator, licensing board, professional body, ombudsman or data protection authority, in any country, at any time — including about the licensing position itself. We will never treat it as a breach of these Terms, it is not affected by clause 7.6, and clause 43.7 excludes it from arbitration. See clause 7.8(b).

27. Using Dar al-Shifaa properly 27.1Please don’t use Dar al-Shifaa: for anything unlawful; to harass, threaten or harm anyone; to pretend to be someone else; to get services you’re not eligible for; to misstate where you are; to infringe anyone’s rights; to introduce malware or interfere with how the platform works; to scrape or systematically extract data; to use our content or data to train any AI model without our written permission; to get around any restriction, including the places we exclude; or to advertise to other users.

27.2 We may investigate, remove content, limit features, suspend or close accounts, and report unlawful behaviour.

27.3 Files. If you receive a file from us or from your consultant, please scan it for viruses and malicious software before you open it, whether it came through Dar al-Shifaa or not.

28. Intellectual property 28.1Dar al-Shifaa — the platform, its software, design, databases, our name, logo and brand, and everything we create — belongs to us or our licensors. You may use it for its intended purpose, personally and non-commercially.

28.2 What you may do with it. For as long as you keep to these Terms we give you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence, which we can revoke, to use Dar al-Shifaa and the content on it on your own devices, for your own non-commercial use, and only for what it is there for. Every other right stays with us and our licensors.

28.3 Please don’t copy, sell, licence, publish, adapt, reverse engineer or create derivative works from any part of it, or remove any ownership notice, except where the law expressly allows you to despite this clause.

28.4 Consultants keep ownership of their own profile content and materials, and licence them to us so we can host, display and promote them as part of running Dar al-Shifaa.

28.5 Course and programme content is licensed to you for your own personal use only. Please don’t share, republish, resell or record it.

28.6 You keep ownership of what you submit. You give us permission to host, store and display it as needed to run the platform and provide the service — and, for anything you choose to publish such as a review, to display it publicly. This does not apply to your clinical information or what you discuss in consultations, which are covered by sections 18 and 19.

28.7 If you send us suggestions or feedback, we may use them freely.

28.8 To report infringement, write to info@dar-al-shifaa.com.

29. Other people’s content on Dar al-Shifaa 29.1Dar al-Shifaa may carry content, products, services, links or advertisements provided by other people — consultant profiles and materials, reviews written by other clients, and resources we link to, including the crisis resources in section 16.

29.2 We did not write that content and we do not adopt it. We are not responsible for it, for any product or service it describes, or for the terms or practices of whoever provided it, and clause 33.2(f) applies to it.

29.3 A link from Dar al-Shifaa is not a recommendation. This is particularly true of the crisis resources we list: we list them because they may help you, not because we have any control over them — see clause 31.2.

29.4 If you see content on Dar al-Shifaa that is wrong, harmful or should not be there, please tell us at info@dar-al-shifaa.com.

30. Reviews 30.1Reviews must be your own genuine experience. We never pay for or incentivise reviews.

30.2 Please protect your own privacy. A review is public and permanent by default. Please don’t include clinical details, what you discussed in a consultation, or anything about your health that you wouldn’t want a stranger to read.

30.3 Please don’t include anything false, defamatory or abusive; personal information about anyone; or allegations of criminal or professional misconduct — those should come to us and to the regulator under section 25, where they can actually be investigated, not into a public review.

30.4 We may decline to publish or remove content that breaks these rules. We do not remove a review just because it is negative or because a consultant objects.

30.5 Consultants must not pressure anyone for a review, offer anything in exchange for one, or reply to a review in any way that confirms someone was a client or reveals anything clinical.

30.6 You can ask us to remove a review you wrote. If a review contains something that should not have been published, we’ll act quickly.

31. Other companies’ services 31.1Dar al-Shifaa relies on other companies for payments, video, hosting, email and text. Their availability is outside our control.

31.2 Links to other websites and resources — including the crisis resources we list — are for your convenience. We don’t control them or take responsibility for them.

32. What we don’t promise 32.1To the fullest extent the law allows, Dar al-Shifaa is provided “as is” and “as available”, and we do not give any warranty or guarantee beyond what is written in these Terms.

32.2 In particular, we don’t promise: any result from a wellbeing consultation; that a consultant is licensed, registered or authorised in your location, or that a consultation is lawful where you are (see clause 7.4); that a consultant’s insurance covers work with someone in your location; that any local regulator, complaint scheme or compensation scheme will be available to you; that a consultant will suit you or that you’ll work well together; that a consultant will be available or will keep offering services; that the platform will be uninterrupted, secure or error-free; that connections over the internet will always work; that what consultants or other users tell you is accurate; or that our services are available in any particular country.

