Refund Policy

This policy applies to fees you pay SIMCOAI LTD for your own subscription, add-ons and prepaid credit. It forms part of your agreement with us under the Terms of Service and sits alongside the Billing and Tax Policy. Where this policy and the Terms of Service differ, the Terms of Service govern.

It has nothing to do with refunds your own customers ask you for. Those are yours to decide and to pay; SIMCOAI records them and never moves money on your behalf.

SIMCOAI is supplied business to business. You confirm when you accept our terms that you are acting in the course of a trade, business, craft or profession and not as a consumer.

On that basis the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 do not apply to your agreement with us. That includes the 14-day right to cancel a distance contract. A free trial we offer is a commercial trial, not a statutory cooling-off period.

So there is no statutory right to a refund if you decide the service is not for you and cancel part way through a period you have paid for. What you are entitled to is set out below, and it is what we actually pay.

If you are in fact a consumer, do not open an account. If you already have one, tell us at hello@simcoai.co.uk and we will close it and refund the fees you have paid for the unused period. Nothing in this policy affects any right or protection that cannot lawfully be excluded.

We refund the part of a period you paid for and we did not supply. In practice that means:

• We withdrew or suspended the service for our own reasons, so the rest of the period you had paid for was not provided.
• We retired or materially reduced a plan or feature you pay for and you cancelled. This is the pro-rata refund promised at clause 7 of the Terms of Service.
• You declined a material change to the terms and cancelled before it took effect.
• We could not supply the service for a prolonged period because of something outside our reasonable control.
• A charge was not owed at all — a duplicate, the wrong amount, or a charge taken after you cancelled. That is returned in full rather than pro-rated, because none of it was due.
• A consumer account is closed under clause 1 of the Terms of Service.

These are the situations we have committed to and they are the ones our systems act on automatically. If you think something else has gone wrong, tell us — this policy is a floor, not a ceiling, and we would rather hear about it.

We say this plainly rather than leaving you to find out:

• Cancelling because you no longer want the service. Your subscription runs to the end of the period you have paid for and you keep access until then. Fees for a period that has already started are not refunded.
• Not using what you paid for. If the service was available and you did not use your allowance, it was still supplied.
• Downtime. Availability failures are compensated with service credits under the Service Level and Support Policy, which says those credits are your sole and exclusive remedy for them. We do not pay a service credit and a refund for the same failure.
• Usage you incurred. Calls, messages and AI usage already delivered are not refunded, including pay-as-you-go charges and phone numbers held on the account.
• Accounts closed for breach of the Terms of Service or the Acceptable Use Policy.

We take what you were actually charged for the current billing period, and return the share of it that was left when the refund became due:

refund = amount charged for the period × (time remaining ÷ length of the period)

Four things about that arithmetic, so you can check ours:

• It uses what you were charged, not the list price of your plan. A discount, a mid-term change or a different tax position all make those two figures differ, and we return what was taken from you.
• It is measured in real time elapsed, not in whole days, so a six-month or annual term is not rounded by up to a day in our favour.
• Any fraction of a penny is rounded in your favour.
• Where a charge was not owed at all, the whole charge is returned rather than a share of it.

A worked example. On a £299 monthly plan charged on the 1st, where we withdraw the service on the 16th of a 31-day month, 16 days of the period remain: £299 × 16 ÷ 31 = £154.33.

Refunds go back to the payment method that was charged. We cannot send a refund to a different card or account, which is a rule of the card schemes rather than a preference of ours.

We issue the refund to our payment provider as soon as it is calculated. How long it then takes to appear on your statement is your bank's timing rather than ours — typically a few working days, and up to ten in some cases.

Refunds are paid in the currency you were charged in. We do not compensate for exchange rate movement between the charge and the refund.

Where a refund reduces a VAT-inclusive charge, we issue a credit note and adjust the VAT accordingly, as required by the VAT Regulations 1995. The credit note reference is shown against the refund in your dashboard and on request.

We do not offset a refund against future invoices unless you ask us to. Prepaid credit is a separate balance and is dealt with in the Billing and Tax Policy.

Every situation in "When we refund" above is something we did, so we do not wait for you to ask or to work out the figure. When one of them is recorded against your account, the pro-rata amount is calculated and returned to the card that was charged.

There is no route by which a refund can be triggered from your side of the product, which is what lets us pay them automatically without creating a way for the payment path to be misused. Larger amounts are calculated automatically and released by a person; that is an internal control and does not change what you are owed.

You can see any refund we have issued, what it was for and how it was calculated, on the Billing page of your dashboard.

Email hello@simcoai.co.uk with your account email and what happened. We aim to respond within one working day and to reach a decision within five.

If we decline, we will tell you why and which part of this policy or the Terms of Service it turns on. If you still disagree, the dispute clause in the Terms of Service applies and nothing here prevents you from taking independent advice or bringing a claim.

Please raise it with us before asking your bank to reverse a payment. A chargeback on a disputed business invoice tends to cost both sides more than a conversation, and we will always look at it properly first.

Claims about a payment are subject to the ordinary limitation period under the Limitation Act 1980. We keep refund and billing records for at least six years for that reason.

We may update this policy. If a change reduces what you are entitled to, we will give at least 30 days' notice by email or dashboard notice before it takes effect, and the version in force when you paid is the one that applies to that payment.

This policy sets out our position; it is not legal advice for your own business. Take independent advice if you need it.