1. Purpose

This policy explains when you may cancel, what you get back, and how long it takes. It forms part of our Terms of Service.

We have written it to be fair and neutral, as our payment processors require, and to meet the disclosure obligations in section 43 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 ("ECTA") and the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 ("CPA").

Your statutory rights come first. Nothing in this policy limits a right you have under ECTA, the CPA, or any other law that cannot be contracted out of. Where this policy is more generous than the law, this policy applies.

2. Your statutory cooling-off rights

2.1 The ECTA seven-day right, and when it does not apply

Section 44 of ECTA gives a consumer who buys goods or services electronically the right to cancel within seven days, without reason and without penalty — refunding the price less the direct cost of returning goods.

Section 42(2) of ECTA excludes several kinds of transaction from that right, and two of those exclusions usually cover our work:

  • Services which began, with your consent, before the seven days were up. If you ask us to start immediately and we do, the seven-day right falls away for the part we have performed.
  • Goods made to your specifications, or clearly personalised. A bespoke website, system or automation built for you is made to your specification.

So: if you ask us to start work inside the first seven days, say so knowing that you are giving up the ECTA cooling-off right for the work we then perform. We will always confirm that in writing before we start. If you have not asked us to start, the seven-day right applies in full and you get everything back.

The seven-day right also does not apply where the transaction is not an electronic transaction with a consumer — for example, most business-to-business engagements negotiated and signed offline.

2.2 The CPA rights

Where the CPA applies to you — broadly, if you are a natural person, or a juristic person whose asset value or annual turnover is under the threshold set by the Minister — you also have:

  • Section 16: a five-business-day cooling-off right on any transaction that resulted from direct marketing, running from the date of the transaction or delivery, whichever is later.
  • Section 17: the right to cancel an advance booking, reservation or order, against a reasonable cancellation fee. What is reasonable depends on how much notice you gave, how much of the work is already done, whether we can resell the slot, and the general practice in our industry. Clause 4 below sets out how we calculate it.
  • Section 54: the right to services of a reasonable quality, performed in a reasonable manner, in a reasonable time. If we fail that standard you may require us to remedy the defect or refund a reasonable portion of the price.

3. Cancelling before work starts

If you have paid and we have not started:

  • You get a full refund, with no deduction, provided you tell us in writing before we begin.
  • We refund within 10 business days of receiving your written cancellation and your banking details, to the original payment method wherever possible.
  • The only exception is a third-party cost we have already irreversibly incurred on your instruction — a domain registration, a paid licence, a stock asset. We will show you the receipt and refund the rest.

4. Cancelling a project after work has started

Project work is invoiced against milestones. If you cancel mid-project:

  • You are billed for work actually performed and costs actually committed up to the date of your written cancellation, plus a reasonable cancellation fee under section 17 of the CPA where it applies.
  • If your deposit exceeds that amount, we refund the difference within 10 business days.
  • If the amount exceeds your deposit, we invoice the balance, payable within 7 days.
  • On request, we give you a written breakdown of hours, milestones reached and third-party costs, so you can see how the figure was arrived at.
  • Work you have paid for in full is yours under clause 7 of our Terms of Service, and we hand it over.

We do not charge a cancellation fee where the cancellation is because we failed to deliver.

5. Retainers and recurring billing

  • Retainers are billed monthly in advance and start on the agreed go-live date, never on the agreement date or the deposit date.
  • Either of us may cancel a retainer on 30 days written notice. Notice takes effect at the end of the billing month in which those 30 days expire.
  • We do not refund a part-used month. You keep full service until the end of the paid period, and we will use the remaining hours if you want them.
  • If we increase a retainer price we give you at least 30 days written notice before the new price takes effect, and you may cancel within that notice period without a cancellation fee.
  • You may pause or cancel a recurring payment mandate at any time from your own bank or card issuer, but doing so does not by itself cancel the agreement — send us written notice as well, or the invoices keep issuing.

6. Where we do not refund

We do not refund:

  • Work already delivered and accepted, where the only reason for the request is a change of mind after the applicable cooling-off period has passed;
  • Third-party costs already spent on your instruction and not recoverable from that third party — domains, licences, paid plans, advertising spend, stock assets;
  • A retainer month already begun (see clause 5);
  • Loss caused by you or a third party after handover — for example a site broken by an edit you made, a plugin you installed, or a hosting account you cancelled; or
  • Requests based on a commercial outcome not being achieved, where we made no guarantee of that outcome. We do not guarantee rankings, traffic, conversion or revenue, and clause 9 of our Terms of Service says so.

7. If we cancel

If we cancel an engagement for convenience, or cannot deliver, we refund everything you have paid for work not yet performed, within 10 business days, with no deduction and no cancellation fee. If we cancel because you materially breached the agreement, clause 4 applies instead.

8. How refunds are paid

  • Refunds go back to the original payment method wherever the processor allows it — a card payment is reversed to that card, an EFT is repaid by EFT to the account it came from.
  • We do not refund to a different person or account than the one that paid, unless you give us written instructions and we can verify them. This is a fraud control, not an obstacle.
  • Timing: we release the refund within 10 business days of agreeing it. After that, how long it takes to appear depends on your bank or card issuer — card reversals typically settle in 3 to 10 business days and are outside our control.
  • Refunds are made in the currency you paid in. If a currency conversion or cross-border fee was charged by your bank or the processor, that portion is not ours to refund.
  • We do not charge a fee for issuing a refund.

9. Disputed charges and chargebacks

If you think a charge is wrong, contact us before you raise a chargeback. Email erik@vdmdigital.io with the invoice number and what is wrong. We will respond within 2 business days and resolve or explain within 10 business days. Almost every dispute is a billing error or a misunderstanding and is faster to fix directly.

If you do raise a chargeback:

  • We will provide the payment processor with the quote, the invoice, the delivery record and our correspondence.
  • A chargeback raised while an engagement is live may result in service suspension until it is resolved, as set out in clause 5.3 of our Terms of Service.
  • If a chargeback is decided in our favour and the processor charges us a dispute fee, we may recover that fee from you.

10. Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have applied this policy:

  1. Email erik@vdmdigital.io. We acknowledge within 2 business days.
  2. If that does not resolve it, we will refer it to mediation as set out in clause 14 of our Terms of Service.
  3. Where the CPA applies to you, you may refer the matter to the National Consumer Commission or an accredited consumer ombud at any time. This policy does not take that right away.

11. Contact

VDM Digital (Pty) Ltd (Reg. No. 2026/179981/07)

13 Jigger Avenue, Somerset West, Western Cape, 7130, South Africa

Email: erik@vdmdigital.io

Telephone: Our telephone number is published in the current version of this document on our website, and is available on request by email.

Last updated: 10 September 2026.