Defaults.Exposed › Refund & Guarantee Policy

Refund & Guarantee Policy

This Policy forms part of the Terms of Service. It converts the on-page promises (A-grade-or-free, slip protection, 30-day money-back) into bounded, honourable terms.

Design rule: every guarantee stated on the sales page must appear here with its conditions, and the two must never disagree. If the page promises it, this document honours it.

Last updated: 2026-07-04 · Version: 1.0 (canonical; scheduled external legal/accountant review 2026-09-04)

The short version

• Digital products (A-Grade Playbook, Security Dossier): delivered instantly, so no change-of-mind refund once delivered — but if a product fails to deliver or is defective, we fix it or refund it. The Dossier also carries a 10-day happiness guarantee: if it doesn’t do what we said, tell us and we’ll make it right or refund it (§3.4).
• Fix It For Me ($499): we get you to an A-grade, or you pay nothing. The risk is ours. Before you pay, we confirm we can reach whoever controls your domain; if we can’t, we tell you first (§4.3).
• Grand Slam ($499/year): triple guarantee — A-grade or your money back, slip below A and we fix it free, and 30 days, no questions, money back. Year one stacks done-for-you remediation, 12 months of monitoring, the signed Dossier and a shareable certificate; from year two it continues as the Annual A-Grade Certification. §6 shows what each piece is worth.
• Subscriptions (Monitor, Grand Slam, Managed): cancel anytime; you keep the service to the end of the period you paid for. No long lock-in. Annual renewals come with a reminder email 14 days before the charge.
• Guarantees are real and we honour them. They have plain, fair conditions, stated at the point of the promise (mainly: you have to let us do the work). Those conditions are below.
• What counts as an “A-grade”: the exact rubric version that applied on the day you ordered is pinned to your order, so “A” can’t move under you after you buy (§4.1, §9).

1. How to make a claim

Email [email protected] from the address on the order, with your domain and order reference. We acknowledge within 2 business days and resolve eligible claims within 10 business days. Approved refunds are processed to your original payment method via our payment provider, Stripe, within 14 days of approval; the time a refund takes to appear after that is set by your bank or card issuer.

2. Rung 2 — A-Grade Playbook ($99): digital good

2.1 The Playbook is a digital product delivered immediately on purchase. Delivery happens after you expressly request immediate delivery and acknowledge that receiving it waives the change-of-mind window — that acknowledgement is ticked and stored with a timestamp at checkout. Because you receive it at once, it is not subject to a change-of-mind refund once delivered. Where your local consumer law gives you a mandatory 14-day withdrawal right regardless, we honour it. Our own promises in this Policy sit on top of any statutory rights and are usually stronger.

2.2 We still stand behind it. If the Playbook fails to generate or deliver, is corrupted, or is materially defective, tell us and we will re-issue it or refund it in full, at your choice.

2.3 What’s inside, and its terms.

• 10 verification re-checks, usable for 12 months from purchase. Unused re-checks have no cash value and are not separately refundable.
• 1 regeneration if your stack changes (for example, you move mail platform), usable within 12 months of purchase.
• 90-day 100% upgrade credit: within 90 days of purchase, the full $99 is credited against Fix It For Me or the Grand Slam for the same domain. When you use the credit, the Playbook purchase merges into the larger purchase and that purchase’s guarantees take over.

2.4 The Playbook is advice — a sequenced runbook with exact record values, console click-paths and gotcha rails. It is not a sealed or signed evidence product; the Dossier is (§3).

3. Rung 3 — Security Dossier ($149): digital good

3.1 The Dossier is a digital product delivered immediately on purchase, on the same instant-delivery and waiver terms as §2.1 — the waiver acknowledgement is ticked and stored with a timestamp at checkout, and any mandatory local withdrawal right a consumer holds is honoured.

3.2 We still stand behind it. If the Dossier fails to generate or deliver, is corrupted, or is materially defective (for example, the evidence bundle or the public verification page doesn’t work), tell us and we will re-issue it or refund it in full, at your choice.

3.3 Re-checks. The Dossier includes 10 verification re-checks, usable for 12 months from purchase; each re-check seals a new signed snapshot. Unused re-checks have no cash value and are not separately refundable. The re-check window is disclosed at purchase and stated in the Dossier itself.

3.4 10-day happiness guarantee. Separately from the defect cover above, for 10 days from delivery you can tell us the Dossier didn’t do what we promised — the evidence wasn’t what you needed, the report was unclear, or it wasn’t the tool for the job you bought it for — and we will put it right or refund you in full. This is a satisfaction guarantee, not just a defect remedy: you don’t have to prove the file was broken, only that it fell short of what we sold. The 10-day window appears on the sales page next to the Dossier price.

