This topic explains the refund rules, procedures, and destinations for Alibaba Cloud Short Message Service.
If the content you send involves illegal activities or regulatory violations that result in regulatory investigations, user complaints, or negative public opinion, Alibaba Cloud Communications has the right to abort or stop providing services to you, take measures such as permanent account suspension, and deduct funds from your order or account as liquidated damages, in accordance with Article 5 of the Service Agreement. If these funds are insufficient to cover the loss incurred by Alibaba Cloud, Alibaba Cloud has the right to seek further compensation from you. Please strictly adhere to all applicable regulations, strengthen your own business security, and send text messages responsibly.
Refund notes
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Refunds are issued only for the amount paid. The value of any coupon or complimentary benefit, such as an extended service period, is non-refundable and will be forfeited.
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After a refund is successfully processed, your available invoiceable quota is automatically reduced. Do not request an invoice for a refunded order to avoid a negative invoiceable quota, which can affect your ability to make cash withdrawals.
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If you have already requested an invoice, you must return it before you can apply for a refund. To learn how to return an invoice, see re-issue invoices. If you request a refund for an order that has an issued but unreturned invoice, the funds are credited to your Alibaba Cloud account balance and cannot be withdrawn. This balance can be used to purchase a new SMS resource plan or other cloud products, but a new invoice cannot be issued for it.
SMS resource plan unsubscription
Individual purchase
You can unsubscribe from a resource plan only if it is unused and has not expired. Used or expired resource plans are not eligible for a refund.
Bulk purchase (all plans unused)
If you purchased multiple resource plans in a single order, and all plans are unused and within their validity period, you can either request a full refund for the entire order or unsubscribe from a specific resource plan within it.
Bulk purchase (some plans used)
If you purchased multiple resource plans in a single order and at least one plan has been used, you cannot unsubscribe from individual plans separately. You can only request to unsubscribe from all resource plans in the order. A prorated refund will be calculated based on the number of messages used.
Prorated refund formula: Refundable Amount = Amount Paid - (Messages Used / Total Messages in Plan) * Amount Paid * 1.2.
Resource plans are offered at a discounted price based on a service commitment and are generally non-refundable. If you request a refund, we apply an early termination fee of 20% of the value of the used portion.
Example: You pay 2,000 CNY for an order containing two resource plans (A and B), totaling 50,000 domestic messages. Plan A has 20,000 messages used, and Plan B is unused. What is the refundable amount?
Calculation: Refundable amount = 2,000 CNY - (20,000 / 50,000) * 2,000 CNY * 1.2 = 960 CNY.
The resource plan prices and pay-as-you-go rates in this example are for illustration only. For actual pricing, refer to the plan purchase page and the pricing of domestic text messages.
Self-service unsubscription and complimentary packages
Self-service unsubscription: If your unsubscription request meets the criteria described above, you can request a self-service refund on the Resource Plans page of the Short Message Service console. After the refund is processed, the resource plan status changes to invalid. The time of unsubscription is recorded as the invalidation time.
The status of a resource plan also changes to invalid when it is fully used or expires. The validity period is typically two years, but you should check the purchase page for the exact period. You can determine why the plan became invalid by checking the remaining quota and purchase date.
In the resource plan details, click Refund in the Actions column for the target resource plan. In the Continue to unsubscribe? dialog box, choose a reason from the Select a reason for the refund drop-down list, and then click Confirm to unsubscribe.
About complimentary packages: Some orders include a complimentary package. The usage or expiration of a complimentary package does not affect the use of your SMS resource plan. If you unsubscribe from an SMS resource plan, the associated complimentary package also becomes invalid.
The complimentary package in the figure, "graphic verification," is provided as an example. For actual package details and its validity period, see the information on the Resource Plans page of the Short Message Service console.
In the table on the Resource Plans page, the Bonus Pack column shows the number of complimentary packages for the resource plan. Click the number to expand and view the complimentary package name, total quota, remaining quota, and validity period.
Other refund methods
In addition to unsubscribing in the Short Message Service console, you can also unsubscribe by following the order workflow in Billing Management. Before you unsubscribe, carefully read the rules, notes, and examples. For detailed instructions, see Unsubscription methods.
Refund destination
After initiating a refund, the funds are typically returned to your original payment method within 1 to 3 business days. For more details, see Refund paths.
Refunds are issued only for payments made with cash or by stored-value card. Any portion of the payment covered by a coupon is not refundable.