Refund & Cancellation Policy

1Who this policy covers

Civil Ashram is a sole proprietorship registered in Kota, Rajasthan, India, with GSTIN 08CRXPP9491C1ZV, at 1063, Mahaveer Nagar Second, Kota, Rajasthan – 324005, India. Our proprietor and Grievance Officer is Deepika Patni. In this policy, “we”, “us” and “our” mean Civil Ashram, and “you” means the person or business using our Services.

“Business day” means Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays in Rajasthan, India. Saturday is counted only when we measure our support response targets, never when we measure a refund, a despatch or a delivery.

This policy applies to every paid service we sell, on any of the Services listed above: Arth Messenger subscriptions and add-on modules, WhatsApp message credits, courses and guidance programmes, custom development and consulting, printed study material, and any paid service, plan, tool or application we introduce later. It sits alongside our Terms of Service, Service Delivery Policy, Shipping & Delivery Policy, Privacy Policy and Data Deletion Instructions.

Where you have signed a separate written agreement with us, that agreement takes priority wherever the two differ.

2The principle behind this policy

You can create an Arth Messenger account and explore the whole product free of charge. We take payment only when you are ready to connect your WhatsApp number and go live. There is no setup fee, no minimum contract and no notice period.

That shapes everything below. Because you can see exactly what you are buying before you spend anything, we do not offer open-ended change-of-mind refunds on a period you have already used. What we give you instead is the freedom to leave whenever you want, at no cost — and a firm, non-negotiable commitment to give your money back in cash whenever the problem is ours rather than yours. That commitment is section 6.3.

3The short version

4How billing works

• Subscriptions are charged in advance and renew automatically — monthly or annually — until you cancel.
• The price you see before you pay includes all applicable taxes. We issue a tax invoice for every payment, downloadable from your account.
• WhatsApp per-message charges are separate from your subscription. Meta sets those rates; we pass them on exactly as billed, with no markup.
• Our payment partner processes the transaction. We never see or store your full card number.
• We email you before every annual renewal, and before any price change.

5Cancelling your subscription

There is no cancellation fee, no notice period and no lock-in. You can cancel in either of these ways:

• from the billing screen inside your account; or
• by emailing info@civilashram.co.in from the address registered on the account.

We confirm an emailed cancellation in writing within one business day. We will never ask you to sit through a retention call or explain yourself before we let you cancel. If our system is down, an email sent to us in time counts as cancelled in time.

What happens next:

• Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for. You keep full access until then — cancelling never switches anything off early.
• Your card or mandate is not charged again.
• You can export your contacts, message history and reports at any time before the period ends, and for 30 days afterwards. Ask us and we will help you export.
• After that 30-day window we delete or anonymise your data in line with our Privacy Policy and Data Deletion Instructions.
• Your account is kept dormant, not destroyed, for those 30 days, so you can come back without losing anything.

6When we refund

6.1 First purchase — a 7-day guarantee

If you are dissatisfied with your first paid subscription, tell us within seven (7) days of that first payment and we will refund it in full. This applies once per business, to the first subscription only.

6.2 After the first seven days

We do not refund a subscription period that has already begun, apart from the situations in 6.3. You keep the service to the end of the period and are not charged again. For annual plans, section 7 gives you back the value of the months you have not used.

6.3 Payments we always refund, in cash

1. We could not activate or deliver your service. If we cannot get a paid service working within 7 business days of having everything we need from you, and the reason is ours, we refund that payment in full.
2. Meta would not allow your number onto the platform. If activation is blocked by Meta and stays blocked for 30 calendar days, we refund what you paid for a service you never received — even though the delay was not our doing.
3. You were charged twice, or charged the wrong amount. We refund the excess in full, without deduction, as soon as we confirm it.
4. A renewal you did not intend and did not use. Tell us within 7 days of a renewal charge, having not materially used the service since, and we refund it less the pro-rata value of the days that elapsed. Forgetting to cancel is a normal human thing and we do not profit from it.
5. Unauthorised or fraudulent use of your payment method. Once verified, we refund in full and cooperate with your bank.
6. A defect we cannot fix. If a fault on our side makes a core feature you paid for unusable, you report it, and we cannot fix it or offer a workable alternative within 15 business days, we refund the affected period pro rata.
7. We stop offering the service, or we close your account and you were not at fault. We refund every unused day, pro rata, in cash.

