Refund Policy

All payments on Trim are collected by our third-party payment provider, acting as our Merchant of Record. It handles checkout, card processing, tax, and refunds to the original payment method — your card details never reach Trim. Because of this, any refund of an actual payment to your original payment method is issued by our third-party payment provider; Trim itself has no mechanism to push money back to a card.

Two different things can happen when something goes wrong, and this policy is careful to distinguish them:

• Refund — money sent back to your original payment method, issued by our third-party payment provider.
• Store credit — a balance on your Trim account, issued by Trim.

The Money-Back Guarantee in Section 4 grants store credit, not a refund.

All prices on Trim are listed in US Dollars (USD). Our third-party payment provider calculates and collects any tax due (VAT, GST, or sales tax) based on your billing location, and the tax portion of a refunded charge is returned the same way the underlying refund is. If your card bills in a different currency, the conversion rate and any conversion fee are set by your card network or bank — not by Trim or our third-party payment provider.

Our third-party payment provider is also the seller of record for the payment itself — a relationship separate from your relationship with Trim — and it maintains its own buyer-facing terms and support process. Your statutory rights, and how to raise them, are covered in Section 5.

Processing time. Store credit lands on your Trim balance immediately. A refund to your card, once our third-party payment provider approves it, is typically reflected by your bank within 5–10 business days — the exact timing depends on your card issuer, not on Trim or our third-party payment provider.

• Pro costs $19 USD per month or $182 USD per year.
• Subscription management — cancellation, renewal, and any refund of a charge — happens through our third-party payment provider’s billing flow.
• Any refund of a Pro charge — whether full or partial — ends Pro access immediately and resets your Pro expiry to the moment the refund is processed.

Idea Validator takes an idea you describe and returns AI-researched signal on it: similar or existing projects on GitHub, competing products already on the market, and what people are already saying about the underlying problem on Reddit and other communities. It’s built to help you see gaps and existing pain points before you commit time to building something.

Idea Validator’s output is AI-generated research, not a guarantee of market outcomes, and its accuracy depends on what’s publicly discoverable at the time you run it.

Idea Validator is included with your Trim account and carries no charge separate from your plan; any usage limits are shown on the Pricing page and in the product itself. Because there is no separate charge for it, there is nothing here to refund. If we ever introduce a paid or per-run tier, that tier follows the same rules as the metered and prepaid charges in Section 8 — a paid run is non-refundable once a result is delivered, and a run that fails outright because of a platform error is not counted or charged, consistent with the Platform Failure guarantee in Section 4.

Both layers of the guarantee are granted as store credit on your Trim account — never a refund to your original payment method:

• Platform failure (automatic). If a Pro deliverable fails permanently — three generation attempts, all failed — during a period you genuinely paid for, we automatically credit you up to the smaller of your charge or $19. There is no time window and nothing to file. Total guarantee credit for a billing period never exceeds what you were actually charged for it.
• Satisfaction (self-serve). If Pro isn’t what you hoped, you can claim credit for the full period charge from your Billing page — within 72 hours of a monthly charge, or within 7 days of an annual charge. If an automatic credit was already granted for that period, the satisfaction claim tops you up to the full charge (never beyond it). Limited to once per account per 90 days. A claim whose payment fingerprint matches a different account is set aside for human review rather than granted automatically.

This guarantee is a Trim benefit, not a substitute for the rights described in Section 5. If a statutory right applies to your purchase, it applies in addition to this guarantee, not instead of it, and it can get you an actual refund rather than credit. The 7-day annual window above is a Trim policy choice, separate from the statutory window referenced in Section 5 — using one doesn’t use up the other.

Guarantee credit is a restricted credit lot: it expires 12 months after it is granted, and can be redeemed only toward Pro renewal or Boost packs. It is not cashable and not transferable — by construction, it never enters any cash-out path.

Our team can also grant store credit manually in situations these rules don’t cover. Manual grants are store credit as well; any request for an actual cash refund is handled by a human through our third-party payment provider.

