Legal

Refund Policy

⚠️ DRAFT — NOT LEGAL ADVICE — NOT FOR PUBLICATION
This document was prepared by a non-lawyer as preparatory material for a legal consultation. It has not been reviewed by a qualified lawyer.
Do not publish this document, and do not rely on it, until a qualified lawyer admitted in the relevant jurisdiction has reviewed and approved it.
All PLACEHOLDER markers must be completed before review. Clauses marked ⚠️ LAWYER need a specific decision.
Draft prepared: 2026-09-02.

Effective date: 2026-09-22 Applies to: Assay Grade, sold at https://assaygrade.com

The short version

Buy it. Read it. If it is not what you expected, email hello@assaygrade.com within 30 days and we refund you. No form, no interrogation, no hoops.

That is a promise we make voluntarily. It is more than the law requires us to give you for digital content you get access to immediately. The rest of this page explains both parts honestly: what the law actually says, and what we do on top of it.

1. Why this page has two halves

Most refund policies for digital products are quietly misleading in one of two directions. Either they say "all sales final" and hide behind the small print, or they advertise a guarantee without saying what your actual legal position is.

We are selling a product whose whole point is grading evidence honestly, including the evidence that does not support what people want to hear. It would be strange to be dishonest about our own refund terms.

So this page has two halves:

	What it is	Where it comes from
Part A	The legal position on the statutory right of withdrawal	EU and UK law
Part B	Our 30-day satisfaction guarantee	A promise we choose to make

Part B is broader than Part A. In practice, Part B is the one you will use.

PART A — The legal position

2. The 14-day right of withdrawal, and why it does not survive instant access

2.1. If you are a consumer in the EU or the EEA, Directive 2011/83/EU normally gives you 14 days to withdraw from a distance contract, without giving a reason and without penalty. If you are in the UK, the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 give you the same 14 days.

2.2. There is an exception for digital content supplied without a physical medium — which is exactly what this Product is.

2.3. Under Article 16(m) of Directive 2011/83/EU (as amended by Directive (EU) 2019/2161), and under regulation 37 of the UK Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, the right of withdrawal is lost once performance has begun, provided all of the following are true:

(a) you gave prior express consent for us to start supplying the content immediately, before the 14-day period expired; (b) you acknowledged that by doing so you would lose your right of withdrawal; and (c) we gave you confirmation of the contract on a durable medium, including confirmation of (a) and (b).

2.4. At our checkout you will see an unticked checkbox that you must tick yourself:

☐ I request immediate access to the digital content and I acknowledge that I will lose my right of withdrawal once access begins.

You will also see that the payment button says "Buy now — pay $39", so it is unambiguous that clicking it creates a payment obligation.

2.5. After you buy, we email you a confirmation that repeats your consent and your acknowledgement. Keep it. That email is the durable-medium confirmation required by Article 16(m)(iii) and by regulation 16 of the UK Regulations.

2.6. The honest summary of Part A: once you tick that box and get access, your statutory 14-day withdrawal right is gone. That is what the law allows, and that is what the checkbox does.

2.7. Full detail — including a model withdrawal form and what happens if we ever fail to obtain your consent and acknowledgement properly — is in our separate Right of Withdrawal Notice. If we got the checkout mechanism wrong in your case, you keep the full 14-day right and you bear no cost. That notice explains it.

⚠️ LAWYER: confirm (i) the exact checkbox wording, (ii) that Link's checkout can carry a custom, unticked consent field — the research file flags this as unverified for both candidate providers — and (iii) that if the consent is instead captured on our own page before handoff, the timestamped record and the confirmation email together satisfy Art. 16(m)(iii). If the consent cannot be captured properly, Part A does not work at all and this document must be rewritten.

3. What Part A does not take away

3.1. Losing the withdrawal right is not the same as losing all your rights. It is narrow. It only removes the no-reason, 14-day cancellation.

3.2. You keep every other statutory right, including:

(a) your rights if the Product is faulty, not as described, or not fit for purpose — under Directive (EU) 2019/770 in the EU, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 in the UK, and equivalent rules elsewhere. If the content does not conform to the contract, you can require it to be brought into conformity, or ask for a price reduction or a refund. Those rights are not time-limited to 14 days and we cannot contract out of them; (b) your rights if you were misled about what you were buying; (c) your rights if the payment was taken in error, duplicated, or unauthorised; (d) any rights your national law gives you that cannot be excluded.

3.3. If you are in Australia, our goods and services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law, and this policy does not limit them.

3.4. If you are in the US or Canada, there is no general federal statutory cooling-off right for online digital purchases — but the guarantee in Part B applies to you exactly as it does to everyone else, and a published refund policy is binding on us.

