Terms of Service

Who we are and what this is

CairnFertility ("we", "us") publishes this website to help anyone considering fertility treatment, whatever their family looks like, understand that treatment and compare IVF clinics. CairnFertility is published by Alice Smith, trading as CairnFertility, in the United Kingdom. Contact us at hello@cairnfertility.com.

By using the site you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, please do not use the site. Nothing in these terms affects rights you have as a consumer that the law does not allow to be limited or excluded.

What the service is, and is not

This site is an editorial information and comparison service. It is free to use, with no accounts and no purchases. What it is not:

• It is not medical advice, and we are not a healthcare provider. Our medical disclaimer is part of these terms; please read it.
• It is not a clinic, an agent, or a broker. We have no commercial relationship with the clinics we list, you cannot book treatment through us, and appearing on this site is not an endorsement by us, nor is it an endorsement of us by any clinic or by the HFEA.
• It is not a substitute for a clinic's own current information. Prices, waiting times, eligibility policies and success rates change; always confirm directly with a clinic before making decisions.

Where our figures come from, and how far to trust them, is set out in the medical disclaimer, which forms part of these terms.

How the site is funded

The site is free to use. No one currently sponsors it, and no clinic pays to appear on it. If we take sponsorship in future, it will follow the rules on How we're funded: sponsors may support a guide or the site as a whole, every sponsored page will say so before the content starts, and no one will be able to pay to appear in, or to change their position, figures or prices in, the clinic finder, the matcher or the cost tools.

Using the site acceptably

You agree not to:

• use the site unlawfully, or in a way that could harm it or other users, including attempting to breach its security, scrape it at scale, or interfere with its operation;
• reproduce our content commercially without permission (personal, non-commercial use, for instance printing a comparison to discuss with your clinic, is fine and encouraged);
• misrepresent this site's content as medical advice, or present it as endorsed by us, a clinic, or a regulator;
• apply to the community under false pretences (for a clinic, a brand, a research study, or a press story) or use it to sell, recruit, or promote anything.

The community group

Our community is a private group on WhatsApp, not part of this website. Applying is free, and approval is at our discretion: we read every application and we decline the ones we are not comfortable with, and we may not always be able to give a detailed reason. That discretion exists to protect the people already in the group.

Membership is conditional on the group rules, which you accept when you apply and again when you redeem your invite. The rule that matters most is that nothing said in the group is repeated outside it. We may remove any member at any time for breaking the rules, and we will do so without notice where somebody's safety or privacy is at stake.

Once you are in, WhatsApp is provided by Meta under its own terms; see the privacy policy for what that means for your phone number. We are not responsible for what individual members say or do, and admins are not a support line.

Intellectual property

The content of this site (text, design, graphics, and the way our comparisons are compiled and presented) belongs to CairnFertility or its licensors. Underlying public data, such as HFEA statistics, remains public: our rights are in our expression and compilation, not in facts, which belong to everyone.

Third-party sites

We link to clinics, regulators, support organisations and social platforms. Those sites have their own terms and privacy policies, and we are not responsible for their content or conduct. A link is a signpost, not a guarantee.

Availability and changes

The site is provided "as available". We may change, suspend, or withdraw any part of it at any time, and we do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free.

Our responsibility to you

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot be excluded under the law of England and Wales.

Subject to that: the site is a free information service, and we are not liable for losses arising from reliance on its content in place of professional advice, from decisions about medical treatment (which must always be made with a qualified clinician), from the acts or omissions of any clinic or third party we link to or list, or from events outside our reasonable control. Where we cannot exclude liability, it is limited to what is fair and reasonable for a free editorial service.

If you are using the site as a consumer, you retain every statutory right the law gives you; these terms sit alongside those rights, never above them.

The legal frame

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction, except that if you live in Scotland, Northern Ireland, or an EU member state, you keep the protection of your local mandatory consumer law and may bring proceedings in your local courts.

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest continues to apply. If we update these terms, the new version takes effect when posted here, with the date above updated; continuing to use the site after that means you accept the revised terms.