Where a purchase included third-party costs already incurred on your written instruction under section 9, those specific amounts are excluded from (a) and (g).

6.4 Add-on modules

Add-on modules follow the same rules as the plan they are attached to. Switching a module off stops the next renewal; it stays active until the end of the period you paid for.

7Annual plans, and pausing instead of cancelling

7.1 Your unused months are not lost

Annual plans are paid in advance and carry a discount of roughly two months against the monthly price. You may cancel one at any time — there is no lock-in and we will never require you to keep paying. If you cancel part-way through a paid year:

• we count the whole calendar months remaining after your cancellation takes effect (part-months are not counted);
• we value them at the discounted monthly-equivalent price you actually paid, not at the higher list price; and
• we issue that amount to you as Civil Ashram account credit.

That credit is issued within 5 business days, is valid for 12 months, and can be spent on anything we sell — a different plan, add-on modules, message credits, professional services, or a course. It may be transferred once, free of charge, to another business under the same ownership if you ask us in writing.

This arrangement is stated at checkout before you pay, so you know it before you commit. If you would rather not have it, choose the monthly plan, which carries no such term. And if you believe credit is genuinely unfair in your situation — for example because your business has permanently closed — write to our Grievance Officer. We look at those cases individually, and we do say yes.

7.2 Pause instead of cancel

If your business is seasonal or you are going through a quiet stretch, you may pause an active subscription once every 12 months for up to 60 days at no cost. Billing stops, your data and settings are preserved exactly as they are, and your price — including any founding or locked price — is protected. On an annual plan a pause extends your paid term by the number of days paused, so you lose nothing. Email us to pause.

8Courses, coaching and guidance programmes

8.1 The 7-day enrolment window

A course is harder to judge from the outside than software, so for every paid course, coaching batch or guidance programme you get a full refund of the fee if you ask within 7 calendar days of enrolment, provided that at the time you ask you have not:

• attended more than 3 live sessions; or
• accessed more than 20% of the recorded content or downloadable material; or
• received physical study material that cannot be returned in resalable condition.

If you have received physical material, we refund the fee less the actual printed cost and courier charge, itemised for you.

8.2 After the window

A seat in a batch cannot be resold once teaching has started, so fees are not refundable after the window closes. Instead you may choose:

• Deferral — move the unused portion to the next batch of the same programme, once, free of charge;
• Transfer — pass your seat to another student, once, free of charge;
• Credit — convert the unused portion to account credit valid 12 months, usable across anything we sell.

Where a programme is billed in instalments, cancelling stops all future instalments immediately. You are never chased for the remainder of a course fee.

8.3 Illness, bereavement and comparable emergencies

If you cannot continue because of serious illness, bereavement or a comparable emergency, write to us with whatever evidence you reasonably have. We will offer a deferral, a transfer or a pro-rata refund. We will not hide behind the 7-day window in these situations.

8.4 If we cancel or postpone

If we cancel a batch, postpone it by more than 14 days, or materially reduce what was promised, you may choose a full cash refund of the unused portion or a deferral to a later batch. The choice is yours, not ours.

8.5 Results are not guaranteed

We do not guarantee any examination result, rank or selection, and no refund is available on the basis of a result.

9Custom development and professional services

Guided onboarding and account setup for a subscription plan is included free of charge. This section applies only to separately quoted project work.

• Each engagement is quoted individually and governed by the written proposal or statement of work you accept.
• Before work starts, you may cancel for a full refund.
• Once work has started, you may cancel at any time. We refund the portion of the fee for work not yet performed, and we hand over everything completed and paid for up to that point.
• Third-party costs we have already incurred on your written instruction — Meta verification, hosting, domains, licences, paid APIs — are not refundable, because the money has left our hands. We always show you these costs in writing before we commit them, and we never incur them without your approval.
• Where an outcome depends on a third party’s decision, such as WhatsApp Business verification or a green tick, we charge for the work of preparing and submitting, not for the decision. That work is not refundable if the third party declines, but we prepare and resubmit once at no extra charge.

