Terms and Conditions
(Takes 10 to 15 minutes to read)
The following are the Terms & Conditions of FastFwd Driving School (we / us / our), and we ask that all students, or parents / guardians of students under 18 years of age, (you / the customer / yours) read and agree to these terms before beginning lessons with us.
If you have questions or would like to discuss any of these terms with us before starting lessons with us, please speak to your instructor in the first instance, or address your questions in writing by emailing them to fastfwddriving@outlook.com with a subject heading of ‘T&Cs Query’ and with specific reference to the term or terms below.
We have put these terms and conditions in place to protect you, our customers, as well as ourselves and our instructors, and to try to make it clear what each party should reasonably expect from the other.
At the point of starting your lessons with us you will be agreeing to be bound by these Terms & Conditions.
We recommend you read them carefully.
We can provide you with an electronic (.pdf) copy of these terms and conditions at the time of your initial enquiry upon request.
Should you not wish to agree to these terms and conditions we will be unable to accept you as a student or customer of FastFwd Driving School and will be unable to provide you with paid for driving tuition.
1. Payment for Lessons
1.1 48 HOUR ADVANCE PAYMENT - The customer must pay us for a pre-booked lesson at least 48 hours in advance of the start of the lesson. Should this advance payment not be received in time, the customer must assume that by not making the payment on time you are effectively cancelling the pre-booked lesson that the payment was intended for. We will book an alternative student into ‘your slot’ in such cases. The only exception to this rule is for those student who have an agreement with us to pay cash at the start of their lesson, also see point 2.3 bellow.
1.2 REMINDER TO PAY - At the discretion of the driving instructor, he/she may try to contact you once to remind you to make a payment for a lesson that has been pre-booked / requested but which has not yet been paid for.
1.3 CUSTOMER RESPONSIBLE FOR PAYMENT - It is the customers responsibility to ensure that lessons are paid for in advance according to point 1.1 above and taking into consideration all points in section 1 of these Terms and Conditions. Customers who persistently don't pay on time despite repeated reminders could find their lessons cancelled, and may also find the school is no longer willing to book lessons in advance for you, i.e., payment will be required before a booking is made, or even that the school is no longer prepared to work with you at all.
1.4 LESSONS UNUSED AFTER 6 MONTHS - Please note that any lessons paid for but not taken within 6 months from the original booking or payment date, will be forfeited and no refund will be given.
2. Acceptable / Unacceptable Methods of Payment for Lessons
Listed below in order of preference and level of acceptability are the payment methods we will take for driving lessons.
2.1 🏦 BANK TRANSFER (YES) - We ask that all payments be made by inter-bank transfer (Faster Payment method) to the following bank account:
Bank: Halifax
Name: ‘Miss M. Simmonds’
Sort code: 11-04-48
Account number: 19640963
2.2 To help us to know that you have made a payment for your lesson(s) and which student it is applicable for, please also provide a payment reference that mentions the student’s name and the words ‘Driving Lessons’. We suggest something like the following format: students first name, a space, student’s surname, a space, and the phrase ‘Driving Lessons’, e.g., ‘John Smith Driving Lessons’.
2.3 💷 CASH (YES) - We accept cash payments although we would prefer a direct interbank transfer such as BACS. Our instructors do not carry a ‘cash float’ and may not be able to issue any change, so please ensure you have the correct payment amount ready if paying in cash. Your instructor will give you a signed Cash Sales Receipt for any cash you give them as payment. Your instructor will take a photo of Cash Sales Receipt issued and enter it into our on-line accounting system for our records and for our tax calculation purposes.
2.4 ✉️ CHEQUES (YES) - We only accept cheques for block bookings of 12 or more 1-hour lesson periods, or intensive 30-hour courses, and cheques must be received at least 10 working days prior to the commencement of a lesson and must have cleared at least 48 hours before the commencement of a lesson. Cleared means your bank has paid any monies promised into our bank and into our account. We ask that you show us a valid cheque guarantee card and allow us to record the details of such a card at the time you present your cheque to us. Cheques should be made payable to ‘SIMMONDS M’.
