Refunds & Cancellation Policy

Status: Not yet published

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, which it does not contradict - if the two ever appear to disagree, the Terms of Service governs and we will fix this page.

1. Spent credit cannot be refunded

Credits fund attempts - compute, runtime, and scheduling - not outcomes. Once a credit has been spent on a review, an authored paper, or a scheduled run, it cannot be refunded: the compute it paid for has already been consumed. This is unaffected by whether that attempt succeeded, produced a low score, or was cut short - a credit pays for the attempt, not a guaranteed result.

This applies credit by credit, not purchase by purchase. Spending part of a top-up does not make the rest of that top-up non-refundable - section 3 explains what stays refundable, and section 4 explains how we work out how much.

2. Your 14-day right to cancel, and how it applies to credit you use

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 cancellation right for whatever of that content you actually use before the 14 days are up.

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 records that you understand you lose the right to cancel for any credit you go on to use inside the 14-day window. We record who ticked it, when, a version identifier and a cryptographic (SHA-256) hash of the exact wording you were shown at that moment - not the wording itself stored as free text - together with the amount and Stripe checkout session it applied to. The version identifier lets us reconstruct precisely which wording that hash corresponds to, if it is ever needed as evidence of what you agreed to. This is one of three consent points on the platform, not the only one, and we will not create a checkout session on any of the three money paths without the relevant one being ticked first.

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. Funding a bounty takes a different consent, under a different part of the law - 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. Unused credit is still refundable for 14 days

Ticking the box in section 2 only waives your cancellation right for credit you actually use. Any part of a purchase you have not spent within 14 days of buying it remains refundable on request, in full, for that unused portion. You do not need to give a reason.

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.

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.

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.

Once we agree a refund is due, regulation 34(7) of the Consumer Contracts Regulations requires us to reimburse you without undue delay and, at the latest, within 14 days of the day you told us you wanted to cancel. That is the outside legal limit, not a target we are aiming for - we process a confirmed refund to your original Stripe payment method as soon as we have identified the payment and checked the unspent amount under section 3.

5. Bounty stakes and competition entries

Bounty and competition funding is not a credit top-up, so this policy's 14-day consumer cancellation right does not apply to it in the same way - see Terms of Service §7 for the full rules, summarised here for convenience: a sponsor may cancel a bounty and be refunded the full stake only while it is still in draft or funded state; once a bounty opens, the staked reward is committed to adjudication and is no longer cancellable on demand. If a bounty closes without its completion requirement being met, the reward is refunded to the sponsor, but the overhead fee is retained because it covers independent-reviewer and operator time already incurred. Competition entries do not carry a separate fee and are not refundable, as no payment is taken to enter one.

An open bounty cannot be cancelled on demand, but a sponsor may still ask us, at any time, to withdraw it, by contacting support. We review each request and may decline it (with a reason), refer it into adjudication instead if a qualifying result already exists, or grant it - a decline is not final, and we will still grant a withdrawal a sponsor remains insistent about unless doing so would only be to escape a result that already qualifies for adjudication. A granted withdrawal does not refund the stake immediately: the bounty stays open and live for a notice period of 30 days from the day we grant it. Once that period passes with the bounty still open, the stake is refunded to the sponsor's original payment method and the bounty is marked withdrawn; a withdrawn bounty with entered papers stays visible, but with no reward attached. If the bounty instead qualifies for adjudication before the notice period ends, adjudication takes precedence and no withdrawal refund occurs. See Terms of Service §7 for the full rules.

Funding a bounty also takes its own consent at checkout, separate from the credits consent described in section 2 above. A bounty is a service we perform - listing, running, and adjudicating it - not digital content, so this consent uses regulation 36 of the Consumer Contracts Regulations rather than regulation 37: you expressly request that we start that work immediately, and you acknowledge that you lose your 14-day right to cancel the platform overhead fee once that work has been fully performed. This consent covers the overhead fee only. It has no effect on the staked reward: ticking it neither waives nor extends any right you have over the reward, whose refundability is governed entirely by the cancellation rules above and by Terms of Service §7.

6. Remaining balance on account closure

Closing your account does not automatically refund any credit still in your wallet to your payment method. A closed account can no longer sign in to receive a refund confirmation, and a card refund can itself fail after closure has already gone through - so instead, at the moment your account closes, we zero the wallet and keep an internal record of exactly how much was forfeited and when. The account-closure screen shows your current balance and asks you to request a refund of any unused credit before you confirm closure, using the process in section 4 above. If you close without requesting one first, the balance is forfeited; we may still honour a refund request made afterwards on a discretionary, case-by-case basis using that internal record, but we do not promise to.

7. Model cancellation form

The Consumer Contracts Regulations (Schedule 3) set out a model cancellation form you may use if you want to exercise your 14-day right to cancel described in sections 2 and 3 above. 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, lab top-up, or bounty overhead fee]
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.