Cancellation & Refund Policy

Services are delivered by allocating time. Once time has been reserved for your project and spent on it, that time cannot be recovered or resold, and the fee for it is earned whether or not you proceed.

Everything below follows from that principle. Work not yet started is refundable. Work already carried out is payable. Reserved capacity that can no longer be filled sits between the two, and is dealt with through the deposit.

The fifty per cent deposit reserves capacity in the schedule and covers the initial review, planning and setup that begin as soon as an engagement is confirmed.

The deposit is non-refundable once work has started. Before work starts it is refundable in full if you cancel within three business days of paying it, provided no material work has been carried out in that time.

Where you cancel later but before any production work begins, we refund the deposit less the time already spent on briefing, review and planning, charged at the hourly rate in the proposal.

You may cancel at any time by telling us in writing. On cancellation we stop work, prepare a statement of what has been completed, and issue a final invoice.

• Fees are due for all work completed and for work in progress at the point of cancellation.
• The deposit is applied against that amount rather than refunded.
• Where the deposit exceeds the value of work done, the difference is refunded within ten business days.
• Where the value of work done exceeds the deposit, the balance is invoiced on standard fourteen day terms.

Deliverables produced up to the cancellation point are released once the final invoice is settled. Rights transfer in the same way as for a completed engagement, as described in the Intellectual Property and Project Deliverables Policy.

We may cancel an engagement where fees remain unpaid after written reminder, where material needed to continue has not been supplied within twenty business days, where the requested work would breach law or a third party's rights, or where conduct towards anyone working on the project is abusive.

Where we cancel for one of these reasons, work completed is invoiced and the deposit is applied against it. Where we cancel for a reason of our own, such as capacity or illness, you are charged only for work completed and any balance of the deposit is refunded in full within ten business days.

If circumstances change, a pause is often better than a cancellation. A pause holds the work in place and avoids the cost of restarting.

Either side may request a pause in writing. Amounts already due remain payable. Resuming depends on capacity, and a pause longer than sixty days may require the schedule to be re-planned and the remaining work re-quoted at current rates.

Once deliverables have been provided and accepted, fees are not refundable. The work has been performed and the material is in your hands.

Where a delivered item does not match the agreed scope, the remedy is correction rather than refund. Report it within the ten business day acceptance period and we correct it at no charge. Defects in front-end code are additionally covered by the thirty day warranty in the services terms.

Dissatisfaction with a creative direction that was formally approved at an earlier stage is not a defect. That is why direction is signed off before production begins.

Approved refunds are issued to the original payment method. Bank transfers are returned to the originating account, and card payments are reversed through the payment provider.

Refunds are processed within ten business days of approval. The time for funds to appear depends on your bank or card issuer and is outside our control. We do not issue refunds in cash or to a third party account.

Amounts already paid to third parties on your behalf, such as licensed fonts, stock imagery or paid testing services, are not refundable once the purchase has been made.

Where a licence was purchased in your name it remains yours and continues to be usable after cancellation.

If you are unhappy with the work, raise it in writing as early as possible. Most problems are resolved by adjusting the work rather than ending the engagement, and they are far easier to resolve when raised at the stage they occur.

We acknowledge a written concern within one business day and respond substantively within five business days, setting out what we propose to do and by when.

This policy may be updated as the practice changes. The date at the top of the page records when the current version took effect.

The version in force when your proposal was accepted governs that engagement. A later change does not alter the terms of an engagement already under way.