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Version 0.3 draft · Last updated 8 October 2026
These terms apply to every assignment Ground Insights Uganda accepts and to the use of our website and online services. Where a signed contract with a client says something different, the contract takes precedence.
In short: we do the work in the written scope you approve, for a fixed price, and we report what we found, whichever way it turns out. A report is a factual observation, not legal, survey or valuation advice, and the decision you take on it is yours.
These terms are between you and Ground Insights Uganda. In them, 'we', 'us' and 'our' mean Ground Insights Uganda, and 'you' means the person or organisation that uses our website or engages us.
The law on electronic transactions requires a business that offers services online to tell its customers who it is. These are our details:
Our tax identification number, and our value added tax registration where we have one, are shown on every invoice and receipt. Our privacy policy carries our registration number with the Personal Data Protection Office once it is issued.
These terms apply to every assignment we accept, to every service listed in section 2.2, and to your use of our website, Insight Room, programming interface and any app we publish. They apply whether you reach us through the website, by email, by phone, by message or in person.
By asking us for a quotation, accepting one, paying us, opening an account or using the website, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use our services.
Our privacy policy explains how we handle personal data. It is part of our agreement with you.
| Word | What we mean by it |
|---|---|
| Assignment | One piece of work for you, described in a scope. |
| Scope | The written description of an assignment that you approve: the place, the questions to be answered, the method, what you will receive, and by when. |
| Quotation | Our written offer to carry out a scope at a stated price. |
| Report | What we deliver at the end of an assignment: our findings, with the evidence that supports them. |
| Evidence | The photographs, video, audio, notes, documents, locations and times gathered on an assignment. |
| Researcher | A person we have vetted and engaged to carry out fieldwork. |
| Consumer | An individual who engages us for a purpose outside their trade, business or profession. |
| Business client | Any client that is not a consumer. |
| Working day | A day other than a Sunday or a public holiday in Uganda. |
| In writing | On paper, or by email, or by a message in the Insight Room. |
A contract for an assignment is made in four steps.
A quotation stays open for 30 days from its date unless it says otherwise. We may withdraw it before you accept, and we may correct an obvious mistake in it at any time.
The price estimator on our website gives a guide. It is not a quotation and does not bind either of us.
Our agreement with you is made up of several documents. If they say different things, the one higher in this list applies:
Your own purchasing terms, or terms printed on a purchase order, do not apply unless we have agreed to them in a contract signed by both of us.
You must be 18 or older to engage us or to open an account. If you engage us for an organisation, you confirm that you have its authority to do so, and both you and the organisation are bound.
You confirm that the details you give us are true, and that you will tell us if they change.
These terms are written to cover the services we provide today and those we expect to provide as the business grows. A service described here may not be on offer when you read this. We are not obliged to provide a service only because these terms mention it, and what we provide to you is what your scope and quotation say.
We carry out the assignment described in the written scope you approve. The scope names the location, the questions to be answered, the method, what you will receive and the date. Anything not in the scope is not part of the engagement until we both agree a change in writing (section 2.7).
We carry out the work with reasonable care and skill, through researchers we have vetted, and in line with the law.
We go to the stated address or plot, establish what is there and who is using it, photograph it with a recorded location and time, speak to people nearby where that is appropriate, and report what we found against each point in the scope. For land, we walk the boundary as it was described to us and record what is on the ground. We do not survey land, open boundaries, value property, or give an opinion on who owns it or whether a title is good (section 3.3).
Where the scope includes a search of a public register, we request the record in the way the register provides and report what it shows. The register's fee is charged to you at cost as a separate line. We are not responsible for an error in a public record or for the time a public office takes to answer.
We collect prices, stock, competitor presence and similar observations at the outlets and on the dates in the scope. A price is what was displayed or quoted to our researcher at that time. You receive the observations as well as our summary.
A researcher presents as an ordinary customer and records what happened against a checklist agreed with you in advance. You confirm that you are entitled to have the outlets assessed, and that the staff, agents or outlets concerned have been told that unannounced assessments may take place. A visit records the service given on one occasion. We recommend that you do not rely on a single visit as the only basis for a decision about a person's job.
