Refund policy: what we refund and what we do not

Recurring services (SMTP relay, VPS, dedicated, monitoring)

All recurring services are billed monthly in advance. If you cancel mid-month, we refund the unused portion of the current month on a pro-rata basis, calculated to the day of cancellation notice. Cancellation takes effect immediately on receipt of a cancellation message through Telegram or your support ticket; we do not require advance notice or specific cancellation windows.

Pro-rata calculation: monthly fee divided by 30, multiplied by days remaining in the billing period. Example: a €99/month SMTP relay tier cancelled on day 18 of a 30-day billing period refunds €99 ÷ 30 × 12 = €39.60.

Refunds are issued in the original payment cryptocurrency at the exchange rate prevailing at the time of original payment. We do not absorb cryptocurrency volatility either direction; if BTC has risen since your payment, you receive the same nominal BTC amount as the EUR pro-rata calculation specified at billing time.

One-time services (setup, migration, audit)

Setup services are quoted as fixed prices for a defined scope. They are refundable in full only before work begins. Once we start delivery, refunds are calculated against the delivered scope:

If we have not begun the work, full refund within 5 business days.
If we have begun but completed under 30% of the scoped work, 70% refund.
If we have completed 30-70% of scoped work, 30% refund.
If we have completed over 70% of scoped work, no refund; we deliver remaining scope.

"Begun" means we have allocated engineering time to the project (which we track and can demonstrate if requested). For most setup work, "begun" happens within 24-48 hours of confirmed payment.

Service failure on our side

If we fail to deliver the service to the agreed specification (provisioning delays exceeding the quoted window, hardware not matching specification, network or SLA breaches as defined in your contract), we refund the affected billing period in full and additionally provide service credit equal to the out-of-spec period.

We do not refund based on customer-side issues: list quality problems causing blocklist entries, content patterns causing spam folder placement, mailbox configuration errors, or third-party DNS misconfiguration that bypasses our infrastructure. Where ambiguity exists, we err toward refunding; we would rather lose a small amount than build a reputation for litigating edge cases.

What we do not refund

Pass-through costs already paid to upstream providers (datacenter pre-pay, IP block purchases, third-party licensing fees) where these are non-recoverable from our side.
Cryptocurrency conversion losses or gains. We bill in EUR at the rate at invoice time; we refund at the same EUR rate. Variance in the underlying crypto exchange rate is your exposure on payment and on refund.
Bandwidth overages already consumed.
Work delivered and accepted, where "accepted" means you have tested or used the deliverable for more than 14 days without raising a defect.
Cancellations driven by changes in your business or regulatory environment unrelated to our service quality.

How to request a refund

Send a cancellation or refund request through Telegram or open a support ticket. Include the service or invoice ID. We respond within 24-72 hours during operating hours with the calculated refund amount and the address or invoice for the refund transaction. Refund payments are typically initiated within 5 business days of agreement and settle on the underlying chain according to that chain's confirmation times.

We do not require justification or reasoning for cancellation, and we do not attempt retention conversations. If you want to leave, you leave; if you want to give feedback on why, we appreciate it but do not require it.

Disputes

Where calculations or scope are disputed, the customer-facing calculation is final unless evidence of error is provided. We do not pursue chargebacks or external dispute mechanisms against customers; we expect the same in the other direction since cryptocurrency payments do not have chargeback infrastructure regardless. The Telegram channel and ticket history are the authoritative record of agreed scope and delivery.

Annual prepayment refunds

Annual prepayment is available on recurring services and produces a 5% discount for the prepayment commitment. The discount reflects the operational value to us of receiving the year payment upfront rather than locking the customer in; we do not believe lock-in is real or valuable, since customers stay because the service works rather than because they paid in advance.

Refunds on prepaid annual terms follow a hybrid calculation. The unused portion is refunded pro-rata at the discounted annual rate for any complete months remaining, and pro-rata to the day for the partial month at the time of cancellation. We do not retroactively apply the 5% prepayment discount forfeit on the months actually used; the discount stays with the months consumed and the refund covers what remains. This is materially more favourable than the typical industry practice of clawing back discounts on cancellation, and it reflects our position that customers should be able to leave without penalty.

Example: a customer paying for 12 months of €99 SMTP relay at the 5% annual discount paid €1,128.60 (12 × €99 × 0.95). Cancellation at the end of month 7 with 5 months remaining refunds 5 × €94.05 (the discounted monthly rate) = €470.25. The customer is not retroactively charged the difference between the full €99 monthly rate and the discounted €94.05 on the seven months consumed.