This section is a summary, not legal advice, and it doesn’t replace the specific law of your country. Where it’s general, that’s deliberate — the goal is to make clear that this policy is a floor, not a ceiling, on what you’re entitled to.

If you’re a consumer under South Korean law, the Act on the Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce generally lets you withdraw from a purchase and get your money back within 7 days of the service being supplied, subject to exceptions the law recognizes — including digital content you’ve already started using, where we clearly told you in advance that starting it forfeits this right. No agreement can validly shrink this right or narrow the reasons you’re allowed to invoke it; a term that tries to is unenforceable regardless of what it says. Whether a given purchase on Trim counts as a “consumer” transaction can depend on how it was made — a self-serve purchase at the same price and terms everyone else gets (like a Pro subscription or a Boost pack) is more likely to qualify than a negotiated, deal-specific charge tied to a particular auction.

If you believe a statutory right applies to a purchase you made, tell us — email the address in Section 13 and we’ll evaluate it under the rule that actually applies, rather than only under Section 4.

Where commitment fees are enabled on auctions (see the Terms of Service, section 10), the winning seller pays a refundable commitment fee when their bid is selected. That fee is Trim’s own service charge — not escrow, not a deposit held between buyer and seller, and not money that moves between users. There is no deposit wallet and no stored balance: the fee is a single charge, collected by our third-party payment provider, and refunded — when it is refunded — by our third-party payment provider to your original payment method.

• Who pays, and how much: only the selected seller. The fee is half of one month’s effective price, no less than $20 and no more than $500 ($20 flat for sellers with at least a 95% honor rate across 10 or more selected deals). Buyers are never charged: a buyer’s commitment is recorded without money.
• Refund to your original payment method happens when the buyer confirms kickoff, automatically at the 72-hour no-fault deadline after payment, when the buyer re-selects another bid or the auction closes without a deal, or by admin ruling. A fee is never kept just because a deadline passed silently. The refund is issued by our third-party payment provider, and Section 1’s processing times apply.
• When Trim retains a fee: only where a no-show is reported and an admin rules that the seller failed to start the work they were selected for. The wronged buyer then receives a make-good of 30 days of Pro — a service benefit, not money or store credit. If the buyer is ruled a no-show, the seller’s fee is refunded and the seller receives a fee waiver: their next auction-win or qualified-lead fee is billed at $0.
• If the selected seller never pays within the fee’s 72-hour payment window, nothing is charged — the award simply lapses and the buyer can select another bid. If a commitment-fee payment does reach us but never attaches to an award — because the award had already lapsed or moved to another seller, because the amount was short, or because it was paid twice — we refund that order in full to your original payment method without you asking. A commitment fee is either the fee for a live award, or it goes back.

Money never moves between users. A commitment fee travels one of exactly two paths: back to the original payment method that paid it (via our third-party payment provider), or retained by Trim as its service charge. It is never paid out to the other party, never held in escrow on anyone’s behalf, and never becomes a balance you can draw on or withdraw — which is why a wronged party receives a service benefit rather than the other side’s money.

A fee attached to a live award is not refundable on demand at an arbitrary time — its refund happens through the paths above. See Section 9 for how an open fee is handled if an account is closed mid-deal.

Boost packs (previously “Up packs” — older receipts may still show that name) are soft currency spent on listing boosts: 30 Boosts for $10, or 100 Boosts for $25. Boosts are consumed on use, have no cash value, and can’t be exchanged for cash or transferred between accounts, except where the law requires otherwise. If a Boost-pack order is refunded by our third-party payment provider, the Boosts it granted are deducted from your balance — never below zero.

