Refunds and cancellation

You pay one week at a time, at the price your cohort states on its own page, due about 8 days before it, which is when we book and pay for the court. We never hold money for a session that has not been booked, so there is rarely much to unwind.

The deposit

£10, paid once when you join the waiting list. It comes off the last session of your cohort, so that week costs £10 less than your cohort’s price.

It exists so that the list we build cohorts from is people who meant it, which is the difference between a group that turns up and a group that was curious.

If you pay for every week your cohort runs, the deposit is yours and it pays for the last one. If you do not, we keep it when the cohort closes. That is the whole rule, and it is the reason the deposit sits at the end rather than the start: the 6 weeks are what makes a cohort work, and the group only becomes a group because the same people keep coming back.

We would rather be blunt about this than bury it. It is £10, it is the only money in Rally Club you can lose, and here is exactly when you cannot lose it:

• While you are still on the waiting list. You have not committed to anything, so ask and it comes back, no reason needed.
• For the first 14 days. Whatever else is going on, including being mid-cohort, your deposit is refundable for a fortnight. That is your legal right under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 and we are not going to make you look it up.
• For any week we called off. Completing means paying for the weeks that actually ran. If we cancel one, it cannot count against you, and a cohort we cancel outright refunds everything including the deposit.
• If you paid for all of it and just could not make a night. This turns on payment, not attendance. Paying for a week you then missed still counts as completing it.

If we do keep it, you get an email saying so, naming the amount, on the day the cohort closes. You will not find out by checking your account months later. And if the reason you stopped coming was something we should know about, reply to that email: we would much rather give you £10 back than be right about a rule.

If your cohort ends without the deposit being used, because its last session was called off, it stays on your account rather than being kept. It comes off the last week of your next cohort, or comes back if you ask.

The first 14 days

You bought this online, which makes it a distance contract, which means the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 give you 14 days from the day after you paid to cancel for any reason at all. You do not need one, and we will not ask for one.

In practice this is simple: any session you have paid for and not yet played is refunded in full, and so is an unspent deposit. A session you have already played is not, because you played it. Email hello@joinrallyclub.com and the refund goes out within 14 days of you telling us, usually the same day.

If we cancel the cohort

A cohort needs a minimum number of paid players: four where we have booked one court, 6 where we have booked two, and your cohort states its own number on its page. If we do not reach that, we cancel and refund every session fee you have paid, plus your deposit if it is unspent, without you having to ask. You keep your place in the queue for the next cohort forming near you.

If a single session is called off

Rain, a venue closure, or too few players for a safe game. If you have not paid for it yet, you simply are not charged. If you have, that week is refunded in full, at the price you paid for it, or carried to the replacement date if we can reschedule it. Your choice, and we will ask rather than assume.

If the slot moves part way through

We book each week’s court about 8 days ahead, at the same venue and the same weeknight, and occasionally a club sells that slot before we get to it. If a week has to move venue or night, we will tell you as soon as we know and you decide: pay for the moved session, or skip that week at no cost. If the whole cohort has to move and the new slot does not work for you, everything you have paid for sessions still to come comes back.

Being straight about this: a standing weekly slot is what we are working towards with venues, and until we have one, a moved week is a real possibility rather than a hypothetical.

If you miss a week

A week you have paid for is not refunded when you do not come, because the court was booked and paid for on the strength of your payment. Tell us early enough and we will find a substitute for your slot, so the rest of the group still gets a proper game.

If you stop part way through

There is a Leave this cohort button at the bottom of your cohort page. Use it and we stop asking you for money, take you off the roster, and find a sub for the weeks you have left so the rest of the group still gets a game. You can also just stop paying, which has the same effect more slowly. Either way you owe nothing beyond the weeks you have already paid for, nobody chases you, and no further charge is made.

We would rather you pressed the button. Not for our sake: it means the other seven find out in time for us to fill your slot, instead of a court being booked for a player who is not coming.

What you do lose is the £10 deposit, because it was set against a last week you did not reach. That is the same whether you press the button or go quiet, and the button says so before you confirm. Unless you are inside your first 14 days, in which case it comes back on request like anything else. See the deposit for the cases where we will not keep it.

Weeks you have already paid for are not refunded when you leave, including one that has not happened yet, because the court for it was booked and paid for on the strength of your payment. If a week has not been paid for, it simply is not.

Being straight about the reasoning: the 6 weeks are the point. A group only becomes a group because the same eight people keep turning up, and somebody leaving in week three costs the other seven more than it costs us. The deposit is the small amount of skin we ask for in that. It is deliberately small, and it is the only money at stake.

How refunds reach you

Always back the way it arrived, never as a balance or a credit we are holding. If you paid by card, it goes to that card through Stripe, which takes 5 to 10 working days to show and is their timing rather than ours. If you paid by bank transfer, it goes back to the account you sent it from. We will tell you when we have sent it.

Before you raise a chargeback

Please email us instead. A chargeback takes weeks, and we can almost always refund you the same day. If you have been charged twice for one week, or charged for a cohort you were never placed in, that is our error and you do not need a dispute process to get it back.

Email hello@joinrallyclub.com, and see the terms of service for everything that is not about money.