Cat

Hi Cat,

I checked her full account history. Nothing is broken on her side. She has no active subscription and she is not being charged.

She bought the $10 Captain tier ten times since November 2025, so $100 in total.

One payment was already refunded. That is order #293 from December 2025. She cancelled it 4 minutes after paying and Duong refunded her manually. That is the refund she remembers.

Three months she used in full and they expired normally, so no refund applies there. Those are orders #164, #404 and #726.

Five times she subscribed and then cancelled quickly, always inside our 2 day window.

All five still have the status completed, so no refund was ever issued on them.

That is $50 in total.

There is one more, order #359 from Jan 2 2026. She cancelled that one about 49 hours after paying, so just outside the 2 day window. It does not qualify under our rules.

About how it works. Cancelling stops future billing and downgrades the role right away, but it does not create a refund by itself. Our Terms of Use section 3 say payments are final and refunds are given at admin discretion on request. That is why these payments are still marked as paid.

So this is a business decision now, not a technical one, and it is Duong's call.

She can refund the $50, refund part of it, or decline under the terms.

Two things that may help her decide. Each of these was cancelled within minutes or hours of payment, so the benefits were barely used. At the same time the oldest charges are already a few months old, and Stripe only allows refunds for a limited period after payment, so the March ones will stop being refundable at some point. It is worth checking the exact deadline in Stripe before deciding.

The order numbers above are all she needs to process them in Stripe.

Thank you!

Max Romanchenko Thanks for looking into this and being so thorough! I've let the user know their choice and Duong has decided we will give a partial refund for now, but we'll be blocking them from subscribing to a paid tier in future to avoid this happening again lol. Appreciate your help!!

Max Romanchenko Thanks for the detailed analysis. Is there a warning of what canceling will do? If no, can we add something that warns users about this?

If the user cancels within 2 days and haven't gone above their alloted daily PB amount:

One more thing about canceling; I think the users are confused. Typically when you cancel any subscription, the next month is canceled. Users still have access for 1 month until the next billing cycle. Traditionally this is how it worked.

Should we have 2 methods of canceling?

But this might be confusing as well. Can we discuss how cancellations work?

Amrayu78 Hi Duong,

Thanks, these are good questions. Most of what you describe already exists, it just works under different names. I attached screenshots so you can see the current state.

There is already a popup. This is the exact text people see today.

"Cancel subscription and request refund? Your role will be downgraded immediately. Refund requests are processed at admin's discretion.

To keep your current benefits and simply prevent renewal next month, use the Disable Auto-renewal toggle instead."

There is a second version of it for people who are past the 2 day window, which says the same thing without the refund part.

So the demotion warning is already there.

Both already exist.

Disable Auto-Renew is the traditional cancellation you describe. Billing stops, but the user keeps Captain until the end of the month they already paid for, and then it expires.

Cancel is the immediate one. The role drops to Free straight away.

There is also a checkbox at checkout called "Enable automatic renewal", ticked by default, so people can choose this before they even pay and change it later in their profile.

No need for a third option, it's just a naming problem. Cancel cuts access instantly, while actual cancellation is disguised as Disable Auto-Renew.

If you want, I could rename them like this.

Disable Auto-Renew becomes "Cancel subscription", with a small line under it saying you keep Captain until 05.09.2026

Enable Auto-Renew becomes "Undo cancellation"

Cancel becomes "Cancel immediately"

Then the plain word "Cancel" does what people expect, and the destructive option is clearly marked. It's a familiar pattern for users, similar to Netflix and Spotify

Keep in mind this wording appears across the app (checkout, profile, popups, help page). Updating it requires changing all instances to avoid contradictions, so I’d avoid rushing this. Let me know if you want to proceed and I'll handle it properly.

Captain accounts currently have unlimited daily PB. What should count as 'using' the subscription? For example, I can check GB downloaded since payment and skip the refund message above a threshold you set. I'd just prefer to keep it simple.

Max Romanchenko Thanks for clearing the confusion for me.

I agree that we should change the wording to something people are more used to.

I like what you've proposed here:

Question about PB condition: Do you recommend that we don't include this then? I'm fine with that as well.

Amrayu78 Yes, there is already a warning for the immediate cancel. Right now it says the role will be downgraded right away and that it cannot be undone. Your version is better though, because it names the FREE tier and mentions losing the daily PB, so I will use your wording.

On the PB condition, yes, I recommend leaving it out. Captain has unlimited PB, so any threshold would be an arbitrary number, and hiding the refund message would confuse people who do not know why it disappeared. Since you decide refunds manually anyway, it is simpler to keep the message always visible.

If it helps, I can put the amount downloaded since payment into the cancellation email you receive. Then you have the number in front of you when you decide, without adding any rules to the site.

I will start on the renaming.

Amrayu78 Hi Duong,

All done, screenshots attached. The buttons are renamed as agreed, and the warning uses your wording, naming the FREE tier and the daily PB. There is also a permanent line under the subscriptions table about refunds not being automatic, and the checkout wording matches now.

The cancellation email is live. If someone cancels within 2 days of paying, you get their username, email, order number, amount, payment date, how many hours later they cancelled, and how many GB they downloaded since paying.

I updated the help page as well.

While going through it I noticed the Refunds section promised things the Terms of Use do not, such as a guaranteed refund within 1 day and automatic account credits, so I rewrote that part to match the Terms. Have a look and tell me if you want it worded differently.

Thank you!

Max Romanchenko Thanks for this! It sounds a lot better and less confusing.