Refund and cancellation policy

Every account begins with a free trial and no card is required to start it. The trial exists so that the decision to pay is made after using the system, not before — which is a better arrangement for both of us than a refund process.

We recommend spending the trial on a demo account. It costs nothing, risks nothing, and shows you the same proposals, the same risk decisions and the same console you would get on a live account.

You may cancel your subscription at any time from the billing page in the console. There is no cancellation fee, no notice period, and nothing to email us about.

Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period. The service keeps working until then, you are not charged again, and the subscription does not renew.

• Cancelling does not close open positions. Positions already open at your broker stay open and remain your responsibility. Close them yourself, or leave them to the stop-loss and take-profit levels already resting at the broker.
• A performance fee already earned is still payable. If the billing month in which you cancel ended profitable, the fee for that month is still invoiced after the month closes.

The subscription is billed monthly in advance. Because cancellation already stops the next charge, an unused remainder of a period is not normally refunded — you keep the service you paid for until the period ends.

We will refund a subscription charge in these cases:

• Duplicate or erroneous charges. Charged twice for the same period, or charged after cancelling. Refunded in full, and we would like to be told so we can find out why it happened.
• An unauthorised charge. Contact us first rather than your bank — we can resolve it faster than a chargeback can, and a chargeback locks the account while it is investigated.
• A renewal you did not use. If a renewal charge is taken and you contact us within 14 days having not connected an account or generated proposals in that period, we will refund it.
• A prolonged outage on our side. If the service was materially unavailable for an extended part of a billing period because of a fault of ours, tell us and we will credit or refund that period pro rata.

A performance fee is charged only on net profit your account actually accumulated during a billing month, and only after that month has closed. A month that ends flat or down is charged no performance fee at all, so there is nothing to refund in the case people most expect one.

If you believe a performance fee was calculated on the wrong figures, tell us. Your invoices and the audit trail in the console are the record we will check it against, and if it is wrong we will correct it and refund the difference.

This is the part worth reading slowly, because it is where expectations and reality most often diverge.

• Trading losses are not refundable. Helios is software you use to trade your own account with your own broker. We do not hold your funds, we do not guarantee any result, and we do not compensate for market losses — including losses on trades the system proposed and executed within its limits. Read the risk disclosure before trading real capital.
• A profitable month is not a refundable event. A performance fee correctly calculated on real profit is not refunded because the following month went badly.
• Costs charged by third parties. Your broker's spreads, commissions, swaps and slippage are paid to your broker, not to us. So are your bank's foreign-exchange fees. We cannot refund money we never received.
• Periods spent with the system switched off. The subscription pays for availability, not usage. Leaving the terminal closed for a month does not make that month refundable.

Write to us from the email address on the account, at the address on the contact page, and include which charge you mean — the date and amount are enough to find it. We aim to respond within two business days and to process an approved refund within five.

Approved refunds are returned to the original payment method. How long it then takes to appear is your bank's timing rather than ours, and is commonly a further five to ten business days.

Nothing in this policy limits rights you have under the consumer law of your own country, including any statutory right of withdrawal. Where that law gives you more than this policy does, that law applies.

The commercial terms are in the terms of service; the mechanics of paying are in how payment works.