Refunds and cancellation

The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 give a consumer 14 days to cancel a contract made at a distance, without giving a reason. A consumer is an individual acting wholly or mainly outside their trade, business, craft or profession.

Most people buying this work are buying it for a cleaning business they run, and that is not buying as a consumer. If that is you, the Regulations do not give you this right - but the 14 days are offered to you anyway, as a term of the agreement, on exactly the terms written below. The only difference is where the right comes from.

If you are buying as a consumer, everything below is yours by law, in Scotland as everywhere else in the United Kingdom, and nothing on this site takes any of it away. Which of the two you are is explained further on the Terms of service page.

This is the wording the Regulations themselves set out. It is reproduced rather than rewritten, because a summary of it in my own words would be worth less to you than the thing itself.

Reproduced from Schedule 3, Part A of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. Two things allowed for in the Schedule itself have been done to it: the blank left for the trader has been filled in with my name, address and email, and option (a) of the first note - 'of the conclusion of the contract' - has been used, because this is a contract for services. The final paragraph is the one the Schedule provides where performance may begin inside the cancellation period. The paragraphs about sending goods back and about time counted from the day goods are returned have been left out, because nothing physical is supplied here for them to apply to. Nothing else has been altered, including the punctuation and the wording of the last paragraph.

Waiting a fortnight before touching the account is usually the last thing anybody wants, so most people ask for the work to begin straight away. You can, and asking does not cost you the right to cancel: the right runs for the whole 14 days whatever has been done in them.

What changes is how much comes back. Under regulation 36 of the Regulations, if you asked for the work to begin inside the cancellation period and then cancel, you pay for what was actually done up to the moment you told me, in proportion to the whole. The rest is returned.

There is no wording anywhere on this site saying that starting work signs away your right to cancel, and there will not be: such a term would not be lawful.

Any clear statement will do. An email to ask@cleanyourads.org saying you want to cancel is enough, and so is a letter to the address in the footer. You do not have to give a reason and you do not have to use any particular form.

The form below exists because the Regulations require it to be available. It is offered, not required.

The model cancellation form from Schedule 3, Part B of the same Regulations, word for word, with the blank at the top filled in with my details. The square brackets, the asterisks and the note about deleting as appropriate are the Schedule's own and are left exactly as they stand there.

A management plan runs month by month and can be stopped at any time. Tell me before the end of a month you have paid for and it ends on the last day of that month. There is no minimum term, no notice period and no charge for stopping.

Nothing renews itself and nothing is taken from a card automatically, so stopping is a matter of saying so rather than of cancelling something that would otherwise keep running.

When the plan ends, everything built in your account stays there, exactly as it is. You can carry on running it yourself, hand it to somebody else, or pause the advertising in your own account whenever you want: none of that needs anything from me.

Cancelling and complaining are different things, and they come from different places. Cancelling is the right to change your mind about work that is perfectly good. If the work is not what was agreed, that is dealt with on the Service and delivery page, and where you bought as a consumer the Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives you the right to have the service performed again, or to a reduction in price where doing it again is not possible or is not done within a reasonable time.

A campaign that was built as agreed but has not brought the work you hoped for is not a fault in the service. What is promised and what is not is set out on the Terms of service page, and it is deliberately short.

There is a rule in the same Regulations, regulation 37, under which the right to cancel can be lost for digital content that is supplied immediately, if the buyer expressly agreed to that and acknowledged losing the right at the moment of buying.

It has nothing to apply to here. Nothing on this site is bought and downloaded on the spot: there is no basket, no checkout and no file waiting behind a payment. Everything sold is work carried out to a brief after it has been agreed, and it is the rule about services that governs it. So there is no box on this site asking you to give up the right to cancel, and there is no circumstance in which you would find that you had.

It is acknowledged in writing on the day I read it, with the date it was received, so there is never an argument about whether it was in time.

The money goes back without undue delay and in any event within 14 days of the day I am told, by the same means it was paid, unless you ask for it another way. No fee is taken for handling it, nothing is kept as an administration charge, and no voucher or credit is offered instead of money. That is what regulation 34 requires, and it is what happens whether or not the Regulations apply to you.

Where work had started at your request and is then cancelled, the amount you pay is worked out against the stages of the package, which are published on the Plans and prices page. You are sent that working: which stages were done, what proportion of the package they are, the figure that comes out of it, and what is coming back.

What is charged is work actually carried out before your cancellation reached me, and nothing else. Time set aside, work planned for the following week and the inconvenience of an unfinished job are not charged for.

For a monthly plan cancelled mid-month, the month that has been paid for runs to its end and the work in it is done. Nothing further is invoiced.

Money already spent on advertising. That was paid by you to Google, out of your own account, for advertising that has already run. It never reached me, so it is not mine to return. Stopping or refunding spend in your Google Ads account is something you do there, under your own agreement with Google.

This is the practical reason the two are kept apart everywhere on this site. If my fee and your budget were ever quoted as one figure, a cancellation would turn into an argument about which part of that figure belonged to whom.

If I end the work - because I cannot complete it, or because I have been asked for something I will not do - you are told in writing with the reason, everything paid for work not carried out is returned within 14 days, and whatever has been built stays in your account.

A management plan that I end finishes at the end of a month you have paid for, never part-way through one.

You will not find "no refunds", "all sales are final", a restocking charge, a cancellation fee, or any wording that makes a statutory right depend on my agreement. Terms like those are unenforceable against a consumer, and offering them to a business customer would only mean writing something I had no intention of relying on.

Nor is there anything here that shortens the time a consumer has under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, or that makes a right conditional on complaining within a window of my choosing.

Write to ask@cleanyourads.org. A complaint is acknowledged within 5 working days and answered within 15 working days. A working day is Monday to Friday, not counting bank holidays in Scotland. That list is not the same as the English one: 2 January and St Andrew’s Day are bank holidays here, and Easter Monday and the late-August holiday are not.

If that does not settle it, nothing here limits what you do next, and the law this agreement is under, together with the courts where a dispute may be raised, is set out on the Terms of service page.