Refund Policy

If someone outbids you and takes over your country, you get refunded - automatically, no request needed - what you paid minus the Stripe processing fee on that charge. That fee is the only part of your payment we ever keep from a purchase that didn't end up staying yours.

• You get outbid: another Brand pays more than you did for a country you own. You're displaced immediately, and the refund is issued to your original payment method within moments.
• Your payment didn't win: if two payments for the same country land at nearly the same time, only the higher one grants ownership. If yours didn't win, it's refunded the same way, immediately.

Stripe charges a processing fee on every payment (typically around 2.9% + $0.30 for US cards, sometimes more for international or premium cards) and does not return that fee to us when we issue a refund. Since we never receive that money back ourselves, we can't return it to you either - we refund the exact amount left over after Stripe's fee on your specific charge, not an estimated or flat percentage.

• While you still own a country, there's nothing to refund - you haven't lost anything. "I changed my mind" is not a refund event: your display stays up until someone outbids you, exactly as advertised at checkout.
• Claiming a previously-unclaimed country has no prior owner, so there's nobody to refund at that moment.

The refund is issued on our end as soon as the takeover is processed - usually within seconds of the payment that displaced you. From there it's up to your bank or card issuer, which can take a few business days (sometimes up to 10) to show up on your statement, the same as any other Stripe refund.

Please don't file a chargeback with your bank instead of waiting for the automatic refund above - if you were displaced, the refund is already on its way. Filing a chargeback on top of a refund you already received is treated as fraud and may result in your account being banned from the Service.

Duplicate charges, technical failures that prevented an automatic refund from going through, or refunds required by law are reviewed by hand. If you think one of these applies to you, or an automatic refund never arrived, contact [[email protected]] with your order details.