2.5 🟡 GOLD (YES) - Yes seriously, we will accept payment in Gold Sovereign coins in the following denominations or multiples thereof in exchange for these numbers of lesson hours: a Gold Quarter Sovereign coin = 2 ¼ hours of lessons, a Gold Half Sovereign coin = 4 ½ hours of lessons, and a Gold Sovereign coin = 9 hours of lessons. Gold Sovereign coins must be those minted by the Royal Mint and have a fineness of 916.7 (22 carat). Our instructors do not carry a ‘gold float’ and cannot issue any 'change', so please ensure you have the correct denominations of Gold Sovereigns. Your instructor will give you a signed Gold Sovereign Sales Receipt for any Gold Sovereign coins you give them as payment. Your instructor will take a photo of the Gold Sovereign Sales Receipt issued and enter it into our on-line records. Sorry, we only accept Gold Sovereign coins as they are British legal tender, and there is no Capital Gains Tax (CGT) payable on them. The only exception being that, like John Wick, we will accept a 1 oz Gold Krugerrand 22 carat coin (minted by the South African Mint) in part payment for our Intensive courses (although they do attract CGT). We do not accept Gold bars or any other precious metal coins or bars. We ask that payment in Gold Sovereign or Gold Krugerrand coins is made 5 days in advance of a lesson so that the coin(s) can be assayed before the start of the lesson.
2.6 💳 DEBIT / CREDIT CARDS (NO) – We do not accept payment for lessons using Debit or Credit payment cards as we lack the facility to process such payments.
2.7 🅿️ PAYPAL (NO) - We do not accept PayPal payments.
2.8 💵 CREDIT (NO) – We do not offer a credit option.
2.9 🧮 LOANS (NO) – We do not offer loans to pay for driving lessons.
2.10 📆 PAYMENT SCHEMES (NO) – We do not offer a payment scheme option.
2.11 🐪 CAMELS / BARTER / SPICES / AMBER / SALT / FIRST BORN CHILD etc. (NO) – We do not offer a barter / trade payment option as unfortunately we lack the means to store and look after such items. Sorry to disappoint those of you who have offered to pay in Camels and Rupees in the past (you know who you are).
2.12 🟠 CRYPTO CURRENCY (NO) – We do not accept payment for lessons in any form of crypto currency regardless of whether it is now accepted legally or regarded as a form of generally acceptable payment in popular culture / media. We are not Elon Musk / Tesla and do not entertain decentralised currency or the daily value fluctuations of BitCoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Shiba Inu or such like. Sorry if we appear stuck in the ‘dark-ages’, but we'd rather accept Camels (the animals), as their value fluctuates less.
3. Statement
3.1 If you have paid for a block of six, nine, or twelve 1-hour lesson periods (see point 6.1) you can request a statement of how many 1-hour lesson periods you had booked, consumed, or have remaining, either directly with your instructor (verbally) at the beginning or end of a lesson, or by contacting us during our standard office hours by phone, by SMS text message, or by email. We will endeavour to process such requests within 48 hours.
4. Deposits
4.1 Intensive course lessons (as defined in point 2.4) require a 20% non-refundable deposit at the time of booking. Please refer to our latest pricing plan for details. Under no circumstances will the 20% deposit be refunded. This is because securing an entire 5 or 8 days of an instructor’s time is a risk to us, and if an intensive course is not fully paid for before the course commences, resulting in the cancellation of that entire period of tuition, it would be extremely difficult to then arrange other lessons or courses to fill that period. Instructors still need to be paid despite cancelled / unpaid for lessons, and we are not a charity organisation.
5. Balance
5.1 The balance of payment for an intensive course (the remaining 80%) must be paid at least 48 hours in advance of the start of the intensive course. Failure to pay on time will result in immediate cancellation of the intensive course and any deposit already paid, however much, will not be refunded even if it is more than the 20% required at time of booking.
6. Booking Lessons
6.1 Lessons can be booked by you as single lessons (minimum duration 1.5 hours), blocks of six 1-hour lesson periods, blocks of nine 1-hour lesson periods, or blocks of twelve 1-hour lesson periods.
6.2 All lessons are between 1.5 hours and 2 hours in duration, unless attending an intensive course.
6.3 All lessons must be pre-booked (in advance) and in accordance with the payment terms above (see Section 1 and Section 4).
6.4 Acceptance and confirmation of a lesson booking will be made by sending you an invitation to the lesson (event) using an electronic calendar. We insist that if you intend to go-ahead with that lesson that you accept the electronic calendar invitation to confirm that you intend to book, pay for, and attend the lesson. If you do not accept the invitation, we may assume that you have decided not to proceed with the lesson and may allocate that lesson slot to another student. We use MS Office 365 Outlook, and it is your responsibility to ensure that you have a compatible electronic / on-line calendar associated with the email address / calendar account we have on record for you.