10What we cannot refund

• WhatsApp and Meta per-message charges for messages already sent. That money has gone to Meta, not to us.
• A subscription period you have already used, apart from the situations in section 6.3.
• Third-party charges we incurred on your written instruction and cannot recover — couriers, currency conversion, bank fees, licences.
• Completed custom development or consulting work.
• Printed study material that has been dispatched, except where it is damaged, incorrect or missing under our Shipping & Delivery Policy.
• The portion of a period we actually delivered before an account was suspended or terminated for a serious breach of our Terms of Service. Any portion we did not deliver is refunded in the normal way — we do not keep money for a service you did not receive, even where you were at fault.
• Discounts, promotional credits, referral credits and account credit itself. These have no cash value.
• A subscription you simply did not get round to using. Non-use is not by itself a ground for a refund.

11Changing plan

• Upgrades take effect immediately and are charged pro rata for the remainder of your current billing period.
• Downgrades take effect at your next renewal, so you keep everything you have already paid for. We do not refund the difference for the current period.
• Founding prices are locked for two (2) years from the date of first subscription, and a downgrade or a pause does not break that lock.

12If the service is unavailable for a long period

Our Service Delivery Policy sets an availability target and a table of service credits. In summary:

• If availability in a calendar month falls below our target for reasons attributable to us, you may claim a service credit by emailing us within 30 days of the end of that month. Credits are applied to your next invoice.
• Any credit still owing when your account closes is paid to you in cash, not written off.
• Where availability in a month falls below 90%, you may cancel immediately and take a pro-rata cash refund of any prepaid period, including on an annual plan. Section 7 does not apply in that situation.

Outages at Meta or WhatsApp, problems with your own connection or configuration, and events beyond our reasonable control are excluded from the measurement. Section 6.3(f) still applies where a fault goes beyond downtime and defeats the purpose of the service.

13How to ask for a refund

Email info@civilashram.co.in with the subject line “Refund request”, from the address on the account. Tell us the service, the payment date, the amount and briefly what happened. Include the invoice number if you have it. You may also call +91 88240 49989 during office hours, but please follow up in writing so we both have a record.

Every request receives a reference number you can quote.

The final leg depends on your bank, card issuer or UPI provider and is outside our control. We give you the refund reference number so you can trace it with them.

14How refunds are paid

• Refunds go back to the original payment method only. We cannot redirect a refund to a different card, account or person — that is a fraud-prevention rule applied by the payment networks, not a preference of ours.
• Where the original method has expired or closed, we arrange a bank transfer to an account in the same name, after verification.
• We do not deduct payment gateway charges from your refund. We absorb them.
• Refunds are made in the currency you paid in. For a payment made in US dollars we refund the original dollar amount; the rupee value you finally receive depends on your bank’s exchange rate on the day.
• Where tax was charged, the refund includes it and we issue a credit note.

15Tax treatment of a refund

Where Goods and Services Tax was charged on the original payment, it is refunded proportionally and we issue a credit note in accordance with the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017. The credit note shows our GSTIN 08CRXPP9491C1ZV and references the original invoice.

16Chargebacks

If you believe a charge is wrong, please raise it with us first. We resolve almost everything within days, and it is far faster than a bank dispute.

You are of course free to approach your bank or card issuer at any time, and we will not suspend your account or penalise you for doing so. We will share our records with your bank and with our payment partner so the dispute is decided on the facts. If a dispute is decided in our favour, the disputed amount remains payable.

17Fair use of this policy

These rights are for real customers with real problems. Where we can show a pattern of repeated sign-up-and-refund, requests supported by false statements, or organised abuse, we may decline a request and close the account. If we ever rely on this paragraph we will say so plainly and tell you why, and you can escalate it to our Grievance Officer.

18Changes to our prices

• A price change applies only from your next renewal. We never change the price of a period you have already paid for.
• We give at least 30 days’ notice by email before a price change takes effect, so you can cancel first if you wish.
• Founding and locked prices are honoured for the full period promised.

19Your statutory rights

Nothing in this policy limits any right you have under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, or any other law that applies to you and cannot be contracted out of. Where this policy and the law differ, the law wins.

This policy is governed by the laws of India, and the courts at Kota, Rajasthan have exclusive jurisdiction — without affecting your right to approach a consumer forum where you live.

20Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. Any change applies only to purchases made after the new version’s effective date — we do not change the rules on money you have already paid. Where a change materially reduces your rights, we give at least 30 days’ notice by email to active customers before it takes effect. The version in force is always the one published on this page.