Terms and Conditions

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Terms and Conditions 

All driving instructors working with ecoPASS are self-employed, meaning all of our Instructors are trading under the brand ecoPASS.  The ecoPASS head office facilitates all new client's first bookings on behalf of our Instructors. ecoPASS driving instructors are franchised under the brand of ecoPASS, they are not employed, the terms and conditions issued to all instructors are from ecoPASS Head office. ecoPASS and its instructors are all franchisee's. This means they are classed as 3rd party and trade under the brand of ecoPASS.

Please note - Instructors may provide out of hours and weekend lessons, but are NOT obliged to respond to calls / texts / confirm payments or do lesson bookings at weekends. If they do, that is their choice, however they are not required to do any admin on Saturdays and Sundays. Please factor this in when arranging lessons.

Please also make sure to read the cancellation policy carefully. It is your responsibility to ensure you are familiar with it and comply with the terms of this contract. 

Learner’s Obligations:

In order to have driving lessons you must:

Be aged 17 or older (16 or over if disabled)

ecoPASS has a Zero Tolerance to abusive, violent, threatening or harassing behaviour towards any office staff, instructors, and members of the public during the course of a lesson will be reported to the police. Any and all lesson bookings with an ecoPASS instructor will be terminated. 

Entitlement to Drive: 

Hold a driving licence that is valid for the UK (provisional, full or an appropriate foreign licence). It is the learner’s responsibility to ensure that they are entitled to drive legally. 

As it is a legal requirement for all candidates learning to drive to have the appropriate licence, it is your responsibility to provide your instructor with proof that you have a valid licence to drive before the start of your first driving lesson. This may include seeing a Driving Licence Check Code, or seeing your licence and National Insurance Number. This is to confirm your identity and entitlement to drive.

If you fail to provide this proof, lessons cannot be undertaken as it is a criminal offence and your instructor is entitled to refuse to conduct the driving lesson. You will still be charged for the lesson if you do not or cannot provide the proof of entitlement to drive. 

When booking lessons with the office staff or an instructor if you do not declare that you possess a valid licence and the lesson is cancelled within the short notice period (see below **********) by either the office staff or the driving instructor, this will result in the lesson being charged in full. 

It is your responsibility to notify the instructor immediately of any changes to your entitlement to drive, including but not limited to any driving bans, medical issues relevant to driving, or any other changes to your licence.

Eyesight test and medical

It is the learner’s responsibility to check their eyesight meets the legal requirement to drive. If you are unsure about how to check this, we recommend conversations about this with ecoPASS staff before booking. 

If learners meet the eyesight requirements with the use of glasses, contact lenses, or any other medical device to improve their vision, they are responsible for having this with them for all of their lessons. If they do not have them for any lesson for whatever reason, the instructor will terminate the lesson and the fee paid for the lesson will be forfeited. 

You must not be under the influence of alcohol, drugs or medication which may affect your driving. In the case where you are, or are reasonably suspected to be, this will result in the lesson being cancelled and full payment being made to the instructor.

It is your responsibility to check whether any medical conditions you have may affect your driving, and to notify DVSA and your instructor accordingly. Any failure to do so will result in you being liable for any and all consequences. 

Lesson Timings

Instructors will always do their best to arrive at the agreed pick-up location at the time agreed. However, due to the nature of road traffic conditions being unpredictable, you must be prepared to begin your lesson ten minutes before/after your allocated time to allow for unavoidable delays or favourable circumstances. If the instructor is going to be more than ten minutes late or early, they will contact you by text or telephone to advise you of such. 

Where the instructor may arrive slightly late for a lesson due to circumstances beyond their control, they will make efforts to extend the finish time by the same amount, or add the time on to a future lesson. 

Each lesson will last for a minimum period of two hours from when the instructor arrives at the agreed meeting address at the pre-arranged or booked time.

If the instructor is unavailable at short notice they will either arrange an alternative instructor, or rearrange the lesson at a mutually convenient time. All last minute cancellations by instructors have to be approved by a manager at ecoPASS.

Instructor’s will endeavour to accommodate requests from learners to be flexible about pick-up and drop-off location requests however the final decision rests with the instructor as they will have other lessons to get to and cannot always accommodate requests. 

If you fail to show up for a driving lesson and give no notice by phone, email, or text, that lesson will be charged in full. 

