Refund Policy

Most people buying a Yibuka report are spending money they had to think about first. A payment that disappears without delivering is not a support ticket to them — it is a real loss, on a real budget. This policy is written from that starting point.

Everything below is the detail of how that promise is honoured: which situation produces which outcome, how to claim, how long each step takes, and what to do if you think we have decided wrongly.

This policy applies to payments made to Yibuka through the platform at yibuka.com. It forms part of our Terms of Service.

It covers

• One-time payments for premium assessment reports.
• Payments made by M-Pesa, the only payment method we accept.
• Payments made in Kenya Shillings, the only currency we price in.

It does not cover

• Free services. The career library, study routes, opportunities, the lessons and the Quick Career Signal cost nothing, so there is nothing to refund.
• Money you pay to a third party. Application fees, tuition, registration charges or anything else paid to an institution or employer you found through Yibuka is between you and them. We never ask you to pay a third party for anything — see section 12.
• M-Pesa transaction charges levied by Safaricom. Those are Safaricom’s, not ours. Section 11 explains how they are treated.

STK push

The M-Pesa payment prompt that appears on your handset asking you to confirm a payment with your PIN. Every payment on Yibuka starts with one.

M-Pesa receipt code

The reference Safaricom sends you by SMS when a payment succeeds, for example QK12AB34CD. It is the single most useful thing to include in a refund request.

Settled

A payment that has reached a final state — succeeded or failed — after Safaricom has confirmed the outcome to us.

Unlocked

The state in which a premium report has been generated and is readable in your account. This is what a successful payment buys.

Business day

Monday to Friday, excluding Kenyan public holidays.

This policy sits on top of your statutory rights; it does not replace them and cannot reduce them.

Under the Consumer Protection Act, 2012 and related Kenyan law, you are entitled to services that match how they were described, to be dealt with honestly, and to a remedy where a supplier fails to deliver what was paid for. Nothing in this policy, in our Terms of Service, or in anything a member of our team says to you, takes those rights away.

Where this policy and your statutory rights differ, your statutory rights win. Where this policy gives you more than the law requires — and in several places it does — you get the more generous of the two.

This table is the operative part of the policy. Find your situation and read across.

A premium report is generated from your own answers and delivered immediately. Once you have read it, it cannot be returned — the value has already been transferred. This is the standard position for personalised digital goods, and it is why the price is shown plainly before you confirm rather than after.

Before you buy, you can see:

• the exact price in Kenya Shillings;
• what the assessment measures;
• what the report includes, item by item;
• a sample report, so you know the shape of what you are buying.

We would rather you understood the product and did not need this policy at all.

Beyond the situations where a refund is owed, we will consider one where the circumstances warrant it. Common cases:

• You bought the wrong report and have not opened it. We will swap it for the one you meant, or refund it.
• A technical fault on our side spoiled the experience even though the report eventually arrived.
• A young person paid without a guardian’s knowledge and the guardian objects promptly. See section 13.
• Genuine hardship, where a payment was made in error by someone who could not afford to lose it. Ask. We would rather hear from you than have you write us off.

These are decided case by case and are not a right you can insist on. But they are real: this section exists because we intend to use it, not to look generous.

Write to support@yibuka.com. There is no form, no portal and no fee. If you have an account, write from the email address on it.

Include these five things

1. The M-Pesa receipt code from Safaricom’s SMS — for example QK12AB34CD. This alone usually resolves the matter.
2. The phone number the payment was made from.
3. The date, time and amount of the payment.
4. The report you were buying.
5. What went wrong, in your own words, and what you would like us to do — unlock it, or refund it.

Time limits

Claim within 90 days of the payment. We can and do look at older claims where the delay is understandable, but records held by both Yibuka and Safaricom become harder to match with time, so the sooner you write, the easier it is to resolve.

Where a case is genuinely complicated — a disputed transaction that has to be traced through Safaricom, for instance — it may take longer. If so, we tell you why and give you a date, rather than going quiet.

Straightforward cases move faster

A payment that clearly succeeded against a report that clearly did not unlock is not an investigation. Those are usually resolved the same day, most often by unlocking the report rather than by moving money.

• To the same M-Pesa number that paid. Always. We do not send refunds to a different number, however the request is phrased — that rule is the main thing standing between a stolen handset and a stolen refund.
• In Kenya Shillings, the currency the payment was made in.
• As a single payment, not as credit, vouchers or platform balance, unless you specifically ask for a credit instead.
• With a confirmation from us telling you it has been sent.