We visit the property or route, record its condition, access and facilities on the day, and check an operator's stated licences where they can be verified. We do not certify that a property is safe, and a report is not a safety, fire, health or building inspection.
We administer a questionnaire agreed with you to the sample described in the scope, and deliver the answers in the agreed format with the location and time of each interview. Taking part is voluntary for every participant, and the number of completed interviews can fall short of a target for reasons outside our control. We report refusals and substitutions. Where a study needs approval from a research ethics committee, a national research council or another authority, the scope states which of us obtains it, and fieldwork does not start without it.
We collect photographs, recordings, text or other material to a written specification, with a consent record for each contributor. Material we collect for you alone is delivered to you with the right to use it for the purposes named in the contributors' consent. Material from our own datasets is licensed, not sold, under a separate licence agreement (section 5.6).
The terms for this service are in section 6.8.
Where you engage us to visit a place more than once, for example to follow a construction project, a farm or a programme, each visit is reported on its own and the scope sets how often we go. section 4.6 covers how ongoing work is paid for and ended.
Where we train your staff or advise you on fieldwork methods, we share our general knowledge and experience. You remain responsible for how you apply it.
Our work depends on what you tell us. You agree to:
If a delay or extra cost is caused by something on your side, such as a wrong address or an access that was not arranged, the agreed dates move accordingly and the extra visit is quoted separately.
We may decline any request without giving a reason. We always decline, and will stop if we discover that an assignment involves:
If you ask us for work of this kind, or mislead us about the purpose of an assignment, we may end the engagement at once and keep the fee for work done (section 4.10).
Within the law. We work within Ugandan law, and within the law of any other country where we carry out work. If an assignment cannot be completed lawfully we stop, tell you at once, and refund the part not performed.
Independently. Our findings rest on the evidence. Nobody, including you, can instruct a researcher what to find, and a researcher has no interest in the outcome. We do not accept payment, gifts or favours from the people or businesses we are checking.
Openly, unless the method is an unannounced assessment. A researcher says who they are and why they are asking. Most verification work is done without naming the client. Where a lawful visit requires us to name you, for example at a local council office, we tell you in advance.
With vetted researchers. The assignment goes to a researcher in that region who speaks the local language, has passed our identity and reference checks, and has signed our confidentiality terms. We choose who does the work and may replace a researcher at any time.
With a second pair of eyes. A second person checks the evidence against the brief before anything reaches you.
With recorded evidence. Photographs carry the location and time recorded by the device, not typed in afterwards. Once reviewed, the evidence record is locked, and a correction is added beside the original and never overwrites it.
The turnaround times on our website are typical, not promises. The date in your scope is the date we work to. We will tell you as soon as we know that a date is at risk, and why.
A date moves, without liability on our part, where the delay is caused by weather, an impassable road, a closed office or site, a public holiday, insecurity, a refusal of access, a delay on your side, or another event outside our reasonable control (section 7.6).
If we have not delivered within 30 days after the agreed date, and the delay is not one of those, you may cancel the assignment and receive a full refund of what you paid for it.
Either of us can propose a change. A change is agreed only when we have both confirmed it in writing, with any change to the price and the date. Additional locations, extra questions, repeat visits caused by circumstances outside our control, and work at unusual hours are quoted separately before they are carried out.
If a researcher at the site finds that the brief cannot be followed as written, for example because the place does not exist as described, we report what was found. That is a completed assignment.
No report is worth a person's safety. A researcher may leave a site, and we may suspend or stop an assignment, where there is a threat, a hostile reception, unrest, a risk to health, or any situation the researcher judges unsafe.
If we stop for safety before the visit has taken place, we will offer to reschedule, or refund the part not performed. If the researcher travelled and was turned back, the visit is chargeable, and we report what happened and what could be observed.
We report what our researcher observed and what people at the place told us, and we distinguish clearly between the two. What a person told us is reported as what they said. We do not present it as a fact we have confirmed.
We state plainly what we could not confirm, and why. An honest statement that a site was gated and nobody was present is worth more to you than a confident answer we invented.
A report describes the position on the date and at the time of the visit. Circumstances on the ground change, and we do not guarantee that a finding will remain true afterwards.
The fee is payment for the investigation and the reporting, not for any particular outcome. It does not guarantee a favourable finding, a confirmation that a business or property is what it was said to be, or the approval of any transaction.
