Refund Policy

1. The principle

We sell to people who are careful with money: learners paying out of their own pocket, and small traders deciding between a business guide and a day's stock. A policy designed to keep their money when the product disappointed them would be a poor way to run a business we intend to still be running in ten years.

So the principle is short, and everything else on this page follows from it:

2. Always refunded

In these situations you get a full refund whenever you tell us, and the time windows in section 3 do not apply:

• You were charged and nothing unlocked. Either we fix the access immediately or we refund it. Your choice.
• You were charged twice for the same thing. The duplicate goes back in full.
• You were charged an amount you did not authorise, or a different amount from the one shown at checkout.
• The content was substantially not as described. If a course promised something it does not contain, that is on us.
• A course or guide was broken in a way that prevented you using it, and we could not fix it in reasonable time.
• We withdrew something you had paid for before your term ended, or before you had a fair chance to use it.
• We closed your account for a reason that was not your fault.
• Someone used your payment method without your permission, once that is established with the provider.

3. Change-of-mind windows

If nothing went wrong and you have simply decided this is not for you, the answer depends on what you bought and how much of it you have used. Digital content cannot be handed back, so "how much have you used" is the only fair measure available.

We can see how far through a course or a guide an account has got, and we look at that rather than asking you to prove anything. If you are marginally over a limit and your reason is a good one, ask anyway. Section 12 exists for exactly that case.

4. Subscription plans

4.1 Cancelling

We do not take a payment automatically when a term ends, so there is nothing to cancel in the usual sense. If you do nothing, your access simply runs to the end of the period you paid for and then stops. You are never billed by surprise.

4.2 Refund inside 14 days

Within 14 days of paying, and inside the usage limit in section 3, you get the whole amount back and access ends immediately.

4.3 Refund after 14 days on an annual plan

On an annual plan we refund a pro-rata share based on whole calendar months not yet used. If you paid for twelve months and ask in month four, seven whole months remain unused, so you receive seven twelfths. The month you are currently in is treated as used.

Monthly plans are not refunded pro-rata after the 14-day window, because the remaining value is usually a few days.

4.4 If you upgraded

Where you upgraded mid-term and received a credit for the unused part of the earlier plan, a refund is calculated on what you actually paid, not on the list price of the new plan. Your receipt shows the net figure.

5. Business guides

A guide is a single purchase that stays in your account permanently. Refund terms are in section 3: seven days, provided you have read less than a quarter of it.

Every paid guide has a free preview, which is a meaningful portion of the guide rather than a title and a teaser. Reading the preview costs nothing and is the intended way to decide. We would much rather you read the preview and decide not to buy than buy, feel misled and ask for your money back.

If a guide is refunded, it is removed from your account. If you bought several and want to refund one, say which; the others are unaffected.

6. Lifetime purchases

Lifetime access carries the longest change-of-mind window we offer, thirty days, because it is the largest single payment most learners make here.

7. Client projects

Commissioned work is not a digital product with a return window; it is time we have already spent on your project. Deposits secure a slot in the schedule and cover work started.

• Before work starts. Cancel before we begin and the deposit is returned in full, less any third-party cost already paid on your behalf, such as a domain registration.
• After work starts. We invoice for work completed to that point and return the balance. We show you what was done.
• If we cannot deliver what was agreed, you get a full refund of anything paid for the part not delivered.
• Milestone projects. An approved and paid milestone is not refundable, because approval is the point at which you confirmed it was what you wanted.

Where a signed proposal sets different terms, the proposal governs that project.

8. What is not refunded

We will say no in these situations, and we will tell you which one applies rather than going quiet:

• You completed the course and took the certificate. That is the product, delivered in full.
• You read the whole guide and then asked. Same reason.
• The window in section 3 has passed and nothing in section 2 applies.
• You are asking because you did not put the time in. We cannot refund motivation, and we would be doing it for everyone.
• Your account was closed for breaking the terms, such as sharing a paid account or redistributing our content.
• The problem is at your end and outside anything we control, such as no internet access, or a device that cannot run the Playground. Talk to us first; we may be able to help, and if we genuinely misled you about requirements, section 2 applies instead.
• A repeat pattern. See section 17.
• Money you spent elsewhere because of something you read here. Section 18 of the Terms of Service covers this. The guides are information, not advice for your specific business.

9. How to ask

There is no form to fill in. Send one email:

Every receipt we send carries the reference, and every payment is listed under Billing in your profile. If you cannot find either, say so and we will look it up from your email address.

