Paid clubs, refunds, and payouts

Effective date: July 28, 2026

This page covers money: what happens when you pay for a club, when you can get a refund, and how hosts get paid. It sits alongside our Terms of Service and, where the two disagree about payments, this page wins.

1. Who you are actually buying from

When you join a paid club, you are buying from the host, not from The Vibe. The host is the seller and merchant of record. They set the price, decide what the membership includes, and are responsible for delivering it and for handling refunds.

The Vibe provides the platform and processes the payment on the host’s behalf through Stripe. We take a platform fee from each payment and pass the rest to the host.

What this means on your card statement: the charge will usually show the host’s business name rather than “The Vibe”. If you see a charge you don’t recognise, check which clubs you have joined before contacting your bank — a chargeback costs the host money and time even when it turns out to be a misunderstanding.

2. Your subscription to The Vibe

Our own plans (the subscription that unlocks platform features) are sold by us directly. Those are billed monthly, renew automatically, and you can cancel at any time from Settings. Cancelling stops the next charge; your access runs to the end of the period you already paid for.

We do not pro-rate partial months. If you cancel on day 3 of a monthly period, you keep access for the remaining days rather than receiving a partial refund.

3. Club membership refunds

Club memberships renew monthly and can be cancelled at any time from the club page. Cancelling stops future charges and you keep access until the end of the current period.

Refunds on a charge already taken work like this:

Ask the host first. They control refunds for their own club and can issue one directly.
If a club shuts down mid-period — the host closes it, abandons it, or is removed from the platform — you are entitled to a refund of the unused portion of that month. Contact us and we will arrange it.
If a charge was fraudulent or duplicated, contact us and we will refund it in full regardless of the host’s policy.
Statutory rights are unaffected. If you are in the UK, EU, or another jurisdiction with a mandatory cooling-off period or consumer guarantee, those rights apply on top of everything above and nothing here limits them.

We will step in where a host is unresponsive or has clearly failed to deliver. We are not a guarantor of every host’s judgement, but we will not leave you stuck between us and them.

4. Chargebacks

A chargeback is a dispute you raise with your card issuer instead of with the seller. Because the host is the merchant of record, a chargeback is charged against their account, including a fee the card network levies whether they win or lose.

Please contact the host, or us, before raising one. Almost everything a chargeback can achieve, a refund achieves faster and without cost to someone who may have done nothing wrong.

We may suspend access to a club while a dispute on that membership is open, and we may decline to serve accounts with a pattern of chargebacks against hosts who delivered what they promised.

5. How hosts get paid

Hosts keep the majority of every membership payment. The platform fee depends on the host’s plan and is shown in Host Studio before any price is set; the fee that applies to a member is the one that was in effect when they subscribed, so changing plans never reprices subscriptions retroactively.

Payments settle into the host’s own Stripe account (direct charges — the host is merchant of record). Stripe pays out to their bank on a rolling schedule, with funds held for 7 days before payout. That delay exists so that a refund or dispute in the first week comes out of the balance rather than out of a host who has already withdrawn the money.

Hosts must complete Stripe’s identity and bank verification before any payout. We never see or store bank details or identity documents; that happens entirely between the host and Stripe. Before opening Stripe, hosts confirm they accept this page and the Stripe Connected Account Agreement(which includes the Stripe Terms of Service). The same commitment is in our Terms of Service (Hosting a paid club). We record the time, IP, and disclosure version of that confirmation. Stripe processes host personal data under Stripe’s Privacy Policy. Card-network acquirer disclosures are shown in Stripe’s hosted onboarding (acquirer disclosure).

6. Refunds and disputes on a host’s earnings

When a host refunds a member, our platform fee on that payment is refunded too. We do not keep a fee on a sale that was reversed.

Refunds and chargebacks are deducted from the host’s Stripe balance. If the balance is insufficient, Stripe may recover the difference from the host’s bank account. A host who accumulates an unrecoverable negative balance may have payouts paused and their paid clubs suspended.

7. Host tax obligations

Money a host earns from memberships is their income, not ours. Hosts are responsible for their own taxes, and for any sales tax or VAT that applies to what they sell. Stripe issues the relevant tax forms to hosts directly where required.

8. Referral commissions

Referral commission is 20% of the platform revenue we earn from someone you referred — their plan, and our fee when they join a paid club. It is a share of our own fee, never a deduction from a host’s earnings, and it continues for as long as they remain a paying source of platform revenue.

Commission is held for 30 days after the underlying payment, so a refund in that window cancels it before it is paid out.
Payouts run monthly, once your balance reaches $20. Below that, the balance carries forward.
You need a verified Stripe payout account (Stripe Connect Express) to receive commission. You may invite and earn before setup — balances accrue — but we cannot send funds until Stripe confirms payouts are enabled. Identity and bank details are collected by Stripe and never stored on The Vibe.
If a payment is refunded or disputed after we have paid commission on it, the amount is deducted from your next payout.
No new commission accrues while the referred member is not generating platform revenue for us. If they pay again later, commission resumes. Commission is permanently void for self-referrals, duplicate accounts, deleted referred accounts, or any referral obtained through spam or misrepresentation.
Referral commission is your income. You are responsible for taxes where you live. Where required, Stripe may issue tax forms to you as a connected account / payee.
Invitees may receive 100 welcome bonus AI assistant sessions and Founding Member recognition. Invite 3 verified people and you may unlock a free month of Pro Host. Top 50 monthly referrers who opt in may get a public club featured in Discover.

9. Price changes

A host can change their club’s price at any time, but the change only applies to new members. Existing members keep the price they signed up at until they cancel and rejoin. We will not silently raise what you are already paying.

10. Failed payments

If a renewal fails, Stripe retries the card over several days and you keep access during that window. If every retry fails, the subscription ends and access stops. You can rejoin at any time.

11. Account deletion and money

Deleting your account cancels every active platform subscription and paid club membership immediately (hard cancel — not merely cancel-at-period-end). It does not automatically refund the current period. Request a refund before deleting if you want one. If we cannot cancel a charge path in Stripe, deletion aborts and your account stays open so you are never left billed without an account.

Disbanding a club: when a leader disbands a club, we cancel every active Connect membership on that club before the room is closed, so members are not charged for a product that no longer exists. Leaving a club schedules cancel-at-period-end on recurring memberships (lifetime purchases are not refunded).

Unpaid earnings are forfeited. Any referral commission still in clearing or ready (not yet transferred to your Stripe payout account), and any host earnings still pending or payable in our ledger that have not left Stripe to your bank under Stripe’s schedule, are voided when you delete. Set up Stripe Connect and wait for a payout before deleting if you have a balance you want to keep. Amounts already paid out to your bank are unaffected. Your Connect Express account and KYC remain with Stripe; we only remove our payout linkage.

We retain de-identified transaction records after deletion where tax, accounting, anti-money-laundering, and platform-reporting law requires (including regimes such as DAC7 where applicable). We email a deletion confirmation. See our Privacy Policy for detail.

12. Contact

For anything on this page, email hello@thevibe.chat. Include the club name and the approximate date of the charge and we will find it.