Membership Billing Terms

Version membership-billing-v3.

These terms describe how membership dues are charged, renewed and stopped, and they describe what the system actually does rather than what it might do later.

What membership dues buy

Membership dues pay for your membership itself: a vetted place in the community, access to the member site, and eligibility to attend and book what your membership opens up.

Dues are not a ticket. Events are priced and paid for separately, and paying dues does not reserve you a place at any particular event.

Applying is free. You are not charged anything to apply, and you are not charged while your application is being reviewed.

Terms, and how renewal works

Membership is sold in terms: monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or yearly. You choose the term when you start, and the price you are charged is the price shown at checkout for that term.

Membership renews automatically. At the start of each new term the card on file is charged for another term of the same length, and this continues until you stop it.

You will always be charged for a whole term. CARNALIFE does not bill partial terms.

Cancelling

You can cancel at any time from your account. Cancelling stops the next renewal; it does not end the term you are in.

You keep your membership and everything it opens up until the end of the term you have already paid for. Nothing is switched off early, and you do not need to time your cancellation to avoid losing access you paid for.

A cancelled term is not refunded, in whole or in part. This is the trade for the sentence above: you keep what you paid for to the day it runs out, and the money for that term stays paid.

If you change your mind before the term ends, you can turn renewal back on and nothing will have been lost.

If a renewal payment fails

A failed renewal does not end your membership on the spot. You keep access for 14 days while the payment is retried and while you have a chance to fix the card.

We will tell you it failed. Losing a membership because an expired card went unnoticed is not a result this system should produce quietly.

If the payment has not succeeded by the end of those 14 days, membership lapses. You can start again at any time, and applying again is not necessary: your vetting stands.

Renewing early, and dues paid at the door

If you renew before your current term has run out, the time you have left is not taken from you. The new term is added to the end of the one you are in.

Dues paid in person at an event are a single term, paid once. They do not set up a recurring charge and nothing will renew them automatically. If you want membership to continue past that term, you start it yourself.

Couples

A couple holds one membership between two people, paid by one of them.

Either partner can take over paying. When that happens the outgoing subscription is stopped so the couple is never charged twice for the same membership, and time already paid for is carried across rather than lost.

Changes to price, and time given by CARNALIFE

If dues change, the new price applies from your next renewal, not the term you are in, and you will be told before it is charged.

CARNALIFE can add membership time to an account by hand, for a make-good or at the founder’s discretion. Time given this way is not a payment, is not refundable in money, and does not change how or when your subscription renews.

Refunds are covered by CARNALIFE’s refund policy, and Dens bookings are governed by the cancellation terms you agreed to when you booked.

Where these terms and CARNALIFE’s Code of Conduct disagree, the Code of Conduct wins.

Billing is handled by hand where it needs a judgement call, so if something here has gone wrong on your account, tell us rather than assuming a rule fired on its own.

See also the refund policy and the Terms of Service.