Terms of Service

Effective date: 13 September 2026.

1. Who we are

The KCompounds platform, available at kcompounds.com (the "Platform"), is operated by KCompounds ("we", "us", "our", the "Operator").

Contact: contact@kcompounds.com

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") govern your access to and use of the Platform, including any purchase you make through it. By creating an account, placing an order, or otherwise using the Platform, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Platform.

The following documents form part of these Terms and are incorporated by reference:

  • Research Use Only Notice
  • Shipping, Returns & Refunds Policy
  • Testing Score & Reviews Policy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy
  • End User License Agreement

If these Terms conflict with any incorporated document, the more specific document governs for its subject matter, except that the Research Use Only Notice always prevails.

2. Definitions

  • "Vendor": an independent third-party supplier that lists Products on the Platform under a Vendor Agreement with us. Vendors are not our employees, agents (except as stated in Section 7), partners, or affiliates.
  • "Product": any item offered for sale by a Vendor on the Platform. All Products are research chemicals supplied strictly for laboratory research use only.
  • "Vendor Policies": the shipping, delivery, returns, refunds, reshipment and customs-seizure policies published by each Vendor on its Platform profile and presented to you at checkout.
  • "Intelligence Content": vendor profiles, Testing Scores, evidence records, testing histories, price histories, editorial articles and any other informational content published on the Platform.
  • "User Content": reviews, order reports, comments, images, documents or other material you submit to the Platform.

3. Eligibility

You may use the Platform only if all of the following are true:

  1. You are at least 18 years of age.
  2. You are accessing the Platform in a professional, scientific or research capacity, and any purchase you make is made for laboratory research purposes and not for personal, domestic or household use. You acknowledge that you are not dealing as a consumer.
  3. You are legally permitted to purchase, import and possess research chemicals in your jurisdiction, and you have verified this before ordering.
  4. You are not located in, or ordering for delivery to, any jurisdiction subject to comprehensive sanctions, and you are not a sanctioned or denied party under applicable UK, US, EU or UN sanctions or export-control regimes.

We may require evidence of eligibility at any time and may refuse, suspend or close any account at our discretion.

4. What the Platform is, and what it is not

The Platform is (a) an information and intelligence service about independent research-chemical vendors, and (b) a marketplace venue through which Vendors sell Products directly to buyers.

We are not the seller of any Product. Every sale made through the Platform is a direct contract between you and the relevant Vendor. We are not a party to that contract. We do not manufacture, produce, test (except as described in the Testing Score & Reviews Policy), package, label, store, ship, import, export, insure or deliver any Product. Title and risk in Products pass directly from the Vendor to you and at no point pass through us.

We are not a laboratory, a pharmacy, a medical provider, or a regulatory body. Nothing on the Platform is medical, health, legal or regulatory advice.

5. Research Use Only: your binding representations

Every Product sold on the Platform is sold strictly for in-vitro laboratory research use by qualified researchers. By placing any order you represent and warrant, for each order, that:

  1. You are purchasing solely for laboratory research purposes.
  2. No Product will be used in or on humans or animals, whether by yourself or by any person you supply.
  3. No Product will be used as a drug, medicine, food, dietary supplement, cosmetic, or medical device, or incorporated into any of these.
  4. You will not resell or transfer any Product for any use prohibited by these Terms.
  5. You understand that no Product has been evaluated or approved by the FDA, MHRA, EMA or any other regulatory authority for any use.
  6. You accept sole responsibility for the legality of your purchase, importation and possession under the laws that apply to you, and for acting as importer of record where applicable.

These representations are a condition of every sale. The full Research Use Only Notice applies to all use of the Platform. If you do not agree to it, you must not order.

6. Accounts

You must provide accurate information when registering and keep it current. You are responsible for all activity under your account and for keeping your credentials secure. Notify us immediately of any unauthorized use. One account per person; accounts are not transferable.

7. Orders and payments

7.1 Order formation. When you place an order, you make an offer to purchase from the Vendor identified at checkout. The sale contract forms between you and that Vendor when the order is accepted. We may reject or cancel orders on a Vendor's behalf where fraud, error, unavailability or a breach of these Terms is suspected.

7.2 Limited payment collection agent. Each Vendor has appointed us as its limited agent solely for the purpose of collecting payments from buyers on its behalf. Your payment to the Platform fully discharges your payment obligation to the Vendor for that order. Our obligation is then to remit those funds to the Vendor; the Vendor's recourse for remittance is against us, not you. This agency is limited to payment collection and does not make us a party to the sale or responsible for the Vendor's performance.

7.3 Payment methods. We accept the payment methods shown at checkout, which may include bank transfer (ACH), and cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency payments are final when confirmed on-chain except as provided by the applicable Vendor Policies; exchange-rate fluctuations between payment and any refund are your risk, and refunds of crypto payments may be made in the original asset or a stablecoin equivalent at the rate applicable when the refund is processed. You must not pay from accounts or wallets that are not your own.