If you fail to meet the instructor at the scheduled time, your lesson will not be extended beyond the original planned end time. You will be charged in full for the duration of the whole original planned booking, as you are reserving specific start and end times in the instructor’s working diary. Please remember that it is your responsibility to arrive to lessons on time, and even where situations are beyond your control unfortunately instructors will have obligations to get to other learners lessons on time. 

Please understand that our instructors work very hard to provide flexibility and often work long hours on the road every day, sacrificing family time on weekends and bank holidays. On this basis some (not all) of ecoPASS instructors may charge an our of hours premium charge, of up to a maximum £5 per hour. This can only be applied to lessons on weekdays after 6pm, on weekends, and on bank holidays. 

If your availability is such that you are only able to take lessons out of hours, please discuss this with ecoPASS office staff before being allocated to an instructor, so that we can endeavour to find you an instructor that provides this flexibility without any premium charge. It is your responsibility to highlight your availability at the time of booking. 

Your agreement to the terms and conditions above and below are further recognised by paying for the driving lessons at the relevant rates agreed.

Paying for Lessons

ecoPass reserves the right to remove or amend any introductory offers at any time. Details of our current offers can be found on our website. Offers cannot be taken in conjunction with one another. The driving lesson price quoted is the standard rate for driving lessons in the relevant postcode area. 

All customers are required to pay in advance for each driving lesson or course. 

All driving lesson payments are kept in the Client Account, and released to the instructor by ecoPASS. The Client Account may be one such as ecoPASS deems appropriate to keep learner funds separate from ecoPASS’ trading finances.

For intensive courses, the payment is released to the instructor on the first day of the learner’s intensive course beginning.

For all other lesson payments, including but not limited to Beginners, Assessment, Refresher, Motorway or Pass Plus lessons, the payments will also be kept in the Client Account. The funds are released to the instructor on the first day of the booked lesson. 

An admin fee of £2.50 for introductory lessons is payable upon prepayment process for regular lessons. 

An admin fee of £5 is payable for intensive courses booked with ecoPASS. 

We charge these admin fees to administer the booking process fees on your behalf between you and your instructor once you have had your first lesson/intensive course assessment with your instructor and to contribute to the cost of administering your funds in the Client Account.

Regular Lessons

Once your initial booking has been made, you will have 24 hours to make payment for your first driving lesson or course, unless paying by flexible finance in which case your first instalment date will be made clear to you. Failure to comply with these deadlines could result in cancellation of the lesson or course at office staff or instructor’s discretion. The lesson or course may not be entered into the instructor’s diary until payment has been received. 

At the start if your first driving lesson you must show your driving instructor receipt of first prepaid booking or gift certificate / voucher. The office staff will explain this process in further detail when you make payment. 

You will also need to show your instructor your proof of eligibility to drive (further information in section XXXXXXX).

Upon completing prepayment either through the office or your instructor for any lessons, packages or courses, this automatically becomes confirmation of agreement to ecoPASS terms and conditions laid out on our website and contracts. This applies to all learners, irrespective of whether the lessons or course has been paid for by any parents/partners/friends/employers/family member on behalf of the client learning to drive. 

After your first booking you can also pay for lessons by paying your instructor directly without involving ecoPass. Please ask your instructor what payment methods they accept and they will confirm this with you. If you pay your instructor directly you should obtain a receipt. ecoPass does not accept any responsibility for any payments you make directly to your instructor.

Block Booking

All customers are required to pay in advance for each block booking. At the start of your first driving lesson you must show your driving instructor receipt of first prepaid booking or gift certificate / voucher. The office staff will explain this process in further detail when you make payment.

At ecoPASS we encourage our learners to pay for one lesson initially, or to only book one lesson from a block into the instructor’s diary to see if they are compatible with the car and instructor that they have been allocated to. Once they have done this lesson and are satisfied, they can then put the remaining hours of the block booking into the diary. This is because once block bookings are in an instructors diary it is not possible to transfer to a different instructor. 

Whereby a learner confirms a course duration with the instructor, the client must pay a 50% deposit of the total course fee to ecoPASS Driving School within 48 hours. Failure to do so will result in the provisional date being offered to someone else.

An £10.00 admin fee for gift packages is payable upon prepayment process of your gift package! We charge this fee to administer the booking process/gift package posting and process fees on your behalf between you and your instructor once you have had your first lesson with your instructor and to contribute to the cost of administering your funds in the Client Account.

