Terms of service

These terms are the contract between you and us when you order a Deed Poll or use this website. You accept them by placing an order, which is why the checkout says so above the payment button. Read them alongside our privacy policy.

Last updated 12 September 2026, and applying to orders placed from that date.

1. Who you are contracting with

Online Deed Polls, 3rd Floor, 86–90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE. Write to us at [email protected] and a person answers, usually the same working day.

In these terms, “we”, “us” and “our” mean Online Deed Polls, and “you” means the person placing the order. A “working day” is Monday to Friday, excluding bank holidays in England and Wales.

2. These terms, and how you accept them

• Ordering means accepting. When you place an order and pay, you accept these terms and our privacy policy. If you do not accept them, please do not order.
• The version that applies to your order is the one published on this page on the day you ordered. The date above tells you which that is, and we keep earlier versions so we can show you the one you agreed to.
• We may change these terms for future orders, for instance if the law or our process changes. A change never applies backwards to an order already placed.
• What makes up the agreement is this page, the details you entered at the checkout and our order confirmation. This does not take away from anything we told you and you relied on when you ordered.

3. What we provide, and what we are not

We draft unenrolled Deed Polls and certified copies of them. A paralegal writes the document, quality control checks it against what you entered, and it is printed and posted to you on paper.

• We are not solicitors, we do not act for you, and nothing we send you is legal advice about your circumstances. Our guides and this website are general information.
• We are not part of government, the courts or the Royal Courts of Justice, and we are not affiliated with them.
• We do not enrol deeds at the Royal Courts of Justice, and we do not notarise or legalise documents. Where you need one of those, we will say so rather than sell you something else.
• We do not register your name anywhere. There is no register of unenrolled Deed Polls, and no organisation is told about your change of name by us.

4. Who can order, and what you confirm when you do

By placing an order you confirm that all of the following is true. We draft from what you tell us, so this is the part that matters most.

• Your age. You are 16 or over and changing your own name, or you are a parent or guardian ordering for a child under 16.
• Your capacity. You understand the change you are making and are able to make it. If someone is acting for another person under a power of attorney or a court order, tell us before ordering, because a Deed Poll may not be the right instrument.
• Accuracy. The names, title, date of birth and address you give us are correct and complete, spelled as you want them printed.
• For a child. Everyone who holds parental responsibility agrees to the change, you have that agreement in writing, and you will give it to us if we ask. Identifying everyone who holds parental responsibility is your responsibility, and a child’s deed made without it is not valid.
• Your purpose. You are not changing your name to defraud or deceive anyone, to escape a debt or a legal obligation, or to evade a court order or a licence condition.
• Duties you already have. If you are a registered sex, violent or terrorist offender, you must tell the police within 3 days of changing your name, and failing to do so is a criminal offence. If you are subject to a court order, a bail or licence condition, an immigration condition or a similar restriction, it is for you to check that it allows a change of name.

If any of this turns out to be untrue, we may stop work and cancel the order, and the acceptance guarantee in section 13 does not apply.

5. Your order, and when the contract is made

• Your order is an offer to buy from us. The contract is made when we email your order confirmation, or when we dispatch your documents, whichever happens first.
• We may decline an order and refund you in full. We would do that if the name is one we will not draft, if the information is incomplete and we cannot reach you, if we reasonably believe the change is for an unlawful purpose, or if we cannot supply for a reason outside our control.
• Obvious pricing mistakes. If a price is clearly wrong and you could reasonably have realised it, we may cancel the order and refund you rather than supply at that price.
• Abuse. We may stop dealing with anyone who is abusive or threatening to our staff, and refund any order that has not been drafted.

6. The name you choose

We will not draft a name that contains numbers or symbols, is vulgar or offensive, promotes crime, or implies a rank, title or qualification you do not hold. If we decline for one of those reasons, we refund you in full. What you may change your name to sets out the rules before you order.

Separately from our own rules, an organisation may have its own. HM Passport Office, for example, applies published rules about names and titles and has a limit on length. A decision of that kind is about the name, not about the deed, so it is not something the guarantee can cover.