4. Rung 4 — Fix It For Me ($499): the “A-grade or you pay nothing” guarantee

4.1 The promise. We get your domain to an A-grade, or you pay nothing — if your domain does not reach an A-grade, we refund your $499 in full. Our completion targets: the spoofing-critical mitigations land within 72 hours of reach being confirmed, and the domain reaches an A-grade within 30 days of reach being confirmed, following the staged DMARC ramp (an A is achievable at the quarantine stage; the final hardening step to reject completes during monitoring).

What “A-grade” means, and why it can’t move under you. “A-grade” is defined by a named, published, versioned rubric — the exact checks and thresholds that make up an A. When you order, the rubric version that is live on that day is pinned to your order and recorded on your receipt. That pinned version is the one your guarantee is judged against. We may improve the rubric later, but a change never retroactively revokes an A we already delivered to you, and never raises the bar on an in-flight order. Current and past rubric versions are published at /methodology, so “A” is something you can check for yourself, not just take our word for.

How we judge it, and what you get to see. Grading uses our own assessment engine (the same one shown on the Site), run against your pinned rubric version. Because we mark our own work, any pass or fail decision comes with the evidence: the list of checks that passed and failed, the pinned rubric version, and the raw results behind each — so a refund decision isn’t “because we said so.” If you think a check was mis-scored, point us to the specific check and we’ll re-run it.

4.2 What “complete” needs from you. The guarantee assumes you give us what the job requires:

• you make the changes we specify, or grant the access we reasonably need — Fix It For Me is fulfilled by guided change: your DNS stays where it is, we drive the exact changes, and we never ask for or accept your passwords or credentials,
• you respond to reasonable requests within 5 business days, and
• you don’t undo or block the changes we drive.

If you don’t, we’ll tell you what’s outstanding; while it’s outstanding, the clock and the guarantee are paused, not lost.

4.3 We confirm we can reach your domain before you pay (a check, not a catch). The one thing that can stop us hitting an A-grade is not being able to actually make the changes — because we can’t get to whoever controls your DNS, registrar, or mail platform. So reach is qualified at purchase, not treated as a hidden refund excuse: before the work begins, we confirm who controls your registrar, DNS, email and web, and the access model (delegated admin, guided change, or admin liaison). We never take money for an A your setup makes unreachable; if a blocked system emerges, it routes straight to the refund promise.

Honest limits (things genuinely outside our control). The guarantee covers the checks that are within our power to fix through domain/DNS/email/TLS configuration. It does not apply where an A-grade is impossible for reasons only you or a third party control — for example, a registrar or DNS provider that refuses to support a required record (e.g. DNSSEC or CAA), a platform you insist on keeping that can’t meet a requirement, or a constraint you decline to change after we explain it. Here’s what you get in that case — and importantly, you’re never left both unfixed and out of pocket: we will (a) get you as high as the configuration allows AND refund your $499 in full because we didn’t hit A, or (b) agree a written alternative with you before proceeding. Either way you keep any improvement we did make; you just don’t pay when we couldn’t deliver the A.

4.4 One domain per purchase, unless we agree otherwise in writing. (Multi-domain purchases carry their own escalating discount, disclosed at checkout.)

5. Rung 5 — Monitor ($19/mo or $190/yr): subscription

5.1 Monitor bills monthly or annually and renews until you cancel. Cancel anytime; cancellation stops the next renewal and you keep Monitor until the end of the period you’ve already paid for. Annual plans get a reminder email 14 days before each renewal charge; cancelling is one click from any receipt or renewal email.

5.2 We don’t refund the current period as a matter of course (you had the service). But where we fail, the remedy is a right, not a favour: if Monitor is unavailable for more than 72 hours cumulative in a billing period, or never functioned after purchase, you get a pro-rata credit or refund for the affected time as of right — you don’t have to argue it was “material.”

5.3 If a monthly signed certificate can’t be produced because the domain became unreachable or you removed our access, that’s not a service failure on our side.

6. ★ Grand Slam ($499/year): the triple guarantee

The Grand Slam is a $499-per-year subscription. Year one stacks done-for-you remediation to A-grade, 12 months of monitoring, the signed Security Dossier, and a shareable certificate. From year two it continues as the Annual A-Grade Certification: yearly re-verification against your pinned rubric, a fresh signed Dossier each year, a certificate and badge refresh, and standing slip-protection auto-fix — renewing at $499/yr (the renewal price is shown at checkout next to the headline price, and a reminder email goes out 14 days before each renewal charge). A 3-years-for-the-price-of-2 option is available at $998 up front (vs 3 × $499 = $1,497 year-by-year — $499 saved).

What’s inside year one, and what each piece is worth (so the price is a value-stack, not just a discount):

The 12 months of monitoring is included inside the bundle, and the point of sale says so explicitly.

It carries three guarantees, and you can rely on whichever applies:

6.1 A-grade or your money back. Same promise as §4 — if we don’t get you to an A-grade, your full year-one $499 is refunded. The pinned-rubric definition of “A” in §4.1 and the evidence-with-decision rule apply here too, as do the §4.2 cooperation conditions and the §4.3 reach check and honest limits.

