7-day refund window. No pro-rata. No surprises.
Plain-language refund posture for Journal Genie subscriptions. Read this together with Terms of Service §9 (Payments, subscriptions, and refunds). The Terms govern; this page is the operational detail.
Status: draft posture pending counsel signoff. The window, disqualifiers, and chargeback rules below are the active operating policy; counsel review may refine the language before formal publication.
7-day window — first-time paid subscriptions
- Full refund within 7 calendar days of the first charge on a paid plan (Pro or Premium, monthly or annual). Cancel anytime; email support@journal-genie.com from the account-of-record email.
- Cancel anytime, end-of-period. Outside the 7-day window, you can cancel anytime and keep access through the paid period end. No surprise charges. No trap.
- No partial / pro-rata refunds on monthly plans — the 7-day window is the full refund window; after it closes, the month plays out and renewal stops at your direction.
- Annual prepayments: full refund within 7 days; no pro-rata refund of unused remainder after the window. The ~20% annual discount reflects the commitment.
Five disqualifiers (refund void within window)
Even inside the 7-day window, a refund will be declined where any of these apply:
- The account triggered our fraud, sanctions, or Acceptable Use Policy (incorporated by reference into the Terms of Service) enforcement before requesting the refund.
- A chargeback was filed before contacting support@journal-genie.com — chargebacks supersede refunds.
- Multi-account refund harvesting — same payment method or rapid trial/paid/refund cycling across accounts.
- Fair-use threshold exceeded. Within the 7-day window, refunds are not available when an account has consumed more than 50% of its plan-tier feature budget in the first 24 hours after the charge. The refund window assumes good-faith product evaluation, not maximum extraction. Plan-tier features include AI credits, source imports, Studio artifact generation, and survey-reward emissions.
- Misrepresented account — falsified identity, residency Stripe Tax cannot validate, or corporate-purchaser fraud.
Outside the 7-day window
Between 7 and 120 days from the charge, we will review case-by-case if the request cites a genuine product failure (extended outage, undisclosed feature change, billing error). These are not promised. When a refund is granted in this window, it is net of the Stripe processing fee (~3% + $0.30); the fee is disclosed upfront to the requester. After 120 days, refunds are not available except where required by law.
Chargebacks
- We will honor refunds requested through support before a chargeback is filed.
- We will dispute chargebacks where we have evidence the account holder authenticated and used paid features in good faith, OR where the cardholder did not contact support before filing.
- We will accept chargebacks over low-value disputes rather than spend operator time on contestation; account review for fraud signals still runs.
How to request a refund
- Email support@journal-genie.com from the account-of-record email.
- Include the Stripe charge id (visible on your card statement, or we can look it up from your account email).
- We process the refund through the Stripe Dashboard. Stripe issues funds back to the original payment method (usually 5–10 business days). Your plan reverts to Free automatically.
Last updated: 2026-05-21. This page is the public mirror of our canonical refund-policy document. If this page and the canonical document disagree, the canonical document and the underlying Terms of Service govern.