We report what the evidence and the information available within the agreed scope support. A completed assignment that could not confirm what you were told has been properly performed and is chargeable in full.
Our reports are factual field observations. A report is not:
You remain responsible for the decision you take. Where a matter needs a licensed advocate, surveyor, valuer, engineer or auditor, we will say so and will not stray into it. A report is one input to your decision, and for a significant transaction it should not be the only one.
A report is prepared for you, for the purpose in the scope. You may share it with your professional advisers, your lender or insurer, and others who need it for that purpose, provided you share it whole and unaltered.
Nobody else may rely on a report unless we have agreed to it in writing. We owe no duty to a person who receives a report from you, and you will make that clear when you share it.
You must not edit a report, remove our name or the date from it, quote it in a way that changes its meaning, or present an old report as current.
Tell us within 30 days of receiving the report, and say what you believe is wrong and why. We re-examine the original evidence record and answer in writing within 10 working days.
Where we were wrong, we correct the report and, where it is needed, do the work again at our cost. That is the whole of our obligation for an error in a report, apart from what section 7.2 provides.
Where the evidence supports the finding, the report stands. If you would like a second visit, it is quoted as a new assignment.
A person who is the subject of a report and believes it is inaccurate about them may ask us to look at it under our privacy policy.
We keep a copy of each report and its evidence in our evidence vault for the period set out in the privacy policy, so that a disputed finding can be checked against the original record. After that period it is deleted, and we cannot reproduce it. Keep your own copy.
Where the law requires us to produce evidence, for example under a court order, we will tell you first where the law allows us to.
If you intend to use a report in court or before a tribunal, tell us before the assignment starts so that it can be prepared accordingly. A researcher's attendance to give evidence, and the preparation of a sworn statement, are separate services charged at the rate in force at the time.
Prices are set in Ugandan shillings. Where the site shows a price in another currency, that figure is an estimate for your convenience. Your quotation states the exact amount and the currency you will be charged in and, where that is not shillings, the exchange rate used.
The quoted price is fixed for the approved scope and includes standard local travel. Assignments that need exceptional travel, and any official search fee charged by a registry or public office, are quoted as separate lines and agreed with you in writing before the work is carried out.
The prices on our website can change at any time. A change never affects a quotation you have already accepted.
Unless the quotation says otherwise, the quoted price is the full amount you pay, and it includes any value added tax we are required to charge. The invoice shows the tax separately where it applies.
If the law requires you to withhold tax from a payment to us, you may deduct it, provided you pay it to the tax authority and send us the withholding certificate within 30 days. Any other tax, duty or bank charge in your own country is yours to bear, so that we receive the amount quoted.
Work begins once the required payment is received or, for a business client with an account, once a purchase order is issued.
We confirm your payment in writing and brief the researcher the same working day where we can.
You can pay by the methods shown on your quotation or invoice, which may include card, mobile money and bank transfer. Card and mobile money payments are handled by a licensed payment provider on its own pages. We never see or store your card or mobile money details.
A payment is made when the money reaches our account in full. Quote the invoice or reference number so that we can match it. We issue a receipt for every payment.
If a payment is reversed or charged back after work has started, the amount remains owing and we may suspend work and withhold the report until it is paid.
If an amount is not paid when due, we may suspend work, withhold a report, and charge interest on the overdue amount at 2 per cent a month, or at the highest rate the law allows if that is lower, from the due date until it is paid. You also pay our reasonable costs of recovering it.
Until an assignment is paid for in full, you have no right to use the report or the evidence (section 5.3).
A business client may open an account, agree a retainer for a number of assignments, or subscribe to a regular service. The account agreement or order form states the price, the period, what is included, and how it is invoiced.
A retainer or subscription for a fixed period runs for that period. Unless the order form says otherwise, it then continues month to month until either of us ends it by giving 30 days' notice in writing. Assignments included in a period and not used by the end of it do not carry over, unless we agree otherwise.
We may change the price of a continuing service by giving at least 30 days' notice in writing. If you do not accept the change, you may end the service before it takes effect.
You may cancel an assignment at any time by telling us in writing.
If you are a consumer and you engaged us online, the law on electronic transactions lets you cancel within seven days after the contract is made, without giving a reason, and receive a refund.
