Purchases and subscriptions

We have not released anything. There is nothing you can buy from us today, no subscription running, and no payment we are able to take. This page exists so that the rules are written down before the first product is available rather than after.

Each section below takes effect for a given product on the day that product becomes available, and only for the ways that product is actually sold. A free product is not made paid by the presence of a subscription section on this page.

Our products will not all be sold the same way. Across the range we plan on:

• Free products, with no payment in them at all.
• Consumer applications distributed through the App Store and Google Play, some carrying subscriptions or one-off in-app purchases.
• Software licensed to businesses under a signed agreement.

Which of these applies is a per-product decision, and it is stated on that product's own listing. Nothing here should be read as a claim that a particular product exists or is for sale.

Some of what we build will be free. Free means free: no card, no trial that turns into a charge, and no paid tier waiting behind the first screen.

A free product is provided as-is. We may change it, stop working on it, or withdraw it from the stores. Where we can give notice before withdrawing something people rely on, we will, and we will say how to get your data out. Because you paid nothing there is nothing to refund, and nothing in this section obliges us to keep a free product running.

This is the part people get wrong, so it comes early. When you buy a subscription or an in-app purchase inside an application distributed through the App Store or Google Play, the transaction is with Apple or Google, not with us. They are the merchant. They take the payment, they hold the payment method, they issue the receipt, and they decide refunds.

What that means in practice:

• The charge on your statement comes from Apple or Google, not from us.
• Your receipt and your purchase history sit in your store account. We never see your card details and we cannot look up your order.
• Cancelling, changing or refunding a purchase happens in the store. We cannot do any of it for you — not as a matter of policy, but because the store gives us no way to.
• The store's own terms apply to that transaction alongside this page.

The software itself is still ours to answer for. If an application is broken, misleading, or not doing what its listing said it would, write to contact@littlestone.world. That part is our problem, not the store's.

Where a product is sold as a subscription, that subscription renews automatically. Here is how it works, set out plainly because several places require these facts to be conspicuous and because this is what people are most often surprised by.

• A subscription continues until you cancel it. At the end of each period it renews for another period of the same length.
• The store charges your payment method within 24 hours before the current period ends. That charge is what starts the next period.
• The price, the length of the period and what the subscription includes are shown before you confirm, and remain visible in your store account afterwards.

A subscription may be offered with a free trial. Where one is offered, its length and the price that follows it are shown before you accept. Whether you are eligible is decided by the store, from your account history rather than by us.

A free trial converts into a paid subscription automatically when it ends, unless you cancel before then. That is how both stores work, and we cannot switch it off for an individual account.

To avoid being charged, cancel at least 24 hours before the trial ends. Cancelling during a trial normally leaves your access running until the last day of it.

Where a purchase was made through a store, the refund is the store's to give. We cannot issue one, reverse one, or overturn a decision the store has made.

• For an App Store purchase, ask Apple through its report-a-problem process, signed in with the account that made the purchase.
• For a Google Play purchase, ask from your order history in the Play Store application, or through the refund request form Google publishes.
• Both companies apply their own rules and their own time limits, and either may decline. We are not told the reason.

None of that removes a refund or remedy that consumer law where you live gives you regardless. If you think you have one and the store has refused you, write to contact@littlestone.world and tell us what happened. We will look at it, and where the fault is ours we will say so.

Where we bill you directly rather than through a store — which no product does today — the refund position is stated at the point of purchase or in the agreement you sign, and that is what applies.

If you are a consumer in the European Union or the United Kingdom, you normally have 14 days to withdraw from a distance contract without giving a reason. Digital content is treated specially, and the special treatment is what matters here.

You can be asked to give that right up in exchange for getting the content straight away. The law allows it only where three things happen together:

1. You give express prior consent to the content being supplied before the 14 days are over.
2. You acknowledge that by giving that consent you lose the right to withdraw.
3. We give you confirmation of the consent and the acknowledgement on a durable medium — something you can keep and come back to, not a screen that disappears.

Where all three happen, the right to withdraw ends once supply begins. Where they do not, the 14 days stand and you can withdraw and be refunded.

For a purchase made through the App Store or Google Play, the store is the seller and runs its own withdrawal process on its own terms. Where we sell directly, running it correctly is on us.

Prices can change. When one does:

• A change never applies to a period already paid for. If you paid for a year, that year runs at the price you paid.
• For a subscription, we give notice before a new price applies to a renewal. The stores have their own notice rules on top of ours, and for some increases they require your explicit agreement before the higher amount can be charged. Where a store rule is stricter, the store rule is the one that applies.
• You can cancel before the new price takes effect. That option is the reason notice is given at all.
• Introductory and promotional prices last for the period stated when you take them up, and then move to the standard price.

Software licensed to a business is sold under a signed agreement — an order form, a licence agreement, or both. That agreement carries the fee, the payment terms, the scope of the licence, the term, and how renewal and termination work.

Where the signed agreement and this page disagree, the agreement wins. This page is not an offer and nothing on it varies a negotiated term.

The consumer protections described above — store refunds, the withdrawal right, the store cancellation route — are consumer rules. They do not generally reach a business buying a licence, and a business should not treat them as a fallback for terms it did not negotiate.

Prices are shown with or without tax depending on where you are and how the product is sold. Where a store is the merchant, the store works out the tax due in your country, collects it and remits it, and the amount is shown to you before you confirm.

Where we invoice a business directly, amounts are exclusive of sales tax, value added tax, goods and services tax and any similar charge, each of which is added where the law requires it. A business registered for such a tax gives us its registration details, and remains responsible for any withholding its own jurisdiction imposes.

• If a subscription renewal fails, the store retries the payment on its own schedule and then cancels the subscription. Paid features stop when the paid period runs out.
• If an invoice we issued directly goes unpaid, we chase it before we do anything else. Where the agreement allows it, continued non-payment can lead to suspension and then termination, and the agreement sets out the notice we have to give first.
• We may suspend or end access where a product is being used in breach of its terms. Where the breach looks accidental we will ask you to put it right first.
• Ending a subscription or a licence does not by itself refund a period already paid for, unless consumer law or the signed agreement says otherwise.

What happens to your data once access ends is described in the privacy policy, and for a business licence in the signed agreement.

This page will change as products get closer to release, and it has to: most of it was written before anything it governs existed. The "last updated" date moves whenever the content does.

A change here never rewrites a purchase you have already made. The version in force on the day you bought is the version that applies to that purchase.

Questions about a purchase, a subscription or a refund: contact@littlestone.world.

Tell us the product, which store you bought from, and what you expected to happen. We cannot see your store account, so the more of that you include, the less we have to ask.