Do You Have to Refund a Follower Who Changes Their Mind?

No. A creator in the United States is not legally required to refund a follower who simply changes their mind on a paid question, shoutout, or service, because U.S. federal law gives online buyers no general buyer's-remorse right. Consumers in the UK and the EU do hold a 14-day distance-selling cancellation right that ends once a service is fully performed. What a creator should do otherwise depends on whether work has started.

Personalized Videos let a follower pay upfront for one personalized video for themselves or someone they care about: you set the price and the delivery time, then record it on your schedule. Custom Work lets you offer clearly scoped commissions and services: you set the price, the scope and the delivery time, and followers submit a brief and pay before you start. No follower account needed; followers check out with name, email, and card. Each request is a one-time purchase, not a membership or subscription. You set one fixed price before the follower buys — for example, $5 for a Paid Question, $25 for a portfolio review sold through Custom Work, or $50 for a Personalized Video. For Paid Questions, followers pay before you do the work; you deliver on your own time.

One Brillay link brings together Paid Questions, Personalized Videos, Custom Work, Tips, Goals, and Brand Collaboration Inquiries, so your paid requests and brand form stay on the same page. Brand Collaboration Inquiries is a “Work with Me” form on your Brillay page that collects a brand’s budget, timeline, and deliverables into a separate brand inbox.

For Custom Work, one defined delivery closes the order, which keeps a change-of-mind refund from turning into endless scope creep. The follower pays when they ask; you reply when you can. If you decline, the request closes and the follower keeps their money. After delivery, apply your published refund terms and any law that governs the sale. UK and EU consumers may have a 14-day cancellation right when buying from a creator acting as a trader; whether that right ends on full performance depends on the required disclosures, the buyer's express request or consent, and local law.

The confusion usually traces back to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's Cooling-Off Rule, which does not reach a creator's page. Many followers — and many creators — assume a federal three-day right to cancel anything exists. That federal cancellation rule is real, but its own published text carves out the kind of sale a creator makes.

Is a creator legally required to refund a follower?

No U.S. federal statute obliges a creator to refund a paid request purely because the follower reconsidered, since no blanket buyer's-remorse right attaches to online purchases. Refund duties come instead from what the creator promised at checkout, the platform's terms, or a card dispute the follower files with their bank.

The one federal rule that does force refunds on distance sellers is narrower than its nickname suggests. The FTC's Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule — the 30-day Rule, which requires a prompt refund when a seller cannot ship within 30 days and the buyer will not consent to the delay — “applies to most goods a customer orders from the seller by mail, telephone, fax, or on the Internet” (U.S. Federal Trade Commission, business guide to the Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule). Where that Rule does apply, it also fixes the timing: a seller who is a creditor “must refund the correct amount within seven working days after the order is cancelled” (U.S. Federal Trade Commission, business guide to the 30-day Rule). The Rule's shipping clock itself is 30 days by default, and 50 days when the buyer applies for credit to pay for the merchandise in whole or in part (16 CFR Part 435, Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule, eCFR). A recorded Personalized Video or a written answer is a service rather than shipped goods, so the FTC's 30-day Rule is a poor fit for a creator request, and the creator's stated refund policy carries the weight instead.

Does the FTC's cooling-off rule apply to online orders?

No. The FTC's Cooling-Off Rule gives buyers three days to cancel certain sales, but its published exclusions remove online orders entirely. The rule covers in-person sales made somewhere other than the seller's permanent place of business — a home, a hotel room, a fair booth — and a purchase completed on a creator's page never qualifies.

“The Rule doesn't cover sales that are... made entirely online, by mail, or telephone.” — U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Buyer's Remorse: The FTC's Cooling-Off Rule May Help

The same FTC page also excludes sales under $25 made at a buyer's home and sales under $130 made at a temporary location, alongside the exclusion for sales made entirely online, by mail, or by telephone (U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Buyer's Remorse: The FTC's Cooling-Off Rule May Help). A Brillay purchase — a Paid Question, a custom request, a Personalized Video — is placed entirely online, so the federal three-day cancellation right never attaches to it (how it works). What governs a change-of-mind cancellation instead is the refund terms the creator stated before the sale, plus the card network's dispute process if the follower escalates to their bank.

Do followers outside the United States have a statutory right to cancel?

UK and EU cancellation rights may apply when a buyer purchases from a creator acting as a trader, but the result depends on local implementation, required disclosures, consent to begin work, and whether the service has been fully performed. This is general information, not legal advice; as last verified September 2026, check current UK and EU guidance for the rule that applies to your location.

The UK window is fixed by regulation rather than by custom. Under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, the cancellation period for a service contract ends at the end of 14 days after the day on which the contract is entered into (legislation.gov.uk, Regulation 30, Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013). A UK trader who receives a valid cancellation must pay the refund within 14 days of being informed of that cancellation (legislation.gov.uk, Regulation 34, Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013).