7.4 Pricing and taxes. Prices are set by Vendors. You are responsible for all import duties, customs charges, and taxes arising from your purchase. Displayed prices may exclude such charges.

7.5 Chargebacks and payment disputes. Contact us before initiating any bank dispute or ACH return; most issues are resolved faster through the Vendor's own policy. Payment disputes initiated in bad faith or in breach of this section may result in account closure and recovery of costs.

8. Shipping, delivery, returns, refunds and seizures: Vendor responsibility

All fulfilment obligations belong exclusively to the Vendor. This includes shipping, delivery timelines, packaging, customs handling, reshipment, returns, replacements and refunds. Each Vendor's own Vendor Policies (shown on its profile and presented to you at checkout before you pay) exclusively govern these matters for your order, and you accept the applicable Vendor Policies as part of your contract with the Vendor when you place the order.

We have no obligation to deliver any Product, accept any return, or issue any refund. Where we process a refund, we do so solely as the Vendor's payment agent, using funds attributable to the Vendor. Any assistance we provide in resolving an order issue is voluntary, is not an assumption of the Vendor's obligations, and does not waive this section.

The full Shipping, Returns & Refunds Policy applies.

9. Intelligence Content and Testing Scores

Vendor Testing Scores, evidence grades, testing histories and related Intelligence Content are statements of opinion produced by applying a published methodology to the evidence records available to us, as described in the Testing Score & Reviews Policy. They are provided for general information only. They are not a guarantee of any Vendor's future performance, product quality, or safety, and are not advice or a recommendation to transact with any Vendor. Evidence available to us may be incomplete, unverifiable or wrong despite our processes. You must conduct your own diligence before transacting.

Editorial articles and interviews reflect the views of their authors at the time of writing.

We may add, amend, suspend, annotate or remove any Intelligence Content at any time, including under the correction procedures in the Testing Score & Reviews Policy.

10. User Content

10.1 Your promises. Any User Content you submit must be truthful, based on your own first-hand experience, and compliant with the Testing Score & Reviews Policy. You must not submit content that is fabricated, misleading, defamatory, infringing, unlawful, or submitted in exchange for payment or benefit from any Vendor or competitor (whether positively or negatively slanted).

10.2 License. You retain ownership of your User Content. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, perpetual license to host, store, reproduce, adapt (including to apply our evidence methodology, redact personal data, or combine into cases), publish, display and distribute your User Content in connection with operating and promoting the Platform.

10.3 Moderation. We may verify, edit for methodology compliance, decline to publish, annotate, or remove any User Content at our discretion. We are under no obligation to publish anything.

10.4 Responsibility. You are solely responsible for your User Content. We act as a hosting intermediary for User Content and do not endorse it.

11. Acceptable use

You must not:

  1. Access the Platform other than through the interfaces we provide, or use any robot, spider, scraper, crawler, or other automated means to access, extract or index any part of the Platform or its data;
  2. Copy, aggregate, republish, sell or redistribute any substantial part of the Platform's data, ratings, evidence records, price histories or vendor profiles, or use them to build or train a competing product, dataset or model;
  3. Circumvent or attempt to circumvent any access control, rate limit or technical protection;
  4. Interfere with the operation or security of the Platform, probe or scan for vulnerabilities, or introduce malicious code;
  5. Impersonate any person, misrepresent an affiliation, or operate multiple accounts to manipulate ratings, reviews or votes;
  6. Submit fake, incentivized, traded or coerced reviews, or attempt to extort any Vendor or the Platform by threatening negative content;
  7. Harvest personal data of other users or Vendors;
  8. Use the Platform for any unlawful purpose, or to facilitate any use of Products prohibited by the Research Use Only Notice.

12. Intellectual property and database rights

The Platform, its software, design, branding, editorial content, and the selection, arrangement and compilation of its data are owned by the Operator or its licensors and are protected by copyright, trademark and other laws. We assert the database right in our compilations of vendor, pricing, testing and review data under the Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations 1997. Extraction or re-utilisation of the whole or a substantial part of any Platform database is prohibited. Vendor names, marks and documents remain the property of their respective owners and are displayed for identification and information.

The End User License Agreement governs your license to use the Platform software.

13. Complaints, corrections and takedown

13.1 Content complaints. If you believe any Platform content is inaccurate, defamatory, infringing or otherwise unlawful, contact contact@kcompounds.com with the URL, the specific statement complained of, and the grounds. We review complaints against our evidence records and may correct, annotate, remove or maintain the content, following the procedures in the Testing Score & Reviews Policy where applicable.

