College Checkmate Client Services Agreement
College Checkmate LLC (“College Checkmate,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) provides college-planning, organization, guidance, and accountability services. The adult who signs the enrollment agreement is the “Client.” The student receiving services is the “Student.” If the Student is under 18, the Client must be a parent or legal guardian authorized to consent to the Student’s participation.
1. Purpose and Included Services
College Checkmate — Your College-Bound Teammate is a college-planning, organization, guidance, and accountability service. The $210 monthly membership includes two 30-minute one-to-one Student check-ins during each monthly service period; a customized College Checkmate Board; accountability and deadline tracking; application and essay guidance; general educational guidance relating to admissions, FAFSA, financial-aid processes, scholarships, enrollment, and related college-planning steps; reasonable between-meeting support through approved communication channels; and brief parent/guardian progress updates when applicable and permitted.
Services are personalized to the Student’s situation. College Checkmate may adjust the order or emphasis of services based on deadlines, progress, and the Student’s stated goals.
2. What College Checkmate Does Not Do
- Guarantee admission, acceptance, scholarships, financial-aid eligibility or amounts, housing, enrollment, graduation, or any other result.
- Make decisions for colleges, scholarship providers, government agencies, testing organizations, or other third parties.
- Submit, certify, attest to, or electronically sign applications, FAFSA forms, scholarship applications, enrollment documents, or other official submissions on the Student’s behalf.
- Write or substantially create an application essay, personal statement, assignment, or response for the Student to submit as the Student’s own work.
- Provide legal, tax, accounting, investment, lending, mental-health, or other licensed professional advice.
- Serve as an emergency service or provide 24/7 on-demand support.
3. Student Ownership and Family Responsibilities
The Student owns the college process. College Checkmate can organize the Board, explain options, and help identify the next move, but the Student and family remain responsible for decisions, accuracy, deadlines, and final submissions. The Student and Client agree to provide accurate and timely information; verify official requirements and deadlines with authoritative sources; complete and submit required materials by the actual deadline; personally review documents before submission; attend scheduled meetings prepared to participate; maintain control of personal accounts and credentials; and follow each institution’s academic-integrity, application, and artificial-intelligence rules.
4. Deadlines and Third-Party Information
Deadline tracking is a support service, not a transfer of responsibility. Colleges and other organizations may change deadlines, requirements, forms, policies, or procedures without notice. College Checkmate is not responsible for errors, outages, delays, lost submissions, portal problems, email filtering, changed third-party rules, or inaccurate or incomplete information supplied by the Client, Student, or a third party.
5. Essays, Applications, Academic Integrity, and AI
College Checkmate may provide brainstorming, writing instruction, feedback, proofreading, and editing on work prepared by the Student. Our role is coaching and editing, not authorship. The Student must originate and approve the substance of all application materials and is responsible for the originality, truthfulness, accuracy, and final content of every submission. College Checkmate will not knowingly generate or prepare an application essay for submission as though it were the Student’s original work. The Student is responsible for following each institution’s current rules regarding AI, editing, and outside assistance.
6. FAFSA, Financial Aid, and Scholarships
College Checkmate may explain general processes, help organize required steps, identify questions to ask, and point the family toward official resources relating to FAFSA, scholarships, cost of attendance, and financial aid. Eligibility, aid calculations, tax treatment, scholarship rules, award amounts, and lending decisions are controlled by government agencies, institutions, and other third parties. College Checkmate does not provide legal, tax, accounting, investment, or individualized financial advice.
Sensitive-information rule: Do not send College Checkmate Social Security numbers, tax-return copies, banking passwords, FSA IDs, full financial-account numbers, or authentication codes through ordinary email, text, the Board, or video chat unless College Checkmate has expressly provided a secure method for a specific necessary purpose.
7. Monthly Billing, Automatic Renewal, Cancellation, and Refunds
$210 monthly membership. Payment is due in advance for each monthly service period. By completing recurring checkout with College Checkmate’s payment processor, the Client authorizes a charge of $210 to the payment method on file each month until canceled.
Monthly service period. The first monthly service period begins on the Effective Date. Each subsequent monthly service period begins on the recurring billing date established by the payment processor and ends immediately before the next recurring billing date.
Month-to-month renewal. There is no fixed long-term commitment. The membership renews for successive monthly service periods until canceled.
Cancellation. Client may cancel future renewals by emailing hello@collegecheckmate.com before the next billing date. Cancellation is effective for future renewals when the written cancellation request is sent to that address.
Refunds. Cancellation does not retroactively refund services already billed or delivered, or a monthly service period that has already begun, except where required by law or expressly agreed in writing. College Checkmate may cancel or decline to renew services and will refund any prepaid amount for services it elects not to provide.
Price changes. College Checkmate may change pricing for future billing periods by providing advance written notice. A price change will not be applied retroactively, and the Client may cancel before the new price takes effect.
8. Scheduling, Rescheduling, and Missed Check-Ins
Check-ins are scheduled by mutual availability. The Client/Student should provide at least 24 hours’ notice to reschedule when reasonably possible. A missed check-in or late cancellation may count as one of the two scheduled check-ins for that monthly service period. College Checkmate may make reasonable exceptions for emergencies. Unused check-ins do not automatically roll over into future months unless College Checkmate agrees in writing. If College Checkmate cancels a check-in, reasonable efforts will be made to reschedule it.
