Refund Policy

1. Overview

Work begins when delivery begins. No refund after that.

A full refund is available if you ask in writing within 24 hours of paying and before delivery begins, or if we are negligent. A person decides every refund; nothing is refunded automatically.

There are three exceptions: the audit accuracy guarantee below; an annual plan cancelled mid-year, whose months after the current one are refunded pro rata (Section 4); and the refunds in Section 8. The audit accuracy guarantee is in Section 5 of our Legal Terms: if any finding in a paid Website Audit is wrong, the audit is free. Tell us which finding; once a person confirms it was wrong, what you paid for the audit is refunded in full to your original payment method, and the audit no longer carries its credit toward a website build.

2. When Work Begins, by Product

• Delivered at payment (the audits and checks): This is delivered the moment you pay, so work begins and completes at payment and there is no refund after that; the amount you paid is credited toward a website build with us. Among products delivered at payment, the Website Audit's accuracy guarantee (Section 1) is the one exception.
• Builds (websites and other built work): Work begins when we start the build: at payment or, where it needs things from you first, once you have supplied them and a person at the studio has approved them to start. From then on the fee is not refundable.
• Monthly services: Work begins when you pay. Cancel any time in writing; the period you have already paid for runs to its end and is not refunded.

3. Services That Need Your Inputs

Some services need information only you have (for example, the competitors you want watched). The product page and the checkout list what you supply before you pay.

Delivery begins once you have supplied what it needs. You have 72 business hours (3 full business days: Monday to Friday, not counting US federal holidays, in your local time) to add it in your client portal. If it is not all in by then, nothing is cancelled: your payment becomes a credit you can spend on anything we sell for 30 days, and we send one short reminder each business day at 07:30 your time (at most 20) until you finish or ask us to stop. If the 30 days pass unused, the payment is kept; a person makes that call, never the system.

If a credit's 30 days pass unused, the payment is kept and the account is closed to new purchases. A person makes that decision; the system never does.

4. Subscriptions and Cancellation

Subscriptions renew on the billing date shown at checkout. There is no notice period. A subscription’s term is the billing period you buy, never a lock-in: month-to-month, or twelve months on an annual plan. A website build with a retainer carries one term: twelve months starting the first full month of retainer after delivery (Section 2 of the Legal Terms). Work begins when you pay. Cancel any time in writing; the period you have already paid for runs to its end and is not refunded. Part of a monthly period is never refunded. Cancelling a website retainer before its term completes is covered in Section 7: buy the site out, or the site is taken down and nothing more is owed.

An annual plan (a year paid at once) can be cancelled at any time in writing. The month you are in is kept and the service ends at the end of it: a website we host comes down unless you have bought it out, and your records with us are kept. The rest of what you paid for the year is refunded pro rata, one twelfth for each whole month after the current one, to your original payment method once a person approves it.

A failed payment is retried. While it stays unpaid, delivery pauses; continued non-payment ends the service. A website we host is taken offline when its retainer ends, unless you have bought it out under Section 7.

5. Proposals

A larger engagement is sold by a written proposal. Its payment schedule, and any refund terms it states, are the ones that apply to it; where it says nothing, this policy applies.

6. How to Ask for a Refund

Email legal@cairnandflint.com from the address you bought with, naming the purchase. A person reads every request and answers it.

7. Intellectual Property and Buyout — Web Design Clients

Code and design are licensed; the domain, Google Business Profile, analytics, content, reviews and lead data are the client's and always were; buyout at total estimated contract value; at term end the site and code are theirs, or month-to-month with no contract, or twelve months for the price of ten. The contract value is two build fees plus twelve months of retainer (ten months with the annual prepay, which covers all twelve). The term is one twelve-month period starting the first full month of retainer after delivery; before it completes, the buyout is one build fee plus the retainer for each month not yet covered, and when it completes the code and deliverables are the client's, free, with the retainer optional for upkeep (month-to-month, or twelve months for the price of ten). Lead data means the leads captured during the engagement. If the client stops paying the retainer and has not bought out ownership, the product is taken down.

These are the ownership terms in Section 2 of our Legal Terms. A buyout is priced as they state and is final once paid.

8. Exceptions

8.1 Studio-caused delays

If the studio misses a delivery timeline for reasons within its control, that is studio negligence under Section 1, and a full refund is available on written request (Section 6); a person reviews the request and decides it. A person at the studio tells you about any such delay in writing within 24 business hours of its occurrence. No software tracks timelines or detects a delay: both are that person’s commitments.

8.2 Regulatory or legal changes

If changes to applicable law make a service unviable for the studio to deliver, a person at the studio refunds affected active engagements pro rata for undelivered work, and gives you 30 days’ written notice before the service stops. Both are done by hand.

9. Refund Processing

9.1 Timeline

A refund a person approves is issued by that person in Stripe, to the original payment method, within three business days of the approval. The audit accuracy refund (Section 1) and the refund of an annual plan’s remaining months (Section 4) are issued by our system at the moment a person approves them.

9.2 Method

Refunds are issued only to the original payment method used for the payment. Alternative refund destinations are not supported except in cases where the original payment method is no longer valid.

9.3 Processing fees

No processing fee is deducted from the client’s refund amount; the studio absorbs it.

10. Changes to This Policy

The version of this policy published here is the one applied to a refund request, whenever the purchase was made. If you bought under an earlier version that gives you a refund this one does not, tell us and a person applies that earlier version to your purchase. Each checkout records the version of our Legal Terms you agreed to (they include this policy), and every earlier version stays published at its own address.

The studio may revise this policy from time to time. A person at the studio emails active clients about material changes. Continued use of services after notice of changes constitutes acceptance of the revised policy. All changes are logged at cairnandflint.com/legal/updates.

11. Monitoring and Access Logging

The studio logs access to its own application (the client portal and back office), as Section 12 of our Privacy Notice describes. This monitoring is standard for hosted services and serves multiple legitimate purposes:

• Security monitoring and incident response
• Audit trail for administrative actions (useful for both studio and client when investigating issues)
• Rate limiting and protection against automated scraping or abuse
• Operational troubleshooting

Logged activity may include: sign-in events and session activity in the client portal and back office, server request patterns, administrative actions such as content changes or credential modifications, and the automatic blocking of unusual traffic, such as probes of addresses that do not exist.

These logs are kept for the periods in Section 5 of our Privacy Notice and may be used as evidence in the event of a dispute involving site operation, content integrity, or intellectual property.

This monitoring does not extend to the client websites we host: Vercel serves them and keeps its own request logs; privacy-policy provisions (see /privacy) govern end-user data practices.

12. Contact

Questions about this policy, or refund requests, should be sent to: