Refunds
There are two completely different kinds of refund on Onflow Ads, and they behave differently. Knowing which one applies to you saves a lot of confusion.
| Service refunds | Top-up refunds | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A service you paid for from your wallet could not be delivered | Money you added to your wallet, paid back out of the platform |
| Who starts it | Automatic, or you cancel an order | You request it, and it is reviewed manually |
| Where the money goes | Back to your wallet, ready to spend again | To an external destination — never your wallet |
| Fees deducted | None by the platform, though some cancellations carry their own fee | Yes — an 18% platform fee plus the payment gateway's fees |
| Guaranteed? | Yes, per the service's own rules | No — every request is reviewed and may be declined |
| Time limit | Per the service's own rules | Within 12 hours of the top-up being credited |
| Effect of asking | None — nothing to ask for | The amount is frozen until a decision |
This page covers the rules for both. For the click-by-click flow of asking for a top-up back, see Requesting a Top-up Refund. For which pocket a refund lands in — which is what decides whether you can still withdraw it — see Where a Refund Lands.
The full legal policy is published at https://onflowads.com/refunds and summarised in Refund Policy.
Service refunds — money back to your wallet
When a service you bought from your wallet cannot be delivered, the money returns to your wallet balance, where it is available to spend again. You do not have to ask.
A service refund returns the amount, but not necessarily to the same pocket. On Paid Promotions in particular, refunds are credited as locked platform credit even where the original charge was paid from withdrawable earnings — so the money is still yours and still spendable here, but no longer cashable.
Which product does what is the whole of Where a Refund Lands. Read it before you spend earnings you intend to withdraw.
Boost Metrics orders
- Could not start. If an order cannot be started or no provider accepts it, the full amount is automatically refunded.
- Cancelled or partly delivered. If an order is cancelled, or only partly completed, the unfulfilled portion is automatically refunded.
- Completed orders. Once a service has been delivered as ordered, it is considered performed and is not refundable.
- If you paid partly with Boost Credits, that portion comes back as Boost Credits rather than cash — credit never converts to money. The wallet portion comes back as wallet cash, with only the promotional slice it consumed re-locked.
Details: Cancellations and Refunds.
Paid ad placements and campaigns
- Before the owner accepts. You may cancel a placement you booked at any time before the channel owner has accepted it, for a full wallet refund.
- After acceptance, before it is posted. You — or the channel owner — can still cancel, for a full wallet refund. No fee, and no reliability effect on either side.
- After it starts. Once a placement is live or a campaign has begun, it is generally non-refundable, because the slot was reserved and the post scheduled.
- Non-delivery or our fault. If a placement fails to run because of a fault on our side, or because the counterparty does not deliver an accepted placement, we work with you in good faith to re-run it or provide an appropriate credit or refund.
Details: Escrow and Protection.
A broken exclusive window carries no refund
Every numeric format sells a window of top-of-feed exclusivity — on a 1/24 booking, 60 minutes during which your ad is meant to stay the newest post in the channel. We check that window after it closes, and if the owner posted over your ad we record it. No money moves.
That is the deliberate answer, not a gap. The breach is priced entirely in the channel owner's reliability score — −0.40, on the same figure that buyers see before they book and that the marketplace's own participation floors are measured against — and your ad is still running for its full booked duration, which is what you paid for. The notification we send you says so in as many words: "Your ad is still running for its full booked duration."
Two things worth knowing about how the check behaves:
- It is one retrospective read of the channel's history, not a live watch. It is not confirmed by a second probe, because a second read of the same immutable past would return the same thing.
- An unreadable channel is never counted against the owner. If we cannot read the history, the verdict is filed as unknown, which never penalises anyone and never files as clean. Unknowns are retried on later passes and given up on 25 hours after the ad was published.
- Bookings made before the formats were redefined are policed under the old meaning. Those slots were sold as "pinned for N hours" rather than as an exclusive window, and they are still delivered and checked as a pin. Nothing was rewritten to the new rule after the fact, because that would penalise owners for breaking a promise nobody made them.
There is no dispute reason for "the owner posted over my ad" either. The four you can raise are "The post was never published", "It was deleted early", "The content was altered" and "Wrong channel or audience" — none of them fits, and a rejected concern costs you −0.50 reliability, so do not borrow the nearest one. The exclusivity check is handled end to end without you. See What You Are Buying.
