We have been receiving a lot of questions about our refund policy, so we thought we would address them all in this article. We will look at three possible types of cases: refundable with ETA, without ETA, and non-refundable.
There are several factors that influence things like how long your refund will take, whether we will be able to give you an ETA (or a refund at all), and how long it will take for our support team to respond to your request. The latter, for example, depends on how many other users have encountered issues at the same time you did. At the moment our refund process is not automated, and our support team members solve all cases manually. Because of this, response times can be a bit longer when the workload is high.
Table of Contents
Refundable with ETA
Refunds can take a different amount of time depending on the reason you need one. Generally, they can be divided into three categories based on how difficult (or easy) it will be for our team to recover your money.
- Easy (1-2 business days)
- Stop-loss protocol
When the market is highly volatile, some transactions may not go through or can fail. This happens due to the exchange rate changing too drastically – our system automatically detects that and prevents the transaction from going through, as otherwise, the customer stands to lose a substantial amount of money. You can read more about this in our Terms of Use, in the section on floating rates.
If this happens to you, contact our support team – they can either refund your crypto or offer to push your transaction through at the current rate.
- Low amount
For each exchange, there is a recommended minimum amount that you should send. Sometimes when you go below that, your transaction can fail. If this happens to you, contact our support team immediately, and they will be able to help you recover your funds. However, there are a few exceptions: if the amount of money you sent was so low that it didn’t cover network fees, then it won’t be possible for us to help you. Please always make sure that you don’t send less crypto than we tell you on the final screen.
- Medium (3-7 business days)
- No extra ID/Memo tag
Some cryptocurrencies require you to enter an additional ID/Memo tag to complete the transaction. We will remind you about it during the transaction process, but if you do forget to enter it, we can help you to recover your funds within a few business days. Learn more about it here.
- Delays due to our exchange partners issues
We work as an intermediary between exchanges and users, and so the transactions initiated on our website can be affected by their issues. When there is a lot of traffic/hype around one coin, sometimes our exchange partners can close withdrawals for it, making it impossible for us to complete your transactions in due time – and sometimes even causing them to fail. As we mentioned previously, our support team solves all cases manually, so although usually, it should take us at most 7 business days to recover your funds, sometimes that time may be extended due to high workloads.
- Hard (up to 20 business days)
- Non-reusable address
Some cryptocurrencies, like IOTA, allow only one transaction per each generated address due to security reasons. Therefore, if users try to use the same address twice the money won’t reach their wallet. It will take quite some time for our specialists to retrieve that money and send it to the correct address.
- Two payments – one hash
If two transactions are completed on Changelly by the same user in a very short period of time, they can sometimes be assigned the same hash. Only one of them will be processed automatically by our system, and the other one will have to be refunded by our technical specialists, which can take up to 20 business days.
Refundable without ETA
- Hard forks
If the transactions happened during a hard fork, then there is a chance it will be completed on the old blockchain. Our team will be able to find the assets and refund them, but in most cases, it will take a lot of time.
- Other parties are involved
There are cases where we have to work together with our partners to organize a refund – for example, when you made a transaction on one of our partners’ websites via our widget. Since we have to cooperate with our partner to retrieve your money in such cases, we won’t be able to tell how long it will take.
- Wrong currency
Happens when users enter an incorrect payout address. If both coins are a part of the same blockchain network, then in most cases we will be able to issue a refund. Please beware, however, that the likelihood of a refund being possible in such cases varies from coin to coin. As a result, no universal ETA can be given for this type of refund. If this happens to you, contact our support team and they will help you to learn more about your particular case.
Non-refundable
- Low amount
If the amount you sent us is less than what is needed to cover the network fee for that currency, then we cannot refund it.
- Non BTC sent to Segwit
Any coin other than BTC sent to a BTC Segwit address (addresses that start with 3) cannot be refunded.
- Different blockchains
Here’s an example: let’s say a user wants to exchange BTC to BNB but enters an ETH address instead – in this case, assets get sent to a wrong blockchain, and we will not be able to recover them. To avoid such situations be sure to double-check all the information you enter.
How to Make Sure You Will Never Have to Get a Refund
So, now you know everything about our refund policy. However, ideally you will never need a refund in the first place. Most of the cases we described above can be avoided.
- Be aware of the cases we posted above
- Double check all the data you input during the transaction, like wallet addresses
- If you’re exchanging a coin for the first time, check if it has any special requirements, e.g. Memo tag
- Don’t use old Changelly addresses when sending us funds during a transaction – they may not be active anymore
- Be sure to send coins only in the corresponding blockchain networks
Follow these simple instructions, and you will greatly minimize the probability of ever having to get a refund. Good luck on your crypto journey!
If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask them in the comments below.
