pardoned.ai

Refund Policy & Reapplication Guarantee

Version
2026-07-10.1
Effective

This page is also incorporated by reference into content/legal/terms.mdx §§7–8. This is the single source of truth — checkout's condensed refund copy and the quiz's verdict-screen refund copy must be generated from, or CI-checked against, this file. Divergence between this page and any other refund-adjacent surface is a launch blocker.

Refund terms

Before your documents are generated: 100% refund, no questions. Until the moment Pardoned first generates your application documents (your case status shows this clearly), you can cancel for a full refund of everything you paid us, for any reason.

After generation: your fee has done most of its work, so refunds are no longer automatic. You are still entitled to a full refund if: (a) you ask us a question about your specific situation that we cannot answer without giving legal advice, and you tell us you don't want to proceed without that answer (our refund-or-referral promise); (b) we fail to deliver your documents; or (c) applicable consumer protection law gives you the right.

Never refundable by us, because we never receive them: Government Fees. You pay those directly to the government. No refunds are available for government processing times or government decisions — the Parole Board of Canada typically takes 12–24 months, and that clock is not something anyone can buy back. See our guarantee below for what we do if your application is denied.

Waiver renewals (C$199) follow the same rules. Refunds go back to your original payment method.

Bracket for Nick — firewall-refund window

Whether the refund-or-referral full-refund window closes at final-document download or stays open indefinitely is not yet decided. Recommended: firewall-triggered refund available any time before you download your final documents; after download, the firewall response becomes referral-only. The checkout spec's condensed refund copy must use whichever bracket Nick selects. See ops/legal/flag-register.md item 3.

Note on the 50%/14-day tier — NOT RATIFIED

Flag for Nick — important, do not silently ship: an earlier draft of the checkout spec (docs/specs/06-checkout-payments.md §8.1) described a post-generation, 14-day, 50%-refund self-serve tier. Per 00-BUILD_PLAN.md §5 ruling R18, this document's text governs all customer-facing refund promises, and the 50%/14-day tier is explicitly NOT ratified. It does not appear above and must not appear on any customer-facing surface unless and until Nick affirmatively adopts it in the decision log. The refund engine should remain table-driven so either outcome is a config change, but the published policy text and the engine's config table must be provably identical before launch (a CI string-match is the acceptance bar per the spec). See ops/legal/flag-register.md item 3, and 00-BUILD_PLAN.md §6 item 3.

Denied → free reapplication preparation guarantee

If an application you prepared with Pardoned and filed is refused by the Parole Board of Canada, or your Form I-192 is denied by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, we will prepare your reapplication documents free of charge. Terms:

  • Applies to applications generated by Pardoned and actually filed with the relevant government body.
  • You must provide the government's written decision within [12] months of its date.
  • Covers one full document-preparation cycle for the same service, incorporating your updated information. It does not cover Government Fees, and it cannot shorten statutory re-application waiting periods (for record suspensions, the Criminal Records Act imposes a one-year wait after a refusal).
  • Does not apply where the refusal resulted from information you provided that was false or materially incomplete, from documents you altered after generation, or from a new conviction or charge arising after purchase.
  • One guarantee claim per purchased case; not transferable; not redeemable for cash.

Flag for Nick: the [12]-month claim window and any other bracketed figure above are placeholders pending final sign-off — see ops/legal/flag-register.md item 4.

Machine-readable refund tier table (CI-locked to the engine)

pre_generation inf 100
post_generation inf 0

How the pre/post-generation boundary is determined

The refund tier that applies to you is determined by your case's own status, not by a date or by anyone's judgment call: once your case status transitions into document generation (visible to you in your portal), you have moved from the "before generation" tier to the "after generation" tier. This is a machine state, not a discretionary decision — you can always see which tier applies by checking your case status.

  • content/legal/terms.mdx §§7–8 — incorporates this page by reference.
  • ops/macros/13-refund-policy-restatement.md — the support-team macro restating this policy; must match this page's substance exactly.
  • ops/macros/99-refund-or-referral-firewall.md — the firewall escalation macro that triggers the refund-or-referral promise described above.