Refund timing and execution

Once a refund amount is agreed, the refund payment is initiated within 5 business days of agreement. The settlement time on the underlying chain depends on the cryptocurrency selected for the refund. Bitcoin on-chain settles within 10-60 minutes once initiated. Lightning Network settles within seconds. Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens settle within 1-5 minutes depending on gas conditions. Monero settles within 20-40 minutes for the 10-confirmation requirement we apply to outbound payments. Stablecoins on fast chains (Solana, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum) settle within 1-2 minutes.

We refund to the same wallet address the original payment came from by default. Customers can request a different destination address; in that case we may require additional verification through Telegram or ticket to confirm the address is under the customer control. The verification step exists to prevent account-takeover scenarios where an attacker could redirect refunds to their own wallet.

Network fees on refund transactions are paid by us rather than deducted from the refund amount. The customer receives the full calculated refund amount; we cover the on-chain fees from operating expense. For very small refunds (under €5 equivalent) where on-chain fees would exceed the refund itself on slow chains, we suggest accepting service credit instead of an on-chain refund, or batching the refund with a future invoice as credit.

Service credit as an alternative to cash refund

Customers can elect to receive service credit instead of a cryptocurrency refund. Service credit is applied against future invoices and does not expire. It is available at the same rate as the cash refund would be, with an additional 10% bonus for customers who choose this option. The bonus reflects the operational value to us of retaining the funds in customer balance rather than refunding them on chain, and the value to customers of avoiding the complexity of receiving and tracking cryptocurrency refunds.

Service credit transfers between services within the same customer account. A customer with credit from a cancelled VPS can apply that credit against a new SMTP relay subscription, against one-time audit work, against any recurring or one-time service we offer. Credit does not transfer between customer accounts and is not assignable to third parties. Customers who eventually want to convert unused service credit back to cryptocurrency can do so at any time at the original credit rate without the bonus (since the bonus reflected retention rather than discount).

Common questions about refunds

Can I get a refund on a service I have been using for months if I am unhappy?

For recurring services we refund the unused portion of the current billing period regardless of how long the customer has been on the service. We do not refund previously consumed months even if the customer becomes unhappy in retrospect, because the service was delivered during those months and the consumption is recorded against the billing. The exception is documented service failure on our side, which produces full-period refunds for the affected periods regardless of when the failure is identified.

What if cryptocurrency prices have changed dramatically since I paid?

The refund amount is calculated in EUR at the original invoice rate, then converted to the cryptocurrency of refund at the rate prevailing at the time of refund. If BTC has doubled since you paid, you receive the EUR equivalent in half as much BTC. The structural reason is that we billed and accepted payment based on EUR value; volatility on either side of that calculation is not absorbed by us. Customers concerned about volatility on the refund side can request a stablecoin refund instead, regardless of which cryptocurrency was used for the original payment.

Do you charge cancellation fees or early termination penalties?

No. We do not charge cancellation fees and do not impose early termination penalties on any service tier or contract length, including annual prepaid terms. The structural reason is that the cost of providing service does not vary by customer commitment length, so the cost of stopping service should not vary either. Customers who cancel mid-contract receive the unused-portion refund as calculated; that calculation is the full financial consequence of cancellation from our side.

How does refund work if the original payment was via Lightning Network?

Lightning Network refunds work the same as on-chain Bitcoin refunds in terms of calculation and timing commitment. The customer provides a Lightning invoice for the refund amount through Telegram or ticket, and we pay the invoice. Most modern wallets handle invoice generation natively. For amounts above typical channel capacities (over a few thousand euros equivalent in BTC), we may suggest splitting the refund into multiple Lightning invoices or using on-chain Bitcoin instead; this is a routing limitation rather than a policy choice.

Can I get a refund if you suspend my account for AUP violation?

For categorical AUP violations (CSAM, malware C2, phishing infrastructure, denial-of-service attack infrastructure, fraud operations) suspension is immediate and no refund is issued for the affected period because the violation breaches the underlying service agreement. For non-categorical violations (operational issues, ambiguous content questions, list quality problems triggering complaint volume) suspension includes the opportunity to remediate before termination; if termination ultimately occurs the unused portion of the current billing period is refunded pro-rata. The AUP documents the specific categories and the procedural distinctions between them.