Send it to support@merikagency.com, or use the contact form. Both reach the same place.

10. How long it takes

The card timeline is the one that surprises people. Once we issue the refund it leaves our control entirely, and your bank decides when it appears. We will give you the reference so you can ask them.

If a target above is missed, chase us. A missed target is our failure, and pointing it out is not rude.

11. How the money comes back

A refund goes back the way it came, to the same M-Pesa number, the same card, or the same cryptocurrency network. This is a fraud-prevention rule and we cannot make exceptions casually, because "refund me to a different account" is exactly what a stolen card looks like.

Where returning it the same way is genuinely impossible, for example a closed bank account or a lost SIM, tell us and we will agree an alternative with you, after verifying who you are.

Cryptocurrency is refunded as the equivalent value in the same coin at the time we process it. The value in shillings or dollars may differ from what you paid, up or down, because the coin moved. That risk is inherent in paying with a volatile asset and it is not something we can absorb.

12. Partial refunds and credit

Not every situation is all or nothing. Where a full refund is not right but something clearly is, we will offer one of:

• A partial refund reflecting the part that did not work.
• Account credit against a future purchase, if that suits you better. Credit never expires.
• An extension of your term, if the problem cost you time rather than money.

You choose. We will not push credit on someone who asked for cash.

13. What happens to your access

A refund reverses the purchase, so it also reverses what the purchase bought. When a refund is issued:

• The purchase is marked refunded and access to that item ends.
• A refunded guide leaves your library.
• A refunded plan drops you back to the free tier. Your account, your community posts and your saved Playground projects are untouched.
• A certificate earned before the refund is revoked, because a certificate is a record that you paid for and completed the course.
• Progress is kept, not deleted. If you come back and buy again, you resume where you stopped rather than starting over.

14. Chargebacks and disputes

If you raise a dispute with your bank, your card issuer or Safaricom instead of contacting us, the provider freezes the amount and charges us a fee whatever the outcome. It is also slower for you, typically weeks rather than days.

Please email us first. If our answer disappoints you, dispute it then; we will not hold it against you.

Where a chargeback is raised:

• Access to the disputed item is suspended while the provider decides.
• We give the provider the facts, including what was accessed and when.
• If the dispute is upheld, the matter ends there and access stays revoked.
• If it is rejected and you still believe you are owed, write to us and we will look again.

A chargeback that is clearly dishonest, for example disputing a course after taking the certificate, results in the account being closed.

15. Failed and stuck payments

A failed payment is not a refund matter, because no money reached us. The usual cases:

• M-Pesa says it went through, nothing unlocked. Send us the M-Pesa message and we will trace it. Do not pay again.
• Card declined but money left your account. That is an authorisation hold, not a payment. Your bank releases it, usually within a few days.
• Crypto sent, nothing unlocked. Send the transaction hash. Blockchain confirmations can take time, and an underpayment caused by network fees is common.
• Paid the wrong amount. Underpayments do not unlock; we refund or you top up. Overpayments are refunded in full.

In all of these, contact us with the reference before paying a second time.

16. Currency and fees

Our prices are set in US dollars and converted for display. A refund returns the amount we actually received, in the currency we received it.

Where currency moved between the payment and the refund, or where your bank charged a conversion fee, the figure that lands may not match the figure that left, and neither of us controls that. We do not deduct a fee of our own from a refund, and we absorb the provider's fee where the refund is our fault.

17. Abuse of this policy

This policy is generous on purpose, which makes it easy to exploit. We watch for a pattern rather than judging any single request:

• Repeatedly buying and refunding the same or similar items.
• Refunding a guide after downloading or copying it.
• Multiple accounts used to take a refund window more than once.
• A refund request that misrepresents what happened.

Where we see a pattern, we will say so directly and we may decline future refunds for that account or close it. We will always tell you what we saw, and you can answer it. We would rather lose a payment than accuse an honest customer of dishonesty, so we set that bar high.

18. Your legal rights

This policy sits on top of your legal rights; it does not replace them. Under the Consumer Protection Act 2012 you are entitled to goods and services that match their description and are of reasonable quality, and nothing here limits that.

If you believe we have not met our obligations, you can complain to the Competition Authority of Kenya, and for anything concerning your personal data, to the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner. You do not need our permission and you do not need to exhaust our process first, although we would appreciate the chance to fix it.

19. Contact

One email, one reference number, and a sentence about what happened. That is genuinely all this takes.