What is free, and what is not

What costs nothing

Being matched costs nothing, and so does the first stretch of every call — a match runs about thirty seconds before payment enters into it at all. Leaving never adds a charge either, and there is no penalty for ending a call early — a random-match format stops working the moment leaving has a price. What it does not do is refund a minute already under way; see the next section for where that line falls. There is a short pause of a few seconds while the next person is found, and that is the only thing between you and the next match.

You also get free matches to start with, and the reward centre hands out more of them. Those are whole matches rather than a discount on one, which is deliberate: whether this format suits you at all is something you should be able to find out without a card.

How a call charges, step by step

This is the part people most want stated plainly, so here is the whole sequence with nothing left out.

• You are matched. Nothing is charged for the match itself.
• The call runs about thirty seconds with no charge.
• Five seconds before that runs out, a notice appears on the call telling you the per-minute rate and that charging is about to begin. You see the number before it applies, not after.
• If you stay past that point, the first minute is charged as one whole minute — it is bought outright rather than counted second by second, so leaving forty seconds into it does not give you twenty seconds back.
• From there the call bills by the minute against your balance.
• If you leave, or skip to the next person, that is the end of it — nothing continues to run.
• If your balance runs out mid-call, the call ends. You are not carried into a negative balance and no card is charged to keep it going.

Most calls run at the same rate, but it is not one fixed number for the whole service — it moves with the person you are matched with and with whether you hold VIP status. The rate shown inside a call is the one that applies to that call. That is why it lives there rather than on this page: a figure printed here would be wrong for a slice of calls even while it is current, and silently wrong for all of them the moment anything changes.

What costs something

Some features are paid. The rule that matters more than any individual price: every one of them shows what it costs before you agree to it. You are never charged as a side effect of scrolling past something, and no trial converts itself into a recurring charge while you are not looking.

This page does not list amounts on purpose. Prices change, and a price table that has quietly gone stale is worse than no price table — you would be reading a number nobody is honouring. The live price is the one shown at the moment you are asked to agree, and that is the one that binds.

What a balance actually is

Paid balance buys access to features on this service. It is worth being precise about what that means, because the word "balance" makes people think of a bank.

• It is not currency. It has no value outside this service.
• It cannot be transferred — not to another person, not to another site.
• It does not expire on a timer, but see the next section for the one case where it is lost.

Refunds, in plain terms

Balance you have already spent

Not refundable. Once a feature has been used, the thing you bought has been delivered.

Balance you have not spent

Write to support and it is handled case by case. There is no automated refund button, and there is also no policy of saying no on principle.

If your account is closed for breaking the rules

Any remaining balance is forfeit. That is the deterrent working rather than an extra penalty stacked on top of the ban.

If prices go up

The change never applies backwards to balance you already bought.

Disputed charge, unspent balance, or a question about what a specific purchase covered: [email protected]. A person reads it.

Things that will not happen

Stated plainly because these are the specific fears people bring to a service like this, and vague reassurance does not answer them.

• No charge appears without a price being shown to you first.
• No free trial turns into a subscription by default.
• No per-minute charge starts without the rate being shown to you inside the call first.
• Card details do not reach us — payments run through a payment processor, and what we see is that a payment succeeded.

The contractual version of all of the above is in the terms. If this page and that page ever disagree, the terms are the ones that bind and this page is the one with the bug.