6.5 If you do not have such an electronic email / calendar account as outlined in point 6.4, we will pre-schedule in your lesson(s) and provide you with a paper slip outlining any lesson(s) we have arranged with you, including date(s), time(s), price(s), discount(s), and pick-up and drop-off location(s). Both parties will sign the slip to show agreement to the booking(s). Your instructor will take a photo of the completed and signed booking slip and enter the booking into our electronic calendar system.
6.6 An intensive course conducted over several days is counted as one lesson.
6.7 Intensive courses (as per point 6.6) must be booked a minimum of four weeks / 28 days (elapsed time) in advance of the start of the intensive lesson. We refer you to point 4.1 above and the fact that deposits for intensive courses are non-refundable under any circumstances.
6.8 Intensive courses can only be spread across a period of longer than 5 consecutive days if agreed by us and scheduled 28 days in advance, for example 2 days in week 1, and 3 days in week 2.
7. Fitness to Drive
7.1 We reserve the right to challenge a student about their fitness to drive and operate a motor vehicle safely in accordance with the law.
7.2 If we deem that a student is incapable of safely operating a motor vehicle due to over tiredness, alcohol, drugs, road rage or illness and we have not been given 48 hours cancellation notice, then we reserve the right to immediately cancel the lesson or stop the lesson, if it has already started. In such instances, our instructor will stop the lesson and ask the student to move into one of the passenger seats. Our instructor will then take control of the vehicle as the driver and return the student to the pre-agreed drop off location or their home, whichever is most appropriate for the wellbeing of the student.
7.3 In such circumstances as presented in point 7.2, a refund will not be issued under any circumstances. It is the student's responsibility to ensure that they have had adequate sleep prior to a lesson, and have not consumed substances such as alcohol or drugs that will impair their driving capability, such that their operation of a motor vehicle would be unsafe or would break the law.
8. Driving Attire and Visual Aids
8.1 Students must wear appropriate footwear for driving our learner vehicle during lessons. We recommend flat bottom shoes with a tread such as trainers. Students wearing inappropriate footwear such as flip flops, high heeled shoes/boots or sliders will be asked to change into something more appropriate. Any time taken by the student to change into the correct footwear will be deducted from the lesson.
8.2 Students who are short sighted (myopic) and who require corrective lenses, must ensure that they wear such lenses for lessons.
9. Cancellation of or Disruption to Lessons
9.1 Should you wish to cancel a driving lesson or intensive course, we require a minimum of 48 hours’ notice by you to cancel a scheduled bookings otherwise the full cost is applicable. It is at the discretion of the driving instructor to waiver this fee in extenuating circumstances.
9.2 There may be times due to traffic conditions, i.e., accidents/heavy traffic, that instructors may have to make changes to lessons or even cancel lessons at the last minute. If an instructor cannot get to a lesson within a reasonable time and must cancel, he/she will let you know by SMS Text, and the lesson will be carried forward to another date.
9.3 Should a lesson commence but be stopped or disrupted due to an issue with the learner vehicle such as a breakdown, or a flat tyre, we will help you call for a private taxi, such as Uber, to return you to your pre-agreed drop-off point. We will contribute up to £15.00 to pay for such a taxi, either at the time of the incident or subsequent payment or refund. We will not be held accountable, responsible, or liable for any loss, damage, or disruption on your part due to such an issue with the FastFwd Driving School learner vehicle. We aim to provide reliable and well-maintained learner vehicles, and our vehicles are regularly serviced and undergo weekly maintenance checks.
9.4 You may request a full refund for a lesson cancelled by us should you so wish.
9.5 It is your responsibility to request such a refund.We will not be liable for any loss, damage, or disruption on your part should we have to cancel a lesson under such circumstances. We always endeavour to provide lessons, advance notice of disruptions or changes to lessons, or make alternative arrangements, but we cannot account for or be held responsible for ‘force majeure' [1] or ‘Acts of God’.
10. Refunds
10.1 Any pre-payment for a lesson that you have made, can be refunded (except for intensive course deposits, see point 4.1 above) if you request a refund for a lesson by giving us at least 48 hours’ notice, but also must take into consideration point 5.1.
10.2 All refunds will be reviewed to ensure that monies owed to us are retained before calculating and refunding payments made. Please also refer to section 15 – Damage, Costs and Charges.
10.3 Request for refunds must be made by emailing fastfwddriving@outlook.com stating the subject of ‘Refund Request’, and providing details of the nominated bank account to receive the refund into electronically. Refund requests made in other ways will not be considered.