If a pin you paid for is not there
The pin is a separate, platform-priced product on top of a placement: you pay $6.00 per pinned placement, the owner receives $4.00 of it, and the ad is pinned from go-live until the campaign ends. (The owner offers it; you accept it or not at checkout. The platform's two dollars are the difference, and every one of these figures is an operator setting, so the checkout is the number that binds.) There are two ways it can fail, and they end very differently:
| What happened | What we do | What happens to the money |
|---|---|---|
| The owner unpinned your ad during the run | Two consecutive conclusive readings confirm it, exactly like the deletion check — about five minutes apart. The owner is charged at once; their −0.75 mark is held back and is never recorded if they re-pin before the run ends. The ad itself keeps running | The whole $6.00 comes back to your wallet as non-withdrawable balance, like every other Paid Promotions refund — spendable anywhere on the platform, not withdrawable as cash. It is paid when the campaign finishes, or within 48 hours — whichever comes first, not at the moment of the unpin. Our team can hold, release it early or reverse it while it is pending, and a hold expires after 48 hours, after which it is paid automatically. The owner owes the platform the same $6 from the moment the unpin is confirmed: it is withheld from the payout still sitting in escrow, and only a shortfall lands on their wallet — see Owing money. Nothing else about the placement changes: the rest of the payout is not held, and no good-faith stake is forfeited, because the ad is still standing |
| Our own bot could not apply the pin | Recorded as a platform-side fault and retried on later passes. The owner is never flagged for it | Nothing is returned automatically. There is no partial refund of the pin charge on its own |
The second row is the honest limitation: we have no mechanism that hands back a pin charge while leaving the rest of a running placement intact. If our executor could not pin your ad and you do not think that has been put right, open a dispute or write to [email protected] quoting the order reference — it is handled by hand, not by rule.
A pin coming down is a different thing from the ad coming down. If the ad itself is removed early, that is the delivery flag — the payout is held, the owner forfeits their good-faith stake, an insured order auto-refunds the full charge, pin included — and a raised concern covers it.
Note that when a placement is refunded in full — a cancellation before acceptance, a decline, an expiry, a non-delivery — the pin charge comes back with it. It is folded into the placement's charge rather than kept in a pocket of its own, so every refund path already carries it.
Subscriber Exchange
Cancelling a paid delivery boost before any placement has run refunds the delivery charge, restoring the exact cash-and-credit split you paid it with. A mid-cycle cancellation after placements have run forfeits the charge, because the boost was partly used and cancelling was your own choice. See Delivery Boosts.
Cross-promotion swaps
Cross-promotion slot swaps are free, so there is no payment to refund. You opt out before a swap is scheduled.
Where to see a service refund
Look in Activity for a green credit reading "Boost refund: …", "Paid promotion cancelled — refund", "Paid promotion not posted — refund" or "Subscriber Exchange delivery refund…". The money is spendable the moment it appears.
Top-up refunds — money back out of the platform
A top-up refund is you asking for money you added to be paid back to you outside Onflow Ads. It is a request, not a right.
When a top-up is eligible
A top-up can only be requested for refund when all of the following hold:
- It was successfully credited to your wallet.
- Less than 12 hours have passed since it was credited. After 12 hours a top-up is final.
- None of it has been spent — and there has been no wallet spend of any kind since it was credited. Any spend, of any amount, for any reason, disqualifies it.
- There is no open refund request for it already, and it has not already been refunded.
- Your balance can still carry the freeze the request will place on it, on top of any freeze already standing.
Two things are deliberately not treated as spends, so they do not disqualify a top-up on their own: a withdrawal hold, and the reversal of some other top-up refund.
Every refund request is reviewed manually and may be declined at our discretion. Submitting a request does not entitle you to a refund. The wallet page states this before you submit, and it bears repeating here.
What we do commit to: if we decline, we tell you why. A decline cannot be recorded without a stated reason of at least ten characters — the API refuses one — and you are shown that reason verbatim, in the notification and on the request itself.
What you receive
An approved top-up refund is paid to an external destination — never back to your wallet — and fees are deducted:
after platform fee = top-up amount − 18% platform fee
net you receive = after platform fee − the payment gateway's fees
The gateway's fees depend on how you paid:
| You topped up with | Gateway fee deducted |
|---|---|
| UPI or card | An assumed 2% of the amount remaining after the platform fee. |
| Cryptocurrency | The crypto processor's fee (1% of the remaining amount) plus the live USDT BEP-20 network withdrawal fee applying at the time — subject to a floor of 3% of the remaining amount, whichever of the two is greater. |
The network fee in that calculation is read live from the exchange the payout settles through and cached for about an hour. It moves with the network. So the same top-up can be quoted a few cents apart on different days — and if the real combined cut ever falls below the 3% floor, the floor is charged instead.