13.2 IP infringement. Rights holders may submit notices to contact@kcompounds.com identifying the work, the allegedly infringing material and its location, with a statement of good-faith belief and authority to act. We may remove material, notify the submitting user, and accept counter-notices. Repeat infringers' accounts will be terminated.

14. Third-party services

The Platform links to and integrates third-party services (including Vendor websites, messaging platforms, payment processors and testing laboratories). We do not control and are not responsible for them. Your use of them is at your own risk and subject to their terms.

15. Disclaimers

The Platform and all Intelligence Content are provided "as is" and "as available" without any warranty of any kind, express or implied, including accuracy, completeness, currency, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement, to the maximum extent permitted by law. We do not warrant that the Platform will be uninterrupted, secure or error-free. We give no warranty of any kind in respect of any Product: all Product warranties, if any, come from the Vendor alone.

16. Limitation of liability

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot be excluded by law.

Subject to that:

  1. We have no liability whatsoever arising from or in connection with (a) any Product, including its quality, safety, composition, labeling, use or misuse; (b) any act or omission of any Vendor, including non-delivery, customs seizure, or failure to honor Vendor Policies; (c) any reliance on Intelligence Content or User Content; or (d) any unlawful or prohibited use of Products by any person.
  2. We are not liable for any indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of business, loss of data, or loss of opportunity.
  3. Our total aggregate liability to you arising out of or in connection with the Platform is limited to the total platform fees (excluding Product prices remitted to Vendors) that you paid to us in the 12 months preceding the first event giving rise to liability or, if you paid no such fees, £25.
  4. Any claim against us must be notified to us in writing within 12 months of the event giving rise to it and, to the extent permitted by law, is waived if not notified within that period.
  5. If any limitation or exclusion in this Section 16 is held unenforceable, our liability is instead limited to the smallest amount and narrowest scope that is enforceable.

You acknowledge that the Platform's pricing reflects this allocation of risk, and that Vendors, not the Platform, are the proper recipients of any Product-related claim.

17. Indemnity

You will indemnify and hold harmless the Operator, its officers, employees and contractors from and against all claims, damages, losses, penalties and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to: (a) your breach of these Terms, including any Research Use Only representation; (b) your use or misuse of any Product; (c) your User Content; or (d) your violation of any law or the rights of any third party.

18. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your access at any time, with or without notice, for breach of these Terms, suspected fraud or abuse, legal or regulatory reasons, or risk to the Platform, other users or Vendors. You may close your account at any time. Sections 5, 9, 10.2, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19 and 20 survive termination.

19. Changes

We may amend these Terms by posting the updated version with a new effective date. Material changes will be notified via the Platform or email. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance. The version in force when you place an order governs that order.

20. Governing law and disputes

20.1 Governing law. These Terms and any dispute arising out of or in connection with them or the Platform are governed by the laws of England and Wales, without prejudice to Section 20.3 and to any non-waivable rights of your place of residence.

20.2 Courts. Subject to Section 20.3, the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.

20.3 Arbitration agreement for United States residents. If you reside in the United States, the following applies:

  1. Informal resolution first. Before commencing any proceeding, you must send a written description of the dispute to contact@kcompounds.com and negotiate with us in good faith for at least 60 days. This is a precondition to arbitration.
  2. Binding individual arbitration. Any dispute not resolved informally will be finally resolved by binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, in English, before a single arbitrator, conducted remotely by videoconference or in the county where you reside. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this Section 20.3. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction.
  3. Class action and jury trial waiver. All disputes are arbitrated on an individual basis only. You and we each waive the right to a jury trial and the right to bring or participate in any class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate claims of different parties. If this waiver is held unenforceable as to a particular dispute, that dispute must proceed in court under Section 20.2, and not as a class arbitration.
  4. Carve-outs. Either party may instead bring an individual claim in small-claims court, and either party may seek injunctive or equitable relief in court for infringement or misuse of intellectual property or data (including scraping).
  5. Mass filings. If 25 or more arbitration demands raising similar issues are filed by or with the assistance of the same or coordinated counsel, the demands will be administered in staged batches of up to 25, with filing and arbitrator fees due only as each batch commences, and all applicable limitation periods tolled while a demand awaits its batch.
  6. Opt-out. You may opt out of this Section 20.3 entirely by emailing contact@kcompounds.com within 30 days of first accepting these Terms, stating your name, account email, and intent to opt out of arbitration. Opting out does not affect any other provision of these Terms.

21. General

If any provision is held invalid, the remainder continues in force. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them to a successor of the Platform business. These Terms and the documents incorporated by reference are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Platform, and supersede all prior discussions. Nothing in these Terms creates any partnership, employment or (except Section 7.2) agency relationship. Notices to us go to contact@kcompounds.com; notices to you go to your registered email.

All terms and policies

Questions about this document go through the contact page.