Refunds and cancellations

Last updated: 28 October 2026 · Effective from: 28 October 2026

1. Cancel

The Steve Academy is a service for practising English. The site is thesteveacademy.com. This policy explains how to cancel Premium and when we refund. It is part of the Terms of use.

In short: you can cancel any time and you keep Premium until the end of the period you paid. A period already paid is not refunded, except in the cases in section 3, when your law gives you a right of withdrawal (section 4), or when you bought in the App Store or Google Play (section 5).

You can cancel Premium any time, on the Premium page in the app or in the Stripe billing portal, when payments are on.
Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period already paid. You keep Premium until that date, and no further renewal is charged.
To avoid a charge, cancel before the renewal date you see in the app and in your notice email.
If you bought in the App Store or Google Play, you cancel in that store (section 5). The app does not sell inside those stores today.
If you cancel during the 7-day free trial, nothing is charged.
Uninstalling the app or stopping using it does not cancel the subscription.

2. General refund rule

The app does not refund a period that has already been paid, or the unused part of a month or a year, or months that ran because a cancellation was forgotten. This rule does not limit the consumer rights your country’s law gives you.

3. When we do refund

We refund the matching amount when:

You were charged twice for the same period.
A technical error on our side caused the charge (for example, a charge after a confirmed cancellation, or a charge with no access to Premium).
An unauthorised charge: someone used your card without permission and you can show it. We will review the case and may close the account involved.
A serious service failure: Premium was unavailable or did not work in a substantial way for 7 days in a row or more because of us; we refund the proportional part.
A material change that harms you: we remove an essential part of Premium (Terms of use, section 11); we refund the unused proportional part.
We close your paid account without a breach of the terms; we refund the unused proportional part of the period.
The law requires it.

4. Right of withdrawal

In some countries, a consumer who buys at a distance may withdraw within a short time, without giving a reason. If your country recognises it, it applies even if the general rule in section 2 says otherwise.

Region	Time	What you should know
European Union, European Economic Area and United Kingdom	14 days from the purchase	If you ask for immediate access to Premium and you use it in those 14 days, we may deduct the proportional part already used only when checkout has asked you to confirm that access. If the service has been fully performed, you lose the right. Today, when payments are on, checkout asks for a checkbox if you are under 18 so an adult can confirm. It does not yet ask for a separate immediate-access checkbox; until it does, we do not deduct this right merely because you used the service.
Brazil	7 days from the purchase	Right of withdrawal for distance purchases (Consumer Defence Code).
Colombia	5 business days from the purchase	Right of withdrawal for distance sales.
Other countries	As their law provides	If your local law gives you a longer period or better terms, that law applies.

How to use it. Email support@thesteveacademy.com within the period, with your username and the purchase date. You do not have to explain why. We refund by the same payment method within 14 days of receiving your request, minus the proportional part used if checkout already asked you to confirm immediate access. When we approve the refund, we end Premium and the account returns to the free plan. A refund made only in the Stripe dashboard, without cancelling the subscription, does not turn Premium off in the app.

7-day free trial: you choose the monthly plan ($12.99 a month), the 6-month plan ($59.99 every 6 months) or the yearly plan ($99.99 a year) and enter a card, but nothing is charged today. Before you enter the card you see the price, the date of the first charge and how to cancel, and you tick a box to accept it. If you do not cancel before the 7 days end, the first period of the plan you chose is charged that day, and after that it renews on its own every month, every 6 months or every year, depending on your plan, at the same price, until you cancel. We email you 2 days before the first charge, with a link to cancel. If you cancel during the trial, you are never charged and you keep Premium until the 7 days end. One trial per person. The withdrawal period, if your law counts it that way, runs from the first charge.

United States. There is no general federal right to return a digital subscription, so the rule in section 2 applies. Many states, for example California and New York, require the price and the renewal to be shown before the charge, your consent, a reminder before yearly renewals, and an easy cancellation by the same method you used to subscribe. When payments are on, you can cancel on the Premium page or in the Stripe portal, without calling or writing. If your state gives you an extra refund right, it applies.

5. App Store and Google Play purchases

If you ever buy Premium inside the iPhone or Android app, Apple or Google charges you, not us. That in-store purchase is not available today. When it is:

You cancel in that store: on iPhone, Settings > your name > Subscriptions; on Android, Google Play > Payments and subscriptions > Subscriptions.
You ask Apple or Google for the refund. They decide under their rules and the law (on iPhone, at reportaproblema.apple.com; on Android, in Google Play help). We cannot refund those purchases.
Deleting your account with us does not cancel the store subscription; you must cancel it.
Once the store refunds you, Premium access ends.

6. Coupons and free trials

A coupon can add free Premium days, or a percentage or a fixed amount off the first Stripe payment only, when payments are on.
Free days are redeemed in the app, not at checkout. They create no charge.
A coupon is not cash, is not exchanged for cash, does not stack with others unless we say so, and is not refunded. If we refund a purchase that used a discount, we refund only what you actually paid, at the price shown in the app before you pay.
Each coupon can have an expiry date, a use limit and conditions, which you see when you redeem it. It cannot be used on accounts created to abuse offers.
7-day free trial: you choose the monthly plan ($12.99 a month), the 6-month plan ($59.99 every 6 months) or the yearly plan ($99.99 a year) and enter a card, but nothing is charged today. Before you enter the card you see the price, the date of the first charge and how to cancel, and you tick a box to accept it. If you do not cancel before the 7 days end, the first period of the plan you chose is charged that day, and after that it renews on its own every month, every 6 months or every year, depending on your plan, at the same price, until you cancel. We email you 2 days before the first charge, with a link to cancel. If you cancel during the trial, you are never charged and you keep Premium until the 7 days end. One trial per person.

7. Gifted Premium

Premium that an administrator turns on, and free days from a coupon, are not a purchase: they create no charge and no refund. We may remove them if they were granted by mistake or by misuse, and we tell you by email.

8. Minors

If you are under 18, a parent or another adult must buy Premium, and checkout, when it is on, includes that adult’s confirmation checkbox. If a minor bought without permission, the parent or guardian can email support@thesteveacademy.com within 14 days with the charge id; we will review it and, if the purchase was made without the responsible adult’s authorisation, we will refund. This does not apply to App Store or Google Play purchases, which are requested from the store (section 5).

9. How to ask for a refund

Email support@thesteveacademy.com from your account address.
Include your username, the invoice id or the date of the charge, the amount and the reason.
We reply within 5 business days.
If we approve the refund, we use the same payment method as the purchase. Stripe and your bank may take 5 to 10 business days to show it.
Please ask within 60 days of the charge for the cases in section 3, unless the law gives a longer period.

10. Chargebacks

Before you dispute a charge with your bank or card, write to us: we can usually resolve it faster. If you start a chargeback, we may suspend Premium while it is resolved. An unjustified chargeback can lead us to close the account and to refuse new payments from it.

11. Deleting the account

If you delete the account while a Stripe subscription is active, we cancel that subscription immediately, before the account is deleted, so there is no further charge. That cancellation does not itself refund a charge already made: if you want a refund, ask before you delete the account, because afterwards we cannot tie the charge to your user. If you bought in the App Store or Google Play, the subscription is not cancelled for you: cancel it in the store (section 5). Payment data is handled as the Privacy policy explains.

12. Changes and contact

We may update this policy. The date at the top is the date of the current version. If the change is important, we will email you at least 30 days in advance; it does not affect what you already paid for the current period. If this policy and a consumer-protection law of your country differ, the law prevails. Write to support@thesteveacademy.com or use the Contact page. Controller: CleanXpress SG LLC, Homestead, Florida, USA.