PART B — Our 30-day satisfaction guarantee

4. The guarantee

4.1. If you are not satisfied with Assay Grade for any reason, tell us within 30 days of your purchase and we will refund you in full.

4.2. This is a voluntary commercial promise. We give it because we would rather you read the thing, decide it is not for you, and get your money back, than sit on a purchase you resent.

4.3. It is deliberately broader than what the law requires:

	Statutory withdrawal right (Part A)	Our guarantee (Part B)
Length	14 days	30 days
Survives instant access	No — waived at checkout	Yes
Reason required	No	No
Who it covers	EU and UK consumers	Everyone, worldwide
Applies after you have read it	n/a	Yes

4.4. You do not have to prove anything. You do not have to justify anything. "It wasn't for me" is a complete answer. So is "I disagreed with your conclusions".

4.5. You may keep the notes you took. We are not going to ask you to delete anything from your own head.

5. How to request a refund

5.1. Email hello@assaygrade.com.

5.2. Include:

(a) the email address you used at checkout — this is the only thing we genuinely need to find your order; (b) your order or receipt number from Link, if you have it to hand. If you do not, we will find it.

5.3. You do not need to fill in a form. You do not need to complete a survey. You do not need to talk to anyone on a call.

5.4. If you want to tell us why, we would genuinely like to know — it is how the Product gets better. But it is optional, and saying nothing does not slow your refund down.

5.5. If you would prefer to use a formal statutory withdrawal form instead, there is a model form in the Right of Withdrawal Notice. You can use it, and we will treat it as a refund request under this policy too.

6. Timing

6.1. We acknowledge your request within 3 working days.

6.2. We approve refunds under the 30-day guarantee within APPROVAL_PERIOD, suggested: 3 working days of your request, and instruct Link immediately.

6.3. Link then returns the money to your original payment method. How long that takes is up to your bank or card issuer, and typically lands within 5 to 10 working days. We do not control this step.

6.4. Where a statutory right of withdrawal applies (see the Right of Withdrawal Notice), the legal deadline is 14 days from the day we are informed of your decision, and we will meet it. In practice the guarantee route is faster.

6.5. The 30-day window runs from the date of your purchase, as shown on your Link receipt. If your request arrives on day 31 because of a weekend, an illness, a holiday or an email that went to spam, ask anyway. We are not going to enforce a deadline against someone acting in good faith. See section 9.

7. How the money comes back

7.1. Refunds are processed by Link, which is the Merchant of Record for your purchase. That is who took the payment, and that is who returns it.

7.2. The refund goes back to the same payment method you used. We cannot send it somewhere else — that is a fraud-prevention rule, not a preference.

7.3. You get the full amount you paid, including any VAT, GST or sales tax. We do not deduct payment processing fees from your refund. Those fees are our cost, not yours.

7.4. If your currency has moved since you bought, your bank may return a slightly different amount in your local currency. That is the exchange rate, not a deduction by us.

7.5. We do not charge a restocking fee, an administration fee, or any other fee.

7.6. You will receive a refund confirmation from Link, and normally a credit note or refunded invoice for your records.

⚠️ LAWYER: confirm with the chosen provider (i) whether we can trigger refunds directly from the dashboard within the stated timeframe, (ii) whether tax is automatically refunded with the principal, and (iii) whether any provider-side window (e.g. a limit after which only a manual bank transfer is possible) means the 30-day promise cannot always be met by the normal route.

8. What happens to your access after a refund

8.1. Your access ends. Once the refund is issued:

(a) your account is deactivated and you can no longer sign in to the web reader; (b) your download link stops working; (c) if you had community access, it is removed.

8.2. This is the honest part of a generous policy. A refund unwinds the purchase. It is not a way to keep the Product for free.

8.3. The PDF you already downloaded. We cannot reach into your device and delete it, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. But once you are refunded, your licence under section 5 of the Terms of Service ends. You should delete your copy, and you must not use, share or redistribute it. Your copy is watermarked with your name and email address, so a refunded copy appearing in public is traceable.

8.4. If you change your mind later and want to buy again, you can. See section 9.4 for the one limit on that.

8.5. Your personal data after a refund is handled as described in the Privacy Policy. You can ask us to delete it.

9. Fair use of this guarantee

We would rather write this section plainly than hide conditions elsewhere on the page.

9.1. The guarantee exists so that a genuine buyer is never stuck with something they do not want. It is not a mechanism for getting the Product free.

9.2. We may decline a refund where, on reasonable evidence, we conclude that the request is not made in good faith. In practice this means:

(a) repeat buy-and-refund cycles — buying, refunding, and buying again on a new email address, more than twice; (b) evidence that the Product has been redistributed, published, shared or resold by you, before or after the request; (c) a request accompanied by threats, abuse, or an attempt to extort something beyond a refund; (d) evidence of an unauthorised or fraudulent payment, which we will refer to Link rather than handle ourselves; (e) a request made after the 30-day window that is not explained by any reasonable circumstance and appears to be a systematic pattern.

