When the money comes back

One critique: a vote and a written note on every frame in your set, the order the master would show the work in, and a written read of the set as a whole. Delivered inside 7 days of the master accepting, or inside two weeks if they take their one extension.

The free half of Crit costs nothing, so there is nothing on this page about it. Nothing else on the site is ever charged for.

Buying a service at a distance in the EU comes with 14 days to change your mind for no reason at all. A critique takes a week, so those two things collide, and the law's answer is that you can ask for the work to start inside the 14 days as long as you are told what that costs you.

That is the box you tick when you send a request. By ticking it you are asking the master to start before your 14 days are up, and accepting that once the read has been delivered in full, your right to withdraw is gone. In exchange, you can withdraw at any point before the master accepts, and you are refunded in full.

If you would rather keep your full 14 days, do not send a request. There is no way to buy a critique and also keep the right to hand it back after reading it, and pretending otherwise would be worse for everybody than saying so.

Nobody has started, so nothing has been spent. There is a Withdraw and refund button on the request itself. One click, the whole amount, no reason needed and nothing to email anybody about.

A master who has not accepted never sees the set again, and our commission goes back with the rest of it.

Now somebody is spending an evening on your work, so the button goes away. Two things bring it back, and both are the master's doing rather than yours:

• They take the extra week. You agreed to a date and the date moved, so you are told, and you can pull out and be refunded in full instead of waiting.
• They miss the date. You can take the money back immediately rather than waiting for the nightly sweep to do it.

Nobody has to ask for any of these. They are what the software does.

• The master declines. Refunded in full, that day.
• The master accepts and delivers nothing by the deadline. The nightly sweep refunds you in full and closes the request. A master who goes quiet does not keep the money.
• You delete your account with work outstanding. Anything paid for and undelivered is refunded before the account goes, so leaving never costs you money you are owed.

You have 14 days from delivery to question the fee, in writing, from the critique itself. Say what was missing. The money stays with us until somebody here decides, and that person is never the master and never anybody with a stake in the set.

A questioned fee is upheld, and the whole amount refunded, where:

• frames were left unmarked or unwritten about
• there is no written read of the set, or it says nothing about your work in particular
• it does not engage with the brief you paid for
• it is copied, generated rather than written, or plainly not the work of the person you hired

You are told the decision and why. If it goes against you, the consumer routes in section 16 of the terms are still open, and so are your legal rights: this process is ours, not a replacement for them.

Disagreeing with the read. You paid for one professional's honest judgement of your work, and a master telling you the set does not hold is that judgement being delivered rather than withheld. A critique you did not enjoy is not a critique you did not receive.

Nor is choosing the wrong master, sending the wrong set once the work has started, or changing your mind about the project after the read has landed.

To the card or account you paid with, in euro, for the full amount including our commission. There is no restocking fee and no administration charge, because there is nothing to restock.

We start the refund the moment it is owed. How long it takes from there is your bank's business rather than ours, and it is usually five to ten working days.

You are emailed when it starts, and the email says which of the reasons above it was.

A refund takes back the whole fee, including your share. You are paid for work that is delivered on time and not questioned successfully, and for nothing else.

Declining costs you nothing and is always better than accepting and going quiet. Take the extension before the date rather than after it.

Nothing on this page takes away a right you have as a consumer under Greek or EU law, including your right to a service performed with reasonable care and skill. Where this policy gives you more than the law does, you get the more generous of the two.