Refunds and cancellation
What happens to your money when you cancel, and when a refund is due. The paid plans are monthly subscriptions, taken by Paddle as the merchant of record, and everything below applies from the moment you subscribe. It is part of the terms and is written to be read before you subscribe, not after.
The trial comes first
Author and Author Plus begin with a two-week trial that costs $1. That is a real charge, taken when the trial starts, and it is how we check the card works rather than a payment for the plan; it is refundable like any other. The first full payment is taken automatically on the fifteenth day unless you cancel before then, and cancelling during the trial stops that payment. A reader account is free and never needs a card at all. Money is only ever taken for a plan you chose yourself, and a plan chosen without a trial is charged straight away.
Cancelling
You can cancel at any time, from Plan and payment in your account, without asking anybody and without giving a reason. Cancelling stops the next renewal; it does not end the period you have already paid for. You keep full access until that period runs out, and any task you are holding stays yours to finish. Points you hold stay in your account.
Refunds on a subscription
If the service did not do what this site says it does, write to us and we will refund you — that is the test we apply, and we apply it to the whole of the last payment rather than pro-rating it into something not worth having. If you paid by mistake, paid twice, or were charged after cancelling, tell us and we will return it in full. Beyond that, a period already used is not refunded simply because it was not used much.
Points are not money
A paid plan comes with points and with the right to shelve titles and ask for readers, and none of that is money. Points cannot be sold, transferred, withdrawn or exchanged for a payment, no refund is ever calculated from them, and there is no balance anywhere that could be paid out. If a payment is refunded, the points that came with it may be taken back. Points set aside for a request that closes early or runs out unfilled come back to your balance, never to your card.
Statutory rights
If you are a consumer in the EU or the UK you have a right to withdraw from a distance contract within fourteen days. Because this is a digital service delivered immediately, that right ends once you begin using the paid service — and you will be asked to agree to that at checkout, before any payment is taken, rather than here. Nothing on this page limits a right that cannot be limited by agreement.
How to ask
Get in touch from the address on your account and say what happened. We answer refund requests within five working days. If a payment provider handled your purchase, they may also process the refund on our instruction, and it returns by the same route it was paid.
How to reach us
Write to [email protected], or use the contact form.