Payment and Refund Policy

Top-ups are final. Balance buys scheduling here and nothing else, and closing your account does not turn it back into money.

If you are not sure how much you will use, add less — there is no minimum, no monthly commitment, and you can top up again at any time. What you get in exchange is that it never runs out on you: no expiry, no decay, no inactivity charge, no deadline. Money you put in stays yours to spend for as long as you take.

Money does come back in the situations below. Note the middle column: some of it comes back as balance, because balance is what was taken, and some of it comes back to your card, because your card is what was charged.

Two of these are yours to set in motion: a sale of the business you would rather not follow, and a change to the Terms or the rates you do not accept. Both work by telling us before the thing takes effect. The rest either happen automatically once established, or follow a decision of ours. Section 10 explains the mechanics, which are the same throughout.

Nothing here removes a right you have under law that cannot be contracted away. If applicable consumer or payment legislation entitles you to a refund, that legislation wins.

Balance does not expire, does not decay, is not subject to inactivity charges, and is not taken away because you stopped using the account. It sits there until you spend it, however long that takes.

If an account goes 24 months without activity we send one email to say the balance is still there. That is a reminder, not a deadline — we do not close accounts for being quiet, and nothing happens to the balance if you ignore it. We do clear out the data that is no longer doing anything, which the privacy policy sets out; the balance is not affected.

There is also no minimum, no monthly commitment, and no charge for capacity you do not launch. Add what you need, when you need it.

Balance is prepaid credit for this service and nothing else. Specifically, it:

• is not legal tender, currency, or a substitute for currency, and has no equivalent value in fiat;
• is not a bank account, a digital wallet, a stored-value account, a deposit, or a payment device;
• cannot be transferred to another person or account, or used to pay anyone but us;
• earns no interest;
• confers no property right beyond the right to have work scheduled against it, and the refund rights set out on this page.

Separately from all that: we do not keep money we should never have taken in the first place. In each of the cases below the correction is automatic once established — you do not have to argue for it.

• A metering error on our side. The wrong band applied, a machine metered that never ran, or a fee deducted twice from your balance. Tell us within 60 days of the deduction appearing on your account and we return the difference to your balance. If you spot an older one, tell us anyway — we would still rather fix it, we just cannot promise to go back indefinitely.
• A card charged in error. If your card was charged twice for the same top-up, or charged for one you did not make, we reverse it to the card — not to your balance. Money that should never have left your account goes back the way it came. There is no time limit on this one.
• A control plane failure that caused the charge. For example, a scheduler fault that provisioned capacity you did not request. We refund the management fee for that capacity in full, without asking you to prove the fault — if our logs show it, that is enough. The compute charges the same fault ran up in your own cloud account are a separate matter: that money went to your provider, not to us, and section 5 sets out where you stand on it.

Metering corrections go back to your balance, because the balance is what was charged. Card errors go back to the card.

None of these covers a workload that failed for reasons inside your own account: a bad container image, an exhausted quota, a spot instance reclaimed by your provider. Kernpool scheduled the work as instructed, and the fee is for that scheduling.

Worth repeating here, because it is the most common misunderstanding: the machines are rented in your own account, and you pay your provider directly for them. Kernpool never handles that money. If you want a refund on cloud charges, that is between you and AWS, GCP, Azure, or whoever owns the machine.

This page is only about the management fee and the balance it comes from.

The balance is tied to the account. Which way it ends — or, in the last case, changes hands — decides whether anything comes back.

We tell you in writing which of these applies and why. Where a refund is due it follows the process in section 10.

If we decide to discontinue the Service, we give at least 90 days' notice and refund every account in full, to the original payment method, with no exit fee.

Ninety days is enough to move workloads somewhere else without rushing, and the refund is not conditional on your having done so.

If a charge looks wrong, write to [email protected] before going to your bank. We reply within 2 business days, and if we charged you in error we say so — section 4 exists precisely for that.

If the problem is that you have changed your mind about the service, section 6 sets out where you stand, and we would rather tell you that plainly than have you find it out through your bank. A chargeback means we suspend the account while the dispute runs, which stops new work from being scheduled, and it is slower than talking to us. If a top-up is reversed after the balance has been spent, section 10 of the Terms explains what happens to the account.

We may verify your identity, ask about the source of funds, and decline or return a top-up we are not comfortable with — in which case the money goes back to the card it came from, in full. Large or unusual amounts may take longer to clear. This is rare and it is not aimed at ordinary use.

Whichever situation applies, the mechanics are the same. Refunds under section 6 are calculated on the balance left at the moment the account ends.

• Email [email protected] from the address on the account. Say what you are asking for and, for a card error, roughly when the charge appeared.
• We reply within 2 business days. If it is a card error and our records agree with you, we do not ask for anything else. Where a top-up triggered the checks in section 9, those have to finish first and we will tell you that is what is happening.
• Approved refunds go to the original payment method and are submitted within 5 business days. How long they take to appear is up to your bank — usually another 5 to 10 days.
• Card networks stop accepting refunds against an old payment after a few months. If your top-up is past that point we pay by bank transfer instead, which means we will ask you for account details and verify who you are first. Slower, but the money still reaches you.
• Time limits are in the table in section 1. The short version: metering corrections within 60 days of the deduction; anything you are objecting to — a change of terms, a change of rates, a sale of the business — before it takes effect, because once it is live and you have carried on scheduling you have accepted it. Everything else has no deadline.
• If we decline, we say why. That is not the end of it — come back with more detail.

We may update this policy. Changes apply to top-ups made after the new version is published, never retroactively to balance already on your account.

Rate changes work the same way, and this is the part worth reading. If we raise the management fee, the balance you already hold is metered at the old band rates until it runs out. New money you add after the change is metered at the new ones.

What that holds is our percentage. It does not hold the public spot rate the percentage is applied to for rented public-cloud capacity, which moves with the market and is not ours to fix — if spot prices for your accelerator rise, the same run costs you more, and that is not a change you can refuse under this section. The fixed rates on the pricing page, including the ones for hardware you own, are ours, and a change to those does fall under this section. Section 13 of the Terms says the same thing.

Where an account holds balance from both sides of a rate change, the older money is spent first. That is the order that favours you, and it is the order we use.

If we lower the rates, the new ones apply to everything immediately, including balance you topped up before. There is no reason to make you wait for a price cut.

Either way, material changes to the Terms or to the rates come with at least 30 days' notice by email. If you do not accept one, tell us before it takes effect and we refund your unused balance in full to the card you paid with, because this is our change and not your decision. Section 10 has the process.