Refund & cancellation policy

This policy explains how orders can be cancelled and how refunds are issued on FreelancerPeople. Because every paid order on our marketplace is protected by full escrow, your money is held safely from the moment you confirm an order until the work is delivered and you have had a chance to review it. The aim of this page is to set out, in plain language, when a cancellation is appropriate, who qualifies for a refund, how that refund reaches you, and what happens when a buyer and seller cannot agree.

This policy applies to packaged services we call SERVEs, to custom contracts (both fixed-price and weekly-billed hourly), and to any other paid engagement booked through FreelancerPeople. It works alongside our Terms of Use, Payment Terms, and Privacy Policy. Where a defined process exists, such as a formal dispute, this policy points you to it. Specific amounts, fees, and timing details are always shown to you in the product itself, rather than fixed here, so that what you read is always current.

1. How escrow protects buyers

Every order on FreelancerPeople is backed by 100% escrow protection. When you place an order or fund a contract, your payment is charged at checkout and the funds are held securely by our Payment Team rather than being passed directly to the seller. The seller can begin work knowing the budget is committed, while you keep the assurance that nothing is released until the agreed work is delivered and accepted.

Funds leave escrow only when one of the following happens:

You review and accept the delivery, which releases payment to the seller.
An order is delivered and the review window passes without a request for changes or a dispute, after which the order completes automatically.
An order is cancelled, in which case the held funds are returned to you under the rules below.
The Resolution Center reaches a decision on a dispute and our Payment Team applies that outcome to the escrowed amount.

Because money sits in escrow rather than with the seller, a refund before release does not depend on the seller having spare funds to return. This is the foundation of every other section in this policy.

2. Cancelling before work starts

The simplest cancellations happen before a seller has begun. If you placed an order or funded a contract by mistake, your requirements have changed, or you and the seller agree the engagement should not proceed, a cancellation at this stage is straightforward. Because no work has been delivered, the full escrowed amount is eligible to be returned to you.

To cancel before work starts, open the order or contract and request cancellation, or message the seller to agree on it together. A cancellation a seller accepts, or one that both sides initiate, is processed promptly by our Payment Team. We encourage a short message to the seller as a courtesy, especially if they have already set time aside, but a buyer is never obligated to proceed with work that has not begun.

3. Cancelling after work has started & mutual cancellations

Once a seller has started, cancellation becomes a shared decision rather than an automatic right, because effort may already have been invested. The fairest path is a mutual cancellation, where the buyer and seller agree on how to close the order and what, if anything, should be returned. FreelancerPeople is built to make this conversation easy and to record the agreed outcome.

A mutual cancellation may resolve in different ways depending on how much work was completed:

A full refund to the buyer, where little or no usable work was produced.
A partial refund, where some work was delivered and both sides agree on a fair split (see Section 6).
No refund, where the agreed deliverable was substantially completed and the buyer chooses to close the order amicably.

If you and the seller cannot agree, you do not lose your protection. You can escalate the matter to the Resolution Center, where our Trust & Safety team reviews the order and decides a fair outcome, as described in Section 7. Until a mutual agreement or a Resolution Center decision is reached, the funds remain safely in escrow.

4. Refund eligibility & what qualifies

A refund is generally appropriate when you did not receive what you reasonably agreed to. Eligibility is assessed against the order's stated scope, the seller's published terms for the SERVE or the agreed terms of a custom contract, and the actual delivery. We look at what was promised at checkout and whether it was met, not at preferences formed after the fact.

Situations that typically qualify for a refund, in whole or in part, include:

The seller did not deliver at all, or stopped responding before delivering the agreed work.
The delivery materially differs from the order's described scope or the seller's own published description.
The work cannot be used because it is incomplete, or because the seller did not provide what was needed for you to use it.
The order was cancelled before work began, or by mutual agreement during the order.
Our Trust & Safety team determines, in the Resolution Center, that a refund is the fair outcome of a dispute.

Before requesting a refund for an in-progress order, we encourage you to use any included revisions and to give the seller a clear, specific chance to correct the work. Many issues are resolved faster through a revision than through a cancellation, and a documented attempt to resolve directly helps if the matter later reaches the Resolution Center.

5. How refunds are returned

When a refund is approved, our Payment Team returns the funds to your FreelancerPeople wallet by default. Wallet refunds are typically the fastest route and let you reuse the balance immediately toward another SERVE or contract without waiting for a card or bank to process the return. Your wallet balance is always visible in your account.

If you would prefer the refund to go back to your original payment method instead of your wallet, you can request that, subject to what the original method supports. A return to a card, bank, or other external method is handled by our Payment Team and is then subject to the processing time of that provider, which is outside our direct control. In all cases:

Refunds are returned to the buyer who paid, never to a third party.
Wallet credit from a refund can be withdrawn later, subject to completing KYC identity verification and any applicable clearance window, as described in our Payment Terms.
The exact amount returned is the escrowed amount eligible for refund under this policy, which may be the full order value or a partial amount.
Any tax is refunded with it. If an indirect tax such as GST or VAT was charged on your order, it is returned together with the refund — in full on a full refund, and in proportion to the amount returned on a partial refund or dispute settlement.

6. Partial refunds & negotiated settlements

Not every problem warrants a full refund, and not every order needs to be cancelled outright. Where a seller has delivered some value but the order fell short of what was agreed, a partial refund is often the fairest resolution. This lets the seller keep a portion that reflects usable work while returning the rest to you.