32.3 Articles, courses and other content on Dar al-Shifaa are general information. They are not advice about your situation, and they don’t create a professional relationship.

32.4 The professional service you receive comes from your consultant, not from us. Any promise about that service is theirs.

32.5 Nothing in this section takes away rights the law does not allow us to exclude. If you are a consumer in the United Kingdom, your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 — including that services must be carried out with reasonable care and skill — cannot be excluded and are unaffected. Consumers in the European Union and elsewhere keep their mandatory legal rights in full.

33. Limits on our responsibility 33.1What we never limit. Nothing in these Terms limits our responsibility for: fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; death or personal injury caused by our negligence; gross negligence or deliberate wrongdoing; or anything else the law does not allow to be limited — including your rights as a consumer.

33.2 Subject always to clause 33.1, and to the fullest extent the law allows:

(a)we are not responsible for indirect or consequential losses, or for lost profits, business, opportunity or data; (b)we are not responsible for the professional advice, clinical decisions, negligence or misconduct of a consultant, or for the professional service they provide to you; (c)we are not responsible for any consequence of a consultant not being licensed, registered or authorised in your location — including the unavailability of insurance, a regulator, a complaint scheme or a compensation scheme — where you booked after giving the acknowledgment in clause 7.5. This does not extend to the way the service was actually delivered; see clause 7.8(c); (d)we are not responsible for failures in other companies’ services, the internet, or your own equipment; (e)we are not responsible for loss caused by false or incomplete information given by you or another user, including a false location; and

(f)we are not responsible for what users post. 33.3Our overall limit. Where we are responsible, our total responsibility to you for everything connected with these Terms is limited to the total amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event that caused the problem, or US$250, whichever is greater.

33.4 Some countries don’t allow certain limits. Where that is the case, our responsibility is limited as far as the law there allows, and the rest of this section still applies.

33.5 Nothing here limits any claim you may have against your consultant for the care you received, or your right to complain to their regulator or to any regulator where you are.

34. Your responsibility to us 34.1If you break these Terms, give us false information — including a false location — record a consultation without permission, post something that infringes someone’s rights, or use Dar al-Shifaa unlawfully, and we suffer loss or a claim as a result, you agree to cover the reasonable costs and losses that follow — but only to the extent the loss was actually caused by what you did, and only as far as the law allows. This does not apply to anything you are not legally responsible for, and it does not affect your rights as a consumer.

34.2 Cross-jurisdiction bookings. Your indemnity in clause 7.7 applies in addition to this section, and is subject to the same limits — including the limits in clause 7.8.

34.3 Consultants give us broader protections in their Wellbeing Consultant Agreement, covering practising without proper authorisation, professional negligence, misrepresenting qualifications, breaching data protection duties, and failing to maintain insurance.

34.4 We’ll tell you about any claim this section covers. Please don’t settle a claim in a way that commits us to anything without asking us first.

35. Wellbeing Consultants are independent 35.1Consultants work for themselves. Nothing in these Terms makes them our employees, partners or agents.

35.2 They are responsible for their own clinical judgment, licensing, insurance, taxes, business registration, clinical records, and compliance with the law that applies to their practice — including the decision, for each client, about whether they may lawfully work with someone in that client’s location (clause 10.2).

35.3 We act as their agent for collecting payment, as described in clause 15.2, and we host certain information on their behalf as described in our Privacy Policy. There is no other agency between us.

36. What we can do 36.1Subject to the law, we may: check consultant credentials and ask for documents; approve, decline, suspend or remove consultant listings; add places to the excluded list and stop accepting bookings from them, including at short notice; decline or cancel a booking; suspend or close an account; remove content; investigate complaints; act to prevent fraud; change or discontinue features; update these Terms under section 41; and cooperate with regulators and law enforcement.

36.2 We’ll act reasonably, and give notice where we can. Where there is a safety risk, a legal requirement, or suspected fraud, we may act immediately without notice.

37. Ending 37.1You can close your account at any time in the platform or by writing to info@dar-al-shifaa.com. Closing your account doesn’t automatically cancel booked consultations — please cancel those separately, and the Cancellation Policy applies.

37.2 A consultant may stop offering services on Dar al-Shifaa, or may stop working with clients in a particular place. They have professional obligations about ending the professional relationship properly, including giving reasonable notice and helping you move on or transfer.

37.3 We may suspend or close your account, immediately where necessary, if you seriously break these Terms; give false information about who or where you are; behave abusively or unlawfully towards a consultant or our team; where there is a risk to anyone’s safety; where a consultant loses a required licence or insurance; where we suspect fraud or payment misuse; where the law requires it; or where we add your location to the excluded list under clause 7.9.