A £15.00 admin fee for booking semi-intensive booking is applied at check out. We charge this fee to administer the booking process fees on your behalf between you and your instructor once you have had your first lesson/intensive course assessment with your instructor and to contribute to the cost of administering your funds in the Client Account.

Intensive course clients must pay 25% of their Total intensive course fee within 48 hours of the instructor's advised course duration from assessment lesson completion. 

At least 75% of the intensive course fee must be paid to ecoPASS at least 28 days before the course start date. 

Cancellation Policy

If you need to cancel your paid lesson, we require a minimum of two clear working days. Cancelling of any lessons must be done in person, over the phone, to a member of our office staff, or via our email address info@ecopassdriving.co.uk. You will be required to give all information (name, full postal address and contact number) with your booking for us to confirm that you are the client and the lesson to be cancelled. If a learner fails to contact the office or the instructor to cancel or rearrange their driving lesson within the correct notice period they may be charged in full for that missed lesson slot.

Working days are Monday to Friday inclusive. Instructors are not expected to respond to calls or messages during weekends or bank holidays, although they may still deliver lessons during these times. Weekends and bank holidays do not count as working days for the notice period.

To cancel a two hour driving lesson learners must ensure that TWO CLEAR WORKING DAYS is given to their Instructor for cancellation or rearrangement of the lesson. 

For every additional hour of lesson, an additional ONE CLEAR WORKING DAY is added to the notice period. For example, to cancel a three hour lesson, three clear working days notice is required. To cancel a four hour driving lesson, four clear working days notice would be required.

Intensive course candidates must give 28 days notice in written form to ecoPASS. Failure to do so can result in your course being removed from the diary and all paid fees absorbed by the instructor.

If Cancellation is made within the notice period, then the pupil will be charged for the full amount of the lesson booked.

The learner will need to prepay for rebooking their next lesson after cancellation.

Courses are non-refundable from the point at which an ecoPASS instructor is allocated. If however, a learner wishes to change instructor, they can only do this before they have booked all of their hours in the diary of the first instructor. Once lessons have been scheduled into the instructor’s diary, they are non-refundable and non-transferrable between instructors.

If you change your mind after you have made a short notice booking and wish to cancel your booking prior to the first lesson, our standard cancellation and refund terms and conditions apply with a minimum of 48 working hours’ notice (weekends are non-working hours) is required prior to the first driving lesson unless all of the hours have been booked into the diary. If all of the hours have been booked into the diary then the hours can be transferred or rearranged only.

Once lessons are booked into the diary they can be rescheduled in line with our standard notice policy (See section XXXXXXX). If you still choose to cancel you will not be refunded the balance of the outstanding lessons and you may be charged an admin fee of up to £70. 

For the first block booking from any new customer, an initial lesson minimum of two hours will be booked into the diary. If you choose not to proceed after this the remaining amount of the block booking can be refunded and you will be charged an admin fee of up to £70. 

If a block of lessons has been put into the diary and a significant number of lessons are rearranged you may be charged an admin fee. For more information please discuss with your instructor. Some instructors do not charge admin fees for rearranging lessons. 

If, instead of cancelling lessons a learner wants to put lessons on hold, this is possible. Lesson credit will be held with ecoPASS for a maximum of 3 months. If the lesson rate has changed and become higher the student will have to pay the difference to redeem their lessons. After this time lessons may not be redeemed. If a learner has exceptional circumstances that mean lessons need to be put on hold for longer, and can provide evidence of this, we encourage a discussion with ecoPASS and we will endeavour to do what is fair for all. 

Any disputed transaction will be promptly and fully investigated by ecoPASS. The result of the investigation will be communicated to both parties. No payment from your funds in the Client Account will be made to either party until the investigation has been completed to the satisfaction of ecoPASS. 

The cancellation policy above is applicable to learners who have come directly to ecoPASS or directly to ecoPASS instructors. For learners who are allocated to ecoPASS instructors from third party companies which ecoPASS has no affiliation with such as Pass Me Fast, Pass Faster, DTC etc, please confirm with your instructor what terms and conditions apply to you as ecoPASS has no direct contract with such learners unless they pay for ecoPASS services. 

