Refund Policy

When you get money back, how much, and how to ask. The trial is how you try before you pay; a month you paid for is a month you keep.

Effective date: 14 September 2026Version 1.0Governing law: South Africa

This policy says when you can get money back, how much, and how to ask. It forms part of our Terms of Service. The short version: the free trial is how you try the product before paying; a month you have paid for is a month you keep; we do not refund credits you have used; a charge that should not have happened is refunded in full.

The free trial is the try-before-you-buy
Cancelling a subscription
Consumed credits
Charges that should not have happened
Your cooling-off right under ECTA
Consumer Protection Act
Chargebacks
How to ask for a refund
Governing law

1. The free trial is the try-before-you-buy

Every self-serve tier opens with a seven-day free trial of 20 credits. It takes a card up front and charges nothing until the eighth day. Cancel from inside the product before then and there is nothing to refund, because nothing was taken: the seven days are a free trial on the Paddle subscription itself.

The trial happens once per company. We cannot extend it, restart it, or grant a second one, so please use it to ask the questions you came to ask. Twenty credits is twenty questions against one part of the business, or five that span it.

2. Cancelling a subscription

An administrator can cancel at any time from inside the product, with no notice period and no fee.

Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for. You keep access until then and no further charge is taken. We do not refund the remainder of a month already charged: a month you paid for is a month you keep, and cutting it short on the click is how a cancellation becomes a dispute. If you cancelled by mistake, tell us before the period ends and we will reinstate you. Because Paddle is the merchant of record for card payments, any refund this policy does grant on a card transaction is issued through Paddle, to the card that was charged.

Enterprise contracts say what notice and refund apply to them.

3. Consumed credits

A credit is spent when a question is answered or a sync files documents. Each spends real work against real systems that we pay for as it runs, so credits that have been used are not refunded, whether or not you found the answer useful, and unused credits do not roll over or convert to money. Two things are deliberately never charged: a question that could not be answered, and a sync that filed nothing. If you believe a question was billed that produced no answer, tell us and we will check the run and correct the credit.

4. Charges that should not have happened

The following are refunded in full, without argument, once we have confirmed them with Paddle:

a duplicate charge for the same month;
a charge after a cancellation Paddle had confirmed;
a charge for a tier other than the one you were on;
a charge taken during the trial;
any charge we cannot match to a subscription you agreed to.

We will also refund in full a month in which the service was unavailable for a material part of the month because of a failure on our side, and pro rata a shorter outage, on request. A connector that cannot connect because of a limit on the vendor's side, or a credential that was granted with too narrow a scope, is not an outage.

5. Your cooling-off right under ECTA

Section 44 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 gives a consumer who enters into an electronic transaction the right to cancel it without reason and without penalty within seven days after the agreement was concluded, and to be refunded within 30 days of cancelling. Under ECTA a consumer is a natural person who buys as an end user; it does not apply to a company. It also does not apply, under section 42(2)(d), to services which began with the consumer's consent before the end of the seven-day period.

How that applies here:

During the trial the cooling-off period and the trial overlap: cancelling in the first seven days charges nothing, whoever you are, so the right is satisfied by the trial itself.
After the first charge, the service has begun with your consent (you asked questions during the trial and let the subscription start), so section 44 no longer gives a right to cancel that month for a refund. Where you are a natural person and have not used the service at all in the first seven days after the first charge, we will nonetheless treat a cancellation in that window as a section 44 cancellation and refund that charge in full.
A company is not a consumer under ECTA and has no cooling-off right; sections 2 to 4 apply instead.

6. Consumer Protection Act

The Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 applies to you if you are a natural person, or a juristic person whose asset value or annual turnover is below the threshold under section 6 of the Act (currently R2 million). It does not apply to a company at or above that threshold, and the Terms of Service say so. Where it does apply:

Section 17 (cancellation of advance bookings). A subscription is not an advance booking or reservation, but to the extent a court treats a prepaid month as one, we charge no cancellation fee at all, which is less than the reasonable charge section 17 would allow, and we refund any part of a prepayment section 17(5) would require.
Section 14 (fixed-term agreements). Your subscription is month to month, not fixed term, so no 20-business-day notice and no early-cancellation charge apply.
Sections 54 and 55 (quality of service). If the service is not provided with the quality a reasonable person would expect, you may ask us to remedy it or refund a reasonable portion of the price, and we will.
Section 22. This policy is written in plain language so that you can understand it without help.

7. Chargebacks

If you dispute a card charge with your card issuer rather than with us, Paddle, as merchant of record, will handle the dispute with the issuer and withhold the amount from us while it is decided, and we will give Paddle the subscription record. Please ask us first: every refund in sections 2 to 5 is faster than a chargeback and does not put your access at risk. Where a chargeback is raised for a charge that this policy would have refunded, we will accept it. Where one is raised for a month that was used, we will contest it, and if the issuer finds for us we may end the subscription for non-payment under the Terms of Service.

8. How to ask for a refund

Email info@synapticintelligence.ai with the subject "Refund", from an administrator's address, and tell us your company name, the date and amount of the charge, and which section of this policy you are relying on if you know. You do not need to give a reason where this policy says a refund is due without one.

We will acknowledge within two business days and decide within ten business days. An approved refund is issued through Paddle to the card the charge came from, within five business days of the decision; how long it then takes to appear on your statement is Paddle's and your card issuer's, typically five to ten business days. We do not refund in cash or to a different card.

Where the law gives you a longer period or a larger refund than this policy, the law applies.

9. Governing law

This policy is governed by the law of the Republic of South Africa and is written in plain language as section 22 of the Consumer Protection Act requires. If you disagree with a refund decision, the dispute process in clause 18 of the Terms of Service applies, and a consumer under the CPA may also approach the National Consumer Commission.