Refunds & disputes

Any time before a pool closes, you can withdraw your own entry from the pool page and get a full refund to the card you paid with. Refunds normally land in 5–10 business days, depending on your bank.

A host can cancel a pool that hasn't been settled. When they do, every paid entry is refunded in full automatically. Nobody has to ask.

We may also cancel and refund a pool ourselves if we believe an outcome was declared dishonestly, if a recipient never completes verification, or if a pool breaks our terms.

Once the host declares an outcome, the pot is committed to the recipient and entries can't be refunded. The pool page says this before you pay, not after.

Stripe does not return its card processing fee (2.9% + 30¢ per entry) when a payment is refunded. Poolsy absorbs that cost rather than passing it on, so you get your full entry back — including the Poolsy fee you paid on top of it.

If you don't recognise a Poolsy charge or think something's wrong, contact us first — we respond within two business days and can usually refund it faster than a bank dispute resolves.

If a dispute is filed with your bank, we remove that entry from the pool immediately. On a pool that hasn't settled yet, the pot goes down by that amount. On a pool that has already settled, the payout is put on hold and reviewed so the same money isn't paid out twice. We may suspend an account with repeated disputes.

Email the address on your receipt with the pool name and the date of the charge. Include your Stripe receipt number if you have it and we'll sort it out.