Refund and Cancellation Policy

What this policy covers

This policy covers every payment made to Astoe Company, whether it was paid by card or wallet through our payment provider, by bank transfer, or by any other method we accepted.

It sits alongside our Terms and Conditions and our Service Delivery Policy. Where a signed contract between us says something different, the signed contract wins.

What you are buying

You are buying development time on a system built to your own written scope, delivered in stages. You are not buying a boxed product off a shelf, and you are not buying a subscription that renews on its own.

That matters for refunds, because once a stage has been designed, written and handed to you, the hours behind it cannot be put back on the shelf and sold to somebody else. So the policy below is built around what has actually been done at the moment you cancel.

Cancelling before work has started

If you have paid and we have not started, you get all of it back. In practice that means you cancel in writing within seven days of paying, and before we have begun the scope document or written any code.

The only deduction is the charge our payment provider or the banks keep on the original transaction, where they do not return it to us. That is normally a small percentage of the amount, and we show you the exact figure when we confirm the refund.

Cancelling once work has started

A project is split into stages, and each stage is treated separately when you cancel.

• Stages already delivered and accepted are not refundable. You keep the code and the files for them.
• The stage in progress is charged for the work genuinely done up to the day you cancel, and the rest of that stage is refunded. We send you the working files for what was built, so you are not paying for something you never see.
• Stages not started are refunded in full.
• Third party costs we have already paid on your behalf, such as hosting, a domain, an API subscription or a paid library, are not refundable, because we cannot get them back either. We hand over whatever they bought, in your name.

What is never refundable

• Work that has been delivered, accepted and put into use in your business
• Third party fees already spent on your behalf, including gateway, hosting, domain, messaging and marketplace charges
• Time spent on changes you asked for in writing after the scope was approved
• Training or consultancy sessions that have already taken place

When we have failed to deliver

The rules above assume a normal cancellation. They do not apply if the problem is us.

If we miss an agreed stage date by more than thirty days, and the delay is our fault rather than something waiting on you or on a third party, you may cancel that stage and take a full refund of it, whatever the work done. If the system as a whole does not do what the approved scope said it would, and we cannot put it right within thirty days of you telling us, the same applies to the whole project.

How to ask for a refund

Write to us at contact@astoecompany.com or message the WhatsApp number on this site. There is no form to fill in and no fee to raise one.

Include the invoice or reference number, the date and amount of the payment, and one line on why you are cancelling. The reason is not a test you have to pass, it just helps us work out whether the fault is ours, which changes the amount.

How long it takes

We acknowledge every refund request within one working day, and we tell you our decision and the exact amount within three working days.

Once approved, the money is sent back within seven to ten working days. Card refunds then take however long your own bank needs to show them, which is commonly another five to ten working days and is outside anyone's control but theirs.

How the money comes back

Refunds go back the way they came. A card payment is reversed to the same card, a wallet payment to the same wallet, a bank transfer to the account it came from. We cannot send a card refund to a different card, or pay it out in cash, because that is exactly what the rules against money laundering exist to stop.

Refunds are made in the currency of the original payment, which is PKR unless we invoiced you in another one. Where a currency was converted by your bank, the amount that lands may differ slightly from the amount you paid, because the rate on the day of the refund is not the rate on the day of the payment. That difference belongs to the banks, not to us.

Chargebacks and disputes

If something has gone wrong, tell us before you tell your bank. A chargeback takes weeks, freezes the conversation, and costs both of us a fee, while an email to us gets an answer the same day.

Where a chargeback is raised on work that was delivered and accepted, we will present the scope document, the delivery record and the correspondence to the provider, and we may suspend work on anything still open until it is settled.

If you think we have got it wrong

Reply and say so. A refund decision is reviewed by a person, and a person can be wrong. Set out what you think the correct amount is and why, and we will look at it again and give you a final written answer within five working days. Nothing in this policy takes away any right the law of your country gives you.

How to reach us about this

Write to us in whichever way suits you. Anything sent about a policy, a payment or a refund is answered by a person, not a queue, and normally within one working day.