Find out where you actually paid
A subscription bought inside an iOS or Android app is billed by the app store, not by the provider. The provider’s support team cannot cancel or refund it, and readers routinely lose a window arguing with the wrong party.
Check your receipt. If it comes from Apple or Google, cancel in the store’s subscription settings and request the refund there.
Read the conditions, not the headline number
Refund windows in this market range from three days to forty-five, and the conditions vary more than the number suggests. Common restrictions: prorated against usage rather than refunded in full, void past a data threshold, excluded for certain payment methods, or shorter for monthly plans than for annual ones.
A forty-five day window that applies only to plans of six months or longer is a different offer from an unconditional thirty-day one.
The auto-renewal problem
The headline price is almost always an introductory rate for the first term. Renewal is typically a multiple of it, and it is charged automatically on a date most subscribers have forgotten.
Turn off auto-renewal when you subscribe rather than when you intend to leave, and put the renewal date in a calendar. This single step is worth more money than any comparison on this site.
Avoid
- Waiting until the last day of the window — support response times are not instant
- Deleting the app and assuming that cancels billing; it does not
- Cancelling with the provider when you paid through an app store, or the reverse
If a refund is refused
Ask which specific term of the refund policy is being applied and quote the version that was live when you subscribed. Most refusals in this category are automated first-line responses rather than final positions.
If the provider is in a jurisdiction with consumer distance-selling rules, those may apply independently of the published policy. A chargeback is a last resort and typically results in the account being terminated.