That UK right ends once the job is finished: Regulation 36 provides that a consumer “ceases to have the right to cancel a service contract under regulation 29(1) if the service has been fully performed,” where performance began during the cancellation period at the consumer's express request (legislation.gov.uk, Regulation 36, Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013). EU law draws the same line and sets the same clock — the baseline EU withdrawal period is 14 days (European Commission, Your Europe: Returns and the right of withdrawal):

“Member States shall not provide the right of withdrawal set out in Articles 9 to 15 in respect of distance and off-premises contracts as regards the following: (a) service contracts after the service has been fully performed if the performance has begun with the consumer's prior express consent, and with the acknowledgement that he will lose his right of withdrawal once the contract has been fully performed by the trader.” — Article 16(a), Directive 2011/83/EU on consumer rights, as published in Official Journal L 304, EUR-Lex

Article 4 of Directive (EU) 2019/2161 later rephrased that exception to read “service contracts after the service has been fully performed but, if the contract places the consumer under an obligation to pay, only if the performance has begun with the consumer's prior express consent,” which leaves a paid creator request in the same position (legislation.gov.uk, Directive (EU) 2019/2161, Article 4).

National implementations of the EU directive differ in detail, so a creator with meaningful UK or EU sales should state the 14-day right and how performance ends it directly in the offer text rather than relying on a U.S.-shaped policy.

Should you refund a request before any work begins?

If you decline before any work begins, the request closes and the follower keeps their money — followers pay upfront, and you deliver on your own schedule. Refunding early also protects a creator's standing with the card networks: card-network monitoring programs do not count refunds when identifying disputes, so money returned before a dispute is filed does not register against a seller's dispute rate (Stripe, Dispute and fraud card monitoring programs). The same applies to a Paid Question: the follower pays upfront and you reply in writing on your own time, so declining before you reply still leaves them with a full refund. Some creators prefer to require a deposit upfront instead of declining outright.

What if you've already started or delivered the work?

On Brillay, when work has started and delivery is still pending, declining closes the request and the follower keeps the full amount, even if you have already spent time on it.

The Brillay order is completed when you deliver the written reply or Personalized Video. Sending a custom request file through delivery completes the order the same way.

The card networks draw the same not-received-versus-not-as-described line a creator draws when deciding how much of a started request to refund. Stripe sorts the hundreds of network dispute reason codes into eight categories, and Visa's codes separate 13.1 “Merchandise/Services Not Received” from 13.3 “Not as Described or Defective Merchandise/Services” (Stripe, Dispute reason code categories). How to Handle Refunds for Custom Work covers full-versus-partial mechanics and already-delivered disputes in more depth; the present page addresses the narrower case in which a follower simply changed their mind and nothing went wrong.

Is a partial refund fair once work is underway?

On Brillay, a pre-delivery cancellation has one payment outcome, not a sliding scale: the follower keeps the full amount, whether the request was opened minutes or days ago. Decline it, the request closes, and — if appropriate — you can offer a new, smaller custom request at a fixed price instead.

These stage-by-stage responses — closing a request before delivery with the follower keeping their money, reviewing a refund after delivery, answering a bank dispute, and handling Tips separately — are practical policy choices, alongside checking the law that applies to the sale. Each response describes common creator practice rather than statute, because the split roughly tracks how much work has actually been given up, and any creator can publish a stricter or a looser version as their own stated policy.

Before delivery, declining closes the request and the follower keeps their money. After delivery, a refund returns Brillay’s 8% platform fee for work or 5% platform fee for tips and goals, while Stripe’s processing fee is not returned to the creator. A customer sees a Stripe refund as a credit approximately 5-10 business days later, depending on the bank (Stripe, cancel payments). Naming that 5-10 business-day window when the refund is issued prevents a second complaint from a follower who thinks the money never came back.

What if the follower disputes the charge instead?

A follower who contacts their card issuer starts a formal payment dispute rather than a refund request you control. Consumer-law rights and card-network chargeback rules are related but separate, so verify the applicable deadline and evidence requirements for the specific dispute. The issuer decides the outcome using its own evidence rules, and the federal filing window is short.

Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, a cardholder's dispute letter must reach the issuer within 60 days of the first bill showing the charge, and the issuer must resolve the dispute within 90 days (U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Using Credit Cards and Disputing Charges).

“Send your letter so that it reaches the issuer within 60 days after the first bill with the error was sent to you... Within 90 days of getting your complaint, the issuer must resolve the dispute.” — U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Using Credit Cards and Disputing Charges

Card network windows run longer than the federal billing-error clock: cardholders can dispute a card charge up to 120 days after the payment was made, and sometimes later (Stripe, Measuring disputes). Disputes can carry Stripe fees, but the amount and refund treatment can vary by connected account, country, and current Stripe pricing. Check the dated official pricing page that applies to your payout country before quoting a fixed cost. A seller who wants to contest a dispute usually has 7 to 21 days to submit evidence, depending on the card network (Stripe, Respond to disputes). A follower who merely changed their mind does not fit cleanly into any network reason category, which is one reason a direct conversation resolves the situation faster than a chargeback decided by the issuer under its own evidence rules.