37.4 What happens then. Your access ends and booked consultations are cancelled. Where the ending is not caused by something you did — including where we withdraw from your location — you get a refund or Credit for consultations not delivered, your choice. Anything you already owe stays owing. Credits are lost only where we ended your account because you seriously broke these Terms, and only where the law allows.

37.5 Your records. Ending your account doesn’t affect your rights over your personal data or your clinical records. Ask your consultant for clinical records — they hold them — and ask us for platform data, as explained in the Privacy Policy. Some records must be kept for professional or legal reasons even after an account closes.

37.6 Sections 2, 3, 7 (including your acknowledgment, release and indemnity, and the limits on them in clause 7.8), 8, 9, 15 (for anything owing), 18, 19, 20, 28, 32, 33, 34, 37, 39, 43, 44 and 45 continue after your account ends, along with anything else that by its nature should.

38. Using Dar al-Shifaa from other countries 38.1Dar al-Shifaa is operated from the United States. The fact that our website can be reached from anywhere does not mean our services are lawful where you are. We accept bookings from most countries and regions, and section 7 explains what that does and does not mean. The places we do not accept bookings from are on our availability page.

38.2 You are responsible for following the law where you are. If it prohibits or restricts using our services, please don’t use them. Clause 7.5(d) is the point at which you confirm you have considered this.

38.3 We may add places to the excluded list at any time, including where the legal position is merely unclear, and including at short notice.

38.4 Sanctions and export control. These are dealt with separately in section 39, and apply in addition to this section.

38.5 If you are a consumer, you keep the benefit of the consumer protection law of the country where you live, and nothing here — including clauses 7.5 to 7.7 — takes that away.

39. Sanctions and export control 39.1Sanctions. You may not use Dar al-Shifaa if you are in, ordinarily resident in, or acting for someone in a country subject to comprehensive sanctions, or if you are personally subject to sanctions. We screen accounts and payments and may decline or close an account on that basis. This is separate from, and additional to, the places we exclude under clause 7.9.

39.2 Export control. Because we operate from the United States, our software and technology may be subject to US export and re-export controls, including the Export Administration Regulations, and to sanctions programmes administered by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. By using Dar al-Shifaa you confirm that you are not located in a country to which the United States has applied comprehensive sanctions, and that you are not on any US government list of prohibited or restricted parties.

39.3 You agree not to use, export, re-export, transfer or otherwise make available anything you receive from us in a way those rules prohibit, without any authorisation they require.

39.4 If sanctions or export rules stop us serving you, clause 37.4 applies and you will not be out of pocket for consultations not delivered.

40. Things outside anyone’s control 40.1We’re not responsible for failures or delays caused by events beyond our reasonable control — natural disasters, extreme weather, fire or flood, epidemics, war, terrorism or civil unrest, government action, strikes, failures of the internet or power supply, failures of the services we depend on, and cyber-attacks that happen despite reasonable security.

40.2 We’ll do what we reasonably can to limit the effect and get back to normal. If a consultation can’t go ahead because of such an event, you get a Credit or a refund, your choice. If it goes on for more than 30 days, either of us can end the agreement and you’ll be refunded for anything paid and not received.

40.3 This doesn’t limit our responsibility for anything within our reasonable control, and doesn’t affect your legal rights.

41. Changes to these Terms 41.1We may update these Terms — for example if our services change, or the law does.

41.2 Important changes. If a change materially affects your rights — price, cancellation, our responsibility, how disputes work, how we use your data, what the service is, or how cross-jurisdiction consultations work under section 7 — we’ll email you and post a notice at least 30 days before it takes effect, and tell you plainly what changed. We’ll ask you to tick the acceptance box again before you continue.

41.3 Small changes — corrections, clarifications, contact details — are published with a new effective date. Adding a place to the excluded list is not a change to these Terms and is made under clause 7.9; we will tell anyone affected directly.

41.4 If you don’t agree, you can stop using Dar al-Shifaa and close your account before the change takes effect, and we’ll refund anything you’ve paid for and not received.

41.5 The Terms in force when you made a booking govern that booking, unless the law requires otherwise.

41.6 Every previous version and its dates are kept on our version history page.

42. How you accept these Terms 42.1You accept these Terms by ticking the box marked “I have read and acknowledge the Terms & Conditions. By checking this box I agree and consent to the Terms & Conditions” and continuing. No signature is needed. Ticking that box creates a binding agreement between you and us, with the same effect as signing.

42.2 These Terms are the same for everyone. They are not negotiated or varied for individual people. Where the law where you live gives you rights that differ from these Terms, those rights apply in addition — see clauses 7.8, 32.5, 33.1, 38.5 and 44.4.

42.3 Before you accept, we show you a summary of the terms that matter most, and the full Terms are there to read in the same place. Please read them. If you don’t agree, please don’t tick the box — you won’t be able to register or book, and no agreement is made.

