Refund Policy

• Council Audits are guaranteed. If we do not deliver your audit within the stated window, or if our own fact-check leaves the verdict without support, you get a full refund — even though the session ran. Section 2 sets out exactly when.
• If you have paid but no council session has run on your account, you can get a full refund within 14 days — no questions asked.
• On a subscription, once a session has run you have consumed the substance of the Service for that period, and refunds become discretionary rather than automatic. The audit guarantee above is the exception and is not discretionary.
• You can cancel at any time from your account settings. Cancelling stops future charges and you keep access until the end of the period you already paid for.

A Council Audit is a one-off purchase: you send one decision and the numbers behind it, the council argues it, a chairman writes the verdict, and we fact-check every external claim against primary sources before you see it. Because it is a fixed deliverable rather than ongoing access, it carries a specific guarantee that takes precedence over the discretionary rules below — the goodwill window, renewals, and what is not refunded. It never displaces a statutory right: where both apply, you may rely on whichever is better for you.

We refund an audit in full, on request, in either of these cases:

• We did not deliver it in time. If the written brief does not reach you within the delivery window we stated when you bought, you are entitled to a full refund. A delay we announce to you in advance, and you accept, is not a missed window.
• The fact-check left the verdict unsupported. Every external claim in a verdict is checked against primary sources. If that check refutes a claim the recommendation actually rests on, and removing it leaves the verdict without support, we will tell you so and refund you in full — even though the session has run and you have the document. You do not have to spot this yourself: the check happens before delivery and we raise it.

This guarantee is deliberately about whether the work stands up, not about whether you like the answer. A verdict that is well supported but tells you something unwelcome — that the expansion is a mistake, that the hire is premature — has done the job you paid for, and is not refundable on that basis. A claim we could not verify is disclosed in the verdict rather than quietly dropped, so you can see for yourself which parts carried weight.

Ask by replying to the delivery email, or write to support@venturecortex.com. We do not require a reason beyond pointing at which of the two cases applies.

If you are a consumer resident in the European Union, EU Directive 2011/83/EU normally gives you 14 days to withdraw from a distance purchase of digital services and receive a full refund.

For digital services delivered immediately, that right ends once performance has begun, provided you expressly requested immediate performance and acknowledged that you would lose the right of withdrawal. Which of those applies depends on how you bought:

• Subscriptions: we ask for exactly that consent at checkout, and record it, because a council session begins consuming substantial compute on your behalf as soon as you run one.
• Council Audits: we do not ask you to waive anything at checkout. Your statutory withdrawal right is not given up, and the guarantee in section 2 applies on top of it, not instead of it.

In practice, on a subscription:

• No session run yet: your withdrawal right is intact. Contact us within 14 days of the charge and we will refund you in full.
• At least one session run: the statutory withdrawal right no longer applies to that billing period, because you asked us to start and we did.

This section applies to consumers. If you purchase as a business, the statutory withdrawal right does not apply, though the goodwill window below may still be offered.

Beyond the statutory right above, we offer a goodwill refund within 14 days of your first charge on a first subscription if the Service is not a fit for you, even if you have run sessions. This applies once per customer and does not apply to renewals or to repeat subscriptions.

Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled. Renewal charges are generally non-refundable, because you have had continuous access throughout the period.

We will, however, consider a refund of a renewal charge where the renewal was clearly unintended and the plan went effectively unused in that period — for example, you meant to cancel, did not, and ran no sessions after the renewal date. Contact us and we will look at the account.

To avoid unwanted renewals, cancel from your account settings before the renewal date. Your renewal date is shown in your billing settings.

• Consumed usage. Sessions that have already run are not refunded on a pro-rata basis. This does not apply to a Council Audit, which is refunded in full under section 2 whether or not the session ran.
• Dissatisfaction with AI output. The Service produces AI-generated opinions that may be wrong, incomplete, or simply not what you hoped for. That is the nature of the product and is disclosed prominently in our Terms of Service. Output you disagree with is not by itself a defect. If the Service is technically broken, that is different — tell us.
• Accounts terminated for cause. If we terminate your account for breach of the Terms or our Acceptable Use Policy, unused time is not refunded.
• Taxes already remitted, where a refund of tax is not available to us under applicable rules. Where tax is refundable, it is refunded with the principal.

Email support@venturecortex.com from the email address on your account, and include:

• The email address on the account
• The approximate date and amount of the charge
• A one-line reason (helps us fix the underlying problem)

You do not need a specific form of words. We aim to acknowledge refund requests within 2 business days and to decide within 14 days of receiving the request.

Approved refunds are issued through Stripe to the original payment method. We cannot refund to a different card or account.

Once we issue the refund, the funds typically appear within 5–10 business days, depending on your bank or card issuer. That final leg is outside our control.

Refunding a subscription charge does not by itself cancel the subscription. If you want billing to stop, cancel in your account settings or ask us to cancel it when you request the refund.

If something has gone wrong, please contact us before opening a chargeback with your bank. We would much rather refund you directly — it is faster for you and cheaper for us.

If you are a consumer in the EU and we cannot resolve a complaint between us, you may use the European Commission's online dispute resolution platform at ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr.

For refund requests or questions about this policy, contact support@venturecortex.com. Our registered identification and address are in section 1 of the Terms of Service.