Refunds without the runaround

1. Summary — at a glance

2. Your legal rights (UK consumers)

Nothing in this policy takes away or reduces your statutory rights. The main ones are:

• 14-day cancellation right. Under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 you have 14 days from the day the contract is formed to cancel a distance contract — for no reason and without penalty. Cancelling within this period is different from complaining that something is faulty: it is simply a change of mind.
• If you ask us to start immediately. Where you ask us, in writing, to begin providing a service during the 14-day cancellation period and acknowledge that you will lose your cancellation right once the service is fully supplied, you may still cancel but you pay for the proportion of the service supplied up to the point of cancellation. This is why we ask for your express request before provisioning a hosting or server plan you have asked to be set up straight away.
• Digital content. Where we supply digital content not on a tangible medium (for example an immediate software download or licence key), the cancellation right is lost once supply begins, provided you gave express consent and acknowledged the loss of the right.
• Services must be performed properly. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 a service must be performed with reasonable care and skill, within a reasonable time, and at a reasonable price where none was agreed. If it is not, you are entitled to ask for the service to be redone or for a price reduction (up to the full price). That right is not time-limited in the way the 14-day cancellation right is — it applies to faults.
• Digital content quality. Digital content must be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described, with the same repair/replacement/price-reduction remedies.

To cancel you must tell us clearly — see section 3. If you are a consumer and believe we have not met these standards, contact us; we will investigate and put it right, or explain the position in writing.

3. How to cancel

Cancellation must be in writing so that we both have a record. Send a clear statement — you do not need a special form — to:

Please include:

• your name and the email address on the account;
• the service, plan or domain you are cancelling;
• your invoice number or order reference, if you have it;
• whether you want the service stopped immediately or at the end of the current paid period; and
• if you are cancelling within 14 days as a consumer, a sentence saying that you are cancelling the contract.

We acknowledge cancellations within 2 working days and confirm the date the service will stop and what, if anything, has been charged. If you do not hear from us, message us again — please do not assume a verbal message has been actioned.

4. How to request a refund

1. Send your request to the same contact details, quoting the invoice number.
2. Where the item you are asking about was paid by card or direct debit, we refund to the same method by default. That is the safest route and helps prevent fraud.
3. We check the request against this policy and your account history, then confirm the outcome in writing within 5 working days.
4. If we approve a refund we process it within 14 days of your request (or of our decision where you cancel, we aim to refund within 14 days of the cancellation). We never charge a fee for issuing a refund, and we do not impose a fee on the payment method you used.
5. We issue a credit note showing what was refunded, including any VAT, so your records match.

Where you asked us to begin a service during the 14-day cancellation period, we may deduct an amount for the service actually supplied up to the moment you cancelled, calculated pro rata from the period you paid for. Where a third-party fee (a domain registration, an SSL certificate, a software licence) has already been incurred on your instruction, we deduct that cost, because the supplier does not refund it to us. We will always itemise any deduction.

5. Our 14-day money-back guarantee

In addition to your statutory rights, we offer a voluntary 14-day money-back guarantee on a first purchase of web hosting, VPS, cloud server or business mailbox plans. If the service is not right for you, tell us within 14 days of the order and we refund the subscription fee.

The guarantee applies where all of the following are true:

• it is your first purchase of that type of plan with us, and the plan has not previously been refunded under this guarantee;
• you have complied with these Terms and the Acceptable Use Policy — the guarantee does not apply where a service was used for spam, malware, infringing content or another prohibited purpose;
• you have not consumed an abnormal amount of resources or bandwidth, and the account has not been suspended for non-payment or abuse;
• any domain name involved is paid for separately and is excluded from the refund, as are SSL certificates, software licences, marketing or design work already carried out, and third-party fees we have already paid;
• we receive the request within the 14-day window, in writing.

Business customers: the statutory cooling-off period does not apply to you, but we extend the same 14-day goodwill window to a new plan on the same conditions. It applies once per customer and does not apply to renewals, upgrades of an existing plan, or one-off projects.

6. What is not refundable

Because of the costs we incur at the moment of the order, the following are not refundable once supplied or submitted:

• Domain registration, transfer, renewal and redemption fees. The registry charges us the moment we submit the order and the transaction cannot be reversed. If you cancel before we submit, you pay nothing.
• SSL certificates and software licences once they have been issued, and any third-party licence or API fees passed through at cost.
• Bespoke development, design and marketing work already performed, including hours worked, milestones delivered and accepted, and discovery or specification work.
• Migration, rescue and incident-response work once carried out — although where we cannot fix a fault we will not charge for the unsuccessful attempt without telling you first.
• Periods of service already used on a monthly or annual plan, outside the 14-day guarantee.
• Abuse investigation costs and accounts terminated for a serious breach of the Terms or Acceptable Use Policy.
• Bank and card fees, currency conversion differences, and administration fees we charge for an unjustified chargeback.
• Crypto, credit or top-up balances added to an account and already used.

We will always tell you before you order if something is non-refundable, and any deduction is itemised on the credit note.

