Refunds

How we think about refunds

Our position is simple to state and we would rather set it out properly than compress it. If something went wrong on our side, we refund you, and in the clearest cases we do it without waiting to be asked. If the product worked exactly as described and you simply wish you had received a different creature, we generally do not refund, because rarity is decided before any payment is made and re-rolling it on request would turn a keepsake into a slot machine.

Between those two poles there is a middle ground, and we would rather you asked than assumed. It is $1. We would considerably rather you felt fine about the purchase than kept the creature and resented it. The sections below describe where each kind of request usually lands.

A digital product: nothing to return, nothing in transit

Your creature is delivered digitally and instantly, revealed on screen seconds after payment. No physical card or any other physical item will be shipped to you, so this policy has no returns, no return postage, no “item not received” window and no damaged-in-transit claims. The “printable card” in your receipt is a file you may print yourself; if your own printout smudges, that is between you and your printer, though we sympathise.

Because delivery is immediate, by completing a purchase you agree that the digital content is supplied to you right away. Where local law provides a cooling-off period for digital content that ends on delivery with your agreement, that is the agreement you are giving. Your statutory rights otherwise remain intact; see the last section.

We refund automatically

• You were charged twice for one creature. We refund the duplicate.
• You paid but never received a creature. We first try to fix it: the creature usually exists and only the email went missing. If we cannot deliver one, we refund in full.
• You paid after the millionth creature was claimed. Full refund, no action needed from you.

We refund on request

• You bought by mistake and have not named or shared the creature. Ask us within 14 days.
• A child made the purchase without permission.
• You were charged an amount that does not match the price shown at checkout.

We usually do not refund

• You wanted a rarer creature, or a different species. Rarity is assigned before payment and cannot be re-rolled; that is precisely what stops this being gambling.
• You expected a physical card, plush, or anything in the mail. Nothing ships; the terms, this page and the checkout all say so.
• Emotional reasons: the creature did not make you feel what you hoped to feel, you grew attached and then regretted it, or somebody laughed at your Blob. We are fond of every Blob. These are not defects, and, as the terms set out, we accept no liability for emotional damage.
• You have already shared the creature widely.
• Requests long after purchase where the creature has been in use.

What happens to the creature

A refund reverses the payment, not the discovery. Your creature keeps its number and its page, and its number is never reissued to somebody else. This is deliberate: the count of creatures in the project should mean something, and recycling numbers would make it a lie.

Creatures that have been given away

Gifting complicates a refund, so it is worth being clear about it in advance.

• If you gave a creature away and the offer was accepted, it belongs to somebody else now and holds a certificate issued to them. We will not take a creature back from its new owner in order to refund the person who bought it. If your reason for the refund is that the payment itself was wrong, for example a duplicate charge, tell us and we will still refund the payment; the creature stays where it is.
• If the offer is still waiting, or was declined or cancelled, nothing has changed hands and the ordinary rules on this page apply as usual.
• If you received a creature as a gift, you did not pay for it, so there is nothing for us to refund to you. If you would rather not have it, decline the offer before accepting it. Once accepted, it is yours to keep or to pass on.

Creatures bought on the marketplace

Buying an existing creature from its owner is a different transaction from discovering a new one, and refunds work differently in one direction: money has already been passed to somebody else.

• If two people paid for the same creature, one of them gets it and the other is refunded in full, automatically, without asking. This is not a judgement call and does not need a request — the system issues it the moment it detects the second payment. If you see a charge for a creature you did not receive and no refund within a few days, tell us and we will fix it.
• If the creature could not be transferred — it was given away as a gift while you were paying, or you turned out to be its own seller — you are refunded in full, automatically, for the same reason.
• If you simply changed your mind, we generally do not refund. The transfer completed the moment you paid: the seller's certificate was voided, yours was issued, and the seller was credited. Undoing that means taking a creature back off you and taking credit off somebody who has done nothing wrong. As always, ask — but this is the case where the answer is most often no.
• If something went wrong on our side, the ordinary rules at the top of this page apply exactly as they do to a discovery.

If you sold a creature

Selling pays you the whole price in credit, and credit cannot be withdrawn or exchanged for money — so there is no refund of a sale in the ordinary sense. Two things are worth knowing before you list:

• A completed sale is final. The buyer holds a certificate we cannot un-issue, exactly as with an accepted gift. We will not take a creature back from a buyer so that a seller can change their mind.
• If the buyer's payment is later reversed — a refund, or a chargeback with their bank — the credit that sale paid you is taken back off your balance, and the buyer keeps the creature. Your balance may go below zero until it clears. This is the risk a seller carries, and it is one more reason credit is not the same thing as being paid.

Chargebacks

If you dispute a charge with your bank instead of asking us, we will respond to the dispute honestly, including the record that the creature was delivered. Please ask us first: for $1, we are far faster and friendlier than a dispute process.

A chargeback on a marketplace purchase has a third party in it. The buyer keeps the creature, and the credit the sale paid the seller is reversed — so a disputed sale costs somebody who was not part of the dispute. That is another reason to ask us before asking your bank.

How to ask

Write to us at hello@1mtinycreatures.com and tell us what happened. Please send it from the address you used at purchase, or include your creature's number, so we can find the payment without asking you a series of questions first.

Refunds go back to the original payment method and usually take 5 to 10 days to appear, depending on your bank. We never refund to a different card or account than the one that paid, which is a protection for you as much as a rule for us.

Your statutory rights

Nothing here limits your rights under consumer law where you live. If the law of your country gives you a refund right that this page does not, the law wins and we will honour it.