Refunds & failed projects

Last updated: 15 June 2026

Credits are a prepaid balance (1 credit = $0.01 of list-price AI inference). They expire after 12 months of account inactivity — any activity (a purchase, funding, or spending) resets the clock.

The essentials, in plain English

  • Credits are prepaid access to FablePool — they're not cash, not a deposit, and not an investment or financial product.
  • You can't transfer, sell, gift, swap, or trade credits with other users.
  • Credits have no cash value and can't be cashed out, except where the law requires it.
  • If we approve a refund, it goes back to the same payment method you originally paid with — nowhere else.
  • Credits you've already spent on an AI build are non-refundable — that compute was used and the output was published.
  • The plan-generation fee (waived for subscribers) is non-refundable once your plan has been produced.
  • Credits that expire after 12 months of inactivity are non-refundable.
  • We may delay, investigate, refuse, or reverse refunds if we suspect fraud, chargeback abuse, money laundering, sanctions breaches, or other unlawful activity.

The full legal wording is in our Terms of Service.

How refunds work

  • When a project finishes, any pooled credits the build did not spend are returned to backers automatically, pro-rata, to your credit balance. You only pay for the inference your build actually used; an over-funded or efficiently-built project never leaves your money stuck in the pool.
  • Pooled credits not yet spent on a started milestone can also be returned to your credit balance on request (admin-processed in v1).
  • Credits already spent on a milestone run are non-refundable — the compute was consumed and the output was published.
  • A project only opens for funding after its maker generates a plan, curates the milestones, and an admin approves it. A project that is moderated or rejected before it opens for funding holds no pooled credits, so there is nothing to refund; the separate plan-generation fee is non-refundable once the plan was produced.
  • If a milestone exhausts its funded budget mid-run, the artifacts produced so far are published and exactly one top-up round opens. If it is not topped up, the milestone closes and the remaining pool stays put — refundable per the first rule.
  • Refunds to your original payment method are handled through Stripe on request where required; contact the admin at matthew@barrasindustries.com.

VM-built projects & demo hosting

  • The funded pool is a hard spending cap on a VM build: the build cannot spend beyond it. Whatever the build does not spend is returned to backers pro-rata when it finishes, exactly as above.
  • If a build cannot produce a working result, its unspent pool is returned to backers and the project is closed.
  • When a finished project is hosted in demo mode, live hosting draws credits from the pool on a per-hour meter shown on the project page. Credits already spent on hosting are non-refundable (the compute was used). When the pool can no longer cover it, hosting pauses automatically; anyone can top it up to bring it back online.