Legal

Refund policy

Last updated: May 22, 2026 · Operated by Vanaheim SRL, Romania.

1. All sales final after access is provisioned

Thren is a paid digital service delivered to you electronically. Your account is activated and access to lessons, the AI sandbox, capstone reviews, and credential issuance is provisioned immediately after Stripe confirms your payment. Because we begin performing the service straight away, with your express agreement, we do not offer discretionary refunds, trial extensions, or money-back guarantees after access is provisioned.

This applies to both recurring plans:

• 4-week plan — first invoice and every renewal thereafter.
• 12-month plan — the annual invoice and every renewal thereafter.

The narrow exceptions where we will issue a refund are listed in §3.

2. Your statutory right of withdrawal — and how you waive it (EU consumers)

Under the EU Consumer Rights Directive (2011/83/EU), consumers resident in the EU normally have fourteen (14) days from the day a purchase contract is entered into to withdraw from that contract without giving any reason.

For digital services that are performed immediately, that right can be waived under Article 16(m) of the Directive if you have:

• given express prior consent for performance to begin during the 14-day withdrawal period, and
• acknowledged in writing that you lose the right of withdrawal once performance has begun.

We collect that consent through a required checkbox on the checkout page. The exact disclosure text you accept is recorded — together with a timestamp, your IP address, your user agent, and the disclosure version — in our withdrawal_waivers audit log. If you ever dispute the waiver, that record is the evidence we will rely on.

Because your account is activated immediately upon successful payment, once we receive your accepted waiver, the 14-day withdrawal right under EU Directive 2011/83/EU no longer applies to that purchase.

This does not limit any rights you may have as a consumer that cannot be waived under mandatory EU or national law (for example, statutory remedies for products that are defective or substantially different from what was advertised).

3. Narrow exceptions where we will refund

We will issue a refund only in the following limited circumstances:

• Duplicate charges — two charges for the same plan within the same billing cycle. We refund the duplicate.
• Wrong plan billed — Stripe charged a different plan than the one you selected on our checkout. We refund the difference (or the whole charge, if no plan was selected at all).
• Unauthorised charges — your card was used by someone other than the named accountholder. We refund and freeze the account pending fraud review. Please file a report with your card issuer in parallel.
• Renewals you didn’t see coming (goodwill, case-by-case) — if you forgot to cancel and contact us within 7 days of the renewal charge AND have not used the service in the new billing period, we will usually refund and cancel as a one-time courtesy.
• Service we never delivered — if a documented technical issue on our side prevented your account from being usable for more than 48 consecutive hours and we could not restore it on request, we will pro-rate or refund as appropriate.

Outside these categories, all sales are final. Specifically, the following do not qualify for a refund: change of mind, lack of time, finding the material harder or easier than expected, switching to a competitor, life events, dissatisfaction with the AI grading rubric, or any reason that emerges after a completion certificate has been issued to your account. The certificate is a verifiable credential we have already produced and registered on your behalf.

4. How to request a refund (for the cases in §3 only)

Send an email to hello@thren.io from the address on your account with the subject line “Refund request”. Include:

• The name on the account.
• The approximate purchase date.
• The specific exception from §3 you are invoking, with any supporting context (e.g. "duplicate charge — Stripe receipts attached").

We will respond within two business days. If the request falls inside §3 we will refund within Stripe at the same time; if it does not, we will explain why and point you to the cancellation flow.

5. App Store and Google Play purchases

If you bought your Thren subscription inside the Thren iOS or Android app (i.e. through Apple’s App Store or Google Play), the transaction is processed by Apple or Google — not by us — and we are contractually unable to issue a refund for it. Refund requests for those purchases must be filed with the platform that took the payment.

• Apple (App Store / iOS) — request a refund at reportaproblem.apple.com using the Apple ID that made the purchase. Apple makes the final decision; we are not part of that loop and cannot escalate or override it.
• Google Play (Android) — request a refund at play.google.com/store/account/orderhistory via the Google account that made the purchase. Refund eligibility follows Google Play’s policy, not ours.
• To cancel an App Store or Google Play subscription so it stops renewing, do so in your device settings: iOS → Settings → [your name] → Subscriptions; Android → Play Store → Profile → Payments & subscriptions → Subscriptions. Cancelling there does not refund past charges; it just stops future ones.

If you paid through Apple or Google and email us instead, we will point you at the right place but cannot move the refund along. The waiver in §2 still applies — the platform is just the payment processor, not a separate seller of the service.

6. How auto-renewal works

Our recurring plans renew automatically until you cancel:

• The 4-week plan renews every four weeks at the standard rate. If you started on the intro offer, the first invoice is reduced; subsequent invoices are at the standard rate.
• The 12-month plan renews once per year on the anniversary of your original purchase.
• Stripe sends you a receipt for every charge, to the email on your account. App Store and Google Play purchases are receipted by Apple and Google respectively.

7. Cancellations vs. refunds

Cancellation and refund are different things and we want you to choose the right one. If you simply want to stop being charged going forward, you do not need a refund — just cancel. Cancellation is one click from your account dashboard via the Stripe customer portal (the Manage billing button on the Account page); for App Store and Google Play subscriptions, cancel in your device’s subscription settings (see §5). You will keep access until the end of the current billing period; we will not charge you again.

Use the refund process only for the narrow exceptions in §3. If your situation isn't covered there, cancelling is your remedy.

8. Processing time

When we agree to a refund, we submit it to Stripe within two business days. The funds typically reach your original card or bank account within five to ten business days, depending on your issuer. We will revoke access to the refunded plan from your account at the moment the refund is submitted, so save any personal notes you want to keep before sending the request.

If you paid with a third-party method that has its own settlement timeline (for example, certain regional bank transfers), processing may take slightly longer. We will keep you posted by email if anything looks unusual on our end. Apple- and Google-processed refunds follow each platform’s own timing — we have no visibility into where they are in the queue.

9. Chargebacks

Please email hello@thren.io before initiating a chargeback with your bank. If your situation falls inside §3, the refund is faster and friendlier through us than through your card issuer. If it does not, the chargeback is likely to be declined — leaving you out the time it takes Stripe and your bank to litigate it — and we will defend it with our records, including the withdrawal_waivers consent row that includes the exact disclosure you accepted, the timestamp, your IP, and your user agent.

Chargebacks initiated to evade this policy (for example, after a certificate has been issued, after you have used the service substantially, or in defiance of an accepted waiver) may result in immediate account closure and forfeiture of any issued credentials.

10. Online dispute resolution

If we cannot resolve a refund-related disagreement directly, EU consumers can submit the dispute to the European Commission’s Online Dispute Resolution platform at ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr. We are not currently obliged to participate in alternative-dispute-resolution before a specific body, but we will engage with the platform in good faith if asked. Disputes about App Store or Google Play purchases are handled under Apple’s and Google’s own dispute frameworks.

11. Contact

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