The 18% and the gateway fees are proportional, but the crypto floor and the network fee are not always. A $20 crypto top-up that is refunded loses $3.60 to the platform fee and then the greater of the real cut or 3% of the remainder — which can leave very little.
The wallet shows you the exact rows before you submit: Top-up amount, Platform fee (18%), Gateway fees and You receive. Read the You receive figure before deciding it is worth asking.
You never have to compute any of this yourself, and what you are shown is what is enforced — the quote is re-derived from the same rules at decision time rather than trusted from your request.
What an approved refund unwinds
You are refunded on the credit alone. But an approval unwinds everything that deposit paid for, because a bonus is consideration for a deposit that is being taken back:
| What moves | What happens |
|---|---|
| The deposit | Removed from your wallet balance, to be paid out net of fees. Guarded so it can only ever be taken from still-locked top-up money, never from earned withdrawable balance. |
| Its wallet deposit bonus | Removed in the same step. A $50 top-up that earned a $5 bonus unwinds $55. |
| Its boost-credit deposit bonus | Clawed back from your Boost Credits, clamped to what you still hold, so it can never drive that balance negative. |
| Your referrer's commission on that deposit | Reversed on the same clamped terms. |
A bonus was never money you handed over, so it is removed rather than refunded — you are paid the net on the credit, and the promotional credit that rode in with it leaves.
Where an approved refund is paid
- A UPI or card refund goes back to the original payment method you paid from, in Indian Rupees. It cannot be redirected to a different account.
- A crypto refund is sent to a fresh USDT BEP-20 (BSC) address that you provide when you request it. Crypto transfers cannot be reversed, so the address is your responsibility.
Timelines
The two periods run back to back, not at the same time:
- Review: up to 5 business days. From when you submit until the request is approved or declined. Your amount is frozen throughout.
- Payout: 7 to 14 business days. From the day the request is approved until the money reaches you. This clock starts at approval, not on the day you asked, because nothing is sent anywhere before a person has approved it.
Business days exclude weekends, public holidays and national festivals in India, so a long festival period adds calendar time to the same number of business days. Unusual volume, or disruption at a bank, a payment provider or a blockchain network, may take longer still. These are targets, not guarantees.
What is never refundable
- Services already delivered or completed as ordered.
- Ad placements or campaigns that have already started or gone live, except for non-delivery or a fault on our side.
- Promotional, bonus or goodwill credit, including Boost Credits — these have no cash value and are neither refundable nor withdrawable.
- Non-recoverable payment-provider fees on a refunded transaction.
- A top-up older than 12 hours, or any part of which has been spent.
Nothing in this policy limits rights you may have under applicable law that cannot be excluded.
Failed, duplicate and unauthorised charges
These are handled separately from the refund request flow:
- Money debited but wallet not credited. Every payment is re-read from the provider before any credit is applied, and each order is credited only once. A charge that never confirms is reconciled automatically. If the credit has not appeared within a few hours, contact support with the date, amount and any reference — a genuinely failed charge is traced and refunded in full.
- Duplicate charges. If you are charged more than once for the same top-up, the duplicate is refunded in full.
- Unauthorised charges. If you believe a payment was made without your authorisation, email [email protected] immediately so we can investigate.
FAQ
Can I get a top-up back after 24 hours? No. The 12-hour window is firm, and after it a top-up is final. Your balance stays fully spendable on the platform.
I spent $2 of a $200 top-up. Can I refund the rest? No. A top-up is refundable only while it is completely intact. Partial refunds of a top-up are not possible.
Why is the platform fee on a refund higher than the fee I paid to add funds? They are different things. The deposit commission set by your plan is the cost of taking your payment in; the 18% on a refund covers reversing an already-completed transaction and paying it back out by hand. Both are stated up front.
My refund was declined. Where is my money? Exactly where it was. A declined top-up refund never moves anything — the amount was never taken out of your wallet, the freeze is lifted in the same step, and it is spendable again.
Can a refund be sent to a different bank account than the one I paid from? Not for UPI or card — those always return to source. Crypto refunds go to a fresh address you nominate.
Can support process a refund over Telegram? No. Refunds are decided and paid on the website side only; the Telegram bot cannot take or return a payment at all, and nobody messaging there can process one.
How do I actually ask for one? See Requesting a Top-up Refund.
Related
- Where a Refund Lands — which pocket the money comes back to, product by product.
- Requesting a Top-up Refund — the click-by-click flow.
- Frozen and Held Funds — what the freeze does while a request is open.
- Refund Policy — the summary of the published legal policy.