Partial refunds usually arise in one of two ways. The first is a negotiated settlement, where you and the seller agree directly on an amount to return and close the order on those terms. The second is a Resolution Center decision, where our Trust & Safety team reviews the order and apportions the escrowed funds between buyer and seller based on what was actually delivered. In either case, our Payment Team applies the agreed or decided split to the funds held in escrow, returning your share to your wallet or original method and releasing the remainder to the seller.

For weekly-billed hourly contracts, a partial outcome may instead take the form of an adjustment to the hours billed for a given week, as covered in Section 8.

7. What happens in a dispute

If a buyer and seller cannot reach agreement on their own, either party can open a dispute, which is handled in the Resolution Center. The Resolution Center is the single, structured place where disputed orders are reviewed and decided. While a dispute is open, the relevant funds stay in escrow and are not released to either side until the matter is resolved.

Our Trust & Safety team reviews each dispute impartially. To reach a fair decision, they consider:

The order's agreed scope and the seller's published or contract terms.
What was actually delivered and whether it meets that scope.
The message history and any files exchanged between the parties.
Any revisions requested and the seller's response to them.

The outcome may be a full refund to the buyer, a partial refund, release of payment to the seller, or another remedy our Trust & Safety team considers fair on the facts. Once a decision is made, our Payment Team carries it out against the escrowed funds. We ask both parties to engage honestly and promptly, and to provide clear evidence, since a complete record helps the review move quickly. Decisions reached in the Resolution Center are final for the order in question.

8. Hourly contract cancellations & the weekly billing cycle

Weekly-billed hourly contracts work differently from fixed-price orders because they are billed in recurring cycles rather than as a single fixed amount. Each week, the funds for that week are held in escrow, the seller logs the hours worked, and after a review window those approved hours are released to the seller. This means cancellation is best understood one week at a time.

The key points for hourly contracts are:

Either party can end an hourly contract going forward, which stops any future weekly billing. No further funds are charged or held once the contract is ended.
Hours that were genuinely worked and approved for a completed week are payable to the seller and are not generally refundable, since they represent time already delivered.
If you believe logged hours are inaccurate or were not actually worked, you can raise the issue during that week's review window, and if it cannot be resolved directly it can be taken to the Resolution Center.
Funds held for a week that has not yet been worked or approved remain in escrow and are returned to you if the contract ends before they are earned.

Because hourly billing is tied to time actually spent, the focus in a dispute is whether the logged hours are legitimate, rather than whether a single final deliverable was met.

9. Non-refundable situations

Escrow protects against non-delivery and work that does not match what was agreed. It is not a way to obtain free work or to reverse a fairly completed order. To keep the marketplace fair to the sellers who earn on it, certain situations do not qualify for a refund:

Work that was delivered as agreed and meets the order's scope, where you simply changed your mind after the fact.
Requests for changes that go beyond the original scope or the included revisions, which are new work rather than a fault in the delivery.
Delays or problems caused by the buyer not providing required materials, access, or feedback in time.
Hours genuinely worked and approved on an hourly contract, as described in Section 8.
Orders the parties agreed to close as complete, or where a final Resolution Center decision has already been applied.

Attempts to misuse refunds, such as taking delivered work and then seeking its return without a genuine basis, may be reviewed by our Trust & Safety team and can affect account standing under our Terms of Use.

10. Refund timeframes

We aim to handle every approved refund promptly. Once a cancellation is agreed or a refund is decided, our Payment Team processes the return without unnecessary delay. Refunds to your FreelancerPeople wallet are generally the quickest, because the credit appears in your account as soon as it is processed and is ready to use right away.

Refunds returned to an original payment method take additional time after we process them, because the final step depends on your card issuer, bank, or other provider, and that timing is set by them rather than by us. We do not fix exact day counts in this policy, since processing times vary by method and can change; what we commit to is processing your refund promptly on our side and keeping the status visible to you in your account. If a refund seems to be taking longer than expected, our Support team can check its status for you.

11. Chargebacks & payment reversals

Because FreelancerPeople already provides escrow protection and a formal Resolution Center, the right way to resolve almost any payment concern is through this policy, not through a chargeback with your bank or card issuer. We ask that you raise any issue with us first, so it can be reviewed fairly and resolved quickly.

If a chargeback or external payment reversal is filed, please be aware that:

The disputed funds may be placed on hold by our Payment Team while the reversal is investigated, including funds connected to the relevant order.
Our Trust & Safety team may review the account activity, since a reversal made instead of using the proper process can indicate misuse.
We will respond to the issuer with the order record, delivery evidence, and message history, which is why a complete in-platform history is so valuable.
Filing a reversal in bad faith, for work that was genuinely delivered, may result in action on the account under our Terms of Use.

If you believe a charge is genuinely unauthorized, contact our Support team right away so our Payment Team can investigate and, where appropriate, return the funds directly.

12. Questions & contact

If you are unsure whether an order qualifies for a refund, want to cancel an order, or need help understanding how this policy applies to your situation, we are here to help. For account and order questions, reach our Support team through the contact page. For a disagreement you cannot resolve directly with the other party, open a case in the Resolution Center, where our Trust & Safety team will review it.

This policy should be read together with our Terms of Use, Payment Terms, and Privacy Policy, and with the fee and timing details shown in the product. We may update this policy from time to time to reflect changes in how the marketplace works, and the current version always governs.