7. Custom software and development projects

• Deposit (usually 50%). The deposit reserves your slot and covers discovery, specification and initial design. It is refundable in full only if we have not yet started work — normally within two working days of payment. Once work has begun, the deposit is not refundable, but we will account for the hours it covered and credit any part you have not used against other work.
• Milestones. A milestone payment for work that has not started is refundable. Once a milestone has been delivered and accepted, that payment is not refundable.
• If you stop the project. You pay for the work completed to the date you stop. We deliver what has been completed, and the rights in it transfer to you on payment of the outstanding amount.
• If we stop the project for a reason other than your breach, we refund the unused portion of any pre-payment and hand over the work in progress.
• Faults after delivery. Every project includes a 30-day window in which we fix, at no charge, anything that does not work as specified. This covers defects against the agreed specification, not new features or changes of requirement, which are quoted separately.
• Acceptance. If you do not give feedback within 14 days of a delivery being sent, the delivery is treated as accepted, unless you have raised a specific defect.

8. Service credits for outages

Our Uptime Target for hosting, mailbox and VPS services is 99.9% per calendar month, measured by our monitoring. If we miss it, you may claim a service credit against your next invoice.

Claim within 30 days of the end of the affected month, with the service name and the times you observed the problem; we verify it against our monitoring. Credits are applied to your next invoice, are not paid in cash, and are the sole remedy for missing the Uptime Target.

Excluded from the calculation: planned maintenance notified at least 48 hours in advance; ' 'emergency maintenance needed for security or stability; faults in your own code, content or ' 'configuration; problems in your local network or device; suspension for non-payment or for a ' 'breach of the Acceptable Use Policy; failures of third-party services; denial-of-service and ' 'other attacks; and force majeure events (see section 19 of the Terms).

9. Renewals

• We send renewal reminders to your account email at 30, 14 and 7 days before the renewal date, for subscriptions and for domains.
• Cancel before the renewal date and no renewal charge is made. Cancelling after the renewal date does not automatically reverse the charge — but if you cancel within a few days of a renewal that was taken after you had already told us to cancel, or the charge was clearly an error, we refund it within 7 days of confirming the position.
• If a renewal payment fails we will tell you and retry. If it remains unpaid the service is suspended and may be terminated; a domain may enter its grace and redemption periods.
• Renewal prices are published on our products page and confirmed in the reminder, so there are no surprise increases.

10. Chargebacks and payment disputes

Please contact us before asking your bank or card issuer to reverse a payment. Almost every issue is resolved the same working day, and a chargeback freezes the account while the bank investigates.

• If you raise a chargeback we may suspend the affected service while the dispute is open.
• If a chargeback is raised without contacting us first and is not upheld, we may charge a £25 administration fee and require payment by another method before restoring the service.
• If we made a mistake, we will refund you directly and you can simply cancel the chargeback.
• Repeated unjustified chargebacks may lead us to decline further work.

11. Where we end the contract for breach

If we suspend or terminate your service because of a serious breach — spam, malware, phishing, infringement, illegal content, abuse of our network, or non-payment — fees already paid for the affected service are not refundable, and charges for the period served remain due.

Where we end a service for our own convenience (for example because we retire a plan), we refund pre-paid fees for the period we will not serve, and help you migrate. Where you end a service for our material breach, we refund pre-paid fees for the unserved period and any unused milestone payment.

12. If you are a business customer

• The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 and the consumer provisions of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 do not apply where you order in the course of a business.
• The 14-day money-back guarantee in section 5 is offered voluntarily and may be withdrawn for future orders; it applies once per customer and never to renewals or bespoke work.
• All other parts of this policy apply to business customers in full.
• VAT is added where applicable and refunded where it was charged, in line with HMRC rules. If a refund is due after you have already reclaimed VAT on the invoice, you are responsible for adjusting your VAT return.

13. How long a refund takes

Refunds are made to the original payment method. If that is not possible — for example an expired card — we will ask you to confirm alternative bank details in writing, and we may verify them with you by telephone or video before sending money, to protect you from fraud.

14. Orders we cannot fulfil

If we cannot provide a service you have paid for — a domain that is no longer available, a resource constraint, an order that fails our fraud or sanctions checks, or a service we are unable to provision — we cancel the order and refund everything you paid for it in full, without any deduction, within 14 days. We will tell you why the order could not be fulfilled and, where possible, suggest an alternative.

15. If you disagree with a refund decision

Email info@pocketmaze.site with the subject “Complaint — refund” and your invoice number. We will acknowledge within 3 working days, review the decision independently of the person who made it, and give you a final answer within 30 days.

Consumers keep all statutory rights and may seek advice from Citizens Advice, use an alternative dispute resolution provider, or enforce those rights in court. Business customers should follow section 21 of the Terms.

16. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy to reflect changes in our products, our suppliers or the law. The version and date at the top of the page show the current version. Material changes are notified at least 30 days in advance by email or by a website notice. The policy in force on the date of your order governs that order, unless a later change is more favourable to you or is required by law.

17. Contact us about a refund