1. What this policy covers
1.1 This policy is part of the Terms of Service and uses the same words for the same things. It covers money you pledge to a campaign on PowerHub.
1.2 It does not cover anything a creator sells you outside PowerHub, or anything a creator promised you as a backer reward. We are not a party to that (Terms, section 2.2). That includes a pledge level (Terms, section 5.8): a level that is missing, late or different from what was listed is not a reason for a refund under this policy.
2. The one-paragraph version
Your card is charged the moment you pledge. If the round fails, you get all of it back in your PowerHub wallet, automatically. If the round funds, the money becomes the creator's AI budget and is not refundable. From your wallet you can back another campaign, or ask us to send the money back to the card that paid it, minus the exact processing fee Stripe kept on that payment.
3. When you are charged
3.1 Card. You pay on Stripe's hosted checkout page and come straight back. The charge is taken immediately, not at the deadline. Card details never reach PowerHub.
3.2 Wallet. If you pledge from your PowerHub wallet balance, it is debited at once.
3.3 The deadline is what counts. A pledge counts towards a fixed round's goal only if the payment was confirmed before the round's deadline. A payment confirmed after the deadline is credited to your wallet instead and does not count.
4. If the round funds
4.1 The pledge is settled: we keep the platform fee shown to you before you pledged (10% by default), and the rest is released to the campaign's AI budget.
4.2 A funded pledge is not refundable. The reason is mechanical: the budget reaches the campaign's inference balance at the moment the round funds, and from that moment the creator can spend it on AI requests that cost us real money at the provider. There is nothing left to give back.
4.3 We refund a funded pledge only where the law requires it, or where we decide to as a goodwill matter. Cases where we will normally refund:
- the pledge was made with a card that was not yours to use;
- we cancelled or removed the campaign for a breach of our terms before its budget was spent;
- we made a mistake: a double charge, a wrong amount, a pledge to a round you did not choose.
4.4 Always-open campaigns. These have no goal and no deadline. Each pledge settles as it arrives, so it is funded from the moment it is paid and section 4.2 applies to it immediately. This is stated on the pledge form before you pay.
5. If the round fails
5.1 When a fixed round closes without reaching its goal, we return 100% of every pledge in that round to the backer's PowerHub wallet. No fee is taken from a failed round. This happens automatically, normally within an hour of the deadline.
5.2 Your wallet balance can be used to back another campaign at any time, or refunded to your card under section 6.
6. Getting money back to your card
6.1 You can ask us to send wallet money back to your card when all of the following are true:
- the money came from a card payment you made on PowerHub (not from a wallet-funded pledge);
- that pledge's round did not fund, or the payment arrived after the deadline;
- your wallet still holds the full amount of that pledge;
- no refund for that pledge is already in progress;
- the amount left after fees is at least US$0.50.
6.2 The amount. We refund the amount you paid minus the exact processing fee Stripe charged us on that payment, which Stripe does not return when a payment is refunded. That fee is shown to you before you confirm the request. We keep nothing else; the deduction exists so that a refunded pledge does not cost PowerHub money.
6.3 Where it goes. Only to the original card, and only to the person who made the payment. We cannot send it to a different card, to a bank account, or to another person.
6.4 How long. We send the refund to Stripe promptly. Card statements normally show it within 5 to 10 business days. Your wallet shows the request's state throughout: requested, sending, paid back, failed or declined.
6.5 While it is in progress, the amount is held out of your spendable wallet balance so it cannot be pledged twice. If the refund fails or an operator declines it, the full amount goes back to your wallet and we tell you why.
6.6 We may decline a refund request where we suspect fraud, where the payment is already disputed with the card issuer, or where refunding would breach a legal obligation.
6.7 We may pause refund processing during an incident. Requests already made stay queued and are sent when processing resumes.
7. Your statutory rights
7.1 Nothing in this policy removes a right you have under the consumer law of the country you live in.
7.2 European Union and United Kingdom consumers. Distance-selling law gives consumers 14 days to withdraw from many contracts. A pledge is a contribution to a creator's AI budget rather than a purchase of goods or of digital content supplied to you, so we do not consider the right of withdrawal to apply to it. If you are a consumer in the EU or the UK and you believe it does apply to your pledge, tell us at legal@powerhub.dev within 14 days of pledging and we will refund it without argument, provided the round has not already funded and the budget has not already been spent.
7.3 If your round has failed, section 5 gives you your money back in full anyway, which is at least as good as a withdrawal right.
8. Chargebacks
8.1 Please write to legal@powerhub.dev before you dispute a payment with your bank. A refund we make ourselves is faster than one your bank makes for you, and it does not freeze anything.
8.2 If you do open a dispute, we will hold the related wallet balance until it is resolved, and we may freeze the campaign's inference balance and revoke its keys while it is open.
8.3 If a chargeback succeeds after the budget has already been spent on AI requests, the money is gone at the provider. We may recover the amount from any balance you hold with us, refuse further pledges from you, and close your account.
8.4 We respond to disputes with the evidence we hold: the pledge record, the checkout session, the settlement, the campaign, and the timestamps of each.
9. Unspent budget
9.1 If a campaign does not spend everything it raised, the unspent balance stays with that campaign for its later rounds and requests. It is not returned automatically and it is never paid out in cash.
9.2 If backers ask, an operator may return an unspent balance to backers' wallets pro rata. That is discretionary; you cannot require it.
9.3 If an AI provider withdraws a model or leaves the market, the balance is not lost. The creator can request another provider or model and we will point the balance at it if we can. See Third-party AI providers, section 5.
10. Contact
10.1 Refund questions, refund requests you cannot make in the app, and anything in this policy: legal@powerhub.dev.