Cancellation and Refunds

Donations made to SaveThem India Foundation are final and are not refundable. Please consider the amount before you complete the payment.

This is not a shop policy dressed up as a charity one. A donation here buys a specific thing on a specific day. The morning after you give, your donation is counted into a plan, rice and vegetables are bought against that count, and a kitchen cooks to it. Refunding at that point does not undo the spend — it takes the meal from somebody who was already told it was coming.

Everything below is the honest set of exceptions to that rule, not a list of hurdles. If your case is not on it and you still think we owe you a refund, write to support@savethem.in and a person will look at it.

The line is the moment the day's plan is built. Until then your donation is only a number on a list, and it can be moved, adjusted or returned. After it, the money has left as food.

Plans are built the day before service, so in practice you have until the evening before your chosen day. Open your donation and it will tell you plainly whether the day can still be changed.

The exceptions in the next clause do not depend on this line. An unauthorised charge is refunded whether or not anything was cooked.

We refund in full, without argument, in these cases:

• You did not authorise the charge. Somebody used your card or account without your permission.
• You were charged twice for the same donation. A retry, a double tap, or a gateway error that put the same amount through more than once.
• You were debited but nothing was ever served. The payment left your account and no donation was created against it.
• The amount taken was not the amount shown.
• We could not deliver at all. A programme was withdrawn and we could neither serve it nor apply your donation to equivalent work with your agreement.
• We refused your donation. Where we declined a name, message or photograph under the Terms of Use and nothing had yet been cooked.

We take every claim of a fraudulent or unauthorised transaction seriously, and we investigate each one rather than reaching for this policy as a reason to say no.

Most people who write in do not actually want their money back — the date no longer suits them. Moving the day is easier, it is free, and it keeps the meal in the world.

Tell us before the plan for that day is built and we will move your donation to any later day you choose. The same goes for a wrong quantity, a misspelt name on the parcel, or an occasion that changed — all of it can be corrected up to that point.

A celebration is arranged in advance — a venue, a group, a quantity, and often a promise made to the people expecting it. Tell us before we have committed that spend and we will move it to another date, or cancel and refund it. Once the arrangements are made it is treated like any other planned day, and the rule at the top of this page applies.

This happens when a payment succeeds at the bank but the confirmation does not reach us — a dropped connection, a closed tab, a gateway timeout. The amount shows as debited and yet no receipt arrives.

Most of these correct themselves within minutes: Razorpay notifies our servers directly, so a donation is recorded whether or not your browser made it back to us. If nothing has reached you after 24 hours, write to us with the amount, the date and the reference from your bank statement. We will either find the donation and send your receipt, or refund it.

A payment your bank shows as failed or pending is not a donation, and nothing is served against it. Those are usually released by the bank on their own within a few working days.

Email support@savethem.in within 10 business days of the donation date, or call 80621 81771. Please include:

• Your full name, as it was given on the donation.
• The date of the donation and the exact amount.
• The donation code or the payment reference, if you have either.
• What went wrong — unauthorised, duplicated, never served, or something else.

Ten business days is the window that lets us trace a payment while the gateway records are still open. Later than that, still write — it is harder, not impossible.

We acknowledge your email and check it against our records and Razorpay's. We may come back with one or two questions; we will not ask you for a card number, a CVV or an OTP, and anybody who does is not us.

Where the refund is due, we approve it and tell you. Allow up to 15 business days for it to be processed and to appear in your account — most of that is the bank, not us.

Where we decide against a refund, we say so in writing and explain why, rather than letting the request go quiet.

Refunds are made through Razorpay to the original payment method — the same card, UPI ID or bank account the donation came from. We do not refund in cash, to a different account, to a wallet, or to anybody other than the donor. If the original method has since closed, tell us and we will work it out with the gateway.

A refunded donation is no longer a donation, so its receipt and any 80G certificate issued against it are cancelled. If you have already claimed the deduction, it is your responsibility to correct your return. We will send you written confirmation of the cancelled receipt so you have something to file with.

If you raise a chargeback with your bank, the gateway freezes the disputed amount and charges the Foundation a fee whatever the outcome — money that comes out of the work. Please write to us first. In every genuine case on this page you will get the same refund faster, and without the fee.

For anything on this page, write to support@savethem.in or call 80621 81771. If you are not satisfied with how a refund request was handled, say so in the same thread and it will be escalated rather than closed.

This policy forms part of our Terms of Use, and sits alongside our Privacy Policy.