9. Communication, Parent Updates, and Adult-Student Privacy
Between-meeting support is intended for reasonable college-planning questions and accountability. College Checkmate responds during normal operating periods but does not guarantee immediate responses, same-day responses, or 24/7 availability. Response timing may vary based on workload, weekends, holidays, and the nature of the request.
For a Student under 18, the signing parent/legal guardian authorizes College Checkmate to communicate directly with the Student for the purpose of providing services and to provide the parent/guardian with brief progress updates. Updates may include what moved, what is next, attendance, upcoming deadlines, and anything requiring parent/guardian attention. College Checkmate does not ordinarily provide a verbatim account of Student conversations.
For a Student age 18 or older, the Student controls whether College Checkmate may share progress information with a parent, payor, or other person, except as required by law or reasonably necessary to address a credible safety concern or enforce this Agreement. The Student will record that communication choice during account activation.
10. Technology, Board Access, Privacy, and Records
Services may use the College Checkmate Board, email, text messaging, video meetings, scheduling tools, cloud services, and payment processors. No internet-based system is completely risk-free. College Checkmate will use reasonable administrative and technical practices to protect information in its control, and its Privacy Policy is incorporated by reference where applicable. The Client and Student agree to use their own accounts responsibly and not to share login credentials. Board access may end after the paid membership period ends, subject to retention practices stated in the Privacy Policy.
College Checkmate is not the Student’s school and does not represent that FERPA applies to College Checkmate in the same manner that it applies to educational institutions. Meetings will not be audio- or video-recorded by College Checkmate unless all required parties separately agree in writing. The Client and Student agree not to record meetings without advance written permission from College Checkmate and any other participant.
11. No Outcome Guarantee
College admissions, scholarships, financial aid, and enrollment outcomes depend on factors outside College Checkmate’s control, including the Student’s academic record, conduct, choices, application quality, institutional policies, available funding, competition, and third-party decisions. The family is purchasing a defined process of planning, guidance, organization, and accountability — not a particular result.
12. Term and Termination
This Agreement continues month-to-month until canceled or terminated. College Checkmate may suspend or terminate services for nonpayment, harassment, threats, abusive or unsafe conduct, repeated nonparticipation, dishonesty, requests to engage in unethical or unlawful conduct, misuse of College Checkmate systems, or another material breach of this Agreement. Billing and refunds after termination are handled under Section 7.
13. Limitation of Role and Liability
To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, College Checkmate is not responsible for decisions or actions of colleges, schools, scholarship providers, government agencies, testing organizations, payment processors, technology providers, or other third parties, or for consequences resulting from changed requirements, inaccurate or incomplete information supplied by the Client/Student, technical failures outside College Checkmate’s reasonable control, or the Client/Student’s failure to verify information, meet deadlines, attend meetings, complete tasks, or take required action. Nothing in this Agreement excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.
14. Client and Student Misconduct
The Client and Student remain responsible for their own unlawful conduct, intentional misrepresentation, unauthorized use of another person’s information, and submission of materials that violate law or third-party rights. College Checkmate may suspend or terminate services if such conduct occurs. Nothing in this section makes the Client or Student responsible for College Checkmate’s own unlawful conduct.
15. Intellectual Property and Marketing
College Checkmate retains ownership of its original templates, Boards, checklists, roadmaps, worksheets, methods, branding, and other proprietary materials. The Student and Client receive a limited, personal, noncommercial right to use materials supplied for the Student’s own college-planning process. They may not resell, publish, or commercially distribute those materials without written permission.
Signing this Agreement does not grant College Checkmate permission to use the Student’s name, image, testimonial, admissions result, work, or identifying story for marketing. Any such use requires a separate voluntary written release, including any additional consent required for a minor.
16. Independent Service
College Checkmate is an independent service provider. This Agreement does not create a fiduciary, partnership, joint venture, employment, agency, or school-student relationship.
17. Florida Law; Disputes
The parties agree to try in good faith to resolve concerns directly before filing a lawsuit when practical. This Agreement is governed by Florida law, without regard to conflict-of-law principles and subject to any nonwaivable consumer protections. Unless applicable law requires otherwise, any court proceeding relating to this Agreement will be brought in a court of competent jurisdiction in Marion County, Florida.
18. General Terms and Electronic Signatures
This Agreement, together with the applicable Privacy Policy, payment authorization, and any signed addendum incorporated into it, states the parties’ agreement concerning the services and replaces prior discussions on the same subject. Changes to this Agreement must be in writing and agreed to by the affected parties, except for operational policies or future pricing updates expressly allowed above. If one provision is unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain effective. Failure to enforce a provision once does not waive the right to enforce it later. Electronic records, electronic signatures, and counterparts may be used to the extent permitted by law.
Effectiveness. This Agreement becomes binding when the Client electronically signs it and the first $210 membership payment is successfully processed. The “Effective Date” is the date both conditions have been satisfied. No College Checkmate countersignature is required.