Refund Policy

vatnode is a digital service that begins immediately on subscription. At checkout you expressly request immediate access and acknowledge that your 14-day EU right of withdrawal is waived once the service commences (see Terms of Service and Article 16(m) of EU Directive 2011/83/EU). For this reason, subscription fees are generally non-refundable. We do, however, issue goodwill refunds in the situations described below.

Under EU consumer law (Directive 2011/83/EU), consumers normally have 14 days to withdraw from a distance contract. Article 16(m) of that Directive disapplies the right of withdrawal for digital content and services where (a) performance has begun with the consumer's prior express consent and (b) the consumer acknowledges that the right of withdrawal is lost once performance begins.

vatnode collects both elements explicitly on the Stripe Checkout page before payment. By completing checkout you confirm that you understand and accept this waiver.

Despite the above, we will normally issue a full or pro-rated refund in any of the following situations:

• Billing error. You were charged for a plan you did not subscribe to, charged twice, or charged after cancellation.
• Documented sustained outage. The vatnode API was unavailable for a significant continuous period during your billing cycle and the cause was on our side (not VIES, not your network, not an upstream national registry). We refund pro-rata for the affected portion of the cycle.
• Early-trial regret. Within 7 days of your first paid charge, and before you have made more than 100 paid API calls in the period, we will cancel the subscription and refund the most recent payment in full on request. This is a goodwill window — it does not extend the statutory waiver above and is not available on renewal cycles.

Refunds are issued to the original payment method via Stripe within 5 business days of approval.

Overage charges reflect actual API requests served. They are not refundable, since they correspond to a service that has already been delivered. If you believe overage was billed in error (for example, requests you can demonstrate were never made), contact us — we audit usage logs and correct mistakes when we find them.

To avoid surprise overage, the dashboard shows live usage and we email you when you cross 80% of your plan quota.

The free plan has no charges; there is nothing to refund. You can cancel a free account at any time from your dashboard.

Email [email protected] from the address on your account, with:

• the invoice number (found on the receipt email or in your Stripe portal)
• a short note on the reason

We respond within 2 business days. There is no online form — replying to a billing email or writing directly is fastest.

Please contact us before opening a chargeback. We can almost always resolve a billing question faster than the card network can. If a chargeback is opened without prior contact we may suspend the account while the dispute is in progress, and we will provide Stripe with the access logs and signed Terms acceptance associated with the disputed charge.

We may update this policy. The "Last updated" date at the top reflects the current version. Changes do not retroactively affect refund eligibility for charges already paid under a previous version.

For consumer dispute resolution within the EU, you can also use the European Commission's Online Dispute Resolution platform. We are not legally required to use the ODR platform, but we monitor it for referrals.