1. Who we are and what we do
Medellín Guide is operated by Norte Sur Consulting SAS, doing business as Norte Conexión, a sociedad por acciones simplificada (SAS) registered in Colombia (NIT 901.956.771-1), with registered address at Cra 43 #25A-112, Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia. Medellín Guide is one of the guide sites in the Norte Conexión network, alongside our sister guides for Barranquilla and Cartagena. In these documents, "we," "us," "our," or "Medellín Guide" refers to that entity. "You" refers to anyone using this website or our services.
Important: we are a concierge and referral service, not a provider
We help you find, vet, and coordinate with qualified third-party providers, doctors, hospitals, clinics, attorneys, notaries, real-estate agents, insurance brokers, drivers, translators, tour operators, event vendors, and others. We do not ourselves provide medical, dental, legal, immigration, tax, financial, real-estate, insurance, or transportation services.
All professional services you receive are provided by independent third parties under their own terms, licenses, and liability. Your legal relationship for any procedure, contract, transaction, or advice is with that third party, not with us. We can introduce, coordinate, translate, and accompany, but we do not practice medicine, law, or any other regulated profession.
What this means in practice:
- A medical, legal, or financial decision is yours, made with the qualified professional you hire.
- We do our best to refer you to providers we believe to be reputable, but we do not guarantee outcomes.
- We do not receive commissions, kickbacks, or referral fees from our network unless we disclose that relationship to you in writing before the referral.
2. Terms of Service
2.1 Agreement
By using this website, submitting the consultation form, messaging us on WhatsApp, chatting with our Catalina concierge, or purchasing any White Glove project, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, do not use the site or the services.
2.2 Eligibility
You must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter into a contract. If you are acting on behalf of another person or a company, you represent that you have authority to do so.
2.3 Our services
We operate three distinct legs:
- Free bilingual concierge. Catalina, our bilingual AI concierge, and our human team (Mike and Santiago) are available by chat and phone, free to you. Coverage includes questions, vendor referrals, scheduling, and coordination. This leg is funded by commissions paid to us by vendors when one of our referrals converts. You pay nothing for chat, phone, or warm intros.
- Free information. The long-form guides and city information on this site are free, with no paywall and no "members only" content.
- White Glove projects. Custom-quoted per project, for tasks where you want one of us physically present or hands-on: accompanying a Migración appointment, riding along to a medical consultation, an apostille run, a multi-week relocation, real-time interpretation in critical meetings, venue coordination on a wedding, etc. This is the only leg you pay us for directly.
We may add, remove, or modify services. We will give reasonable notice of changes that affect users with an active White Glove project engagement.
2.4 Pricing, billing, and refunds (White Glove only)
The free concierge and free information legs have no user-facing fees, no subscription, no billing, no cancellation. The clauses below apply only to White Glove projects.
- White Glove projects are quoted and invoiced per project, in advance. Payment terms, milestones, deposit, and refund eligibility are stated in the individual quote you accept before work begins.
- Currency, USD or COP, is stated in the quote. Where the quote is in USD, COP equivalents are informational only; the USD figure controls.
- If we cannot deliver a project we have accepted (for example, an unrelated emergency on our side), we refund any unused portion of the deposit. If you cancel a project after work has begun, refund eligibility follows the cancellation clause in your accepted quote.
- Third-party costs (clinic fees, legal fees, government fees, driver fees, vendor fees, etc.) are your responsibility and are paid directly to the provider, or reimbursed to us if we have advanced them on your behalf, regardless of which leg you are engaging through.
2.5 Your responsibilities
- Give us accurate information. We cannot coordinate well with bad inputs.
- Comply with the terms of the third-party providers we introduce you to.
- Respect Colombian law, local customs, and the time of our team and our partners.
- Do not use our services for anything illegal, fraudulent, or intended to harm others.
2.6 Disclaimers
The website and our services are provided "as is" and "as available." To the maximum extent permitted by law:
- We do not warrant that the site will be error-free, uninterrupted, or secure.
- We do not warrant the outcomes of any third-party provider, clinic, attorney, landlord, vendor, or government process.
- Information on the site, including prices, visa rules, healthcare options, neighborhood notes, and guides, is offered in good faith and is believed accurate at the time of publication, but may become outdated. Verify time-sensitive information with a qualified professional before acting on it.
- Nothing on this site is medical, legal, immigration, tax, or financial advice.
2.7 Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, our total liability to you for any claim arising out of or relating to these terms or the services is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us for the White Glove project from which the claim arises, or (b) USD 100. Because the bilingual concierge leg is provided to you at no cost, our liability for that leg is limited to the USD 100 floor.
We are not liable for indirect, consequential, incidental, special, punitive, or exemplary damages; for lost profits, lost opportunities, or lost data; or for acts or omissions of third-party providers. Some jurisdictions do not allow these limits; in that case, our liability is limited to the smallest amount permitted by law.
2.8 Indemnification
You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from claims, damages, and costs (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from your misuse of the services, your violation of these terms, your violation of applicable law, or your dealings with third-party providers introduced by us.
2.9 Intellectual property
The website, logo, copy, images (except those we credit to third parties), guides, and other content are ours or licensed to us. You may share links to our pages freely. You may not copy, republish, or use our content commercially without written permission.
2.10 Termination
We may suspend or terminate your access to any leg of the service at our reasonable discretion, including for non-payment on a White Glove project, abusive behavior toward our team or partners, or breach of these terms. You may stop using the free concierge and free information legs at any time. For White Glove projects, cancellation follows the terms of your accepted quote.
2.11 Governing law and disputes
These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Colombia. Any dispute will first be addressed through good-faith discussion. If not resolved within 30 days, the courts of Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia have exclusive jurisdiction, unless mandatory consumer-protection law in your country of residence provides otherwise.
