Refund Policy

The short version

• Cancel a retainer before work starts on a month and that month is refunded in full. Tell us within 5 working days of the invoice date and before delivery has begun.
• Once a month's work is underway, that month is not refundable — but your 30 days' notice means you are never billed for a month you did not choose to take.
• Project deposits are refundable until we schedule the work. After that, you pay for what has actually been produced.
• Ad spend is never refundable by us. It goes from you to Google or Meta and never touches our accounts.
• If we made the mistake — we failed to deliver something you paid for, double-charged you, or billed the wrong amount — you get your money back, in full, without an argument.
• We do not offer a results-based money-back guarantee, and section nine explains why we think you should be suspicious of anyone who does.

What this covers

This policy applies to fees invoiced by Mind Your Ads for services described in a proposal or statement of work. It sits alongside our terms and conditions; where your signed agreement says something different, that agreement governs.

It does not cover money paid to anyone else — advertising platforms, software vendors, domain registrars or payment processors. Those are governed by their own policies, covered under ad spend and third-party costs.

Monthly retainers

Retainers are invoiced monthly in advance and run month to month, with 30 days' written notice on either side.

• Before work begins on the month: full refund, if you tell us within 5 working days of the invoice date and we have not yet started that month's work. In practice this is the window between paying and the month's work kicking off.
• Once the month's work has begun: that month is not refundable. Retained work is a block of time and attention that is committed and largely spent early in the month, not an hourly meter.
• Notice given mid-month: the current month runs to its end and the following month is your notice period, invoiced as normal and worked as normal. Nothing beyond that is billed.
• Onboarding fees, where charged, cover audit and setup work delivered up front. They are refundable only in the 5-day window above, before that work begins.
• Paused engagements: if we agree to pause rather than end, unused prepaid fees are held as credit against the resumed engagement for up to 6 months, and refunded in full if you decide not to resume within that period.

One thing we will not do is keep invoicing a retainer we do not believe is working. If a channel is not earning its fee, we would rather say so and change the plan — or end it — than defend it to month twelve.

Project work

Websites, apps and other fixed-scope projects are invoiced against the milestone schedule in your statement of work, usually starting with a deposit.

• "Work in progress" is assessed against the deliverables in your statement of work, not against hours logged. We will show you what was produced.
• Anything you have paid for in full is transferred to you on cancellation. We do not withhold paid-for work as leverage.
• If a project stalls on your side for more than 60 days, we may invoice work completed to that point. That is not a cancellation, and the balance stays available to you when you restart.
• Additional rounds of revision beyond the number in your statement of work are quoted and approved separately, and are not refundable once produced.

Ad spend

Advertising spend is paid by you, directly to the platform, from your own account and your own payment method. It never passes through Mind Your Ads, so we cannot refund it.

• Refunds, credits and invalid-click adjustments for ad spend are governed by Google's, Meta's or the relevant platform's policies, and are issued by them into your account.
• Where we believe you are owed a credit — invalid traffic, a billing error, a platform fault — we will pursue it on your behalf as part of the engagement, at no extra fee. We cannot promise the platform will agree.
• Spend already delivered is not recoverable simply because the campaign underperformed. That is the nature of buying media.
• If spend ran outside an approved budget because of an error on our side, we will make that right — see when we do refund.

This arrangement is deliberate. It is the only structure in which you can independently verify what was spent, which is also why we never mark media up or bill it through us.

Third-party costs

Stock assets, fonts, premium plugins, software subscriptions, hosting, domains and similar are either bought in your name or passed through at cost with your prior approval. Once purchased they follow the vendor's refund policy, not ours, and we will point you to it and help you claim where we can.

When we do refund

These are not discretionary. If any of them applies, the money comes back.

• We charged you twice, or charged the wrong amount. Refunded in full within 7 working days of the error being identified, by us or by you.
• We invoiced for a service you never received. Refunded in full.
• We failed to deliver a paid deliverable and cannot put it right within a reasonable agreed period. Refunded in proportion to what was not delivered.
• We spent budget outside what you approved because of our error. We cover the difference — this is a payment from us, since the spend itself sits with the platform.
• You cancelled within the windows above and we started work anyway.
• We end the engagement ourselves for a reason that is not your breach. Any prepaid fees for work not yet performed are returned in full.

When we do not

• Because results fell short of hope. Campaign performance depends on your pricing, your market, your competitors' budgets, your sales follow-up and platform behaviour. We charge for work performed with skill and care, and we report honestly on how it went, including when it went badly.
• For work already performed in a month or milestone that was underway.
• For ad spend, for the reasons set out above.
• Where delay or failure was caused on your side — access not granted, approvals not given, content not supplied, invoices unpaid.
• Where you changed direction and the work already produced no longer suits. We will happily rescope forwards; we cannot un-perform what was done.
• Where an account was suspended or ads disapproved because of your product, claims or landing page, after we raised the risk with you.
• Where the engagement ended for your material breach of our terms.

Why there is no results guarantee

Agencies that offer a money-back guarantee on results are doing one of three things, and it is worth knowing which before the promise persuades you.

• Defining "results" so loosely that the guarantee can always be claimed to have been met — traffic that was already yours, branded searches, impressions, or rankings for terms nobody searches.
• Pricing the guarantee into the fee, so you pay a premium for insurance against their own underperformance.
• Steering the work towards whatever hits the guaranteed metric fastest, which is rarely what grows the business — heavy remarketing, brand bidding, and discount-led offers that borrow from next quarter.

We would rather do it the other way round: no lock-in, 30 days' notice, published pricing, honest reporting, and the freedom to leave the moment you think it is not working. That is a stronger protection than a guarantee, because it costs us something real every month.

How to request a refund

1. Email contact@mindyourads.com with Refund request in the subject line. Tell us the invoice number and what happened. You do not need to quote this policy.
2. We acknowledge within 3 working days.
3. We review — which usually means looking at what was delivered against what was invoiced — and give you a written decision within 10 working days, with our reasoning either way.
4. Approved refunds are issued within 7 working days of the decision, to the original payment method wherever possible.
5. Banks and gateways then take their own time: typically 5–10 working days, sometimes longer for international transfers. We will send you the transaction reference so you can chase it.

If you disagree with the decision, say so and it will be reviewed by someone who was not involved in it. After that, the dispute process in our terms and conditions applies.

Chargebacks

If you think you have been wrongly charged, please raise it with us before raising it with your bank. A chargeback takes weeks, costs both sides a fee, and is usually resolved less well than an email would have been.

We will not treat a good-faith dispute as a breach. Where a chargeback is filed on an invoice for work genuinely delivered, we will provide the payment provider with the delivery evidence, and any fees charged to us may be added to the outstanding balance. Where the chargeback turns out to be right, we will say so and stop there.

Tax and currency

• Refunds are issued in the currency of the original invoice. We are not responsible for exchange-rate movement between payment and refund.
• Bank charges and payment-gateway fees deducted at the time of payment are generally not recoverable from the provider and are deducted from the refunded amount, except where the refund is due to our error — in which case we absorb them.
• GST or other taxes are refunded in proportion to the refunded fee, and a credit note is issued so your accounts reconcile.

Contact

Refund questions or requests: contact@mindyourads.com, or the phone numbers on our contact page. A person reads these, not a queue.

This policy is written in plain language for readability, and does not affect any statutory rights you have that cannot be excluded by agreement.