Refund & Cancellation Policy

Last updated: 26 September 2026

We sell two things, and they are refunded differently. Your subscription is covered by everything down to "Refunds after the cooling-off period". A one-off penalty appeal letter has its own rules, set out in its own section below.

Your right to cancel (14-day cooling-off period)

Under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, you have the right to cancel within 14 days without giving a reason.

An active subscription is required to submit a filing — £19 a year for one company, £39 for up to 10, or £49 for up to 100 — and preparing a return is free. Subscribing in order to file is an explicit request for the service to begin straight away, during the cooling-off period.

There is a single, simple test for a refund: if you cancel within those 14 days and we have not yet had a filing accepted for you by Companies House or HMRC, you receive a full refund.

No accepted filing yet → full refund, no questions.
A filing has already been accepted → the core service has been performed and delivered to the register and cannot be un-filed, so the fee is non-refundable. On a 3-year plan, the current year is forfeited but the full years not yet started are still refundable, as set out below.

A submission that was rejected does not count as an accepted filing — if everything you have sent was rejected, you are still eligible for a full refund within the 14 days while you fix and resubmit.

Closing your company

Our guided journey for closing a company down is free on every plan, including the free deadline watchdog. You only need a subscription if HMRC has sent a notice asking for a final tax return and you want us to file it. We do not file the application to strike the company off (form DS01), because Companies House does not accept it through filing software: you apply on Companies House's own service and pay its £13 fee. Companies House does not need a final set of accounts, and HMRC needs a final return only if it has sent a notice asking for one — so closing a company sometimes involves no filing from us at all. That is not us failing to deliver — it is the correct answer, and we would rather tell you than invent work. The 14-day refund test above is unchanged.

How to cancel

Cancel any time from your account settings — one click, no phone call. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period, and you keep access until then.

After it ends, your company stays on the free deadline watchdog: you keep getting Companies House deadline reminders, confirmation-statement reminders and strike-off alerts at no charge. You only subscribe again if and when you choose to file.

If a filing is rejected

When you submit a return, Companies House or HMRC either accepts it or rejects it with a reason. Your subscription covers every attempt, not a single filing.

If a return is rejected, nothing has been delivered to the register. You can correct the details and resubmit as many times as you need, until it is accepted — at no extra charge.
A rejection is usually a simple data mismatch and takes moments to fix. The Corporation Tax return we file is always nil, but the figures in your accounts are entered by you, so we cannot guarantee Companies House or HMRC will accept a particular set of numbers — but fixing and resubmitting a rejected filing is always free.

Because a rejected return is not an accepted filing, your 14-day refund right above still stands while you are correcting and resubmitting it.

Penalty appeal letters (£9.99)

A penalty appeal letter is a separate, one-off purchase — £9.99 a letter, on any plan including the free watchdog. It is not part of a subscription and it does not renew. These rules apply to it instead of the subscription rules above, and buying one changes nothing about your subscription's own refund rights.

The check is free. Before there is any question of paying, we read the penalty notice, compare it against your own filing record and the public register, and tell you whether there appears to be a ground to appeal. If there isn't, we say so, and there is nothing to buy.

Nothing is written before you pay, and the letter is written the moment you do. Because it is digital content supplied immediately at your express request, the 14-day right to cancel stops applying to that letter once it has been produced. We tell you this at the checkout, before you pay. It affects that letter only — never your subscription.

When we refund a letter

We took your money and no letter appeared. You have paid for nothing. We refund you in full.
Our printer refused the letter and nothing was posted. We refund you automatically and email you to say so. The letter stays in your account, so you can still print it and send it yourself.
We can't tell whether the letter went. Occasionally a letter is handed over and we lose sight of whether it was accepted. We do not refund automatically in that case, because the letter may genuinely be on its way — refunding it and then having it arrive would be worse for you. We check by hand, normally within one working day, and then either confirm it was posted or refund you.

When we don't refund a letter

The appeal was refused. You paid for the letter, not for the result. We never promise an outcome, and a penalty being upheld is not a failure to deliver what you bought.
The letter has been posted. Once it is in the post it can't be recalled, and the service has been performed.
You changed your mind after the letter was written. That is the digital-content waiver above.
You printed it and sent it yourself and it didn't arrive. Printing and posting it yourself is free and entirely in your hands.

If a posted letter comes back undelivered

Appeal letters go to a fixed, verified address for HMRC or Companies House — never an address read off your photograph — so a letter coming back is our problem, not yours. Tell us and we send it again at no charge. A returned letter isn't refunded automatically, because the letter itself was written and delivered to you and can still be sent.

If you think we've got it wrong

Email hello@dormantfile.co.uk with the company name and the date you paid, and we'll look again. Nothing in this section affects your statutory rights, including your right to a remedy under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 if the letter was not written with reasonable care and skill.

Refunds after the cooling-off period

This section is about subscriptions; appeal letters are covered in their own section above.

After the 14-day cooling-off period we do not refund part-years. Your subscription runs to the end of the period you paid for — a year, or three years on a 3-year plan — then drops to the free watchdog automatically.

The one exception is a 3-year plan. If you close your account before it ends, we refund every full year you have not yet started; the year you are in is forfeited. Closing in the first year refunds two years, closing in the second refunds one, and closing in the third refunds nothing. Within the first 14 days, with no accepted filing, the whole 3-year payment is refunded under the cooling-off rule above.

Every refund, including this one, must be requested in writing by email — deleting your account from Settings cancels the subscription but does not trigger a refund on its own.

What happens to your data

After cancellation:

Your account and company details are kept, on the free watchdog, until you delete your account — so you can subscribe again whenever you next need to file.
You can delete your account at any time from Settings. If you have filings we are required to keep, email privacy@dormantfile.co.uk and we will remove your personal data and keep only the statutory records.
Filing records, including the figures in the accounts, are kept while your account exists. If you close your account, we keep the records of filings we submitted until six years after the end of the accounting period each one covers, as HMRC's record-keeping rules require.
Due-diligence records are kept for 5 years after our relationship ends, under our anti-money laundering and fraud-prevention policy.

How to request a refund

All refund requests must be made in writing. Email hello@dormantfile.co.uk with your account email address and the reason for your request. We aim to respond within one working day.

Contact

If you have questions about this policy, contact us at hello@dormantfile.co.uk.