Refund Policy

Sponsorship on public radio works differently from an ordinary online purchase. Your card is not charged when you submit. It is charged only after the station has read your message and approved it. This page explains when money moves and what happens if it needs to move back.

You are not charged when you submit

When you finish the sponsorship builder and pay, we place a temporary authorization, commonly called a hold, on your card for the full amount of your sponsorship. A hold reserves the funds with your bank. It is not a charge, and it does not move money to us or to the station.

The station then reviews your on-air message. If they approve it, the hold is captured at that point and becomes a real charge for the same amount. If they do not approve it, no charge is ever made.

How long the hold lasts

Card networks generally hold an authorization for about seven days, and we treat seven days as the working window. If your sponsorship has not been approved within that window, we release the authorization and the reserved funds return to your available balance. Your submission is not lost; we will contact you about starting the payment again.

Exactly when a released hold disappears from your statement is up to your bank, not up to us. Some banks show it as pending until the hold lapses on their own schedule.

Cancelling before you are charged

You can cancel a sponsorship yourself at any point before it has been approved and charged, including while it is a draft and after a station has sent it back to you for revisions. Cancelling releases any authorization we are holding.

Once a station has approved your sponsorship and the charge has gone through, the cancel option is no longer available to you in the platform, because at that point the sponsorship is scheduled to air. Contact us instead and we will work it out with the station.

If a station asks for changes

Public radio has content rules to follow, so a station may send your message back with notes rather than approving it. When that happens we keep your original authorization on file so you are not paying twice. You revise, resubmit against the same hold, and the charge still only happens on approval. If you would rather stop there, cancelling releases the hold.

Refunds after a charge

When we refund a sponsorship, we refund it in full. The platform does not issue partial refunds. A refund returns the entire amount you were charged to the card you paid with, reverses our platform fee, and reverses the payment to the station, so nobody keeps a portion of a refunded sponsorship.

Refunds are issued by us rather than requested through your account. If you believe a sponsorship should be refunded, contact us and we will review it with the station. Once we issue the refund, how quickly it appears on your statement is up to your bank, typically within five to ten business days.

Questions

On your card statement, charges from this platform show as SPONSOR PUB MEDIA. If you do not recognize a charge, contact us before disputing it with your bank: we can usually explain or refund it the same day.

Write to us at 5227 N. 7th St. Suite 18012, Phoenix, AZ 85014, or reach out through Market Enginuity. If something about a charge on your card does not look right, tell us before you dispute it with your bank and we will get to the bottom of it faster.