Refunds & Withdrawal

Books are physical objects. When you order one, real ink is poured onto real paper. Our refund policy reflects that reality — we lean toward store credit rather than cash refunds, and we operate the same self-service safety net for small mistakes that any good bookshop has run for a hundred years.

· I ·The shape of our policy

Three tiers, top to bottom: self-service store credit for small problems, manual review for larger ones, and a hard floor for digital purchases that cannot be refunded once delivered. The EU 14-day right of withdrawal sits on top of all three for printed books, with one important boundary at press-commit which we explain below.

· II ·Self-service store credit

If something is wrong with a printed book — a binding flaw, a missing page, a colour that printed badly — go to /account/orders, tap the order, and request a refund. You choose between a reprint at no cost or store credit equal to what you paid. The decision applies within minutes. You don't need to return the imperfect book; keep it as a curiosity.

· III ·Caps on self-service

Self-service is generous on purpose, but it has caps that exist to deter abuse. Per account, lifetime:

• Three self-service refunds total. After three, subsequent requests go to manual review.
• $100 USD (or local equivalent) of cumulative self-service refund value per rolling twelve-month window.
• Each individual self-service refund is capped at the original line value — we don't refund shipping more than once on the same order, and we don't refund more than you paid.

These caps are not punitive: they are the threshold above which we want a human to actually look at the case rather than rubber-stamp it. If your problem is real and large, manual review serves you better anyway.

· IV ·Over-cap manual review

Over the cap, your request goes to a queue and a human reads it. Median response time is one business day; the maximum we commit to is five. We may ask for a photo of the imperfect book. We do not ask for the book to be shipped back unless the issue is unclear and we want to inspect — and if we do, we cover return shipping.

· V ·Theme purchases — no refund

Premium themes are digital downloads delivered immediately. At checkout you tick a checkbox that reads, in the same body type as this paragraph: "Start delivery now. I waive my 14-day right of withdrawal under EU Directive 2011/83/EU Article 16(m)." Once that box is ticked and the theme has been delivered to your library, the purchase is final. No refunds. The trade-off is real: you get the theme the second you pay, and in exchange you give up the 14-day buffer.

If a theme is genuinely broken — fonts missing, layout wrong, a bug we shipped — we will fix it for you for free, and if the fix takes longer than seven days, we'll credit the theme value to your store balance. That is not a refund; it's a service-level commitment.

· VI ·EU and UK 14-day withdrawal right

For non-digital purchases — that is, printed books — consumer law gives you the right to withdraw from the contract within 14 days of receiving the goods, without giving a reason. This applies in three overlapping regimes:

• EU:Directive 2011/83/EU as transposed by Norway’s angrerettloven (Lov om opplysningsplikt og angrerett). The right runs 14 calendar days from delivery.
• UK (post-Brexit): The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 (SI 2013/3134), which implemented Directive 2011/83/EU into UK domestic law before Brexit and remain in force under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 applies to the underlying supply contract. The 14-day cancellation right runs from the day after delivery (reg. 30).
• Norway (domestic): angrerettloven § 20 — 14-day withdrawal from the day after receipt.

To exercise any of these rights, email [s…@p…]. The model withdrawal form set out in Directive 2011/83/EU Annex I(B) is also accepted.

There is one boundary, and it is structural rather than legal: the moment we commit the print-ready PDF to Lulu's press, the book is being physically made. Under Directive 2011/83/EU Article 16(c) (and its UK equivalent, reg. 28(1)(b) of the 2013 Regulations), goods made to consumer specifications or clearly personalised are exempted from the withdrawal right. Every book we print is personalised by definition — the manuscript is unique, the cover is yours, the title is yours. So the withdrawal right applies until the press-commit moment, and after press-commit it no longer applies because the law itself excludes personalised goods.

· VII ·The press-commit moment

We tell you exactly when press-commit happens. After checkout, you get an email titled "We're checking your book one more time." You have a window — typically 60 minutes, configurable up to 24 hours — to cancel for free. When the window closes, you get a second email titled "Your book is on press." That email contains the press-commit timestamp. After that timestamp, the EU withdrawal right under Article 16(c) no longer applies.

Cancellations during the pre-press window are full cash refunds, not store credit, processed automatically. After press-commit, the order is firm; quality issues are handled under the self-service and manual-review tiers above.

· VIII ·Example timeline — a worked refund

A concrete chronology, in case the rules above feel abstract. Names and dates are illustrative; the mechanics are exactly how a real defect-and-reprint flows through the system.

Two variations worth naming. If you had cancelled before Monday 15:02 — during the pre-press window — Stripe would have voided the authorisation; no money would have moved at all. If the defect had been over the self-service cap (your fourth lifetime refund, or a cumulative twelve-month value above $100), the same Request refund button would have routed you to the manual-review queue with a median one-business-day response.

· IX ·How to ask

Most refund questions are answered self-service inside /account/orders. For everything else — over-cap requests, theme service-level credits, withdrawal during the pre-press window — write to [s…@p…]. We don't run a phone line; we read every email; the median first reply is the same afternoon.