Refund Policy

We build things we are willing to stand behind, and when something goes wrong we would rather put it right than hand back the money and walk away. That is not a stalling tactic. A refund leaves you exactly where you started, still needing the thing you came to us for.

Digital goods cannot be returned in any meaningful sense. Once a product is delivered or downloaded, you have it, and we cannot take it back off your servers. So purchases are treated as final once delivered. Exceptional situations do happen though, and this policy sets out exactly which ones we will refund.

Every request is read by a person, not filtered by a rule engine. Where the situation is genuinely unfair to you, we will lean towards you.

We sell two quite different things, and the refund rules are not the same for both.

Third-party costs we paid on your behalf, such as hosting, domains, app store fees and paid licences, are never refundable, because that money has already left us and gone to someone else.

Before anything else, open a ticket. Most problems that feel like grounds for a refund turn out to be an installation step, a server setting or a bug we can patch quickly. Our developers fix the large majority of these within a day.

What helps us solve it fast

• Your order or invoice number.
• The base URL where the product is installed.
• Screenshots or a short screen recording of what is going wrong.
• Temporary website, server or cPanel access, but only where we genuinely need it to diagnose the issue.

We know handing over access takes trust. We ask for it only when there is no other way to see the problem, we use it for nothing except the fix, and you can revoke it the moment we are done.

You have grounds for a refund if any of these apply:

• The product does not work and we cannot fix it. It is substantially non-functional, you gave us a fair chance to investigate, and our team could not resolve it.
• The description materially misled you. A feature we advertised is simply not there, or the product does something fundamentally different from what the listing said.
• Support went silent. You raised a genuine support request through the proper channel and got no response within three (3) business days.
• You were charged twice. Duplicate or accidental double payments are refunded in full, always, no questions asked.

Requests are reviewed individually. Meeting one of these conditions means we will take the request seriously and investigate it properly. It does not mean approval is automatic, because the facts still have to hold up.

We would rather be blunt about this now than disappoint you later. Refunds are normally declined where:

• More than seven (7) days have passed since purchase and no genuine support request was ever raised.
• The purchase was made under a promotion, discount, bundle or campaign marked as non-refundable.
• You simply changed your mind.
• You bought the wrong product and have already downloaded it.
• The purchase was made by an employee, colleague or anyone else you had given access to your account.
• You will not provide the information or temporary access we need to investigate.
• The problem was caused by changes you, your developer or a third-party service made to the product.
• The product works exactly as advertised but does not match your personal expectations or your project's particular requirements.
• The issue sits with your hosting, your server configuration or a third-party service rather than with our product.

That last group is worth dwelling on. "It works but I wanted it to work differently" is a change request, not a fault, and we are usually happy to quote for it.

Custom work is different, because you are buying our time rather than a finished article. Once a designer or engineer has spent a week on your project, that week is gone regardless of what happens next.

• Deposits are not refundable once work has started. The deposit reserves the team and blocks out the schedule, both of which cost us the moment you book them.
• Completed milestones are not refundable. Work delivered and accepted has been paid for and is yours.
• Cancelling midway. You may stop a project at any time. We invoice for work completed and costs already committed up to that point, refund any balance left over, and hand across everything paid for.
• If we fail to deliver. Where we cannot deliver what the agreed scope described, and the fault is genuinely ours, you get a fair refund of the undelivered portion. That is on us and we will not argue about it.

Delays caused by waiting on your content, feedback or approvals are not grounds for a refund. Our Terms of Service set out what each side is responsible for.

Cancel any subscription, retainer or recurring service whenever you like. There is no notice period to trap you and no cancellation penalty.

Cancelling stops future charges. It does not refund payments already taken. Your service stays active until the end of the period you have paid for, so you keep what you bought rather than losing it the moment you cancel.

We do not refund partial months or unused time on a retainer, since that capacity was held for you and could not be sold to anyone else. If a renewal charged you by surprise, tell us within 7 days and we will look at it sympathetically.

• Open a support ticket first and give us a real chance to fix the problem. Almost everything ends here.
• If it cannot be fixed, ask for the refund in that same ticket, or email support@thesoftking.com with your order number, what went wrong, and what you have already tried.
• We acknowledge within 2 business days and may come back with questions.
• You get a decision within 7 business days of us having everything we need, with our reasoning either way.
• If we decline and you disagree, reply and say so. A second person who was not involved in the first decision will review it.

Refunds are paid to the original payment method and to the original payer. We cannot redirect them elsewhere, which is a fraud-prevention rule rather than an inconvenience we invented.

• Refunds may be full or partial, depending on how much of what you bought actually worked and how much you used.
• Approved refunds are issued within 7 business days of approval.
• Your bank or card provider then takes a further 7 to 10 business days to show it. That part is out of our hands.
• A processing fee of up to 10% may be deducted to cover payment gateway and administrative costs, unless the law where you live says otherwise. This is never applied to duplicate charges or to a failure on our side.
• Currency conversion differences and bank charges are not something we can reimburse, since the amount that left your account was set by your bank rather than by us.

Once a refund is processed, the purchase is unwound completely:

• The service or licence is terminated.
• Access to the portal, to updates and to support is revoked.
• You must stop using the product and delete every copy from your servers, devices and repositories.

Continuing to use something you have been refunded for is a breach of our Terms of Service and an infringement of our intellectual property. We do check, and we do act on it.

Please come to us before you go to your bank. A chargeback filed without contacting us first freezes the whole situation: we are obliged to defend it with evidence, your account gets suspended while it runs, and the process takes months to reach an answer we could have given you in a day.

Where a chargeback is raised without a prior support request, we will contest it with our delivery records and ticket history, suspend the account and licence immediately, and may decline future business. None of that is punitive. It is simply what a disputed transaction forces on us.

Talk to us first. We have never refused to look at a request that was put to us fairly.

This policy gets updated as our services change and as payment rules move. The version published here is the one in force.

Your purchase is always judged against the policy that was live on the day you bought, not a version we published afterwards. Changing the rules retrospectively would not be fair, so we do not do it.

If you think you qualify for a refund, or you are simply unsure where you stand, get in touch before doing anything else. We treat every request on its facts and we will always try to land somewhere both sides can live with.

Refund and support requests: support@thesoftking.com
General enquiries: hello@thesoftking.com