Refund Policy
When and how you can request a refund. Unused eSIMs and qualifying technical failures are eligible; you can request a refund on any order directly from the app or by emailing support.
Effective date: 2026-07-20
This policy is part of the SimChao Terms of Service. It applies to every Order (eSIM Plan purchases and Top-ups). It is designed around one principle: you should never pay for something that didn't work, and you can change your mind as long as nothing was used.
1. At a glance
| Situation | Outcome |
|---|---|
| Provisioning failed — you never received your eSIM/Plan | You are never charged. The card authorization is voided automatically |
| Identity verification failed or was declined | You are never charged. The authorization is voided automatically |
| eSIM never installed, no data used, within 30 days of purchase | Full refund on request |
| eSIM installed or any data consumed | Not refundable, except verified technical failure (Section 4) or where the law requires |
| Plan validity period expired with data unused | Not refundable |
| Top-up, not yet started, no data used, within 30 days | Full refund on request |
| Account deleted with an active Plan | Active Plans are not refunded (the app warns you before deletion) |
2. Failed purchases — you are never charged
Our checkout only charges you after your eSIM or Plan has been successfully provisioned:
- We place an authorization on your payment method.
- We provision your eSIM/Plan with our supplier.
- Only if provisioning succeeds do we capture the payment.
If provisioning fails — including when a required identity verification fails, expires, or is declined — the authorization is voided automatically. No charge settles and no refund is needed. Your bank may display the authorization as "pending" for a few days before it disappears; that is your bank's display behavior, not a charge. If you believe you were actually charged for an Order that never delivered, contact support@simchao.app and we will fix it with priority.
3. Change of mind — 30 days, unused
You may request a full refund of an Order within 30 days of purchase, provided that:
- the eSIM was never installed on any device (for Plan purchases that include a new eSIM), or the Top-up Plan was never activated; and
- no data from the Plan was consumed.
This covers the common honest cases: trip cancelled, bought the wrong destination, device turned out not to support eSIM or was carrier-locked.
Once an eSIM profile has been installed, or any data on a Plan has been consumed, the Order is no longer refundable under this section — at that point the underlying operator inventory has been irrevocably consumed on our side. Partial refunds for partially used Plans are not offered. Expiry of a Plan's validity period with unused data does not create a refund right.
4. Technical failures after delivery
If your eSIM or Plan never worked at all due to a fault on our side or our suppliers' side — for example the eSIM could not be installed due to a profile error, or the Plan never established service despite correct installation and settings — contact support. We will troubleshoot with you (most "no data" cases are settings issues we can fix in minutes, such as data roaming being off). If our diagnosis confirms a genuine technical failure that we cannot remedy, we will refund the Order in full, regardless of the 30-day window.
Refunds under this section require that the failure is attributable to SimChao or its suppliers — not to device incompatibility, carrier locks, misconfiguration, local network outages, or destination-government network restrictions. Where a local operator outage temporarily interrupts service, we will help and may offer a remedy at our discretion, but temporary third-party outages do not create an automatic refund right.
5. How to request a refund
- In the app / on the site: open the order in My Account → Orders and tap Request a refund, choosing the reason. This is the fastest path — clear-cut cases (such as provisioning failures) resolve automatically; the rest go to human review.
- By email: support@simchao.app from your account email, with the order reference.
We aim to decide refund requests within 2 business days. Approved refunds go back to your original payment method via Stripe; banks typically post them within 5–10 business days. We will email you when the refund is issued.
6. Your statutory rights
Nothing in this policy limits rights you have under mandatory law.
EU/UK consumers — right of withdrawal: digital service purchases normally carry a 14-day withdrawal right. By purchasing, you request immediate performance (we provision your eSIM at checkout — that immediacy is the product). You keep your 14-day withdrawal right while the service is unused; if you withdraw after performance has begun you may owe a proportionate amount; and once the service has been fully performed (Plan consumed or expired) the withdrawal right lapses. Our 30-day unused-refund policy (Section 3) is deliberately more generous than the statutory minimum in the honest cases; where statutory law gives you more in a specific situation, statutory law wins.
EU/UK consumers also benefit from statutory conformity guarantees for digital services (the service must work as described); Section 4 operates alongside those rights, not instead of them.
7. Chargebacks
If you dispute a charge with your bank instead of contacting us, the dispute process typically takes far longer than our refund path — please contact us first; if a refund is due, we will simply issue it. We respond to chargebacks with transaction evidence (order, delivery, and usage records). Chargebacks that are pursued in bad faith on delivered, used Orders may lead to account suspension under the Terms of Service.
8. Contact
support@simchao.app — include your order reference. We aim to reply within 24 hours.