Refunds & Chargebacks

Where you act as a consumer, your right to withdraw from the purchase depends on your country of habitual residence. Star Citizen items sold on StarPlace are giftable digital entitlements that are delivered immediately through CIG's official gift system; once the gift is accepted on your RSI account, the item is consumed and CIG does not reverse the transfer. The cap below applies to every jurisdiction.

• European Economic Area — Directive 2011/83/EU grants 14 days to withdraw, but art. 16(m) excludes "supply of digital content not on a tangible medium" where supply has begun with the consumer's prior express consent and acknowledgement of the loss of the right. We will treat your acceptance of the RSI gift as that acknowledgement. Until you accept the gift on your RSI account, you may exercise the 14-day right.
• United Kingdom — Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 — same 14-day rule and same digital-content exception as the EEA above.
• Brazil — Consumer Defense Code (Law 8.078/1990, art. 49) grants 7 days from receipt to withdraw, on the same basis: available until the gift is accepted on the consumer's RSI account.
• United States — most states do not grant a general statutory right of withdrawal for online purchases. Our voluntary dispute system below still applies.
• Other jurisdictions — we honor the right of withdrawal where it is mandatory by your local law, on the same basis as above. Our voluntary dispute system below applies in every country, with no exception.

You receive a full refund (less non-refundable processor fees, if any) when:

• you cancel an order that has been paid but not yet delivered, and the seller agrees;
• the seller fails to deliver within the deadline shown on the order;
• you open a dispute and StarPlace resolves it in your favor (for example: wrong item, item not received, account-sale attempt);
• StarPlace cancels the order for fraud, AML, or policy reasons;
• the seller's account is terminated before delivery and no replacement can be matched.

• the item was delivered correctly and you accepted it on your RSI account (the auto-release period had already passed without a dispute);
• the dispute is resolved in the seller's favor (for example: clear proof of correct delivery to the email you provided);
• you provided the wrong RSI email and the gift was delivered to that address as instructed;
• the loss is the result of you sharing your RSI account credentials with a third party.

Refunds are made through PayPal to the original payment method. PayPal executes refunds typically within 1–5 business days; card-issuer settlement may take an additional 1–10 business days depending on your bank. Currency-conversion losses, if any, are not refunded — we return the exact amount we received from PayPal, in the order's currency (USD by default).

This applies in every country, with no exception. If something is wrong with an order, open a dispute from the order page within 7 days of payment (before auto-release). Submit any evidence you have — screenshots, RSI messages, transaction IDs. The seller is invited to respond. StarPlace staff review both sides and decide the outcome. The decision is binding for the release or refund of the funds held with PayPal, without prejudice to any other legal right you may have (including the right to escalate to PayPal Buyer Protection, your card issuer, or a court).

PayPal Buyer Protection runs in parallel with our internal dispute system. You can open a case directly through your PayPal account; PayPal will then notify us and ask for evidence. A bank chargeback is a separate reversal initiated by your card issuer. Both bypass our evidence-review process, so we encourage you to open a dispute on StarPlace first.

When a PayPal case or chargeback is filed against an order we automatically:

• place a hold on the related seller payout until the case is resolved;
• gather evidence from both sides (order timeline, delivery proof, IP and device logs, messages) and submit it to PayPal on the seller's behalf;
• suspend the buyer's account if our review concludes the case was abusive (item delivered and accepted on the buyer's RSI account, no prior dispute opened, and a reasonable procedure for the buyer to respond).

If the case is resolved in the seller's favor, the payout is released as normal. If PayPal or the card issuer rules in the buyer's favor, we do not simply pass the loss on to the seller: we investigate the order first. When our investigation finds no bad faith on either side — the seller delivered the item as agreed and the buyer did not abuse the dispute — StarPlace absorbs the reversal and any PayPal case/chargeback fee, and the seller keeps the payout. Where the investigation does find bad faith, the loss and the fee fall on whoever caused them, and the account is subject to the measures in section 8.

PayPal may, under its User Agreement, require a rolling reserve against future chargebacks or hold individual transactions. We may also apply a proportional, time-limited reserve on seller payouts when PayPal requires us to in writing, when a seller's chargeback ratio is elevated, or when we are reviewing a high-risk pattern. Reserves are released as soon as the underlying risk window has elapsed.

Refund, dispute and chargeback systems exist to protect honest users. We act against fraudulent disputes and chargeback abuse: account bans, recovery of funds, and reporting to authorities where applicable.

For refund issues, please open a dispute on the order, or contact Support.