Refunds & Cancellation Policy

Effective date: 6 August 2026

This policy explains when credit you buy on Recensorium can be refunded, how the statutory 14-day right to cancel applies to it, and what happens to any remaining balance if you close your account. It should be read alongside §7 of the Terms of Service. Together, they set out the customer information for credits. Nothing in this policy limits any statutory right you have; if this policy, the Terms, and mandatory law differ, mandatory law prevails.

1. Credit that has been properly used

Credits fund attempts - compute, runtime, and scheduling - not outcomes. Once a credit has been properly used on a review, authored paper, or scheduled run that we supplied as agreed, we do not provide a refund merely because the attempt did not succeed or produced a low score. A credit pays for the attempt, not a guaranteed result.

This does not limit your rights where credit or a paid service was not supplied, was faulty, was not as described, or where a payment was taken in error. We assess those issues under the law and the contract. Spending part of a top-up also does not make the rest of that top-up ineligible for the additional refund policy in section 3.

2. Your 14-day cancellation right and immediate supply

If you buy credit as a consumer (not a business), the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 normally give you 14 days from purchase to cancel and receive a full refund with no reason needed. Regulation 37 lets a trader ask you to expressly agree that supply of digital content begins immediately, in exchange for acknowledging that you lose the statutory cancellation right for that purchase once supply begins. It is not a credit-by-credit statutory cancellation right.

At checkout, before you are sent to pay, we ask you to tick a box that does exactly that: it requests that we make your credit available immediately, and it acknowledges that the statutory cancellation right for that purchase ends once supply begins. We record who ticked it, when, the exact wording shown, a version identifier, a cryptographic (SHA-256) hash, the amount, and the Stripe checkout session. We also send a written confirmation to the email address on the account. This consent applies to credit purchases; it does not apply to a cash bounty or a B2B Challenge Sponsorship Fee.

The same regulation 37 wording, reworded for a shared pool ("the lab's credits" rather than "my credits"), is shown when a lab owner tops up the lab's wallet on the pool's behalf - it is a lab-scoped instance of the same right described above, not a different one. Cash bounties are handled under a separate B2B Challenge Sponsorship Agreement and Bounty Schedule - see section 5.

Before you tick that box, the checkout page also states the essentials the law requires you to see up front: the amount of credit you are buying, the price in pounds sterling you will be charged, that the seller is Recensorium Ltd (see contact details below), and that credit does not expire while your account stays open.

3. Our additional 14-day unused-credit refund policy

Separately from the statutory cancellation right described in section 2, we offer a contractual refund of any part of an identified credit purchase that remains unspent when you ask within 14 days of buying it. You do not need to give a reason. This policy does not reduce any statutory right you may have.

How to ask. Email support@recensorium.com from the address on your account, telling us which purchase you want refunded. There is no self-service refund control in the product: this is the request route for both this policy and the statutory right in section 2. We reply within the timescales in section 8, and where a refund is due we reimburse within the period stated in section 4.

Because a refund reverses a particular purchase rather than cashing out your balance, we need to work out how much of that purchase is still unspent. Credit is interchangeable once it is in your wallet, so we apply a stated rule: your spending uses up your oldest credit first. This is the rule most favourable to you, because it exhausts any earlier credit - including free starter credit and anything a lab allocated to you - before it touches the purchase you are asking us to reverse, which leaves as much of that purchase refundable as possible.

A full or partial refund reverses the particular purchase at the price actually paid for that purchase. It is not calculated using a current or later credit price, and it does not turn a general wallet balance into cash.

4. How to request a refund

Email support@recensorium.com from the address on your account, telling us roughly when you topped up and how much you would like refunded. We will identify the specific payment, check your wallet's ledger to confirm how much of that purchase is still unspent under the oldest-first rule in section 3, and - for that unspent portion, within the 14-day window - issue the refund to your original Stripe payment method. You may also contact us about a statutory claim under section 1, whether or not it falls within this additional policy.

Two consequences worth stating plainly. First, a refund is always tied to an identified payment and is capped at the unspent part of it: we cannot convert a credit balance back into money on request, and credit is not a stored-value product carrying any right to be cashed out. Second, if you have topped up more than once, a purchase you have already spent does not become refundable again because a later top-up is sitting unspent in your wallet - each purchase is assessed on its own.

Refunds are issued by an admin, not automatically: this keeps the wallet balance and the real Stripe refund consistent with each other, and stops more being refunded than a purchase actually has left in it. Requests outside the 14-day window are declined by default, though we may honour one at our discretion - see section 6.

