Refund Policy

Your first Pro purchase carries a no-questions-asked 14-day money-back guarantee. If Cortex is not for you, email support@scrutinies.dev from your account address within 14 days of the initial charge and we will refund it in full — you do not need to prove anything, fill a form or talk to a retention agent. One guarantee per customer; it applies to the first subscription payment (including student plans), not to renewals.

Renewals and subsequent payments are refundable under two conditions, whichever you can claim:

• Fair-use window: within 7 days of the renewal charge, if you have used fewer than 10 AI actions (copilot messages, summaries, cards or mind maps combined) during that billing period — essentially, you forgot to cancel and barely used it.
• Material change: within 14 days of a change that reduces the value of your plan (a feature you relied on is retired, or limits drop below what was published when you subscribed), pro-rated for the remaining time.

Outside those conditions renewals are not refundable, because the service has been delivered — but you can always cancel to stop future charges, and we will consider goodwill refunds for genuine hardship cases at our discretion.

Write to support@scrutinies.dev from the email address on your Cortex account (this is how we match the request to the payment) with the word “refund” and, if you can, the date of the charge. No other detail is required for the first-purchase guarantee. We respond within 72 hours, usually much faster, and will either process the refund immediately or tell you plainly why not and what would change our answer.

Refunds always return to the original payment method. Charges made through Lemon Squeezy are refunded by Lemon Squeezy to the card or wallet you paid with (their statement line will match the original charge); charges made through Safepay are refunded through the same card, wallet or bank channel used at purchase. Banks and wallets can take 5–10 business days to display a completed refund — that part is outside our control. We cannot refund to a different account than the one that paid, as this is the primary fraud vector for digital goods.

Cancelling a subscription stops all future charges; your Pro benefits stay active until the end of the period you already paid for, and we do not refund that remaining time proactively. After expiry the account returns to the free plan — nothing in your workspace is deleted, and any content you created while on Pro remains yours. Deleting your account does not automatically refund the current period; if that is your intent, request the refund first (sections 01–02 apply as normal).

Please talk to us before filing a chargeback. Chargebacks carry fixed fees that hurt a small independent service and typically take longer than a direct refund. Accounts with an open chargeback are suspended until it resolves; if a chargeback is decided in our favour because the request did not meet this policy, the account may remain closed for fraud-prevention reasons. In practice, honest refund requests by email are always the faster route.

Nothing in this policy limits mandatory consumer rights you may have under the law of your country of residence, including rights around defective services and unfair contract terms. Where this policy and mandatory local law conflict, local law wins. Questions about any of this: support@scrutinies.dev — a human reads it.