Refund Policy

1.What this covers

This policy applies to everything sold under the Filantis name: cloud subscriptions bought at filantis.com, appliance hardware, office-server installations, dedicated cloud instances, and any professional services invoiced alongside them. It forms part of our Terms of Service.

Where the law where you live gives you stronger rights than this policy does — a statutory cooling-off period, for instance — those rights apply and this policy does not reduce them. Nothing here is intended to take away a consumer protection you are entitled to.

2.Why there is no trial

Most phone systems give you fourteen or thirty days and then switch off. We do not, because we think the fastest way to find out whether Filantis suits you is to run your business on it — and a countdown makes that impossible to do properly.

So the free plan is a real plan: ten extensions, four simultaneous calls, voicemail, the browser dialpad and the call log, for as long as you want it. Everything below is therefore about changing your mind after you have chosen to pay, not about evaluating the product.

3.Cloud subscriptions

This section is about the shared cloud plans — Free, Basic, Standard and Premium. A dedicated cloud instance is priced and refunded differently and is covered by section 7; nothing below applies to it.

Your first payment: 7 days

If you upgrade to a paid plan and decide within 7 calendar days that it is not for you, tell us and we will refund that payment in full. You do not have to give a reason, and it makes no difference how many calls you made in the meantime.

The 7 days are counted in calendar days from the date the payment was taken. Weekends, public holidays and any closure of ours fall inside them and do not extend them.

Renewals

Renewal payments are not refundable, because by then you have been using the system for a full period and we have told you the renewal is coming. What you can always do is cancel before the next renewal — see section 5 — and keep the service to the end of what you have paid for.

If a renewal takes you by surprise — you meant to cancel, nobody did, and the system has genuinely not been used since — write to us anyway. We would rather settle that sensibly than argue about a date, and we usually do.

Changing plan mid-period

Upgrading takes effect immediately and you are charged the difference for the rest of the period. Downgrading takes effect at the next renewal, at the lower price; we do not refund the difference for the part of the period already run.

4.Yearly plans

A yearly plan is cheaper because it is a commitment for a year. The same 7-day window applies to your first yearly payment, in full.

After 7 days a yearly plan is not refundable and does not convert to a monthly one. You keep the service for the whole year you paid for; you can cancel at any point so it does not renew.

The exception is a genuine failure on our side — if we cannot deliver the service and cannot fix it in a reasonable time, we refund the unused part of the year on a pro-rata basis, counted in whole months.

5.Cancelling

Two ways, and either is enough:

• In the admin interface, under Subscriptions. This is the fastest and it is timestamped, so there is never a question about when you asked.
• By email to billing@filantis.com, from an address on the account. Quote your workspace name.

Cancelling stops the next payment. It does not switch your phones off that afternoon: the service runs to the end of the period you have already paid for, and then the workspace moves to the free plan if it fits inside it, or is closed if it does not.

6.Appliance hardware

A Filantis appliance can be returned within 30 days of delivery for a refund of what you paid for it, provided it is:

• complete — unit, power supply, and anything else that came in the box;
• undamaged, and not modified, opened beyond normal use, or physically marked;
• returned with an RMA number we have given you, so it can be identified when it arrives.

Return shipping is yours unless the unit was faulty on arrival or we sent the wrong thing, in which case it is ours. We inspect the unit on arrival and refund within five working days of accepting it. A unit that comes back incomplete or damaged is refunded less the cost of putting it right, and we will tell you that figure before we deduct it.

After 30 days a returned unit is a warranty matter rather than a refund: we repair or replace a hardware fault, we do not buy the unit back.

7.Licences, dedicated instances and installation

Office-server licences

An office-server licence is refundable within 7 days of purchase, provided the software has not yet been installed on a production system. Once it is carrying your calls it has been delivered, and the free plan was there to evaluate it with.