Where you cancel under the statutory right described in section 2, we reimburse you without undue delay and in any event no later than 14 days after the day on which you tell us you are cancelling, using the same means of payment you used for the original transaction unless you expressly agree otherwise. You will not incur any fee as a result of that reimbursement. We also process a confirmed section 3 refund to your original Stripe payment method as soon as we have identified the payment and checked the unspent amount under the oldest-first rule.

5. Cash bounties, self-funded bounties, public contributions, and B2B Challenge Sponsorship

Public contributions to a bounty are not refundable. This is the shortest and most important answer in this policy, so it comes first. If you contributed to an open research problem by card, that money cannot be cancelled, withdrawn, returned to you, or turned into credits or cash - not if the problem goes unsolved, not if no prize is ever paid, and not if you simply change your mind. You are shown this in terms before you pay and you confirm it as a condition of paying. The reason is that a contribution is a donation and not a purchase: nothing is supplied to you in return for it, so there is no supply to cancel. Section 7.12 of the Terms of Service sets out the whole arrangement, including how your money divides between our fee, compute on the problem, and the prize.

Two things this does not take away. It does not affect any right you have under mandatory law - in particular where a payment was taken in error, was not authorised by you, or was obtained by fraud. And it does not stop us putting something right: if you believe a contribution was charged twice, charged after you cancelled, or taken from a card that is not yours, write to support@recensorium.com and we will look at it. What we will not do is treat dissatisfaction with a research outcome as a ground for return, because the outcome was never what you were buying.

A bounty you funded yourself is different again, and it is largely refundable. If you created a cash bounty and paid for its award by card under Terms of Service 7.13, you did buy something from us - listing, running and independently adjudicating your problem - so unlike a public contribution there is a supply here to cancel. What comes back depends on how far that supply has got:

At checkout you expressly ask us to begin listing and running the bounty immediately, and acknowledge that your statutory 14-day cancellation right over the service fee ends once that service has been fully performed. The award element is not affected by that acknowledgement - it is governed by the four outcomes above and by the Member Cash Bounty Schedule. None of this removes a right mandatory law gives you. Money we return under this paragraph goes back to the original card; it is not paid out as cash and never becomes a credit balance.

The rest of this section is about Sponsors - incorporated businesses and institutions funding an award under a written commercial agreement. It does not apply to a public contribution or to a bounty you funded yourself, and neither of those ever makes you a Sponsor.

This policy's consumer credit-cancellation and refund rules do not govern a Challenge Sponsorship Fee. At launch, a cash bounty is funded by Recensorium itself and may be supported by one or more approved incorporated Sponsors under separate written B2B Challenge Sponsorship Agreements and Bounty Schedules. Where Recensorium funds the award alone there is no Sponsor and nothing in this section applies to it. A Sponsor buys Challenge Sponsorship Services for a single contract price, which the invoice may itemise for transparency into an award-supported element and a service element. The whole price is consideration for services supplied by Recensorium as contracting principal; no part of it is a stake, escrow, account balance, deposit, client money, or money held for the Sponsor or a winner, and the Sponsor obtains no proprietary or beneficial interest in it. Once a cash bounty is published, the award is Recensorium's own contractual obligation to an eligible winner under the Terms of Service and the applicable Schedule.

A Sponsor may ask to remove only its own contribution. The request first enters Recensorium's solution review and adjudication; it does not itself remove money or start a timer. If the requirement remains unsolved, 30 days' public notice begins. A qualifying entry during notice cancels the withdrawal. If notice expires unsolved, only that Sponsor's contribution leaves the published award; the bounty and every other contribution remain.

Expiry belongs to each contribution, not to the bounty as a whole. When a contribution reaches its published expiry, it leaves the active cash award for later work, while the bounty remains open and research and entries may continue, including with no active cash award. Recensorium conducts a final review of work submitted or credibly achieved while that contribution was active. No adjustment is due while a qualifying entry, credible timely off-Service solution, unresolved claim, adjudication, or timely dispute remains open. After a contribution-specific no-award decision and the published 14-day dispute period, the price of that contribution's services is adjusted downward by the amount stated in its Schedule, calculated by reference to the award-supported element. That is a contractual price adjustment for services Recensorium did not ultimately supply for that period, not the return of money held for the Sponsor. It is satisfied by credit note against future Challenge Sponsorship Services, or by payment to the verified originating account where the Schedule so provides or Recensorium so decides, normally within 30 days. The service element is earned on work already performed and is not adjusted unless mandatory law or the applicable Schedule says otherwise. The parties may instead agree in writing to extend or replace that contribution period, or apply it elsewhere, before the adjustment falls due; there is no automatic rollover. Another Sponsor may add a new, independently dated contribution without changing any other contribution's expiry. This is Recensorium's own obligation as principal, not the return of escrow, a deposit, a stake, or client money, and it gives the Sponsor no right to any identified sum of money.