7. Price and payment

• The deed is £18.50, whether it is an adult, child or replacement Deed Poll. Certified copies (from £6 for 2, up to £25 for 20), Royal Mail delivery (from £2.99) and a board-backed envelope (£1.99) are optional extras chosen at the checkout.
• The total shown at the checkout is the amount you pay, including any VAT that applies. There is nothing further to pay us afterwards.
• Payment is taken by Stripe on a separate secure checkout, by debit or credit card, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay or Klarna. We never see or store your card details. We start work once payment has been taken.

8. Drafting and dispatch

Orders placed before 4pm on a working day are drafted, checked and posted the same working day. Orders placed after that, or at a weekend or on a bank holiday, are posted on the next working day.

If anything in your application needs clarifying, a paralegal emails you before drafting. That pauses the timing until you reply, because we would rather ask than guess.

9. Delivery, and post that goes astray

• Royal Mail delivers, using the service you chose at the checkout. The times shown for each service are Royal Mail’s estimates and not guarantees, and delivery is charged separately from the price of the deed.
• Envelopes carry no indication of what is inside. The exceptions are deliveries to a prison or to an address outside the UK, where the sender has to be shown.
• Outside the UK we may use a courier, and we cannot guarantee a particular carrier.
• The address you give us is the address we post to. If it is wrong or you have moved, tell us before dispatch. Once an item has gone to an address you gave us, a replacement is a new order.
• If an item is delayed or lost, tell us. We will help you chase it and claim from Royal Mail, and we will agree with you what we can do to put it right.

Your documents become your responsibility when they are delivered to you or to someone at the address you gave us.

10. Checking your documents, and mistakes

Read both names letter by letter the day your Deed Poll arrives, before anyone signs it. A signed deed cannot be corrected: no correction fluid, no crossing out, no writing over a letter.

• If we made the mistake, tell us and we redraft it and post the replacement at our cost.
• If the information you gave us was wrong, a corrected deed is a new order. Tell us anyway, because we would rather sort it out than leave you with a document you cannot use.

11. Cancelling your order

Every Deed Poll is drafted to your specification and is clearly personalised, so it falls within regulation 28(1)(b) of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. That means the usual fourteen-day right to cancel a distance contract does not apply once we have begun drafting.

In practice: email [email protected] as soon as you can, quoting your order. If drafting has not started, we cancel and refund in full. If it has, we will tell you honestly where your order is and what we can do.

None of this affects the acceptance guarantee, and none of it affects your rights if what we sent was faulty, not as described or not drafted with reasonable care and skill.

12. Refunds

Refunds go back to the card or account used for the original payment. We process them within two working days of the decision, and Stripe usually places the money back in your account within seven to ten working days after that.

13. The acceptance guarantee

If a Deed Poll we drafted is refused as evidence of your change of name, tell us and we will help. If it cannot be resolved, we refund your order in full. The guarantee covers refusal by a UK government department, a public body, a UK company or organisation, and a British diplomatic mission overseas.

How to claim

• Send us the refusal in writing, the letter or email in which the organisation says it will not accept the deed and why.
• Let us take it up with them first. We write to the organisation, explain what an unenrolled Deed Poll is and ask them to look again. That resolves it more often than not.
• Tell us promptly, and in any event within 30 days of the refusal, so that we can deal with the organisation while the matter is live.

What it does not cover

• A deed we did not draft. The guarantee is on our work.
• A refusal of the name itself. If HM Passport Office declines to issue a passport in a particular name, that is their rule about the name, not a fault in the deed.
• Requirements outside the UK. Foreign authorities apply their own law. If you hold a passport issued by another country, only that country can change the name in it.
• A refusal caused by information you gave us wrongly, or by the deed being signed or witnessed incorrectly, or by a child’s deed made without the agreement of everyone with parental responsibility.
• A refusal to accept a copy where the organisation asks for the original, such as HM Passport Office and the DVLA.

14. Your data, and marketing

How we handle your personal data is set out in full in our privacy policy. Because the marketing part is something you agree to when you order, it is here as well.

