Refund & Cancellation Policy
Because VultPay holds a buyer's payment in escrow until delivery, cancelling and refunding work differently than on an ordinary store. This policy explains when a transaction can be cancelled, when a refund is due, what a refund returns, and how it reaches you. It forms part of the Buyer Terms of Service and the Seller Agreement.
In short: a cancellation unwinds a deal before the seller is paid; a refund returns the buyer's held money. The two overlap - most cancellations produce a refund.
1. When a buyer can cancel
A buyer can cancel a single-payer transaction that has been funded but not yet delivered/released. Once you cancel, the held funds are refunded to you, minus any applicable cancellation fee (Section 5). A buyer cannot cancel a pooled (group-funded) transaction, and cannot cancel after the funds have been released to the seller.
If you paid by card and cancel before the card charge has settled, you are refunded in full with no cancellation fee - the deal never truly landed.
2. When a seller can cancel
A seller can cancel a transaction before it is released. If it was never funded, it simply closes. If it was funded, the buyer is refunded in full - a seller does not keep a cancellation fee on a deal they call off. Repeated seller cancellations of funded deals count as strikes and can temporarily restrict the seller from creating new transactions, because they defeat the protection buyers came for.
3. Automatic refunds (no one has to cancel)
Some refunds happen on their own, under specific conditions:
- Seller doesn't deliver by the fulfilment deadline → the buyer (or every contributor) is automatically refunded.
- A pooled funding target isn't reached by its deadline → every contribution is refunded, back to the method it came from.
- A transaction is cancelled by the system (e.g. an unfunded transaction expiring) → any held funds are returned.
4. Disputes and refunds
If a buyer raises a dispute, the outcome is decided on the evidence and can be a full release to the seller, a full refund to the buyer, or a split. Refunds arising from a dispute follow the dispute decision, not this cancellation flow. See the Buyer Terms of Service for how disputes work and the appeal window.
5. The cancellation fee
A cancellation fee may apply when a buyer cancels a funded deal. The rate is set per category and is shown to the buyer before they pay and fixed for that transaction at the time it is created - it cannot change under you afterwards. The fee is deducted from the refund, so a buyer receives the transaction amount minus the fee.
No cancellation fee applies when: the seller cancels, the system cancels, a card payment is cancelled before it settles, contributors are refunded from a pooled transaction, or a refund results from non-fulfilment or a dispute decision.
6. How refunds are paid
Refunds are returned to the original payment method - the same bank-transfer or card rail the money came in on, and for a bank transfer, to the account it was paid from. VultPay initiates the refund promptly on cancellation, and funds typically settle by the next working day, though the exact timing depends on your bank or card issuer.
7. What a refund does and doesn't return
A refund returns the escrowed transaction amount, less any cancellation fee that applies under Section 5. The payment processing fee charged at funding is non-refundable: it is incurred by the payment processor when the payment is taken, and is not returned on a buyer cancellation. This does not affect your mandatory rights as a consumer under the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act (FCCPA).
8. Milestone and pooled specifics
For milestone transactions, each milestone is refunded independently: funded-but-undelivered milestones are refunded (a buyer cancel deducts each milestone's share of the fee), already-released milestones stay paid, and a milestone that is mid-confirmation or in dispute must resolve on its own before the rest can be cancelled. For pooled transactions, each contributor is only ever refunded their own contribution.
9. Changes to this policy
We may change this policy prospectively, with notice. A change never alters the cancellation fee or terms fixed for a transaction that was already created.
10. Questions and help
You can see the status of a cancellation or refund on the transaction itself. If a refund has not reached you within the expected time, or you have a question about how this policy applies to your transaction, contact VultPay support at support@vultpay.co with the transaction reference.