1. The short version

Critic Pass (one-time purchase): 14-day right of withdrawal under EU consumer law — full refund — provided you have NOT yet accessed the critique results. Once you've opened the redemption link and started using the service, you've waived the right of withdrawal (legal basis below).
Studio and Atelier (subscriptions): cancel any time from the billing portal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period; you keep access until then. No partial refunds for unused time on a period you've already paid for.
Pre-renewal cancellation: for annual subscriptions, French consumers receive a 45-day pre-renewal notice (Loi Chatel) — cancel before renewal and the next charge does not happen.
Service failure on our side: if our service is broken in a way that prevents you from using what you paid for, we refund the affected period. Email hello@winphoto.io.

2. Critic Pass — your 14-day right of withdrawal

Under Article 9 of the Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU (as amended by the Omnibus Directive 2019/2161 and transposed in every EU member state — including Luxembourg's Loi du 2 avril 2014 on consumer protection and France's Article L.221-18 of the Code de la consommation), consumers in the EU have a 14-day right of withdrawal on distance-purchased digital services. The window starts on the day after the contract is concluded.

To exercise this right within the window, email hello@winphoto.io from the address on the order, with subject "Withdrawal — Critic Pass — [order ID]". We refund within 14 days of receiving your request, to the original payment method, with no fee. A standard withdrawal form is available on request — use of the form is not mandatory; any unequivocal statement of withdrawal is sufficient.

Important exception (Article 16(1)(m) of the same Directive). The right of withdrawal does not apply to the supply of digital content not on a tangible medium once performance has begun, where (a) you have given express prior consent to performance beginning during the cooling-off period, and (b) you have acknowledged that you thereby lose the right of withdrawal. The Critic Pass redemption link is the trigger for performance: when you click it and our AI begins generating critique results, both conditions are met because the checkout consent screen captured the express prior consent and the waiver acknowledgement. From that point on, the right of withdrawal is waived under the law cited above.

In plain English: if you bought a Critic Pass but haven't clicked the redemption link yet, you can ask for a refund within 14 days. If you've already received your critique results, the service has been performed and refunds are no longer available except for service-failure reasons (Section 5).

3. Subscription cancellations — Studio and Atelier

Both tiers are offered on monthly and annual billing cycles. To cancel:

Open your account page → "Manage billing".
Click "Cancel subscription".
Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period — not immediately. You keep your tier benefits until that date.
You receive a confirmation email.

We do not pro-rate refunds for the unused portion of a billing period you've already paid for. The trade-off is the simpler upfront pricing — no surprise mid-cycle credits or charges. If you cancel a monthly Studio subscription on day 5, you keep Studio access for the remaining ~25 days of the month at no further charge, then drop to the free Apprentice tier.

The cancellation behaviour above (end-of-period, not immediate) is fixed. Switching it would break a public commitment we make on the /pricing page; under the EU Digital Content Directive (2019/770), substantively changing that commitment without explicit user consent would itself be a breach.

4. Annual subscriptions — Loi Chatel pre-renewal notice

For French consumers on annual Studio or Atelier subscriptions, French law (Loi Chatel, Article L.215-1 of the Code de la Consommation) requires us to notify you of the upcoming renewal at least 30 days in advance, with a clear cancellation path. We send the notice 45 days ahead of the renewal date — extra runway so you can decide unrushed.

If you cancel within that pre-renewal window:

You keep access through the end of your current annual period.
The renewal charge does not occur.
You drop to the free Apprentice tier on the renewal date.

If we fail to send the pre-renewal notice on time, French consumers are entitled to terminate the contract at any time after the renewal date and recover any sums paid for the unused remainder of the year.

5. Service-failure refunds

If our service is broken in a way that prevents you from using what you paid for — extended outages, unavailability of premium AI judging on Atelier, broken Critic Pass redemption — we refund the affected period proportionally. Email hello@winphoto.io with details and we respond within 5 business days.

"Broken in a way that prevents use" is the threshold. Cosmetic glitches, occasional slow responses on a single endpoint, or ordinary product changes do not meet it. Genuine outages and feature failures do.

6. Chargebacks

If you initiate a chargeback through your card issuer instead of contacting us, we lose access to the funds and pay a fee regardless of the outcome. We will always refund a legitimate request through the channels above — please email us before going to your bank. Chargebacks initiated for transactions that fall outside this policy (for example, after the digital-content waiver in Section 2) will be disputed.

7. Payment processor and merchant of record

Your purchase is processed by Polar Software, Inc., acting as our merchant of record. The receipt you receive on purchase will name Polar as the seller of record. Refund requests made via this policy are handled by us; we coordinate with Polar to issue the refund to your original payment method.

8. Contact

All refund requests: hello@winphoto.io.
Privacy / data-erasure (separate from refunds): privacy@winphoto.io or use the self-serve account-deletion flow.