Legal · updated 9 September 2026
Terms
The short version. You buy a dated edition of a guide. You may keep it and read it for as long as you like, on your own devices. Please do not republish it or pass it around. Each copy carries the buyer's name.
The guides are researched carefully and are still only information. They are not legal, tax, immigration or investment advice, and you should check anything that matters with the authority that issues the rule.
01 Who you are dealing with
The guides are written and published by KOGAIONON LIMITED, a company incorporated in Hong Kong SAR. Our company number is 80395803. Our registered office is Unit 2904, 29/F, Universal Trade Centre, 3 Arbuthnot Road, Central, Hong Kong. In these terms, "we" and "us" mean that company. "You" means the person reading or buying.
When you buy, the sale itself is made by Stripe through Stripe Managed Payments, acting as merchant of record. That makes Stripe the seller for the transaction. It takes the payment, and it calculates and remits any VAT or sales tax. Its own terms apply to the payment itself.
You will meet this as Link. Checkout is Link-branded. Your purchase is described as “Sold through Link”. Your receipt and invoice come from Link rather than from us, issued as Sold through Link, LLC. Your card statement shows LINK.COM*. Your order history, and anything recurring, lives at link.com.
We remain the publisher and the licensor of what you are buying. Write to us about the guide itself: its content, a correction, a file that will not open. Stripe handles questions about the payment.
02 What the guides are, and what they are not
Each guide is a researched document about living in one city. What it costs. Where people live. Which visa fits, and what tends to catch people out. Every figure carries the date it was true and the source it came from.
They are educational material, not advice. Nothing in them is legal, tax, immigration, financial or investment advice. Nothing in them creates a professional relationship between us. Before you sign a lease, buy a property, move money or file a visa application, check the rule with the authority that issues it. Or with a professional qualified in that country.
We say where we are unsure. Around two hundred claims across the series carry a CHECK mark. Sources disagreed, or a rule was changing when the edition closed. That is deliberate honesty rather than a defect. A marked claim is exactly the kind to verify before you rely on it.
Rules and prices move. A guide describes the position at its edition date and nowhere else. Visa rules change, currencies move, rents rise. An edition does not become wrong when the world changes. It becomes old. That is why the date is on the cover.
03 What you may do with a guide
When you buy, we grant you a licence to keep and read that edition for your own use. It is personal, worldwide, non-exclusive and non-transferable, and it does not expire. You may store it on your own devices and print a copy for yourself.
Please do not:
- republish it, upload it to a file-sharing or summarising service, or post it publicly;
- sell, sublicense, rent or give away your copy;
- remove or alter the watermark, which carries the buyer's name and order reference;
- use it to train a machine-learning model, or feed it wholesale to one.
Quoting a sentence or a figure with attribution is welcome. That is ordinary fair dealing, and we would rather be cited than not. We keep copyright in everything we publish. Buying a guide buys the licence above, not the work itself.
04 Editions, not subscriptions
You buy a specific dated edition and it stays yours. A later edition is a new product. If we ever offer an update pass, you will choose it and pay for it separately, and it will say so plainly at the time. Nothing on this site renews automatically unless you deliberately bought something that does.
05 Price, tax and payment
Prices are shown before you buy. Prices in euro include VAT, as consumer law in France requires. Prices in dollars exclude any sales tax, which may be added at checkout depending on where you are.
Stripe calculates, collects and remits that tax as merchant of record, and issues your invoice. It is registered for VAT, GST and sales tax in over eighty countries. Those include every member state of the European Union, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong.
Checkout may convert the price into your local currency and offer local payment methods. The amount shown at checkout is the amount charged.
If a displayed price is obviously wrong, say a decimal in the wrong place, we may decline the order. We would refund you in full rather than hold you to it.
06 Refunds
Refunds have their own page, which forms part of these terms: the refund policy. It also explains the statutory withdrawal right, and how that right applies to a file you download at once.
07 The site itself
We try to keep cityhonestly.com available and correct. We do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free, and we may change or withdraw parts of it. Free material on the site is provided as it is.
08 Where our responsibility ends
We are responsible for delivering the guide you paid for, and for it being what we described. If we fail at that, tell us. We will fix it or refund you.
Beyond that, and so far as the law allows, we are not liable for the decisions you take after reading a guide. Nor for indirect loss: a move that did not work out, a lease you regret, a visa refused, an investment that fell. Where we are liable, our liability is capped at what you paid us for that guide.
Nothing here excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded. That covers fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, and death or personal injury caused by negligence. If you bought as a consumer, nothing here removes your statutory rights.
09 Governing law
These terms, and any dispute arising out of them, are governed by the law of Hong Kong SAR. The courts of Hong Kong have non-exclusive jurisdiction.
If you bought as a consumer, that takes nothing away from you. You keep the protection of the mandatory rules of the country where you habitually live, and you may bring proceedings there. For a buyer in France, French consumer law keeps applying whatever this clause says.
10 Changes to these terms
We may update these terms. The version that applies to your purchase is the one published when you bought. A change never narrows a licence you already hold.
11 Contact
Write to [email protected]. For payment, invoicing or card questions, Link usually resolves it faster. Those details are on your receipt.