Refund Policy

This policy sets out the basis upon which HTM Legacy (Pty) Ltd (“the Supplier”, “we”) considers, in its sole discretion and subject always to applicable law, requests for the refund of amounts paid in respect of an HTM LEDGR subscription, billed monthly in South African Rand through the Supplier’s payment gateway provider. It forms part of, and should be read together with, our Terms of Service, to which it is subject in the event of any inconsistency, and our Pricing Policy and Cancellation Policy, which govern related but distinct matters.

1. Free trial

Every new Organisation commences on a free trial prior to any charge being levied. Trial length and whether payment details are required upfront are disclosed at the point of signup. Where no charge occurs during a trial that does not require payment details, no amount is capable of refund, there being nothing paid; a Customer who elects not to proceed need simply decline to subscribe upon the trial’s expiry, or cancel (see Cancellation Policy) prior to the first billing date where payment details were collected in advance. Where a Customer is charged despite having cancelled prior to the first billing date, that charge falls within clause 4(a) below.

2. Cancelling a subscription

A Customer may cancel at any time — see our Cancellation Policy for the governing timeline applicable to access and data following cancellation. Cancellation and refund are distinct concepts: cancelling stops future billing; it does not, of itself, entitle the Customer to a refund of any amount already paid, which is governed exclusively by this policy.

3. General position on refunds

HTM LEDGR is supplied on a monthly, no-fixed-term basis. Because the Services (hosting, document generation, email transmission, and the other functionality described in the SLA) are made continuously available to, and consumed by, the Customer from the commencement of each billing period irrespective of the extent of the Customer’s actual use thereof, the Supplier does not, save as expressly provided in clause 4 below, offer pro-rated, partial, or any other refund in respect of early cancellation, non-use, or partial-month use of the Services. Upon cancellation, the Customer simply ceases to be billed prospectively; no retrospective adjustment is made. This position reflects the commercial basis on which the subscription price is set, and the Customer accepts it as a term of subscribing.

4. Circumstances in which a refund may be considered

The Supplier will, in its reasonable discretion, consider a refund, in full or in part, where:

• (a) Billing error. The Supplier itself committed a demonstrable billing error, an incorrect amount was charged, a duplicate charge was levied for the same period, or a charge was processed after cancellation had already taken effect and been confirmed. In this case the Supplier will refund the erroneously charged amount in full.
• (b) Unauthorised or fraudulent payment. A payment is shown, to the Supplier’s reasonable satisfaction, to have been made without the authority of the account holder or the holder of the payment instrument used, and is reported promptly upon discovery. The Supplier may require supporting information (for example, a police case number or the payment gateway provider’s own fraud determination) before processing such a refund, and may liaise directly with its payment gateway provider to investigate.
• (c) Sustained service failure. The Supplier failed to make the Services available for a material and sustained period as a direct result of a cause within the Supplier’s reasonable control (as distinct from a third-party provider outage or a matter outside the Supplier’s control, which our SLA addresses and does not treat as refund-triggering). Any refund under this ground is calculated, at the Supplier’s discretion, as a pro-rated credit or cash refund reflecting the proportion of the billing period during which the Services were materially unavailable, and is not a guarantee of a full-period refund merely because some disruption occurred.
• (d) Statutory entitlement. A refund is required as a matter of South African law, including, where applicable, the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008, in which case the Supplier will refund only to the extent, and in the manner, that law actually requires, and no further.

Save as aforesaid, the Supplier does not offer a refund on the grounds of change of mind following knowing subscription and use of the Services for a meaningful portion of a billing period, nor on the grounds of dissatisfaction with functionality that was accurately described on the pricing page prior to subscription, nor on the grounds that the Customer’s own business circumstances changed. The determination of whether a request falls within this clause 4, and the amount (if any) properly payable, rests with the Supplier, acting reasonably, and is final absent a successful escalation under clause 8.

5. How to request a refund

Submit a request to support@htmledgr.com or via our contact page, stating the account email, the billing date and amount in question, and the basis for the request by reference to clause 4 above. The Supplier aims to respond within five (5) business days, without warranting that timeframe. An approved refund is returned to the original payment method via the Supplier’s payment gateway provider; processing time thereafter is a function of that provider’s and the Customer’s own bank’s processes, and falls outside the Supplier’s control. The Supplier does not issue refunds in cash, by EFT to a different account, or by any method other than reversal to the original payment instrument, save where that instrument is no longer available to the Customer, in which case the Supplier may, at its discretion, propose an alternative method.

6. Chargebacks and payment disputes

A Customer who initiates a chargeback or payment dispute directly with their bank or card issuer, rather than raising the matter with the Supplier under clause 5 first, does so at the risk of the Supplier treating the underlying conduct, once the chargeback is resolved in the Supplier’s favour or is found to have been raised without reasonable basis, as a breach of the Customer’s payment obligations under these Terms, entitling the Supplier to suspend the Organisation’s access pending resolution and to recover any chargeback or dispute-handling fee levied on the Supplier by its payment gateway provider as a consequence. Nothing in this clause 6 limits a Customer’s right to dispute a genuinely unauthorised transaction with its bank.

7. Plan changes

See our Pricing Policy for the timing and billing treatment of upgrades and downgrades, which is not, in itself, a refund matter.

8. No implied entitlement, and escalation

Nothing in this policy shall be construed as creating a general entitlement to a refund in any circumstance not expressly enumerated in clause 4, nor as fettering the Supplier’s discretion to decline a request that does not, in the Supplier’s reasonable assessment, meet the criteria set out above. A Customer who disagrees with a refund determination may request that it be reviewed by escalating in writing to support@htmledgr.com, marked for the attention of a senior member of the Supplier’s team; this is a courtesy afforded by the Supplier and does not constitute a formal appeals process or create any additional right.

9. Changes to this policy

The Supplier may update this policy as its billing arrangements evolve. The “Last updated” date above reflects the version currently in force.