Do not promise a refund-arrival date you do not control

Identify what starts and ends the promise

Collect the exact timing sentences from the policy, checkout, FAQ and support templates. For each, identify the starting event and the promised result. Receiving a request, approving it, submitting the refund, receiving a provider result, and the buyer seeing the result are separate events. A sentence using only the word processed can hide which one your business means.

Compare the part your team controls with the procedure staff actually follow. If the statement starts when a buyer contacts you but staff act only after a separate review, that interval belongs in the explanation. Do not silently start the clock later. Where you publish a merchant action time, identify the applicable conditions and use business or calendar days consistently with the commitment you can support.

Separate a provider refund from its bank appearance

Stripe’s refund documentation distinguishes the request submitted to the bank or issuer from the result appearing on the statement. It also describes early refunds that appear as reversals: the original charge drops off instead of a separate credit appearing. A policy that promises every buyer a new credit entry can therefore misdescribe the outcome even when the refund was handled.

Pending is also a meaningful condition. Stripe uses available balance for refunds; insufficient available funds leave card refunds pending, while refunds for other payment-method types fail in that situation. Do not attach a guaranteed bank-arrival date to a request waiting at that stage. Nor should a payment cancellation before completion be described as though it necessarily created a refund credit. Name the action and status actually recorded.

Keep an estimate attached to its source and scope

For each bank timing estimate under consideration, keep the provider’s official URL or account-specific written response, the date it was checked, the payment method, and the event from which the estimate runs. Preserve any dependency on the bank, network or refund state. A timing statement for one provider or method does not establish a deadline for another.

The FTC’s truth-in-advertising guidance calls for truthful, nonmisleading and substantiated claims across media. Use that principle to check the impression of the whole statement: an unconditional arrival promise in a prominent answer is still a problem to resolve when a separate policy page describes uncertainty. This guide does not supply a legally approved phrase. If the source does not support the arrival interval you want to publish, remove that interval and explain the process and available follow-up instead.

Publish an accountable follow-up step

A useful timing explanation tells the buyer how the merchant will confirm its action, where to ask about an unresolved result, and what the team will check next. The team can commit to reopening the provider record on a date it actually supports without describing that date as the day the bank will display funds. A provider failure or pending state calls for a status update, not repeated reassurance that an earlier arrival promise still holds.

Revise the policy and the shorter explanations together, retaining the earlier version in your business records for existing orders. Do not use a new wording change as proof that a prior promise was fulfilled. For a Prism website-review consultation, provide the public URLs, the exact timing wording and the procedure it is intended to describe. The agreed scope can address representations on the site; the provider and bank retain control of their own processing, and legal obligations require separate advice.

Refund-timing statement

Use one real published timing statement at a time. Fill the last column from your own procedure and the applicable provider document. Retain an estimate only when its method, starting event and qualifications fit. Where evidence is missing, revise the promise rather than supplying a guessed interval.

Worksheet entries are not submitted by Prism’s worksheet and are not saved by the site. Use record types, availability, anonymized observations, or match/mismatch results. Do not enter government identifiers, customer names or addresses, customer messages, receipt-access links, card or bank details, passwords, or keys. Send sensitive documents only through the provider’s verified secure channel.

These are temporary notes. Leaving or reloading this page may clear them. Worksheet entries are not sent automatically. If you copy notes into the consultation message and submit the form, Prism receives them as part of your request.