Terms of Service

These terms govern your use of this website and any report you order from it. By placing an order you accept them. Please read the section on permitted use in particular: it is the part that most often matters in practice.

1. Who we are and what we sell

IsItAFactory is an independent research service operated by an individual based in mainland China. We sell written reports that summarise information taken from official Chinese public registers, as they stood on the date of research. We are not a law firm, an accounting firm, a credit reference agency or a private investigation agency, and we do not represent anyone whose company appears in a report.

2. What you receive

• A written report covering the items listed on the pricing page for the package you chose, written in English (or English plus Chinese, if you selected the bilingual option).
• Delivery by email to the address you gave us, normally within the stated turnaround for your package, and within the shorter period if you paid for expedited delivery.
• Replies to your follow-up questions, where your package includes them.

The deliverables are exactly those listed for your package. Anything not listed is not included, and nothing in our marketing material creates an obligation beyond what the report contains.

3. What a report is, and what it is not

A report is a factual summary of what public registers said at a point in time. You should understand its limits:

• It is not advice. It is not legal, financial, accounting, tax or investment advice, and it is not a recommendation to enter into or avoid any transaction.
• It is a snapshot. Registers change, sometimes within days. A record that is absent on the date of research may exist later, and vice versa.
• We report the registers, we do not audit them. Government registers can themselves contain errors, omissions or delays. We quote what they said rather than asserting it is true.
• We do not verify your counterparty. A report tells you what records exist. It cannot tell you whether a business is honest, whether a shipment will arrive, or whether a company is a good commercial partner.
• Names are ambiguous. Chinese company names can be similar, and translated names especially so. Where the identity of the company matters, give us the registration number (USCC) or a reliable link.

4. Permitted use — please read this section

Reports are sold for your own internal business risk assessment of a company you are considering dealing with. You agree that you will not:

• use a report, or any information in it, to make decisions about an individual's eligibility for credit, employment, insurance, tenancy, or any other purpose regulated as a consumer report — in particular, you will not use it as a consumer report under the US Fair Credit Reporting Act or equivalent legislation elsewhere;
• use it to harass, threaten, defame or stalk any person, or to send demands to a third party in a way that suggests we endorse or support your claim;
• resell, republish, redistribute or make a report available to the public, or use it to train a machine-learning model, without our written permission;
• use it for any purpose that is unlawful where you are, or that would be unlawful in China.

We may refuse or cancel an order, and refund it, if we believe it would breach these terms or expose us to legal risk.

5. Your responsibilities

• Give us accurate information, particularly the company's registered name, and the correct email address. If the company is misidentified because the details you gave were wrong, the report will not answer your question.
• Only order checks you are entitled to request. You confirm that researching the company you name does not breach any restriction that applies to you.
• Keep the order number we email you, and use the tracking page to check progress.

6. Price and payment

Prices are shown in US dollars on the pricing page. Payment is taken in advance, through PayPal. Your own currency and any conversion charge are determined by PayPal or your card issuer. We do not store card details. Prices may change, but a change never affects an order you have already paid for.

Research normally begins on the working day after your payment clears. Until then the order sits in a pending state and you can cancel it for a full refund.

7. Refunds

Refunds are governed by our Refund Policy, which forms part of these terms. In summary: full refund before research begins, no refund once research has begun, and a full refund if we are unable to produce a report at all.

8. Turnaround and delays

Turnaround times stated on the site are working days and are estimates, not guarantees. They can be affected by register outages, public holidays in China, or questions we need to ask you. If we expect a delay we will tell you, and if we cannot deliver within a reasonable time you may cancel for a full refund.

9. Intellectual property

The report and its contents remain our copyright. When you pay, you receive a licence to use that copy within your own organisation for the purpose described in section 4. That licence does not include the right to publish it or to pass it to anyone outside your organisation. Facts taken from public registers are not owned by anyone and this clause does not restrict you from researching them yourself.

10. Limitation of liability

To the extent the law allows, our total liability arising out of or relating to an order is limited to the amount you paid for that order. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost profits, lost opportunities, or for decisions you took on the basis of a report. Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

We do not exclude or limit your statutory rights as a consumer. If you are a consumer resident in the EU, the UK or another jurisdiction with mandatory consumer protections, those protections apply regardless of section 11.

11. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the People's Republic of China. Before starting formal proceedings, please write to us: most issues can be settled by email, and we would rather fix a problem than argue about it. Where mandatory local consumer law gives you the right to bring proceedings in your own country, nothing here takes that away.

12. Changes

We may update these terms. The version in force for your order is the one published on the date you placed it. We will update the date at the top of this page whenever the terms change.

13. Contact

Questions about these terms, or about an order, can be sent through our contact form or by replying to any email from us.