What we never do

• We never sell, rent or exchange your personal data.
• We never pass it to another organisation for that organisation to market to you.
• The only people who see it are the suppliers who help us fulfil your order, such as payment, post, email and reviews, acting on our instructions, and anyone we are required by law to give it to.

Emails about our own services

Because you have bought from us, we may email you about our own similar services and offers. That is what regulation 22 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 allows a business to do for its own customers. Every message carries an unsubscribe link, and you can opt out at any time, by using that link or by emailing [email protected]. We act on it straight away, and opting out never affects your order or the guarantee.

Other companies in our group

We would also like to tell you about services from other companies in our group. The law treats that as marketing from a different business, so we send it only where you have agreed, for example by ticking the box at the checkout. Agreeing is optional, it is never a condition of ordering, and you can withdraw it at any time in the same way.

Review invitations

We may invite you to review the service through Reviews.co.uk. You do not have to, and unsubscribing stops those too.

Emails about your order

Order confirmations, questions from a paralegal about your application and dispatch notices are part of the service rather than marketing, so they are sent for as long as your order is live whatever your marketing choices are.

15. Our material, and this website

• What belongs to us: the wording of our deeds, our guides and cover letter, and the text, images and design of this site.
• What you may do: use the documents we draft for you for any lawful purpose connected with your change of name, and read, print and share pages of this site for your own use.
• What you may not do: resell our documents, republish our wording or guides as your own, or copy material from this site to run a competing service.
• The site itself is provided as it is. We keep it accurate and correct errors when we find them, but we cannot promise it is complete, that it is always available, or that it will work with every device or connection.
• Links to other sites, such as GOV.UK, are there to help. We do not control them and are not responsible for what is on them.

16. Our responsibility for loss

We are responsible for carrying out our work with reasonable care and skill, and for foreseeable loss you suffer because we failed to do so. Foreseeable means loss that both of us could have expected when you ordered.

What we are not responsible for

• What an organisation decides. Each one judges the document in front of it. The guarantee in section 13 is our answer to a refusal.
• The post. Once documents are with Royal Mail, the timescales are theirs.
• Requirements outside the UK, which are set by the authority concerned.
• Loss that was not foreseeable, such as a missed flight or booking, a lost opportunity or the cost of a delayed application, unless you told us about that risk before ordering and we accepted it in writing.
• Business losses. We supply consumers. If you order for a business purpose, we are not liable for loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption or loss of opportunity.

The limit, and what we never limit

Where we are liable to you, our liability for any one order is limited to the amount you paid for that order, except where the law does not allow such a limit.

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, or for anything else that cannot be limited or excluded by law.

17. Your statutory rights

Nothing here reduces the rights you have as a consumer under UK law. Goods must be as described and of satisfactory quality, and a service must be carried out with reasonable care and skill. Where anything in these terms conflicts with those rights, your rights apply.

18. Events outside our control

If something genuinely outside our control delays us, such as a postal strike, a failure of a supplier we rely on or an interruption to power or communications, we will tell you and do what we reasonably can to limit the delay. We are not liable for a delay caused that way, and if it is substantial you may cancel the affected order and we refund you for anything not yet drafted.

19. If something goes wrong

Email [email protected] with your order details. A person reads it, usually the same working day, and we would much rather fix a problem than have you leave a review about one.

If we cannot put it right between us, nothing in these terms stops you taking the matter to court. Complaints about how we handle your data can go to the Information Commissioner’s Office, though we would rather you told us first.

20. Other terms

• Transfer. We may transfer this contract to another business, including another company in our group, if your rights under it are not affected. You may not transfer your rights or obligations to anyone else without our agreement.
• Nobody else has rights under it. This contract is between you and us, and no other person may enforce it under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.
• If part of it cannot apply, the rest still does. A court striking out one paragraph leaves the others in force.
• Delay is not a waiver. If we do not insist on something straight away, or we delay in taking a step, that does not stop us doing it later.
• Notices. Write to us at [email protected]. We write to you at the email address you gave at the checkout, so please keep it working while your order is live.

21. Governing law

These terms and any contract between us are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you may also bring proceedings in the courts where you live.