2.12 Changes to these terms
We may update these terms. Material changes will be flagged at the top of this page and, where you have an active White Glove project engagement, sent by email at least 14 days before they take effect.
3. Privacy Policy
We care about your privacy. This section explains what we collect, why, who we share it with, and your rights. It is written to satisfy Colombian Habeas Data law (Ley 1581 de 2012 and Decree 1377 de 2013), the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for visitors in the EU/UK, and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) for California residents.
3.1 Who is the data controller
Norte Sur Consulting SAS, doing business as Norte Conexión (NIT 901.956.771-1), at Cra 43 #25A-112, Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia. Data-protection contact: mike@nortesurconsulting.com.
3.2 What we collect
- Contact information you give us: name, email address, phone number, country of origin, service category you selected on the consultation form.
- Information you share during the engagement: travel dates, purpose of travel, health notes relevant to a medical coordination request, address for delivery or visits, government-document numbers if required for a specific service (e.g., passport number for visa assistance), payment information processed by our payment processor (see section 3.5).
- Communications: messages you send us via WhatsApp, email, or forms on the site, including timestamps.
- Technical information, automatically: IP address, browser and device type, referring URL, pages visited, approximate location (from IP), date and time of visit. See the Cookie Policy for details.
Sensitive data: we only collect health-related information if you specifically ask us to coordinate medical or dental care, and we only collect what is necessary to make the relevant introduction. We will ask for explicit consent (autorización previa, expresa e informada) before collecting sensitive data.
3.3 Why we collect it (legal bases)
- Performance of a contract (or steps to enter one): to respond to your consultation, deliver our services, and coordinate with providers.
- Consent: for marketing emails, for sensitive data, for non-essential cookies.
- Legal obligation: to comply with Colombian tax, accounting, and data-protection law.
- Legitimate interests: to run and improve our website, prevent fraud, and secure our systems, balanced against your rights and never used for intrusive profiling.
3.4 How long we keep it
- Concierge chat leads who don't become White Glove clients: up to 24 months, then deleted or anonymized.
- Users with an active White Glove project engagement: duration of the project plus up to 5 years after the last interaction, to meet Colombian record-keeping obligations.
- Billing and tax records: as long as required by Colombian law (currently up to 10 years).
- Website analytics: retention settings of the relevant tool (Google Analytics: 14 months; Cloudflare Analytics: 6 months; see Cookie Policy).
3.5 Who we share it with
We share the minimum information necessary with:
- Service providers we refer you to (doctors, lawyers, drivers, vendors, etc.), only with your consent, and only the details needed for the introduction or booking.
- Our technology vendors (data processors): Cloudflare (hosting, form endpoint, analytics, Cloudflare Turnstile bot protection on our newsletter signup form, and Catalina concierge agent), Google (Analytics, Fonts, fonts are served from Google's servers), Anthropic (the Claude AI model that powers Catalina, our chat concierge), our email service (for sending consultation replies and the Medellín Essentials guide), and our payment processor for billing.
- Our professional advisors (accountants, lawyers), under confidentiality obligations.
- Government authorities, when required by law or valid legal process.
We do not sell or rent your personal information to anyone.
Our newsletter signup form uses Cloudflare Turnstile to filter automated bot signups. Turnstile runs invisibly and does not display a puzzle or challenge. See Cloudflare's Turnstile Privacy Policy for details on what it collects.
3.6 International transfers
Some of our vendors (e.g., Google, Cloudflare, Anthropic) are based in or operate from the United States and other countries. When we transfer your information outside Colombia or the EU/UK, we rely on recognized safeguards: adequacy decisions where they exist, Standard Contractual Clauses where they don't, and, for Colombian law, the explicit or implied consent permitted under Circular Externa 005 de 2017 of the Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio.
3.7 How we protect it
- HTTPS across the whole site.
- Access to user data restricted to our team members who need it.
- Secure password and device policies for our team.
- No storage of payment card details on our servers, payments are handled by our processor.
- Backups and logs retained only as long as needed.
No system is perfectly secure. If we ever learn of a breach that affects you, we will notify you and the relevant authority (in Colombia, the Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio) within the timeframes required by law.
3.8 Children
Our services are for adults. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has given us data, please contact us and we will delete it.
5. Your rights
Wherever you live, you have a baseline set of rights over your personal information. You can exercise any of these by writing to mike@nortesurconsulting.com. We will respond within 15 business days (Colombian Habeas Data standard), and within 30 days for EU/UK/California residents.
- Access, ask us what data we hold about you.
- Correction, ask us to fix inaccurate or incomplete data.
- Deletion, ask us to delete your data (subject to legal record-keeping obligations).
- Revocation of consent, withdraw consent at any time; this doesn't affect processing done before you withdrew.
- Proof of consent (Colombia), ask us to show you the record of your authorization.
- Portability (EU/UK/California), ask for a copy of your data in a machine-readable format.
- Objection (EU/UK), object to processing based on legitimate interests.
- Opt-out of sale or share (California), not applicable to us since we do not sell your data.
- Complaint, you may complain to the Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio in Colombia (sic.gov.co), to your local Data Protection Authority in the EU/UK, or to the California Attorney General. We would appreciate the chance to resolve things first.
5.1 Marketing opt-out
Every marketing email we send has an unsubscribe link. You can also message us on WhatsApp and say "stop" at any time, we will remove you from marketing contact. Transactional messages about services you actively use are not marketing.
6. Contact
For privacy, legal, or data-protection questions:
- Email: mike@nortesurconsulting.com
- Mail: Norte Sur Consulting SAS, Cra 43 #25A-112, Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia
- WhatsApp: +57 310 325 0953
This document was last updated on May 28, 2026. Previous versions are available on request.
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