Refund Policy

What this page covers

Almost all of KarmaVaani is free. This page explains the one part that involves money: the Supporter contribution, and the one-time offerings some readers choose to make. It sets out what you are paying for, how to stop paying, what happens to your account afterwards, and how to ask for a refund.

If anything here is unclear, please write to editor@karmavaani.in before you pay rather than after.

What a Supporter contribution is

Supporter is a voluntary contribution toward running an independent Hindu knowledge platform: the hosting, the scripture data, and the AI companions that answer from the texts. It is not a key to a paywall.

The Bhagavad Gita, the Valmiki Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the temple atlas, the deity and festival pages, the glossary, the community essays, the discussions and the Q&A are open to everyone, with or without an account, and they stay that way. So does the free tier's use of the AI companions.

What a Supporter contribution unlocks today

• One guided meditation — "The Witness Within" — which is the only one of the four currently marked Supporter-only. The other three are free to everyone.
• A Supporter mark on your own dashboard.

That is the whole of it, and we would rather say so plainly than dress it up. What your contribution mostly does is keep the rest of the site open for people who cannot pay.

What you are charged, and by whom

KarmaVaani does not process payments itself. There are two routes, and only the ones we have switched on will appear on the membership page.

Rupee payments, through Razorpay. A single payment of ₹199 that covers 30 days of Supporter access. It does not renew on its own. No card is stored for a future charge, and nothing is taken again. When the 30 days are up the account simply returns to the free tier, and you may contribute again whenever you wish.

[CARD PAYMENTS THROUGH STRIPE — do not publish this route, and do not switch Stripe on, until the renewal handling is fixed. The Stripe checkout is created as a recurring subscription, but the webhook records a single 31-day period and never extends it, so from day 32 a customer would keep being billed while losing Supporter access. Once the webhook extends the period on each successful renewal, describe the route here with the real amount and interval read from the Stripe Price object — it is not ₹199, which is the Razorpay figure only — and restore the Stripe cancellation section below. If Stripe is not live at launch, delete this paragraph and the Stripe cancellation section, and describe only the Razorpay path.]

Either way, your card, UPI or bank details are entered on the payment provider's own checkout, not on KarmaVaani. We never receive them and never store them. What we keep is a record that a payment happened: the amount, which provider handled it, the provider's reference for it, and the date. The Privacy Policy sets that out in full.

One-time offerings

An offering is separate from Supporter membership. It goes through Razorpay, in rupees, for any amount between ₹10 and ₹1,00,000, and it unlocks nothing. It is a gift toward the work. We record the amount, the payment reference, and the message you left with it, if any.

Stopping your contribution

If you contributed through Razorpay

There is nothing to cancel. The payment was a single one, it does not repeat, and no further amount will be taken. Your Supporter access lasts 30 days from the payment and then lapses on its own.

If you subscribed by card

[STRIPE CANCELLATION — publish this section only alongside the Stripe payment route above. There is no cancel button, no billing portal and no cancellation route anywhere in the product, so every cancellation has to be performed by hand in the payment provider's dashboard. If you publish it, state: the email address to write from, that we cancel at the provider and confirm by email within [FIRST RESPONSE TIME], and that the request must arrive at least [CANCELLATION NOTICE PERIOD] before the renewal date. Confirm first that someone is actually watching editor@karmavaani.in daily, because a manual cancellation path with nobody reading the inbox produces exactly the charge this policy then has to refund.]

If a renewal is charged after you asked us to cancel, that charge is refunded in full — see below.

What happens to your account

Nothing else changes. Your account stays open and nothing is deleted. Your essays, answers, comments, saved items, follows, reading streak and profile all remain exactly as they were. What ends is access to the Supporter-only meditation and the Supporter mark on your dashboard. Contribute again later and both come back.

Asking for a refund

Where we will refund

• You were charged twice for the same thing, or a payment went through more than once.
• Money left your account but Supporter access never started.
• You were charged after asking us to cancel, because we failed to stop the renewal in time. Refunded in full.
• A payment you did not authorise. We refund it and close the subscription.
• You changed your mind within [REFUND WINDOW] of a Supporter payment and have not made real use of the Supporter-only material. Refunded in full, and you do not have to give a reason.

Where we usually will not

• One-time offerings, which are gifts freely given. But if you gave by accident, or typed a figure you did not mean, tell us within [REFUND WINDOW] and we will put it right.
• The unused remainder of a period, once the window above has passed. Your access continues to the end of the period you paid for.
• A period running on a suspended account. Suspension for breaking the community rules stops you posting; it does not end a paid period early, and we do not refund the remainder of one. The same rule is stated in the Terms of Use.
• Dissatisfaction with an answer from an AI companion. The companions answer from the scriptures and cite what they drew on, and they can still be wrong or incomplete. They are a study aid, not an authority, and that limitation is not something a refund can settle. If a companion was unavailable for a long stretch of a period you paid for, that is a different matter — write to us.

How to ask

1. Email editor@karmavaani.in from the address on your KarmaVaani account, with "Refund request" in the subject.
2. Tell us the date, the amount, which provider handled it, and the payment reference from your receipt. Razorpay references begin with pay_.
3. Say briefly what happened. There is no form and no template to fill.
4. We reply within [FIRST RESPONSE TIME] to confirm we have your request. If we need to check something with the payment provider first, we will tell you that rather than go quiet.
5. If we approve it, the refund goes back to the same card, account or UPI id the payment came from. We cannot send it anywhere else, and we will not ask you for bank details. Expect [REFUND PROCESSING TIME] for it to show up, depending on your bank.
6. If we decline, we say so in writing and explain why.

You never need to raise this publicly, and asking for a refund will not affect your account or your standing in the community.

If money left your account but your access did not start

This can happen if the payment window or the browser tab is closed before the confirmation comes back to us. The payment reaches the provider, but KarmaVaani never records it, so the membership is not switched on.

Write to us with the payment reference and tell us which you would prefer: we will either activate the membership for the full period or refund the payment. Please do not pay a second time to try to fix it — if you already have, tell us and we will refund the duplicate.

Chargebacks and disputes

Please write to us before raising a dispute with your bank or card issuer. Almost every case is a duplicate charge or a failed activation, and we can settle those far faster than a chargeback can. If you do raise one, we will cooperate with the provider and give them whatever record we hold.

Taxes and receipts

Your receipt for any payment is issued by the payment provider that handled it, to the email address on your account. Tax treatment: [GST / TAX TREATMENT AND REGISTRATION NUMBER, OR A LINE STATING THAT THE ENTITY IS NOT REGISTERED].

Who you are paying

KarmaVaani is operated by [LEGAL ENTITY NAME], [REGISTERED BUSINESS ADDRESS]. Any dispute arising from a payment is subject to [GOVERNING LAW AND JURISDICTION].

Changes to this policy

We may revise this page as the membership changes. Any revision applies from the date it is published and does not change the terms of a payment you have already made. This version is effective from [EFFECTIVE DATE].

Contact

Email: editor@karmavaani.in — the only address we staff, and the one that reaches the people who can act on a payment problem.

Phone: [SUPPORT PHONE NUMBER — required on a published policy by some payment gateways. None exists in the repo. Publishing a number commits you to answering it; the Contact page says email is the only channel we staff, so either add a number here and keep the two pages consistent, or confirm with your gateway that an email-only policy is acceptable.]

Write in English or Hindi, whichever you prefer.

The rest of the fine print

About KarmaVaani · Privacy Policy · Terms of Use · Contact

This page is a draft. It has not been reviewed by a lawyer.