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 donation when you refund? We reverse it. WFP's ShareTheMeal platform handles the return through their partner infrastructure. If you subscribed on the 3rd and refunded on the 6th, the $8 that was earmarked for that month's donation batch unwinds before the batch is sent. No pretend meals accrue on your behalf; no meals get double-counted somewhere else.

If you refund AFTER the monthly donation batch has been sent to WFP, the meals were funded — we don't ask WFP to unwind their side, and we absorb the $8 as ops cost. This has happened maybe six times since launch and it's fine. The clarity of the refund is worth more than the $48 across those cases.

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.