Refund Policy

1. Who takes the payment, and who returns it

Payments for Sonela subscriptions are processed by Paddle, who act as merchant of record: your invoice comes from them, their own terms cover the payment itself, and an approved refund is issued by them to the payment method the charge was made on — it goes back the way it came, so there are no card or bank details for us to ask you for. Fees are charged in USD, so that is the currency a refund comes back in; what your bank makes of the conversion is between you and them.

You do not have to deal with Paddle to start this. Ask us (section 7 below) and we arrange it. If you raise a dispute with your bank instead, Paddle handles that as merchant of record — we would still rather you wrote to us first, because we can usually settle it faster than a chargeback can.

2. Your rights under the law come first

Where you buy as a consumer, the law gives you rights that no policy page can write away — including the statutory cancellation period that applies to consumers in the UK and the EU. Those rights apply whatever else is written here or in our terms, and where this page appears to say something narrower, the law wins and we will honour it.

Consumer protection also survives our choice of governing law: our terms keep the protections and the forum that the mandatory law of your country of residence gives you.

3. If you cancel

You can cancel at any time from your dashboard. Cancelling takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for: the assistant keeps working until then, and nothing renews after it.

What you have already paid for that period stays paid. Fees are not refunded pro rata when you cancel, except where the law gives you a refund right or where we have failed to provide the service — the two exceptions in section 9 of the terms, and the subjects of sections 2 and 4 here. A charge that should never have been made at all is a different thing, and it is section 5.

4. If we fail to provide the service

Where we have failed to provide the service, we refund the unused part of the period you paid for — the exception written into section 9 of the terms. The same refund applies where we change the service in a way that materially reduces it and you would rather cancel than accept the change, which is section 11 of the terms.

"Failed to provide the service" means the service did not work as we describe it and we could not put it right in reasonable time. It does not mean a stretch of maintenance we told you about, an answer you disagreed with, or the assistant turning out to suit your work less well than you hoped. Sonela composes answers with an AI model, those answers are informational, and an answer being wrong is a limit of the technology that section 6 of the terms states plainly rather than a service failure. If you think we have fallen short, write to us and say what happened; we would rather hear it than have you cancel quietly.

5. If a charge should never have been made

A billing mistake is not a refund question and we will not argue it as one. If the same period was charged twice, if a charge landed after you had already cancelled, or if you were put on a plan you did not choose, tell us and we return it in full. This is the one rule on this page that the terms do not carry, and it runs in your favour.

6. Trials

A trial takes no card and costs nothing, so there is no charge to refund. When a trial ends the workspace pauses rather than billing you, and you only ever pay by choosing a plan yourself.

7. How to ask for a refund

Email hello@sonela.ai from the address on the account, and tell us which workspace and what went wrong. That is the whole process — there is no form and no queue, and a person reads it.

We answer every request, including the ones we decline, and when we decline one we say why and point at the clause we are relying on. If you disagree with the outcome, say so in reply: an unhappy customer arguing with a policy is a better use of our time than an unhappy customer who has given up.

8. How long it takes

The part that is ours — deciding the request — is quick, because it reaches a person directly and there is no queue in front of it. What happens after that is not ours to set: Paddle issues the refund on their own timescale, and your bank or card issuer then takes its own time to show it on a statement. We will not print a number of days here that neither of them has committed to. Paddle's confirmation is what tells you the money has been sent, and if it has not landed a reasonable while after that, write to us and we will chase it with them.

9. What this page does not cover

This page is about the subscription fee you pay us. On a plan where you bring your own AI key, what you pay that provider is separate, is billed by them, and does not pass through us — a refund of it is a matter between you and them. On a plan where we supply the key, the model cost is ours and is inside the fee this page covers.

Taxes charged on your invoice are handled by Paddle as merchant of record and follow the refund of the fee they were charged on.

It is not about what happens to your workspace either. A refund returns money and deletes nothing: your configuration and anything you uploaded stay where they are, and section 5 of the terms is how you export or remove them when you want to.