That settlement is final in both directions. The final review, the 14-day dispute period, the 30-day withdrawal notice, and any adjudication are the opportunities to establish that the requirement was met while a contribution was active; if any of them finds it was, the contribution stays in the award and is paid rather than refunded. Once a contribution's no-award decision is final and it is refunded, released, or otherwise settled, that contribution permanently leaves the award: it cannot afterwards be paid to any entry, including an entry made while it was active and including where a later review or new evidence concludes that entry did meet the requirement. That entry may still be awarded any other contribution still available to it, and nothing here limits rights that mandatory law gives you.

Challenge Sponsorship is not available to consumers, individuals, or sole traders. Sponsors must be incorporated legal entities, including legally constituted universities or research institutions. A member of the public who wants to support a bounty does so by public contribution instead, under the first part of this section - which is a non-refundable donation and carries none of the Schedule, withdrawal, or price-adjustment rights described in the paragraphs above. We may consider a Sponsor established outside the United Kingdom only after manual business, authority, sanctions, tax, payment-route, and jurisdiction review. Sponsor invoices, cash awards, cancellation credits, and refunds are in GBP unless the written Agreement or Schedule says otherwise. Competition entry itself carries no entry fee; its event-specific prize and eligibility terms are published in the applicable Event Schedule.

6. Remaining balance on account closure

Closing your account does not automatically refund any credit still in your wallet to your payment method. It permanently forfeits the balance shown in the account-closure screen once you give the separate forfeiture acknowledgement and confirm closure. Account closure is not a refund request or a cash-out route. We retain the relevant payment and lot records after closure. Closing an account never removes a statutory right, or a valid refund request made before closure: contact support@recensorium.com if you need to make such a request after closing your account.

Before you close, you have two ways to avoid the forfeiture. First, if any of the credit came from a purchase made in the last 14 days and is still unspent, you can ask us to refund that part under section 3 above, by emailing support@recensorium.com and waiting for that refund to be processed before you confirm closure. Second, if you own a verified lab, you can transfer your remaining balance into that lab's wallet from the Lab tab in your account; unlike a refund, that is not limited to recent purchases. Because allocating credit out of a lab pool to its members is an owner-only action, you should also allocate that credit to the members who will spend it before you close, so it does not sit in a pool your closed account can no longer administer. Both have to be done before you confirm closure, because closure is irreversible and deletes the account either action would be applied to. Neither route makes credit refundable that would not have been refundable anyway - closing an account does not create a new right to a refund or to a cash payout of a balance.

7. Model cancellation form

The Consumer Contracts Regulations (Schedule 3) set out a model cancellation form you may use if you want to exercise a statutory 14-day cancellation right. You may also use it to identify the purchase when requesting our section 3 unused-credit refund. You do not have to use this exact form or its exact wording - emailing us as described in section 4 works just as well - but it is reproduced here, reachable from the Terms of Service, so the option exists in the form the law specifically contemplates.

To Recensorium Ltd, Suite A, 82 James Carter Road, Mildenhall, IP28 7DE, United Kingdom, support@recensorium.com:

I/We hereby give notice that I/We cancel my/our contract for the supply of the following digital content/service: [describe the top-up or lab top-up]
Ordered on/received on: [date]
Name of consumer(s):
Address of consumer(s):
Date:

Send it to the email address above, or by post to the address above. Whichever way you send it, section 4 explains what happens next: we identify the specific payment, check how much of it is still unspent under the oldest-first rule in section 3, and process the refund within the timescale in section 4.

8. How to complain, and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)

If something has gone wrong, tell us first - most issues are resolved fastest this way. Email support@recensorium.com with “Complaint” in the subject line, or write to us at the postal address in section 9, describing what happened and the outcome you are looking for. We aim to acknowledge a complaint within 3 business days, and to give you a substantive response - or tell you when to expect one - within 14 days.

The Alternative Dispute Resolution for Consumer Disputes (Competent Authorities and Information) Regulations 2015 require us to tell you whether we will use a certified Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) provider if we are unable to resolve a complaint between us. We are not currently a member of a certified ADR scheme and are not obliged to be one, and we do not commit to using one for a dispute we cannot resolve directly. This does not affect your right to bring a claim in the courts (see Terms of Service §14), or to seek free, impartial guidance from Citizens Advice (www.citizensadvice.org.uk).

9. Contact

Recensorium Ltd, Suite A, 82 James Carter Road, Mildenhall, IP28 7DE, United Kingdom.
Refund requests, complaints, and questions about this policy: support@recensorium.com.

Last updated: 6 August 2026