42.4 Things the box doesn’t cover. Some things are handled separately, because the law requires it or because they change from booking to booking: where you will be for each consultation; your acknowledgment under clause 7.5, which you give separately for each booking; your consent to treatment, which your consultant takes separately; consent to any recording; and consent to marketing emails. Ticking the box for these Terms doesn’t give any of those.

42.5 Communications. You agree to receive notices from us electronically.

42.6 Our record. We keep a record of each acceptance — the version you accepted, a copy of the exact text you were shown, the date and time, and your account. We keep the same record for each clause 7.5 acknowledgment, including the consultant’s home jurisdiction and the location you gave, for that booking. You can ask us for a copy of anything you accepted at any time.

43. Arbitration and class action waiver — clients in the United States This section applies only if you are located in the United States. If you are anywhere else, it does not apply to you at all and section 44 governs disputes instead. Please read it — it changes how a dispute between us would be decided, and it gives up the right to bring or join a class action.

43.1 Who this applies to. This section applies to you only if you are located in the United States when a dispute arises. Clause 43.12 says what happens if that is unclear.

43.2 The agreement to arbitrate. You and Dar al-Shifaa agree that any dispute, claim or controversy between us arising out of or relating to these Terms, any earlier version of them, or your use of Dar al-Shifaa or of any Wellbeing Consultation, will be resolved by final and binding individual arbitration rather than in court — except for the claims clause 43.7 carves out. You and we both give up the right to a trial by jury.

43.3 Rules and forum. The arbitration will be administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, before a single arbitrator, and the Federal Arbitration Act governs this section. Where those rules and this section conflict, this section governs. If the AAA will not administer the arbitration, either of us may ask a court of competent jurisdiction to appoint a neutral arbitrator. Unless we agree otherwise, the arbitration takes place in the state where you live, or remotely if you prefer.

43.4 Costs. Where the law or the AAA Consumer Rules require it, we pay the arbitrator’s and the filing fees. Each of us pays our own legal costs, subject to anything the arbitrator may later award. If you cannot afford your share of any fee that falls to you, tell us and we will not use the cost of arbitration to prevent your claim being heard.

43.5 Class action waiver. You and we each agree that a dispute will be brought only in an individual capacity, and not as a claimant or class member in any class, collective, consolidated or representative action. The arbitrator has no authority to hear one. Whether any part of this clause is enforceable is for a court to decide, not an arbitrator; and if a court finally decides that this clause cannot be enforced as to a particular claim, that claim proceeds in court while the rest of this section still applies to everything else.

43.6 Many similar claims at once. If 25 or more arbitration demands of a similar nature are filed against us by or with the help of the same firm or organisation, we will group them into batches of no more than 100, each batch treated as one case with one arbitrator and one set of fees. This keeps mass filings workable for both sides rather than using their cost as leverage. Disagreements about whether this clause applies go to a single arbitrator in one consolidated proceeding.

43.7 What is never arbitrated. This section does not apply to, and does not restrict:

(a)a claim you bring in small claims court, so long as it stays there and stays individual; (b)a claim of sexual assault or sexual harassment connected with your use of Dar al-Shifaa, which you may bring in court whatever this section says; (c)either of us asking a court for an injunction to stop the infringement or misuse of intellectual property; (d)a complaint to, or an investigation by, any regulator, licensing board, professional body, ombudsman, data protection authority or government agency. Nothing in this section prevents you going to a regulator, prevents a regulator investigating us, or prevents a regulator awarding you anything it can award. See clause 7.8(b) and clause 26.4; (e)anything the law does not allow to be arbitrated. 43.8You can opt out, and you have 30 days. You may opt out of this whole section — the arbitration agreement and the class action waiver together — by writing to info@dar-al-shifaa.com with the subject line Arbitration Opt-Out within 30 days of first accepting these Terms. Give your name and the email address on your account; you do not need to give a reason. If you opt out, neither of us is required to arbitrate and section 44 governs disputes between us instead. Opting out will never be held against you.

43.9 Talk to us first. Before starting arbitration, either of us may try to resolve things informally for 30 days by writing to the other — you to info@dar-al-shifaa.com, us to the address on your account — setting out what happened and what you want. Most things are resolved this way. This is optional, not a condition of arbitrating, and it does not stop either of us seeking urgent court protection.

43.10 What this section does not take away. It does not limit our responsibility under clause 33.1, does not affect your rights under clause 7.8, and does not change what clause 7.6 does and does not cover. Arbitration changes where a dispute is decided, not what you are entitled to.

43.11 This section continues to apply after your account ends.

43.12 If your location is unclear or disputed. Where it is genuinely unclear whether you were in the United States, this section applies only if you agree it should. We will not argue that a client was in the United States in order to move a dispute out of their own courts.