10.4 We require 48 hours to process a refund from the time of the request but will endeavour to process your refund within 1 working day. Should your need for a refund be extremely urgent (extenuating circumstances), please do follow-up your email request for a refund with a phone call to your instructor to inform him/her of your pending request. It is at the discretion of your instructor as to whether they can follow-up immediately on your request as they may be taking a lesson at the time of your call / voice mail and be unable to action such a request.
10.5 It is your responsibility to request and follow-up on requests for refunds.
10.6 Refunds will be made electronically to a bank account of your choice in £GBP currency only. We do not issue credit, cash, cheques, or Gold coins for refunds. The value of the number of lesson hours refunded will be based on our standard rate for 1 hour of tuition, which is £39 per hour as of 1 August 2022 (or the discounted rate paid for blocks of lesson hours for those students who qualified for a discounted rate, see 1.4).
10.7 Should we feel that a refund cannot be issued, we will respond in writing to the email address that we have on file for you, stating our reasons for such a decision, and inviting you to provide any further explanation or argument. Your statutory rights are not affected and any further resolution between parties will follow normal UK legal procedures and applicable UK laws and regulations.
10.8 Please note that any lessons paid for but not taken within 6 months from the original booking or payment date, will be forfeited and no refund will be given.
11. Collection and Drop-off
11.1 Collection and drop-off points must be agreed in advance of the start of each lesson, in accordance with our general need for 48 hours advance notice. This is because we are not a taxi service and being asked ‘at the last minute’ to drop-off a student at the end of a lesson a significant distance away from your collection point or from the collection point of the following lesson for another student causes all following lessons that day to start and finish late. We wish to avoid this as far as possible, with effective planning, to respect everyone’s time and availability.
11.2 With respect to point 11.1, we define ‘a significant distance away from the collection point’ as being more than 2 miles radial distance from ('as the crow flies') or more than 3 miles distance travelled by road from the pre-agreed collection point at the start of the lesson.
11.3 We ask that you try whenever possible to be consistent and to stick to the same collection and drop-off point for the duration of your tuition with us, as this enables effective planning of lessons for you and other students and helps to facilitate the timely start and finish of lessons for everyone involved.
11.4 Considering points 11.1, 11.2, and 11.3, our driving Instructors will endeavour to be flexible in collection and drop off at requested points where possible. Please ask your instructor at the very beginning of your lesson if you wish to deviate from your usual pre-agreed drop-off point and do expect them to have to consult a map to confirm that your request is possible. Time taken to conduct this check and to deviate to an alternate drop-off point further away from your normal drop-off point will be incorporated into the duration of that specific lesson.
11.5 Under no circumstances will lesson durations be extended beyond what has been booked and paid for to accommodate a last-minute alternative drop-off point request.
12. Opening Times / Office Hours
12.1 Our office opening time are 08:00 to 18:00 Monday to Friday, and 09:00 to 12:30 Saturday, closed on Sunday. We will endeavour to be available during these periods to conduct business and provide driving tuition.
12.2 We operate on GMT (Greenwich Mean Time, or Zulu Time) during the Winter, and on BST (British Summer Time) during the Summer. We refer to times using the 24-hour clock standard (for example 00:00 / 24:00 being midnight, 12:00 being Noon, and 18:00 being 6pm). We do take into consideration British Summer Time. We operate on the Gregorian Calendar, i.e., the calendar used by most of the World.
13. Lateness for Lessons
13.1 It is your responsibility to ensure that you get to a lesson at the pre-agreed scheduled start time and agreed pick-up location. The instructor will only wait at the pick-up point for 15 minutes before assuming you are not attending the lesson and will then cancel the lesson but retain payment for said lesson.
13.2 If you are going to be late and know you’ll be longer than the 15-minute ‘wait time’, it is up to you to contact your instructor beforehand or within the 15 minute wait period to let them know and discuss options for continuing the lesson. The duration of the lesson cannot be extended to accommodate your lateness, for example if you have a 1.5-hour lesson booked, and are 30 minutes late, considering point 13.1 and you having contacted your instructor, you will only receive the remaining 1 hour of your lesson.