9.3. What is not abuse. To be explicit, none of the following will ever be used as a reason to refuse you:

reading the whole thing before deciding;
downloading the PDF;
disagreeing with our conclusions or our grades;
asking for a refund shortly after buying;
asking on day 31 because life happened;
having asked us questions or used support first;
having posted in the community.

9.4. If we decline a refund, we will tell you why, in writing, and explain how to challenge it. If we decline on abuse grounds, we may also decline to sell to you again.

9.5. We would rather refund ten people who did not need it than refuse one person who did. If a case is genuinely borderline, we will refund.

⚠️ LAWYER: section 9 needs review against the unfair terms rules — Directive 93/13/EEC and, in the UK, Part 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015. A discretion to refuse based on "reasonable evidence" and "good faith" may be found unfair if it is too open-ended or if there is no clear route to challenge the decision. Also confirm that refusing a voluntary guarantee can never be applied to a statutory non-conformity claim under Directive (EU) 2019/770 — section 10 is meant to make that clear, but check the drafting.

10. If the Product is faulty or not as described

10.1. This is a separate route from the guarantee, and it is not limited to 30 days.

10.2. If the Product is faulty, does not work, is materially different from how we described it, or does not have the qualities you can reasonably expect, you have statutory rights under Directive (EU) 2019/770 (EU), the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (UK), the Australian Consumer Law (AU), or your equivalent local law.

10.3. Email hello@assaygrade.com and describe the problem. We will first try to fix it. If we cannot fix it within a reasonable time, you are entitled to a price reduction or a refund under those rules.

10.4. Nothing in this policy limits or excludes your statutory rights as a consumer. The 30-day guarantee is offered in addition to them. Where the two overlap, you may use whichever is better for you.

11. Chargebacks — please talk to us first

11.1. If you dispute the charge with your bank or card issuer instead of asking us, Link handles it as a chargeback. That process takes weeks, costs everyone money, and usually ends with the same outcome as a two-line email would have produced in three days.

11.2. So: email us first. If you have already filed a chargeback, tell us anyway and we will work with Link to resolve it.

11.3. Your right to dispute a payment with your bank is yours, and we are not asking you to give it up.

12. Questions and complaints

12.1. Refund questions, order questions, anything at all: hello@assaygrade.com.

12.2. If a payment problem is on the payment side — a duplicate charge, an invoice detail, a card dispute — Link's support can also help, since they are the Merchant of Record.

12.3. If we cannot resolve a complaint between us and you are a consumer, you can refer it to the State Consumer Rights Protection Authority (Valstybinė vartotojų teisių apsaugos tarnyba, "VVTAT"), the out-of-court consumer dispute resolution body for a Lithuanian trader. We will take part in its procedure, which is free of charge for consumers. Contact details: A. Goštauto g. 12, LT-01108 Vilnius, Lithuania; phone +370 5 262 6760; email tarnyba@vvtat.lt; website https://vvtat.lrv.lt/en/.

12.4. Consumers elsewhere in the EU can also get help from the European Consumer Centre in their country. The European Commission's directory of certified ADR bodies is at https://consumer-redress.ec.europa.eu/dispute-resolution-bodies.

13. Changes to this policy

13.1. We may update this policy. Any change applies only to purchases made after the change is published.

13.2. The terms in force on the day you bought are the terms that apply to you. We will not shorten your guarantee retroactively.

13.3. Previous versions are archived at /refund/archive.

14. Who we are

Bit State, MB, small partnership (mažoji bendrija), registration number 307056143, Šeduvos g. 29-14, Padubysio k., LT-83250 Pakruojo r., Republic of Lithuania. Contact: hello@assaygrade.com.

Payments and refunds are processed by Link as Merchant of Record. See section 2 of our Terms of Service for how responsibility is divided.

Open questions for the lawyer

Can Link's checkout carry an unticked custom consent checkbox? If not, Part A collapses and the whole document needs restructuring around a consent-captured-on-our-page model.
Is the anti-abuse discretion in section 9 fair under Directive 93/13/EEC and CRA 2015 Part 2, and is the challenge route in 9.4 adequate?
Does the Link merchant agreement allow us to promise refunds on this timetable, and does it impose a refund window we cannot exceed?
Is the "access ends on refund" position in section 8 compatible with Art. 17 of Directive (EU) 2019/770 on the trader's obligations after withdrawal or termination?
Do we need a separate statement for California, given state-level requirements on published refund policies for online sellers?
Should the 30-day guarantee be described as a "commercial guarantee" within the meaning of Art. 6(1)(m) of Directive 2011/83/EU, with the associated pre-contractual disclosure duties?