44. Disputes and which law applies 44.1Please talk to us first. If something has gone wrong, write to info@dar-al-shifaa.com and give us a chance to put it right. Most things are resolved this way. We both agree to try in good faith to resolve a dispute informally for 30 days before starting court proceedings. This doesn’t stop either of us seeking urgent court protection, or you contacting a regulator or ombudsman at any time.

44.2 Which law applies. These Terms are governed by the law of Virginia, United States.

44.3 Where disputes are heard. The courts of Virginia have jurisdiction over disputes arising from these Terms.

44.4 If you are a consumer, your local rights come first.

(a)Nothing in clauses 44.2 or 44.3 takes away the protection of the mandatory law of the country where you live, or your right to bring proceedings in your own country’s courts where the law gives you that right. (b)United Kingdom: you may bring proceedings in the courts of England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland as applicable. (c)European Union: you may bring proceedings in the courts of the member state where you live, and the mandatory consumer law of that state applies where it gives you more protection. (d)Clauses 7.6 and 7.7 apply only as far as the law of the place deciding the dispute allows — see clause 7.8(e). 44.5Disputes with your consultant. A disagreement about the professional service itself is between you and your consultant. We’ll provide booking and payment records on reasonable request — including your clause 7.5 acknowledgment for that booking — and help where we can, but we’re not part of that dispute and can’t resolve it.

45. Other things 45.1These Terms and the documents that form part of them are the whole agreement between us about Dar al-Shifaa. This doesn’t exclude responsibility for fraudulent misrepresentation, and doesn’t affect your legal rights as a consumer.

45.2 If any part is found invalid, it is adjusted as little as possible or removed, and the rest stays in force. Clause 7.8(e) says how this works for clauses 7.5 to 7.7.

45.3 If we don’t enforce something straight away, we haven’t given up the right to enforce it later.

45.4 You can’t transfer these Terms to anyone else. We may transfer them to a group company or as part of a sale of our business, on notice to you, provided your rights aren’t materially affected.

45.5 Only you and we can enforce these Terms, except that our group companies and our team may rely on sections 32, 33 and 34, and consultants may rely on clauses 7.6 and 7.7 to the extent those clauses are expressed to benefit them.

45.6 We send notices to the email address on your account. Please send notices to info@dar-al-shifaa.com.

45.7 These Terms are written in English. Where we provide a translation, the English version applies if there is any conflict, unless the law where you live says otherwise.

Part Two: Cancellation, Refund & Rescheduling Policy

What this policy covers This policy applies to Wellbeing Consultations booked through Dar al-Shifaa.

It does not cover courses, cohort programmes, retreats or consultation packages. Those have their own terms, shown at the point you enrol or purchase. If you have booked one of those and something has changed, please contact us at info@dar-al-shifaa.com.

This policy forms part of our Terms & Conditions. Where the two differ on cancellation, this policy applies.

46. Why this policy exists When you book, your consultant sets that time aside for you and does not offer it to anyone else. A consultation cancelled at short notice usually cannot be filled, and the consultant is not paid for it.

The 48-hour notice period is how we balance that against the fact that life is unpredictable — particularly for people who are unwell, caring for someone, or going through something difficult. That is why cancelling early costs you nothing, why your Credit keeps its full value, and why we read every refund request properly rather than applying a blanket rule.

47. Words we use Words defined in section 2 have the same meaning here. These are the terms this Part uses most:

Wellbeing Consultation — An individual session with a Wellbeing Consultant booked through Dar al-Shifaa. We also say consultation for short.

Start time — The scheduled start of your consultation, in the time zone shown on your account and in your booking confirmation.

Credit — The value of a cancelled consultation, held in your account to put towards a future booking. A Credit is our standard remedy when you cancel early.

Refund — Money returned to the card or account you paid from.

Late cancellation — Cancelling less than 48 hours before your start time.

Missed consultation — Not attending, or joining more than 15 minutes after the start time without contacting anyone.

48. How we measure the 48 hours 48.1The clock runs to your scheduled start time, in the time zone shown on your account and repeated in your booking confirmation. Please check the time zone — it is the single most common cause of a cancellation going in late.

48.2 A cancellation or reschedule takes effect when you submit it in Dar al-Shifaa, using the cancel or reschedule button. Emailing us, or messaging your consultant, does not stop the clock.

48.3 Your account shows the exact cancellation deadline for every upcoming booking, so you never have to work it out yourself.

48.4 If our platform is down and you cannot cancel because of it, tell us as soon as you can and we will treat your cancellation as made at the time you first tried.