• Billed in arrears: the auction-win lead fee ($79 / $149 / $299 by deal size), and — if enabled — the $25 qualified-lead fee, charged once per buyer conversation. These are charged when the service is delivered and can exceed any prepaid balance you hold.
• Drawn from residual prepaid credit (if any remains): discovery clicks ($0.40 each after the first 200 free per month) and promoted listing placement at $9 per day may still be debited from any prepaid seller credit left from an earlier top-up (rejected up front if the balance is insufficient — they never become debt). New prepaid top-ups are no longer offered. There is no withdrawable wallet, no cash-out of prepaid credit, and Trim does not hold funds for users as a stored-value product. Residual unspent credit is handled on account closure under Section 9.
• Discovery clicks, the auction-win lead fee, and the qualified-lead fee are charged for services already rendered — a click delivered, a lead delivered, a conversation connected — and are non-refundable outside of Section 10’s reversal mechanics, except where the Platform Failure guarantee in Section 4 applies. Where a charge is reversed, the money is returned by our third-party payment provider to the original payment method, not issued as store credit.
• Trim charges no commission or percentage of a deal’s value. Deals settle off-platform between buyer and seller; the fixed and tiered fees above are the only seller charges. Trim does not move money between users.

Credit and Boosts we granted. If your account is closed — whether you close it or we close it for a Terms of Service violation — any store credit or guarantee credit we granted you, and any unused Boosts, are forfeited and can’t be converted to cash. This is credit and soft currency we issued, not money you paid us.

Money you prepaid. New prepaid top-ups are no longer offered. If any unspent prepaid seller credit remains from an earlier top-up, it is not refunded automatically when you close your account, and Trim has no on-demand withdrawal. Spend it down first, or email us before you delete your account to arrange a manual refund through our third-party payment provider to your original payment method. Once your account is closed, any remaining prepaid balance is forfeited. A commitment fee tied to a live, awarded auction has to be resolved under Section 6 before your account can close — and when its outcome is a refund, that refund goes to your original payment method via our third-party payment provider, so closing your account never forfeits it. If we close your account for a Terms of Service violation, we may first offset anything you owe us (including an unrecovered chargeback, per Section 10) against a balance we would otherwise return.

None of this affects a refund our third-party payment provider already approved before closure, or any right described in Section 5.

When our third-party payment provider refunds a charge, Trim reverses exactly what that charge had funded: Pro access lapses, granted Boosts are deducted, and credited prepaid balances are drawn back down. A commitment-fee refund that Trim itself initiated (a release under Section 6) reverses nothing — it is the intended outcome, not a clawback. Every reversal is idempotent and floors at zero — a refund never drives your balance negative, and we never claw back more than the refunded charge funded.

Chargebacks. If you dispute a charge directly with your card issuer or bank instead of using the options in this policy, we may place your account under review and pause access while the dispute is open. Raising a billing problem with us or with our third-party payment provider first is usually faster than a chargeback and won’t put a hold on your account — though nothing here or in our third-party payment provider’s terms takes away your right to dispute a charge with your bank where the law gives you that right. A chargeback that turns out to be unwarranted (i.e., not a case of actual fraud on your payment method) may lead to suspension of your account. Where the law permits it, we may offset an unrecovered chargeback against your remaining store credit, prepaid credit balance, or Boosts before pursuing any other collection.

This policy is available to accounts in good standing under Trim’s Terms of Service. Guarantee credit, commitment-fee refunds, and every other benefit in this policy apply only to the account that made the original payment, and none of it is transferable to another account.

We may deny, delay, or reverse a refund, credit, or guarantee claim we reasonably believe is fraudulent, abusive, or made in violation of the Terms of Service — including a claim tied to a payment method, device, or identity already associated with a prior claim or a suspended account. A satisfaction claim whose payment fingerprint matches a different account is set aside for human review rather than granted automatically, as described in Section 4.

We may update this policy as Trim’s features change. If a change would reduce your rights under a guarantee window or balance that’s already active, we’ll give notice — such as an email or an in-app notice — before it applies to you, and it will only apply to new charges and claims going forward. An update never reaches back to shrink a right or a balance you already have.

Satisfaction-guarantee credit is self-serve from your Billing page while the window is open. For anything else — a refund request for a specific charge, a commitment-fee dispute, or a situation this policy doesn’t clearly cover — email support@trimprocure.com and a human will look at it.

This policy is governed by the Terms of Service, including its governing law of South Korea.