14. Privacy & Data Protection
14.1 Please see our website for details of our Privacy Notice and Data Protection Policy…
Privacy Notice | FastFwd Driving School
15. Damage, Costs and Charges
15.1 A £100 charge will be incurred by the student (or parent or guardian if under 18 years of age) for 'kerbing' [2] the wheels of the learner vehicle, resulting in damage to a wheel and/or tyre. We aim to keep our cars in tip top condition for students and repairs to a wheel generally cost around £100 per wheel (excluding the cost of a replacement tyre). It is at the discretion of the driving instructor to waiver this charge for damage to the learner vehicle in extenuating circumstances. We understand however that someone who is completely new to driving a car is much more likely to hit a kerb when driving / manoeuvring, and as such we agree to waive this fee for new students who have had less than 12 hours of tuition from us unless we believe the act of hitting the kerb was a deliberate act by the student with intent to cause damage to our vehicle.
15.2 A charge of £25 will be incurred by the student for the cost of valeting should the student spill a drink other than water or be ill in the car resulting in the car interior needing to be cleaned.
15.3 Payment for damages to the learner vehicle can be made as per our payment methods laid out in Section 2, or by reducing any prepaid balance of lessons in accordance with the value amount in question, i.e. £39 per hour as of 1 August 2022 (or the discounted rate paid for blocks of lesson hours for those students who qualified for a discounted rate, see 1.4).
16. Accidents (Car Crash)
16.1 During a paid for lesson with us, should you be involved in a car accident in our learner vehicle whilst under the supervision of one of our instructors, we will take all reasonable actions to look after you. If required, our instructor will call appropriate emergency services and your emergency contact person or parent / guardian if applicable and able to do so (unless he/she is incapacitated).
16.2. If the crash is as the result of a 3rd party, we would require you to make any claim for any loss or injury to yourself directly with the third party or their insurers.
16.3 If the accident and any loss or injury is down to our negligence or fault, we would of-course expect you to make a claim against us to be covered by our business / vehicle insurance. We would cooperate with you in this instance to facilitate your claim. We have public liability insurance in place that covers up to a claim / pay-out of £1,000,000 GBP.
16.4 By agreeing to these terms, you agree to make no claim against us that is higher than our public liability insurance cover provides for (see 16.3).
17. Cessation of Lessons
17.1 Either party can request that no more lessons be taken or provided without reference to any particular reason or cause by giving 48 hours notice. Both parties agree to pay whatever monies are owed to the other within 28 days subject to sections 1, 10, and 15 above who’s rules override section 17. Should we decide to cease lessons with a student for whatever reason, we will only make a refund for lessons that have been paid for in advance but not yet taken.
18. Correctness, Care and Respect for Yourself & Others
18.1 We ask that you undertake a duty of care to look after yourself and your instructor during lessons with us, and we / our instructor will do the same for you.
18.2 We ask that you be respectful, polite, patient, and kind towards our instructor and they will be similarly courteous towards you.
18.3 We will not tolerate abusive, threatening, or physically abusive behaviour towards our instructors, and will seek to publicly and privately prosecute anyone who physically harms our instructors through violence or assault, seeking the maximum punitive penalties and compensation available under UK Law.
18.4 We understand that as people we are individuals and that everyone is different and is entitled to their own opinions, beliefs, and orientations, and we will respect those beliefs and undertake to behave correctly so as not to cause offence. Any offence perceived will be accidental due to misunderstanding and we will not seek to cause any offence on purpose due to bigotry or to be deliberately, offensive, intolerant, or discriminatory. We ask that you show us and our instructors the same considerations.
18.5 Our company is LGBTQ+ friendly and can be considered a safe place for LGBTQ+ individuals.
18.6 Our company identifies as being ‘women-owned’.
19. Probation / Trial Period
19.1 With the exception of Intensive 30 / 48 hour courses, at the commencement of provision of Standard (1.5 hour) or Extended (2 hour) duration lessons for a student, both parties agree that the first two lessons are a trial to assess compatibility and that should either party feel that they do not wish to continue 'working with' the other party for any reason, the party wishing to terminate relations can do so by giving 48 hours notice to the other party without having to provide a reason for their decision.
19.2 We or your instructor will contact you after the second lesson to ask for your feedback on how the lessons are going and whether you wish to continue or stop having driving lessons with us.
19.3 In the event a party wishing to terminate the relationship, refunds for monies owed for unused lesson hours from pre-paid block bookings will be paid in accordance with Section 10 above.
Glossary of Terms Used
[1] 'force majeure' - unforeseeable circumstances that prevent someone from fulfilling a contract.
[2] 'kerbing' - the action of hitting a kerb with a car wheel or tyre, leading to possible damage to the tyre and/or wheel.