Most clients want the work to start at once. If you ask us to start within those seven days, you agree that the service begins with your consent before the period ends. The right to cancel under this section then ends once we have begun, and section 4.7 applies in its place.
This section does not reduce any right the law gives you that cannot be given up.
If we cannot carry out work you have paid for, for a reason on our side, you receive the full amount back.
If we stop because the work cannot be done lawfully or safely, you receive back the part not performed (section 2.5, section 2.8). If you cancel, section 4.7 applies.
A Lost & Found search fee pays for the search itself, so it is not refunded when an item is not found, unless we did not carry out the search. A recovery fee is charged only when the item comes back.
Refunds are paid back the way you paid, within 14 days of our agreeing that one is due. A payment provider or bank may take longer to pass it on, and its charges for the original payment may not be recoverable.
We may cancel an assignment before it starts for any reason, and you then receive a full refund.
We may stop an assignment that has started where you have not paid, where you have broken these terms, where the brief turns out to be misleading, or where the work falls within section 2.4. In those cases you pay for the work done up to that point and receive back any balance.
We treat your identity as the commissioning party, the brief and the findings as confidential. Our researchers sign a confidentiality undertaking before their first assignment. We will not disclose that you commissioned a check unless you instruct us to or the law compels us.
You, in turn, keep confidential what you learn about how we work: our methods, checklists, pricing, the identity and contact details of our researchers, and anything we mark as confidential.
Neither of us is bound to keep confidential something that is already public through no fault of its own, that it already knew or learned lawfully from someone else, or that the law, a court or a regulator requires it to disclose. Each of us may share confidential information with its professional advisers, insurers and auditors under a duty of confidence.
These duties continue for five years after an assignment ends, and for as long as the information remains confidential in the case of a researcher's identity.
Each of us complies with the Data Protection and Privacy Act, Cap. 97 and its Regulations, and with any other data protection law that applies to it.
For most assignments we decide how the fieldwork is done, and we are a data controller for the personal data we collect. When we deliver a report, you become a data controller of your copy and are responsible for what you do with it. You agree to:
Where you decide why and how personal data is used and we only carry out your instructions, for example where we administer your questionnaire to a list of people you supply, you are the data controller and we are your data processor. A written data processing agreement between us then applies, and you confirm that you have a lawful ground for the processing and have given the people concerned the notice the law requires.
Our services use providers outside Uganda, as the privacy policy explains. By engaging us you agree that the personal data you give us may be stored and processed outside Uganda with the safeguards described there.
On full payment, the report and the evidence gathered for your assignment are yours to use for the purpose you commissioned them, without limit of time. Until then, they remain ours.
We retain a copy for the period in the privacy policy (section 3.6), and we keep the right to use what we learned in a form that identifies neither you nor any person, for statistics, training and improving our methods.
Where a photograph or recording shows a person who can be recognised, your right to use it is limited to the purpose in the scope. You may not publish it or use it in advertising without that person's consent.
Our name, logo and website, our software, our questionnaires and checklists, our report formats, our methods and our training materials belong to us or to those who license them to us. Nothing in these terms transfers them to you. You may use them only as far as needed to read and use a report.
You may not copy, sell, reverse engineer or build a competing service from our software, questionnaires or report formats.
Documents, photographs, questionnaires and other materials you give us remain yours. You give us the right to use them to carry out the assignment, and you confirm that you are entitled to share them with us.
Data from our own datasets is licensed, never sold. A written licence agreement states what the data may be used for, by whom, for how long and where. Unless that agreement says otherwise, a licence is not exclusive and cannot be passed on.
A licensee must not try to identify or contact any person from the data, must not combine it with other data for that purpose, must keep it secure, and must delete a contributor's material when we tell it that the contributor has withdrawn consent. We may audit compliance on reasonable notice, and we may end a licence at once if it is broken.
We confirm that we hold a consent record for the material we license. We give no promise that licensed data is fit for a particular purpose, complete or free of bias.
We will not name you as a client, use your logo, or publish anything about your assignment without your written permission. A case study or testimonial is published only with the written permission of the person or organisation named in it, and is taken down on request.
If you suggest an improvement to our services, we may use it freely and owe you nothing for it.