49. Cancelling 49.1You can cancel any consultation at any time. What happens depends on when.

When you cancel What happens

48 hours or more before start Credit for the full amount you paid

Less than 48 hours before start Not refundable — see section 51

You don’t attend Not refundable — see section 51

49.2 A missed consultation means not joining within 15 minutes of the start time without contacting your consultant or us. Your consultant will normally wait, and will try to reach you.

49.3 If you start a consultation and end it early, it counts as delivered. Please do tell your consultant if something isn’t working — ending early because a consultation is difficult is very different from ending early because the fit is wrong, and they can help with both.

49.4 You do not have to give a reason for cancelling.

50. Credits 50.1When you cancel 48 hours or more before your consultation, we issue a Credit for the full amount you paid. It appears in your account straight away.

50.2 A Credit is worth exactly what you paid. It never loses value while it is valid.

50.3 Credits are valid for 12 months from the day they are issued. Your account shows every Credit you hold and the date each one expires.

50.4 Credits are intended for use with the same consultant, so that your work with them continues.

50.5 If that consultant isn’t available to you — because they have left Dar al-Shifaa, stopped offering the service, can no longer lawfully work with someone in your location, or have no availability within a reasonable time — you can use your Credit with any consultant. If you would rather have the money back in that situation, ask us: we will normally refund you, because a Credit you cannot use is not a remedy.

50.6 If a consultation costs more than your Credit, you pay the difference. If it costs less, the balance stays as Credit until it expires.

50.7 Credits cannot be transferred to another person.

50.8 A Credit is our standard remedy for an early cancellation. It is not automatically exchangeable for cash — see section 51.

51. Refunds

51.1 How refunds work here We do not issue cash refunds as standard. When you cancel a consultation yourself, the remedy is a Credit. That is deliberate: it keeps the value with you and with your consultant, rather than unwinding the booking entirely.

We do, however, read every refund request properly. If you believe your circumstances warrant a refund, ask us — we will look at it on its own facts.

51.2 How to ask Email info@dar-al-shifaa.com with:

—​ your name and the consultation date —​ what you would like to happen —​ why you believe a refund is appropriate Please ask within 30 days of the consultation or cancellation, so that we can look into it while the details are still clear. If you could not ask within 30 days, tell us why when you do — we will not turn you away over timing alone.

51.3 What happens next 51.3.1We acknowledge your request and check the booking record.

51.3.2 Requests are escalated for review. A refund is not decided by the person who first reads your email.

51.3.3 We assess each request on its own facts. There is no fixed list of qualifying reasons and no automatic entitlement. We take into account what happened, when you told us, whether the consultation went ahead, whether your consultant was able to fill the time, and anything else you tell us.

51.3.4 We will give you a decision and explain the reasoning.

51.3.5 If we decide not to refund, you can ask us to look again at info@dar-al-shifaa.com, marking it for escalation. A different person will review it.

51.4 What we will not ask you for We may ask for something to support what you have told us, but we keep any request proportionate.

We will never ask you for medical evidence of a mental-health difficulty, and we will never ask you to describe what you are going through in order to be considered for a refund. “Something serious happened that I would rather not go into” is an acceptable answer, and we will assess your request on that basis.

51.5 Circumstances we take seriously The following would ordinarily weigh in favour of a refund or a Credit where a consultation would otherwise be non-refundable. This list is not exhaustive and does not create an entitlement:

—​ sudden illness or injury, yours or someone you care for —​ a family emergency —​ a bereavement

—​ an accident —​ a safety or safeguarding situation —​ a mental-health crisis —​ a natural disaster, civil emergency or serious travel disruption

51.6 When a refund is your right, not a request You do not need to ask, give a reason, or wait for a decision in any of these situations. Tell us which you would prefer — a refund or a Credit — and we will action it.

Situation

Your consultant cancels Refund or Credit, your choice — section 52

We cancel Refund or Credit, your choice — section 53

A technical failure meant less than Refund or Credit, your choice — section 54 half the consultation happened

Nothing in clauses 51.1 to 51.5 applies to these. They are not discretionary.

51.7 How refunds are paid 51.7.1Refunds go back to the card or account you paid from. We cannot send a refund somewhere else.

51.7.2 We process approved refunds within 5 working days. Your bank may take a further few days to show it — that part is outside our control.

51.7.3 Refunds are made in the currency you paid. We do not cover exchange-rate movements between the day you paid and the day you were refunded, or your bank’s own conversion or cross-border fees.

51.7.4 We do not deduct a handling or administration fee from refunds.

52. If your consultant cancels 52.1You receive a full refund or a Credit — whichever you prefer — and we will help you rebook, including with a different consultant if you would rather.

52.2 If you do not tell us which you want within 14 days, we issue a Credit so the value is not lost. You can still ask us to convert it to a refund while it is valid, and in this situation we will.

