Refund Policy

Every transaction on Hashtags Studios flows through Stripe. Refunds are issued to the original payment method in AED and typically appear in 5-10 business days depending on your bank or card issuer. Where a refund is granted, the platform service fee that was added at checkout is refunded together with the principal. This policy is governed by UAE consumer-protection law (Federal Law No. 15 of 2020 on Consumer Protection and its Executive Regulations) and is read together with our Terms of Service.

A single, consistent principle runs through everything below: if the seller is at fault (non-delivery, host cancellation, materially-not-as-described), you are refunded 100%, regardless of the listing's cancellation policy or any window. Buyer-initiated changes of mind are governed by the cancellation policy attached to the specific listing.

Each listing carries one of three published cancellation policies. You see the policy on the listing before you pay, and the policy in force is snapshotted onto your order at checkout so it cannot change retroactively. Refunds are calculated against the order's gross amount and the scheduled fulfilment moment ("scheduled date"):

For an item with no scheduled fulfilment moment (instant / un-dated), FLEXIBLE listings are fully refundable on cancel and MODERATE / STRICT listings are non-refundable. Bundles inherit the strictest cancellation policy of any item they contain.

These windows apply to buyer-initiated cancellations only. Seller fault always overrides to a 100% refund (see Overview).

A 20% deposit is collected at the point a talent accepts a direct selection (job-posting flows collect a 10% deposit). The remaining balance is captured at completion. Talent and provider payouts settle via Stripe Connect transfer only after the silent-flag confirmation window below has passed.

When work is delivered, the buyer has a 48-hour silent-flag window to raise a problem (flag the booking / open a dispute) before the seller's payout is released. If you take no action within those 48 hours, the booking is treated as accepted and a cron job releases the escrowed payout to the seller's Connect account. Once the window closes and the payout is released, a refund can no longer be processed automatically — you must open a dispute and admin will review it. The same 48-hour silent-flag window applies to magazine-article purchases.

Rentable products follow the service flow, with the scheduled date measured as the rental start / return date.

A learner may refund a course enrollment when either condition is met: the course has not yet started, or you are within 48 hours of enrolling. Outside both of those (digital good, already commenced), course purchases are non-refundable. A successful course refund reverses the original Stripe charge, marks the order REFUNDED, and revokes the enrollment. Free-course unenrollment is instant and involves no payment.

Magazine all-access subscriptions are recurring Stripe subscriptions billed monthly. You can cancel at any time; cancellation takes effect as cancel-at-period-end — your access continues until the end of the period you have already paid for, and you are not billed again. Part-months are not pro-rated or refunded. Individual one-off magazine-article purchases follow the 48-hour silent-flag window above.

The BASIC_FREE plan is free. Paid plans (PRIVILEGE, HEALTHY, SOCIAL, BUSINESS_NETWORKING, VIP, EXCLUSIVE, ELITE) are billed via Stripe subscription against your package tier (BASIC / LIFESTYLE / PRESTIGE / LUXURY). Paid plans are non-refundable once activated, except where the platform is unable to deliver the promised feature set — in which case admin can issue a manual refund on review. You can cancel at any time; access continues until the end of the paid period (cancel-at-period-end).

Entry fees are refunded automatically when:

• The competition is cancelled by admin before entry close.
• Your entry is rejected at submission moderation for a reason outside your control (technical error, ineligibility we should have caught earlier).

Entry fees are not refundable once your entry is accepted and the competition runs. Prizes are paid out via Stripe Connect to winners' verified accounts within 14 days of the winners announcement.

Event tickets:

When a host cancels or reschedules an event or competition, the refund cascades automatically to all affected ticket-holders / entrants. Partial event-ticket refunds (e.g. a downgraded tier) are issued idempotently to the original payment method.

Representation between a talent and an agency is a relationship, not a purchased good. Ending a representation contract — by the talent or by the agency — is always free and carries no refund obligation in either direction. There is no exit fee, no buyout owed by the talent, and no clawback of commission already earned on completed work. Because nothing is "purchased" to be returned, there is no refund associated with leaving representation. See Trust & Safety for the full Talent Sovereignty commitments (20% commission cap, no lifetime lock, no-fee notice-period exit).

UAE VAT (5% by default) is charged on the platform's service fee only — Hashtags' own taxable supply — never on the talent's or provider's net. When a refund is granted, the service fee and the VAT charged on it are refunded together with the principal. Where a refund is partial, the fee and its VAT are refunded in the same proportion.

Promotional purchases — featured / pinned slots, media advertising slots, billboard and outdoor placements, and the posting fees charged to publish a job, an event, a course, or an advertisement — buy exposure for a period, not an outcome. They are refundable in full while the placement has not yet started, and are non-refundable once the placement has begun running, because the inventory has been held and shown. If we fail to run a placement you paid for, or run it materially less than booked, admin issues a full or pro-rata refund on review. No promotional purchase carries any guarantee of bookings, clicks, applications, or sales.

A profile-shoot booking is a scheduled service and follows the listing cancellation-policy table above, measured against the shoot date. A shoot cancelled or missed by the platform or the assigned crew is refunded in full.

A quotation is priced work agreed between the two parties before payment. Once the quotation is accepted and paid, it follows the same rules as any other service order: the 48-hour silent-flag window applies, seller fault refunds in full, and a buyer-side change of mind is governed by the cancellation policy snapshotted onto the order.

Points, credits, and reward redemptions are not purchases and carry no cash value. A redemption cannot be refunded or converted to money, and payouts and commission entries are ledger records rather than charges — none of these can be reversed as a refund. Where a redemption is reversed because of an error on our side, the points are returned to your balance rather than paid out.

If Stripe declines or errors on a refund we have approved, the charge is queued and retried automatically. Your refund is not lost: the request stays open, admin can see the failure, and you are notified when it settles. Please do not file a chargeback while a retry is pending — see "Stripe chargebacks" below.

1. Open the affected transaction at /dashboard/[your-area]/transactions and use the Request refund action, or
2. Email contact@hashtagsstudios.com with the transaction ID and the reason.

Admin-MODERATOR or admin-FULL reviews refund requests at /admin/refunds. Decisions are notified by in-app notification + email.

When a refund cannot be processed automatically (e.g. buyer alleges undelivered service, talent alleges client no-show), either party can open a structured dispute from the transaction page. Filing a dispute atomically freezes the escrowed funds so neither side can move them while the case is open. Admin mediates by reviewing the booking timeline, message history, and any submitted evidence, then rules to refund the buyer, release to the seller, or split. The losing party may file a single appeal (within the resolved state) with a written narrative; if an appeal is upheld, any payout already released is clawed back and the corrected refund is issued. Resolution typically lands within 3-5 business days.

If you file a chargeback with your card issuer instead of opening a platform dispute, your account is automatically frozen until the chargeback is resolved with Stripe. Chargebacks should be a last resort.

Refund questions: contact@hashtagsstudios.com (or via /contacts).

This content can be updated live by an admin from /admin/settings (key: legal.refund).