The information on our website describes our services in general terms. We take care to keep it accurate, but it is not advice, and coverage, turnaround times and prices shown there are confirmed only in a quotation.
The text, photographs, maps, designs and software on the website belong to us or to those who license them to us. You may view and print pages for your own use. You may not copy the site, republish it, or collect its content by automated means, except as a search engine does to index it.
Your Insight Room account is for you alone. Give us accurate details, choose a password you use nowhere else, keep it to yourself, and tell us at once if you think someone else has used your account. You are responsible for what is done through your account until you tell us.
Messages you send and quotations you accept through the portal have the same effect as if you had signed them (section 6.10).
You can delete your account from Your profile at any time. The privacy policy explains what is removed and what we must keep.
When you use our website, Insight Room, programming interface or apps, you must not:
If you find a weakness in our security, tell us at info@groundinsightsuganda.com and give us reasonable time to fix it before you tell anyone else. We will not take action against a person who reports a weakness in good faith and does not misuse it.
Where we give an organisation access to our programming interface, we issue it a key. An API key is confidential to the organisation it was issued to, reads only that organisation's own requests and reports, and may be limited in how often it is used.
The organisation is responsible for everything done with its key, must store it securely, must not share it outside the organisation or build it into software that others can read, and must tell us at once if it may have been exposed.
We may change the interface, and will give reasonable notice of a change that would break an existing use. We may suspend an account or revoke a key that is misused, and will tell you why.
Where the question assistant is available on our website, it gives general answers about our services, written by an artificial intelligence service from what is published on the site. It can be wrong. It cannot give a quotation, accept an order, see your request or bind us in any way. Only a quotation or a message from a person on our team does that.
Do not type personal or confidential details into the assistant.
We aim to keep our online services available, but we do not promise that they will be uninterrupted or free of faults. We may take them down for maintenance, and will choose quiet hours where we can.
We may change, add or withdraw a feature. Where a change would remove something you rely on under a continuing agreement, we will give you reasonable notice.
Taking part in one of our surveys is voluntary. You may skip a question or stop at any time. The consent wording shown at the start says what the survey is for and how your answers are used, and it applies together with the privacy policy.
You must be 18 or older unless the survey says otherwise, and you agree to answer truthfully and only once. Where a reward is offered for taking part, the survey states what it is and how it is paid, and we may refuse it for answers that are false, duplicated or automated.
Lost & Found Recovery helps to reunite lost items with their owners. These terms apply to it in addition to the rest.
Our website links to services run by others, such as payment pages, WhatsApp and social media. We do not control them and are not responsible for them. Their own terms apply when you use them.
You agree that we may contract with you and send you notices electronically. An acceptance given by email, in the Insight Room or by paying online, and a document signed electronically, have the same effect as a signature on paper, as the law on electronic transactions and electronic signatures provides.
We keep a record of each contract, with the version of these terms and of the privacy policy that applied, and you can ask us for a copy.
We promise to carry out each assignment with reasonable care and skill, in line with the scope and the law, through researchers we have vetted, and to report honestly what was found.
We make no other promise about our services. In particular we do not promise that a report will produce the result you hoped for, that a finding will stay true after the visit, or that our online services will be free of faults. Terms that the law would otherwise imply are excluded as far as the law allows.
Our total liability to you for an assignment, whatever the cause, is limited to the fee you paid for that assignment. For a continuing service, it is limited to the fees you paid in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim.
For an item held under Lost & Found Recovery, our liability is limited to the fees you paid for that case.
A claim must be brought to our attention in writing within 12 months of the date you became aware, or ought to have become aware, of the facts behind it.
We are not liable for:
Nothing in these terms limits or excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that the law does not allow to be limited or excluded.
If you are a consumer, you have rights under consumer protection law that these terms do not take away.
You are responsible for, and will make good, any loss, claim or cost we or our researchers suffer because:
Neither of us is liable for a delay or failure caused by an event outside its reasonable control, such as severe weather, flood, an impassable road, epidemic, unrest, an act of government or of a public authority, a strike, a power or network failure, or the failure of a payment or communications provider. This does not excuse a failure to pay money that is due.