52.3 This applies however the cancellation arises, including where your consultant cannot lawfully work with someone in your location, is unwell, or does not attend.

52.4 If a consultant cancels on you more than once, please tell us at info@dar-al-shifaa.com. Consultants are held to reliability standards, and repeated cancellations are something we act on.

52.5 Consultants have professional obligations about ending a professional relationship properly. If your consultant decides to stop working with you, they should give you reasonable notice and help you find someone else or move your care on.

53. If we cancel 53.1Where we cancel a consultation for a reason that is not something you have done, you receive a full refund or Credit — whichever you prefer.

53.2 We may cancel where there is a legal, licensing, safety, payment, fraud or compliance issue, or where a consultant has been suspended or removed from Dar al-Shifaa.

53.3 We will tell you as soon as we can, and explain what we can.

54. If the technology fails 54.1If a consultation cannot meaningfully go ahead because of a technical problem — ours, yours, your consultant’s, or another company’s:

How much of the consultation What happens happened

Less than half Full refund or Credit — whichever you prefer

More than half Counts as delivered — you can ask us to look at it under section 51

54.2 “How much happened” means usable consultation time — time spent trying to reconnect does not count towards it. Your consultant records this, and if you disagree with their assessment, tell us and we will look at it.

54.3 Please both try to reconnect before treating a consultation as lost, including by phone if your consultant offers that.

54.4 If you are having repeated trouble with your own connection, please tell us. We would rather help you fix it than keep processing cancellations.

55. Rescheduling 55.148 hours or more before your consultation — reschedule free of charge to any time your consultant has available. Your payment moves with the booking. Nothing else changes.

55.2 Less than 48 hours before — rescheduling is up to your consultant. Many will accommodate it where they can. If they cannot, the consultation counts as a late cancellation under section 49.

55.3 You can reschedule the same consultation twice. After that, please cancel and book again — the 48-hour rule applies to the cancellation as normal.

55.4 A rescheduled consultation should take place within 3 months of the original date.

55.5 Rescheduling is not a cancellation. Moving a consultation does not use up a Credit and does not count against you in any way.

55.6 If you need to move a consultation at short notice and your consultant cannot fit you in, rescheduling is often still the better route than cancelling — ask us at info@dar-al-shifaa.com and we will see what we can do.

56. If you want to dispute a payment 56.1Please talk to us first — email info@dar-al-shifaa.com. We can usually resolve a billing problem within a day or two, which is considerably faster than a bank dispute. Contacting us first does not affect any of your rights.

56.2 Where a chargeback is raised for a consultation that was properly delivered and there is no genuine dispute, we may pause the account and recover the amount owed.

56.3 If you are unhappy with how we have applied this policy, email info@dar-al-shifaa.com and ask for it to be escalated. We will look at it again.

57. What Wellbeing Consultants must do 57.1Consultants on Dar al-Shifaa are required to follow this policy. They cannot set their own cancellation terms, charge different amounts, or apply the 48-hour rule differently to different clients.

57.2 Consultants cannot approve or promise a refund. All refund decisions are made by Dar al-Shifaa under section 51.

57.3 Consultants must not ask you to pay for a cancelled or missed consultation outside Dar al-Shifaa.

57.4 If a consultant tells you something that contradicts this policy, this policy is what applies. Please tell us at info@dar-al-shifaa.com.

58. Changes to this policy 58.1We may update this policy. We will give at least 30 days’ notice of any change that materially affects you, by email and on the website.

58.2 The policy in force when you made a booking is the policy that applies to that booking. A change never applies retrospectively to a consultation you have already booked.

58.3 Previous versions and their dates are kept at [VERSION HISTORY PAGE].

59. Contact us Cancellations, Credits, refund requests, billing questions and complaints: info@dar-al-shifaa.com

Part Three: Group Consultations

Applies in addition to Parts One and Two whenever you join a group consultation.

60. What a group consultation is 60.1A group consultation is a Wellbeing Consultation attended by several clients together with a consultant. Everything in these Terms applies to it, and this Part applies in addition. Where the two differ, this Part governs the group consultation.

60.2 A group is not a substitute for individual work. Group consultations are designed so that you can share experience with people in a similar position and be supported by them as well as by the consultant. They are not a replacement for one-to-one consultations, and not a replacement for care from a licensed professional where you live. If what you need is individual attention, please book a one-to-one consultation or seek care locally.

60.3 You confirm you understand clauses 60.2, 61.1 and 61.2 before your first group consultation. It is a separate confirmation from the one in clause 7.5 and from accepting these Terms.

61. Confidentiality inside a group 61.1The other people in the group are not bound by professional confidentiality. Your consultant owes you the duty in section 18. The other clients do not. They are bound only by their promise under clause 61.2 — which matters, but is not the same thing.

