Refunds without questions.

We refund any LADLE subscription within 7 days of purchase. Monthly or annual, doesn't matter. One email to hello@ladle.chat and it's done, usually in an hour.

No form. No "please tell us why so we can improve." No retention offer. No pop-up trying to talk you out of it. The point of writing this post is to say — explicitly — that the friction most SaaS refunds carry is a deliberate design choice, and we chose the other one.

Here's the reasoning.

If you subscribed and the product isn't for you, keeping your $20 hostage costs you $20 and costs us goodwill worth much more than $20. The customer who tried LADLE, didn't love it, and got their money back cleanly is the customer who mentions us on a podcast in 2027 when someone asks about AI subscriptions with a social contract. The customer who felt jerked around during the refund isn't.

If you subscribed and the product IS for you but this month is a bad month, we don't want the money. Software subscriptions where you're not using the software but feel too awkward to cancel is one of the ugliest patterns in consumer tech. We'd rather have you back later than have you resenting us now.

There's a design constraint in this too. A pain-free refund makes it possible for us to say honestly: try LADLE for a week, and if it isn't your assistant, get your $20 back cleanly. That sentence carries the demo's job of "let me see if this works for me" and then some.

What happens to the meal earmark when you refund? We reverse it. If you subscribed on the 3rd and refunded on the 6th, the $8 that was earmarked for that month's batch unwinds in the LADLE ledger before the batch posts to the pooled meal fund. No pretend meals accrue on your behalf; no meals get double-counted anywhere.

If you refund AFTER the monthly batch has been posted to the pooled meal fund, the $8 stays reserved for meals and LADLE absorbs the ops-side impact. It's a rare edge case and it's fine. The clarity of the refund is worth more than the absorbed cost. (Post-partnership — once we cross the $50,000/year partnership threshold, [context here](/blog/the-fifty-thousand-threshold) — the same rule applies: if the batch already shipped as a real partner donation, we don't ask our future partner to unwind it, and we cover the refund from ops.)

Two things we do NOT refund: - Beyond 7 days from purchase on a fresh subscription. You get the paid period out. - On annual plans: same 7 days from purchase. After that, you keep access through the year and the meals stay booked.

The policy is on the /legal/refunds page in the plain version. This post is the reasoning.

If you're reading this because you're on day 5 and unsure, email us. We'll refund without asking why. Most people who refund never write back to explain, and that's fine — we're not owed the explanation.