Please understand that this cancellation policy is in effect to protect instructors, because if a learner cancels within the cancellation period it may be difficult to fill the gap in their diary. It would not be fair to expect instructors to lose income because of mismanaged bookings. Instructors will always do their best to flex with you if something unexpected happens and you cannot make the lesson if they are able to. 

Block bookings

Block bookings must be purchased with your driving instructor if you are having more than 1 x 2 hour lesson per week. Should you choose not to, the instructor may only be able to accommodate 1 x 2 hour lesson per week.

If the pupil wishes to cancel their instructor through the course of a block booking/intensive course they relinquish their block booking/intensive course payment, which is non-refundable and non-transferable, to a different instructor.

Block booking/special offers are non-refundable and non-transferable to another instructor.

Block booking/pre-paid lessons must be taken within a 90-day period of payment, if not, the pupil relinquishes the right to take these paid lessons.

Refunds

Office pre-payment refunds, via debit or credit card, will ONLY be issued on the following basis: 

• All refunds are claimed within 21 days of the cancelled lesson. Any claims after this period are null and void. 

• Refunds can only be claimed for eligible payments. For example, a refund will not be issued if you did not take a driving lesson because of failure to comply with any of our terms and conditions above, such as not giving correct notice to reschedule a lesson. 

• Only the original card payer can claim a refund minus admin charges paid at the time. 

• All claims must be made via telephone call or email to office staff. 

• All refunds are subject to meeting ecoPASS Terms and Conditions. 

• Once a refund is processed, payments will be made back to you within 21 working days.

• Intensive course refunds will only be issued outside of 28 days' notice of the course beginning. Minus the admin fee.

• Block booking/special offers, once paid are Non-Refundable and Non-transferable between instructor’s.

• Gift packages once paid/issued are valid for 90 days from date of purchase (unless otherwise stated) and this is printed on the voucher.

• Gift packages refunds, can only be claimed inside of 90 days from date of purchase.

• All gift vouchers and packages are subject to Post + Package fee for hand delivery or postal if a customer has requested this. This is on top of price for product and will vary dependant on recipient address.

• Any refunds for gift packages can only be claimed if the above criteria is met.

• Post + Packaging is non-refundable. This is due to issuing original gift voucher/package and delivery of said package.

• Refunds for gift vouchers/packages may take up to 28 days to process and reach your account.

• Gift vouchers, pre-paid lessons, and block bookings must be taken within 180 days unless otherwise stated of payment. If not, the pupil relinquishes the right to take these paid lessons, or seek a refund as this is past the vouchers expiry date.

Driving Tests 

The length of time required for a driving test at the test centre the instructor recommends is 2 hours for a standard test or 3 hours for an extended test. 

If the test centre is other than the one the instructor has recommended, and is further away, the overall length of time for the test may be increased to reflect the additional travel. 

The test fee is a separate price, due to the use of car for training before the test and use of the car during the test. Please see our price page for more information. 

If you require ecoPASS to book your driving test booking price will include The Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) fee. The test may not be booked until this fee has been paid. 

The Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency stipulate that you need to give three clear working days to them to cancel your driving test. You may / will lose your Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency test fee if you do not provide them with enough notice. 

Generally, pupils must be driving at test ready standard and pass a mock test without any serious or dangerous faults to be allowed use of a vehicle. It is the students responsibility to ensure lessons are booked with sufficient time to allow a refund from DVSA if they need to cancel or rearrange the test, although it is the instructor’s responsibility to highlight this at least once with the pupil.

Your instructor will regularly check in with you and update you on your progress and estimate how test ready they feel you are, including by using mock tests to demonstrate your readiness. If they feel you may not be ready for a booked test they will raise this with you at least once however it is ultimately your responsibility to ensure you give enough notice to The Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency if you need to move your test further away. 

Please note, no matter what intensity learners choose to do their course, the final decision on whether learners will be allowed to use ecoPASS or instructor’s vehicles for the driving test remains with the instructor. Instructors reserve the right to refuse to take pupils to test in the instructor’s training car if they feel that are not ready or driving and not driving to a safe standard. This is in accordance with their professional training and DVSA guidelines.

GDPR and Data Protection

All learner’s personal data and their records are stored, secured and compliant with Data Protection and GDPR laws. Instructor’s who handle learner’s information also agree to be compliant with Data Protection and GDPR laws. If learners wish to pursue their rights under GDPR Regulations, please see our GDPR Policy here.