61.2 Your promise to everyone else. You agree to keep private everything you learn in a group consultation about anyone else in it — what they said, what they are dealing with, who they are — and not to repeat it to anyone outside the group, including to family, including anonymously, and including after you leave.

61.3 Think before you share. Share only what you are willing for the other people present to know. Your consultant will help you judge this, and will never press you to disclose more than you want to.

61.4 If someone breaks clause 61.2, tell us. We treat it seriously: we may remove that person from the group and from Dar al-Shifaa under clause 65.3, and where what was shared was seriously harmful we will help you take it further.

62. How we expect people to behave in a group 62.1Treat everyone in the group, and the consultant, with respect. Do not insult, intimidate, harass or discriminate against anyone, and do not behave in a sexual way towards anyone present.

62.2 Do not give other participants clinical or treatment advice. Sharing what helped you is welcome; telling someone what their problem is, or what they should take or stop taking, is not.

62.3 Do not bring in material that is likely to harm others present — encouragement of violence or self-harm, graphic detail shared for its own sake, or content that has nothing to do with why the group exists. Your consultant decides where that line falls.

62.4 Clause 24.2 applies in a group as it does anywhere on Dar al-Shifaa.

63. Joining, arriving and attending 63.1Please be on time. A group consultation starts for everyone at once, and someone arriving part-way through interrupts what the others are in the middle of.

63.2 Late arrivals may not be admitted. Your consultant may close the group once it has begun. If you are not admitted for that reason it counts as a missed consultation and clause 49.1 applies — but tell us if something serious stopped you, because clause 51.5 applies here too.

63.3 If you cannot attend, please say so in advance. We understand that people miss things; repeatedly booking a place and not using it, where others wanted it, may mean we ask you to leave the group under clause 65.3.

63.4 Where a group runs as a course or programme, that course’s own terms apply to booking, payment and cancellation, and take priority over Part Two for it (clause 1.3).

64. Leaving a group 64.1You can leave at any time — a single consultation or the group altogether — if you are uncomfortable or simply do not want to continue. You do not need to explain, and we will not ask you to.

64.2 Leaving a group is usually final for that group. A group works because the same people build trust over time, so someone rejoining part-way changes it for everyone who stayed. If you leave a group you normally cannot rejoin that same group, though you can join a different one or book one-to-one consultations.

64.3 Clause 64.2 is about the stability of the group, not a penalty. If you left because of something that happened in the group — something someone said or did, or something we or the consultant got wrong — tell us, and we will look at letting you back in.

64.4 If you leave part-way through a package, course or programme, clause 63.4 applies and that course or programme’s own terms say how any refund is worked out.

65. Your consultant’s role 65.1Your consultant leads the group: they guide the discussion, decide how time is shared, and keep the consultation safe and balanced for everyone in it.

65.2 They may interrupt, redirect or end a discussion, and may ask someone to stop — including you. Please take it as managing the group rather than a judgement about you.

65.3 Where someone is preventing the group from working, or has broken clause 61.2, 62.1 or 67.1, your consultant or we may remove them from that consultation, from the group, or from Dar al-Shifaa. Where safety is involved we act first and look into it afterwards (clause 24.4).

65.4 Clinical responsibility in a group stays with the consultant, exactly as clause 10.14 says.

66. No exchanging contact details 66.1Please do not exchange phone numbers, email addresses, social media handles or any other personal contact details with other participants, inside the consultation or outside it.

66.2 This protects everyone, including you. People share things in a group they would not share with a stranger who can contact them afterwards, and contact outside the group is outside the consultant’s sight, outside our support and outside section 18. Clause 21.3 applies.

66.3 If someone tries to contact you privately after a group consultation and you did not want them to, tell us.

67. No recording, no sharing 67.1Do not record any part of a group consultation — no video, no audio, no screenshots, no automatic transcription — and do not share anything from it on social media or anywhere else. Section 20 applies in full, and in a group it protects everyone present, not only you.

67.2 We do not record group consultations.

67.3 Recording or sharing a group consultation may mean your account is closed, and may be referred to a regulator or to the police (clause 20.5). Because it exposes other people’s health information, we treat it as more serious in a group than in a one-to-one consultation.

68. Agreeing to this Part 68.1Booking or joining a group consultation means you agree to this Part and will keep to it.

68.2 Where someone does not, we and the consultants may do what clause 65.3 allows, so that the group stays safe and useful for the people in it.

68.3 If anything in this Part worries you, or you are not sure a group is right for you, write to info@dar-al-shifaa.com before you book and we will talk it through with you.

Dar al-Shifaa — Terms & Conditions, version 1.4. Questions about these Terms: info@dar-al-shifaa.com