How do you set a refund policy in advance?

You set a refund policy in advance by writing one rule per cancellation stage — before work starts, mid-request, after delivery — and stating it in plain language on the offer before the first follower buys. A policy invented under pressure from an unhappy follower comes out inconsistent and gives a creator nothing to point to in a later dispute. That also makes asking followers to pay less awkward: the offer states the price, and Brillay handles checkout instead of you manually tracking which followers have paid and which haven't.

“All disputes, whether they're won or lost, count towards your dispute rate, so the best strategy to avoid monitoring programs is dispute prevention.” — Stripe, Measuring disputes

Prevention has a measurable ceiling worth knowing: the credit card processing industry recognizes dispute activity above 0.75% of payments as excessive, and a sudden spike can trigger a monitoring program below that level (Stripe, Measuring disputes). A short, specific policy line does the preventive work — for example: “If you cancel before delivery, I’ll decline the request; it will close and you’ll keep your money. After delivery, I’ll review refund requests under the terms shown before you bought.” That single sentence answers each cancellation stage — before work starts, mid-request, and after delivery — before a follower has to ask.

Does Brillay require a specific refund policy?

Check Brillay’s current Purchases & Refunds Policy, then state your own cancellation and refund terms clearly before a follower buys. A Brillay creator sets the refund terms they will honor and can decline a Paid Question, custom request, or Personalized Video directly, rather than being forced to complete the request or contest it.

No monthly fee, you only pay a small platform fee when you get paid. 8% platform fee when a follower pays for work, 5% platform fee on tips and goals. Card processing is separate (pricing). There is no follower minimum or platform gate to use Paid Questions, Custom Work, or Personalized Videos on Brillay. Creators in 41 countries can get paid; followers pay by card from anywhere.

Card-processing costs are separate from the platform fee and are charged by the payment processor rather than by Brillay: Stripe's standard U.S. rate is 2.9% + $0.30 per successful domestic card transaction, with no setup or monthly fee (Stripe, Pricing).

Frequently asked questions

A change-of-mind policy should address six recurring issues: a U.S. follower’s possible three-day cancellation right, UK and EU followers’ possible 14-day right, the difference between a refund request and a chargeback, the separate default for Tips, the separate treatment of a quality complaint, and the scope of a creator’s refund discretion. Each answer below cites a primary source.

Does a follower have a legal right to cancel a paid request within 3 days?

No. The three-day right comes from the FTC's Cooling-Off Rule, which excludes purchases made entirely online, by mail, or by telephone, along with sales under $25 at a buyer's home and sales under $130 at a temporary location. A Brillay purchase is placed entirely online and therefore falls outside that rule.

Does a follower in the UK or EU have a 14-day right to cancel instead?

Potentially—if the buyer is a consumer, the creator is acting as a trader, and the purchase falls within the applicable UK or EU distance-selling rules. A UK consumer's cancellation period for a service contract bought at a distance generally ends 14 days after the day the contract is entered into (Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, regulation 30), and the baseline EU withdrawal period is likewise 14 days (European Commission, Your Europe: Returns and the right of withdrawal). Both rights end once the service has been fully performed after the consumer's express request or prior express consent.

What's the difference between a refund request and a chargeback?

A refund request comes straight to you, and you settle it under the refund terms you published before the sale: decline a request that hasn't been delivered and it closes with the follower keeping their money. A chargeback is a formal dispute filed with the follower's card issuer under the Fair Credit Billing Act, which requires the cardholder's letter to reach the issuer within 60 days of the first bill showing the charge and requires the issuer to resolve the dispute within 90 days (FTC).

Should I refund a tip if a follower asks for it back?

A tip is a separate case, because no deliverable was ever owed in exchange for it. Are Tips Refundable? explains how the default for an unsolicited tip differs from the default for a priced Q&A, service, or Personalized Video.

What if the follower says the work wasn't what they expected, not that they changed their mind?

A complaint about quality is a different dispute from a change-of-mind cancellation, and the card networks code it differently too — Visa uses 13.3 “Not as Described or Defective Merchandise/Services” for that claim (Stripe, Dispute reason code categories). How to Handle Refunds for Custom Work covers how to weigh full versus partial refunds once something has already been delivered.

Can I just refuse all refunds after payment?

Creators set their own refund policies, but published terms cannot override consumer rights that apply where you or the follower is located. A strict no-refund stance before delivery can push a frustrated follower toward a card dispute. Stripe dispute fees vary by connected account, country, and current pricing, so check the official pricing page for your payout country rather than quoting one universal amount.

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