What happens to the report

A refunded report is locked again, unless the refund was for a duplicate payment — in which case you keep the report you paid for once and get the second payment back.

If the refund cannot reach you

If the M-Pesa number is no longer active and a refund fails, we hold the amount and contact you at the email on the account. Tell us a working number registered to you and we will send it again.

Safaricom’s charges

M-Pesa transaction charges are set and levied by Safaricom, not by Yibuka, and are separate from the price of the report. We refund the full amount you paid us. We cannot refund a charge Safaricom levied and we never received — but where a refund is due because of a failure on our side, we will make up a documented M-Pesa charge as a goodwill payment rather than leave you out of pocket for our mistake.

Partial refunds

Partial refunds are rare, because a report is a single item at a single price. They arise mainly where you overpaid — you sent more than the quoted price — in which case we refund the difference and unlock the report.

No fees for asking

We charge nothing for handling a refund request, however many times you have made one and whatever the outcome.

Some payment problems happen entirely on the M-Pesa side and never touch our records at all.

You paid the wrong recipient

If you sent money to a paybill, till or number that is not ours, we cannot refund it — we never received it. Contact Safaricom customer care immediately and ask about their reversal process. Speed matters here.

Money left your account but never arrived with us

Send us the receipt code. If our records show nothing received, the transaction has stalled on the network, and Safaricom is the party who can trace it. We will tell you plainly that this is the position rather than leaving you to guess, and we will confirm in writing that no payment reached us — which is what Safaricom will want to see.

A payment you did not authorise

Tell us as soon as you notice it, at support@yibuka.com, and change your Yibuka password. We investigate against our transaction records and the M-Pesa confirmation, and where the payment is confirmed as unauthorised we refund it in full. Where a device or an M-Pesa account has been compromised, contact Safaricom as well — they control the account the money moved from.

A young person paid without a guardian’s knowledge

Where an account holder under 18 has bought a report and the parent or guardian who confirmed the account objects, write to us within 30 days of the payment. We will refund it, and the report is locked again. We may ask the guardian to verify their relationship first, and we will not treat the young person as being in trouble.

Reports bought for someone else

If you paid for a report on another person’s account — a parent paying for a child, say — the refund goes to the M-Pesa number that paid, and we may confirm with the account holder before locking their report again.

This policy is deliberately generous, which makes it worth saying plainly what happens when it is exploited.

• We may decline a refund where a claim is knowingly false, where the same person repeatedly buys and reclaims reports, or where a claim is made for a report that plainly delivered exactly what it promised.
• We may suspend or close an account used to abuse this policy, under section 16 of the Terms of Service.
• We may report attempted payment fraud to Safaricom and to the authorities.

None of this affects a genuine claim, and we start from the assumption that a claim is genuine. Being wrong about a payment is not abuse; the bar here is deliberate dishonesty, not a mistake or a misunderstanding.

Where we decline, you get:

• the decision in writing;
• the actual reason for it, not a template;
• the evidence it rests on — the transaction record, the M-Pesa confirmation, the delivery record;
• a route to have it reviewed by someone else.

Reply and say you disagree, and we will look again. Bring anything new you have: a screenshot, an SMS, the time it happened. A first decision is not a final one, and a decision made on incomplete information is worth revisiting.

1. Ask for a review. Reply to our decision saying you disagree and why. It goes to someone more senior than whoever answered first.
2. Formal complaint. Write to support@yibuka.com with “Complaint” in the subject line. We acknowledge within 7 days and respond substantively within 30 days.
3. Safaricom, where the problem is with the transaction itself rather than with what we delivered — a payment that never arrived, a reversal you need raised.
4. The Competition Authority of Kenya, which handles consumer protection complaints, if you remain dissatisfied.
5. The courts of Kenya, whose jurisdiction is set out in our Terms of Service.

You may go to a regulator or a court at any stage. Nothing in this policy requires you to exhaust our internal process first, and using it costs you nothing.

We may update this policy. The version number and effective date at the top of the page always show which version is current.

The policy that applies to your payment is the one in force on the day you paid. A later change never reduces the protection you had at the moment your money left your account. Ask us at support@yibuka.com for the version that applied on a particular date and we will send it.

Refunds and payment problems

support@yibuka.com

Everything else

support@yibuka.com

Include your M-Pesa receipt code if your message is about a payment. It is the fastest way to a resolution, and usually the only thing we need.