This policy takes effect at checkout activation and applies to every purchase made from that point onward.

Refunds & Withdrawal

This page sets out the Registry's refund handling and the statutory right of withdrawal for digital content delivered immediately. It states what will actually happen, not what is merely permitted.

The 14-day right of withdrawal

A consumer buying digital content or a digital service online has a statutory right to withdraw from the contract within 14 days, without giving a reason. That right applies to purchases from the Registry.

Every assessment sold by the Registry is delivered immediately: the certificate is issued at its URL the moment checkout completes. To make that possible, the order form asks the buyer to expressly request that performance begin immediately and to acknowledge that the right of withdrawal is lost once the service has been fully performed. Both are separate, un-ticked statements; delivery follows only after the buyer gives them.

The right of withdrawal is therefore lost once the assessment has been delivered in full, because at that moment the service has been fully performed following the buyer's express request and acknowledgment. This is the standard position for immediately delivered digital services under EU consumer law, not a Registry-specific restriction.

An order that has been paid but not yet delivered can still be withdrawn. Send a withdrawal notice to the address listed at /contact, quoting the order reference. A withdrawal in that situation is honoured with a full refund of the amount paid, returned to the original payment method.

The statutory right of withdrawal belongs to consumers as defined in EU consumer law. Business purchasers do not hold it, and the refund cases below apply to them instead.

When a refund is issued

Independently of the withdrawal position above, the Registry issues a refund in the following cases:

  • 🔁 Duplicate charge — the same order was charged more than once.
  • 🔍 Non-delivery — payment was completed but no certificate was issued.
  • 📊 Processing error — a documented fault in checkout or delivery prevented the purchaser from receiving what was paid for.

Outside these cases, a delivered assessment is not refunded. The content of an assessment — the verdict it returns, the window it recommends, or the risk factors it names — is not grounds for a refund, because the assessment delivered is the assessment the method produces for the parameters submitted. The method is published in full at /method before purchase.

These cases do not limit a consumer's mandatory statutory rights where the service delivered is not what was contracted for.

What permanence covers

Certificate content is immutable and permanently on record. Once issued, a certificate's number, issue time, parameters, and computed result are never altered, recomputed, or withdrawn.

Continuous availability of the certificate URL is a best-effort service commitment, not a warranty in perpetuity. The Registry undertakes to make reasonable efforts to keep every issued certificate reachable at its address indefinitely, but does not warrant uninterrupted availability for any specified period. A temporary outage at a certificate URL is not by itself a refund case under the list above.

How to request a refund

Refund requests, withdrawal notices, and reports of a payment-processing error are sent to the address listed at /contact. Include the order reference and, where applicable, the certificate URL.

Refunds are returned through Stripe, the Registry's payment processor, to the original payment method used at checkout. Where a refund follows a valid withdrawal, it is made without undue delay and no later than 14 days after the Registry is informed of the withdrawal decision. Other accepted refunds are made without undue delay. The time the payment method itself takes to post the credit is outside the Registry's control.