Refunds & disputes

What it covers

Three paths can reverse a charge:

• Buyer-initiated refund request: you ask for a refund from your Licenses page; Packagento reviews and approves or denies it.
• Platform-initiated refund: Packagento issues a refund directly (compliance, support escalation, billing error).
• Card-issuer dispute or chargeback: you contest the charge with your card issuer instead of asking for a refund. Your card network drives the timeline, not the marketplace.

Refund decisions are made by Packagento; the marketplace is the merchant of record on the payment and handles the refund decision centrally.

For buyers: request a refund

Open My licenses. The "Request refund" action appears next to any licence still within the eligibility window. The window is 14 days from the licence creation date by default. After it closes, the action disappears; you can still email support, but later requests are reviewed case by case.

Submitting opens a short form that asks for two things: a reason category from a dropdown and a free-text explanation (at least 20 characters, up to 2000). Both are required so the reviewer has enough context to decide. Your request appears on your activity feed straight away; no money moves until the request is reviewed.

Blocked on a money issue? Get in touch through our contact form with your order number and we'll look at the case manually.

See also: Writing a strong refund request.

Review and outcomes

Packagento reviews refund requests in the order they arrive. A request resolves to one of two outcomes:

• Approved: the refund is issued through Stripe and the licence is deactivated (see next section).
• Denied: you receive an email with a short reason. The most common reasons are out-of-policy use (long-running installed access followed by a refund request) or a duplicate request where an earlier refund already settled.

What happens after approval

When the request is approved, Packagento issues the refund through Stripe and deactivates the licence at the same time. The money returns to your original payment method on Stripe's standard 5 to 10 business day timeline. The licence becomes inactive straight away.

Effect on licence access and installs

Once a licence is deactivated, it no longer grants access. The project token tied to that licence stops being able to fetch the package; subsequent composer install or composer update runs will not pull new versions. Code already installed on your servers is untouched: Composer never reaches into your vendor/ directory and removes files. If you buy the package again later, a fresh licence is issued and your existing project resumes pulling updates against it.

For vendors: activity and settlement impact

Vendors do not approve, deny, or initiate refunds - those decisions go through Packagento. What you do see:

• A refund or lost-dispute event in your activity feed.
• A negative payout row on the settlements page that reverses the original sale's vendor share. The reversal is netted against your next settlement period; if the period totals negative the platform raises it directly with you rather than holding the next month's positive payout.
• An email when a chargeback is opened against one of your sales.

Disputes and chargebacks

A dispute (chargeback) starts when you ask your card issuer to reverse the charge. Packagento records the dispute and holds the disputed amount while the case is open. The outcome is decided by your card issuer and the card networks, not by the marketplace. The two outcomes recorded against the order are:

• Won: the held amount is released back to the platform and the order returns to its succeeded state. Your licence stays active.
• Lost: the charge is reversed by the issuer. The order is flagged as dispute-lost; Packagento support will then settle the licence (typically by deactivating it the same way an approved refund would). Get in touch if anything looks inconsistent on your end.

Disputes are slower than refund requests for everyone. If the package is not what you expected, request a refund first; the marketplace can usually resolve it directly.

Subscription refunds

Subscriptions are billed per period. A refund request raised against a subscription licence is reviewed the same way as a one-off purchase; the reviewer decides what is fair given the time elapsed in the current period. If you want to stop further charges without disputing the most recent one, that is a cancellation, not a refund - see Cancel a subscription. Refunding the most recent invoice and cancelling future renewals are independent actions; you can do either or both.

Troubleshooting and support

• Refund button missing on a recent purchase: the eligibility window has lapsed. Get in touch through our contact form with your licence ID and reason; out-of-window cases are handled case-by-case.
• Request submitted but no email back: check the spam folder; the response comes from the Packagento notify address. If the request still shows as pending after several business days, follow up with support.
• I disputed instead of requesting a refund: cancel the dispute with your card issuer if it's still open, then request a refund the normal way. Once a dispute is closed (won or lost) it can't be re-routed through the refund flow.
• Vendor: payout reversal looks wrong: the settlement detail page links each reversal to the original sale and the refund/dispute that triggered it. If the linkage looks off, capture the settlement period and email support.