Dedicated cloud instances

A dedicated instance is a machine provisioned and reserved for you alone: the moment it is created, the hardware, the address and the capacity are committed and billed to us on your behalf, whether or not you go on to use them. That is the same reason third-party charges are not refundable in section 8 — the money is already spent by the time you could change your mind.

You can still cancel at any time and it will not renew, with the instance running to the end of the period you have paid for. What you cannot do is get that period's payment back once the instance exists.

Because of that, we would much rather you ran the shared cloud first. The free plan and the paid plans are the same software with the same interface, they carry the 7-day window, and moving up to a dedicated instance afterwards is a migration rather than a fresh start. If you are not certain a dedicated instance is what you need, say so before you order and we will tell you honestly — it is often not.

Installation and professional services

Installation and configuration work is charged for the time spent and is not refundable once performed, whether or not you later cancel the licence. Cancel a booked installation at least two working days beforehand and there is no charge; cancel inside that and we may charge for the day.

8.What is not refundable

None of the following can be refunded, at any point:

• Third-party charges we paid on your behalf — number purchases, porting fees, carrier minutes, SMS charges, certificate fees. That money has left our hands and is not ours to return.
• Work already performed — installation, migration, custom configuration, training and consultancy, charged by time.
• Dedicated cloud instances, at any point, including the first payment — the machine is reserved for you alone and committed the moment it is created (section 7).
• Renewal payments beyond the first payment on the account (section 3).
• Hardware returned after 30 days, or returned damaged, incomplete or without an RMA number.
• Accounts closed by us for breach of the Terms of Service — fraud, illegal calling, or using the platform to send unlawful automated calls or messages.

We are a phone system, not a phone company: we do not resell minutes and take no cut of your call spend, so your carrier's charges are between you and your carrier and we could not refund them even if we wanted to.

9.How to ask for a refund

Email billing@filantis.com from an address on the account, and include:

• your workspace name (the first part of your Filantis address);
• the invoice or transaction reference, or the date and amount;
• what you would like — the payment back, or the money moved onto a different plan or product.

You do not need to explain why. If something went wrong we would genuinely like to know, and it will not change the answer either way.

We acknowledge every request within one working day and decide within five. If we say no, we tell you which part of this policy we are relying on, so you can disagree with something specific.

10.Getting the money back

Refunds go back by the route the payment came in on, to the same account. We cannot send a refund to a different card, a different person, or a different method — that is a fraud rule, not a preference, and it protects you more than it protects us.

Those timings are the bank's, not ours — we release the refund immediately on approval and have no way to hurry what happens next. Refunds are made in the currency you paid in. If your bank converted the payment, you may receive slightly more or less than you paid because the exchange rate has moved; that difference is the bank's and we cannot make it up.

11.Your data after you cancel

Your call records, voicemail, recordings and settings are yours. If you need anything out of the system, tell us before the subscription ends, while the workspace still exists.

On the appliance and office-server editions this section does not really apply: the data is on your hardware, on your premises, and cancelling a licence does not reach into it.

12.Your phone numbers

Filantis connects to your own SIP trunks, so in most cases your numbers are your carrier's and stay with them regardless of what happens here — you point them at somebody else and carry on.

Where we bought a number on your behalf, you can port it out at any time. Number purchase and porting fees are not refundable (section 8), and porting takes as long as the receiving carrier takes. Start the port before you cancel: a number attached to a closed workspace stops receiving calls, and a number that has been released cannot always be recovered.

13.Chargebacks

If you think a charge is wrong, please write to us first. Almost every dispute we see is a renewal somebody forgot about or a payment made by a colleague, and both take about a minute to sort out.

A chargeback raised without contacting us costs both sides a fee and freezes the account while the bank investigates, which — on a phone system — means your office loses its phones over a billing question. We will always answer a chargeback with the account's own records, and an account with an unresolved chargeback may be suspended until it is settled.

14.Changes to this policy

We may update this page. The date at the top always says when it last changed, and a change never applies backwards: the version in force when you paid is the one that governs that payment. Material changes are emailed to customers with an active subscription before they take effect.