The affected party tells the other promptly and does what it reasonably can to carry on. If the event lasts more than 30 days, either of us may cancel the affected assignment, and you receive back the part not performed.
We hold the insurance the law requires of us. Where a contract with a business client requires particular cover, such as professional indemnity or public liability, the contract states the cover and its amount.
We do not offer, give, ask for or accept a bribe, a facilitation payment, or a gift or favour meant to influence a finding or a decision, and we do not allow anyone working for us to do so. Official fees are paid only against an official receipt.
You agree not to offer anything of that kind to our researchers or staff. If a researcher asks you or anyone at a site for a payment or a favour, tell us at once at info@groundinsightsuganda.com. We will investigate, and we will not hold it against you.
A researcher is not assigned to work that concerns their own family, employer, business or property, and must tell us of any connection to the people or place concerned. If we find that we, or a researcher, have an interest that could affect an assignment, we tell you and either assign someone else or decline the work.
We may act for more than one client in the same market, and for clients with opposing interests in unrelated matters, keeping each client's information from the other. We will not act for two parties on opposite sides of the same transaction without telling both.
We may ask you to show who you are, who you are acting for, and why you need the work, and we may check what you tell us. We may refuse or stop an assignment if we are not satisfied.
We do not knowingly work for, or accept payment from, a person or organisation that is subject to sanctions under Ugandan law or under international sanctions that apply to us, and we comply with the law on money laundering and the financing of terrorism, including any duty to report.
Our researchers are engaged and paid by us, and all work for you goes through us. For 12 months after an assignment you will not engage a researcher who worked on it to do similar work for you directly, or encourage them to leave us, without our written agreement. If you do, you agree to pay us a fee equal to the price of the last assignment that researcher carried out for you, as a fair estimate of our loss.
You will not ask a researcher to do anything outside the scope, pay a researcher directly, or ask for a researcher's personal contact details.
Either of us may end a continuing agreement by giving the notice it provides for (section 4.6). Either of us may end any agreement at once, in writing, if the other breaks it in a serious way and does not put the breach right within 14 days of being asked to, or becomes unable to pay its debts.
We may suspend your account, your access to the programming interface or work on an assignment while an amount is overdue, while we look into a suspected breach of these terms, or where the law requires it. We will tell you why unless the law forbids us to.
When an agreement ends, you pay for work done up to that date, we deliver the reports you have paid for, and each of us returns or deletes the other's confidential information, except what the law or the privacy policy requires us to keep.
The sections on what a report is not, who may rely on it, payment, confidentiality, personal data, ownership, liability, your responsibility to us, our researchers, disputes and governing law continue to apply after an assignment or an agreement ends.
If you are unhappy with anything we have done, tell us at info@groundinsightsuganda.com or on +256 705 498 258. We acknowledge a complaint within 2 working days, look into it, and answer in writing within 10 working days. If we need longer, we tell you why and when to expect the answer.
A complaint about a finding is handled under section 3.5. A complaint about personal data is handled under the privacy policy.
If a complaint is not resolved, we both agree to try the following steps in order before going to court, unless urgent relief is needed to prevent harm.
A consumer may at any time take a dispute to a court or to a consumer protection body that has the power to hear it.
These terms, and any assignment or agreement under them, are governed by the laws of Uganda, and the courts of Uganda have jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them. If you are a consumer living in another country, you keep the protection of any law of that country that cannot be excluded by agreement.
A notice under these terms is given in writing. We send notices to the email address you gave us or through the Insight Room. You send notices to info@groundinsightsuganda.com, or by post or by hand to 14 to 18 Cooper Road, Kisementi, Kololo.
A notice sent by email or through the portal is treated as received on the next working day. A notice sent by post within Uganda is treated as received five working days after posting. Legal proceedings must be served at our physical address.
We may update these terms. A new version applies to work quoted after it is published, never to work already agreed, and the version you accepted is kept with your record. The version number and date are at the top of this page.
For a continuing service, we give at least 30 days' notice in writing of a change that affects you. If you do not accept it, you may end the service before the change takes effect.
Write to info@groundinsightsuganda.com, call or message +256 705 498 258, or write to 14 to 18 Cooper Road, Kisementi, Kololo.
Questions about these terms: info@groundinsightsuganda.com or +256 705 498 258.