6.2 Slip protection. Monitoring watches your grade continuously. If your domain drops below A for a reason within our remit, the standing auto-fix corrects it; if the grade stays below A for more than 72 hours despite the auto-fix, the slip remedy applies — we step in and re-fix it free to bring it back to A. To keep “within our remit” from being argued after the fact, here’s the pre-agreed classification:

• Covered (we fix free): configuration regressions we can correct through the domain/DNS/email/TLS controls we manage — e.g. a record we set gets overwritten, an expiry we track lapses, a rubric-relevant setting drifts.
• Not covered: a drop you cause and refuse to let us fix; a change made by you or your other providers that we weren’t given the chance to prevent; or a slip caused solely by a third party outside our control (e.g. a registrar withdrawing support for a required record).

Slip protection depends on our keeping the standing access needed to watch and correct your configuration. If that access is removed, we can’t detect or fix a slip, so cover for that period is paused until access is restored — we’ll tell you if it lapses.

6.3 30-day money-back, no questions. Within 30 days of purchase you may ask for a refund of your year-one fee for any reason — no explanation needed, and it is unconditional: you get it whether or not we recover the certificate, and asking for it never costs you a guarantee you’d already earned. You keep any improvement already made to your configuration.

About the certificate. The refund is not conditioned on clawing back the certificate. Where you’ve already published or shared a certificate or verification page, we don’t require you to un-share it as a price of your refund. Instead, the public /verify page shows a dated status (“withdrawn / refunded”, with the date it happened) so it isn’t relied on as current, while your refund proceeds regardless — the evidence chain stays honest rather than silently deleted. If you exercise your statutory right to erasure, we honour it in full.

6.4 Price lock. Where we advertise a founding-customer price lock (the Founding-100: the first 100 customers lock their price for 12 months, enforced as a real redemption counter by our payment provider), we honour the locked price for the stated term for every customer who qualified, even if list prices rise — and the lock survives even if we later stop selling that tier to new customers. Withdrawing the offer from the market does not defeat a lock a qualifying customer already earned; their renewals at the same tier stay at the locked price for the stated term.

6.5 No double-dipping. The three guarantees are alternatives matched to the situation, not stackable cash back on one event — you can’t claim the A-grade refund and the 30-day refund on the same fee, or keep a period’s service as if paid while refunding it.

7. Rung 6 — Fully Managed ($199/mo or $1,990/yr): retainer subscription

7.1 Managed bills monthly or annually and renews until cancelled. Cancel anytime; you keep the service to the end of the paid period. Annual plans get a reminder email 14 days before each renewal charge. Because it’s an ongoing hands-on service, we don’t refund a period already delivered — but where we fail to provide it, the remedy is objective, not discretionary: if the service is unavailable or unperformed for more than 72 hours cumulative in a period, you get a pro-rata credit or refund for the affected time as of right (consistent with §5.2).

7.2 There is no domain cap on Managed. Capacity is managed by an honest onboarding queue: if demand outruns our onboarding capacity, new customers are told their start date before they pay, and billing starts when onboarding starts.

8. General conditions on all guarantees and refunds

8.1 Good faith. Guarantees are for genuine use. We may decline a claim that is fraudulent, or where the domain was submitted without the right to assess or remediate it (see Terms §5).

8.2 What gets refunded. A refund returns fees you paid us. It does not cover third-party costs you incurred (e.g. a registrar’s own charges), your internal time, or any consequential loss — consistent with the liability terms in the Terms of Service.

8.3 Taxes. Prices exclude any applicable VAT/GST, which is shown at checkout for your country. Where tax was charged, refunds include the tax portion as required by law.

8.4 Chargebacks. We ask that you contact us first — we’d almost always rather just fix or refund it, and it’s faster for you. But chargebacks are never penalised: raising one never forfeits a guarantee you’d already earned and never ends your eligibility, and your statutory right to dispute a charge is untouched.

8.5 We may improve, not worsen. We can make this Policy more generous at any time. A change that reduces rights applies only to orders placed after the change and never removes a guarantee you were promised at purchase.

9. How “A-grade” is defined and frozen

Because our headline guarantees turn on the word “A-grade,” it is not a moving, self-marked target:

• Named + versioned. “A-grade” is defined by a published rubric with a version number (the exact checks and pass thresholds). Current and prior versions live at /methodology.
• Pinned at purchase. The rubric version live on the day you order is pinned to your order and recorded on your receipt. Your guarantee is judged against that pinned version.
• No retroactive moving of the goalposts. We can tighten or improve the rubric later, but a change never revokes an A we already delivered to you and never raises the bar on an order already in flight.
• Checkable, with evidence. Any pass/fail that drives a refund comes with the failing/passing checks and the raw evidence behind them (§4.1), so “A” is externally verifiable and a refund decision is never just our say-so.