Legal

Refund & Withdrawal Policy

Your cancellation rights, and how refunds and withdrawals work.

Last updated: 29 June 2026

This policy explains how entry fees, refunds and withdrawals work when you submit a film or screenplay to the festival. Please read it before you pay, because by completing your entry you agree to it. We've tried to keep it short, clear and fair.

Who we are

The festival is currently run under the trading name Liverpool Indie Awards (the "festival", "we", "us", "our"), via the website liverpoolindieawards.com. We may rebrand the festival in the future (for example to "Liverpool Indie Festival"); if we do, this policy continues to apply under the new name.

The festival is operated by:

THREE OH FIVE LTD

Contact for refunds and this policy: info@liverpoolindieawards.com

The short version

Entry fees are non-refundable once judging of your entry is complete (when the service has been fully performed). Before that point, special rules apply — see below.
You have a 14-day cancellation right. If you cancel within 14 days while judging is still in progress, you pay only a proportionate amount for the work already done, and we refund the rest (Section 4).
You can withdraw your entry at any time — but withdrawing on its own simply removes your work from judging. Outside the 14-day window, it does not trigger a refund.
We make two goodwill exceptions: an obvious duplicate or accidental double payment, and certain situations where the festival can't go ahead due to circumstances beyond our control — in which case any refund is limited to entries that have not yet been judged (Section 3).
If we materially change the core service you paid for (for example, your selected work loses its live in-person screening), you'll be offered a fair remedy (Section 3b).
Your legal rights are not removed. If we fail to provide the service we promised, your statutory consumer rights stand — see Section 5.

The rest of this page explains each point in plain English.

1. What your entry fee buys, and when it becomes non-refundable

When you submit a film or screenplay, you pay an entry fee for a service: the review and evaluation of your work by our jury for the current festival season, and — if your work is officially selected — its inclusion in the festival programme.

Optional paid add-ons. Some submissions include optional paid programs — the Industry Network Pitch and the Official Jury Review (Film or Screenplay). These are part of the same service and follow the same 14-day cooling-off and proportionate-charge rules as your entry fee. Because the Official Jury Review's written critique is itself the deliverable, that program is fully performed and non-refundable once the written review has been delivered to you.

That service begins as soon as your entry is accepted into judging, and is fully performed once judging of your entry is complete and your result has been issued. The fee becomes non-refundable once the service has been fully performed or once your 14-day cancellation period has ended (whichever comes first).

In short: once judging of your entry is finished and your result has been issued, your entry fee is non-refundable — for example, if your work is not selected, does not win an award, or you are simply unhappy with the outcome. This applies across all deadline tiers and all categories. What happens before the service is fully performed is governed by your 14-day cancellation right in Section 4.

We charge entry fees in US dollars (USD) through our payment provider, Stripe (which supports cards and Apple Pay / Google Pay). The checkout shows your full total in USD, including any applicable taxes, before you pay. Any currency conversion, bank or card fees charged by your own bank or card issuer are outside our control and are not something we can refund.

2. Withdrawing an entry

You are free to withdraw your entry at any time before results are announced. To withdraw, email us at info@liverpoolindieawards.com from the email address linked to your entry, and tell us the title of the work and the entry/order reference.

Please understand what withdrawal does and does not do:

What it does: it removes your work from judging, so the jury will no longer evaluate or consider it, and it will not be eligible for selection or awards.
What it does not do: withdrawing on its own does not entitle you to a refund. However, if you withdraw within your 14-day cancellation window while judging is still in progress, the proportionate-refund rules in Section 4 apply, and you may be entitled to a partial refund.

There is no paid "submission protection" or refund-insurance product available — we don't offer one, and you don't need to buy anything extra. This policy is simply how entries work.

3. Goodwill exceptions and material changes

(a) The goodwill exceptions

Beyond your statutory rights, we will consider a refund in two situations. We call these "goodwill exceptions" because they sit outside the normal rule:

(i) Duplicate or accidental double payment.

If you clearly paid twice for the same entry, or were charged more than once by mistake (for example, a payment glitch created two identical orders), tell us and we will refund the genuine duplicate. Please contact us as soon as you can so we can match it to your record — telling us promptly helps, but a genuine duplicate or erroneous charge will be refunded regardless of how long ago it happened, subject to us verifying it. (We keep payment records for several years, so we can normally still check.)

(ii) If the festival cannot go ahead (circumstances beyond our control).

We will never cancel a running season on a whim. But if events beyond our reasonable control prevent us from holding or completing the festival — for example a cyber-attack or major technical failure, loss of our hosting or platform listing, loss of venue, serious illness, or any legal, regulatory or other force majeure event — we will first do whatever we reasonably can to keep the service going another way: continue and complete judging, publish results and laurels online, and hold, move (including online) or reschedule the live screening, rather than simply cancel.

Because your entry fee pays principally for the jury's evaluation of your work (and, for selected works, screening), any refund in these situations is limited to the part of the service that has not yet been provided:

if your entry has not yet been judged, you may request a refund of your entry fee;
if your entry has already been judged (which, in practice, often happens before the live event), the evaluation service you paid for has been delivered, so the entry fee is non-refundable — though we will still recognise your result and laurels and do our best to deliver, move or reschedule any screening.

This mirrors your statutory rights: you are entitled to a remedy for a part of the service we fail to provide, not for a part we have already provided. We are not asking you to give up a refund for something you genuinely did not receive.

(b) Changes to dates, venue or format

Festivals sometimes have to adjust. We distinguish between minor changes and material ones:

Minor changes — no refund (this is fair and normal). A change of date, a change of venue within Liverpool, or an adjustment to the programme does not entitle you to a refund. (Deadlines may also move once per season; that is a normal scheduling change, not a cancellation.)
Material changes to the core service — you get a fair remedy. If we make a fundamental change to what you actually paid for — in particular, if a selected work loses its live, in-person Liverpool screening entirely (for example, a switch to online-only) — that is more than a scheduling tweak. Because your work will still have been judged, we will offer a fair remedy in proportion to the part that changed, which may include a partial refund reflecting the lost screening, transferring your entry to a future edition, or another reasonable option. We will tell you your options at the time.

Nothing in this section limits your statutory rights where a material change means the service is not as described (see Section 5).

How to request a refund under this section. Email info@liverpoolindieawards.com with the title of your work, your entry/order reference, the email address used at submission, and a short explanation. Approved refunds are returned to the original payment method via Stripe; the time it takes to appear depends on your bank or card issuer.

4. Your 14-day cooling-off right, early performance, and the proportionate charge

Under UK and EU consumer law, when you buy a service online (at a distance) you normally have a 14-day "cooling-off" period during which you can cancel.

The law also lets you ask for a service to start immediately, before the 14 days are up. If you do, two things follow: (i) you can still cancel during the 14 days while the service is only partly performed, but you will be charged a proportionate amount for what has actually been provided by then; and (ii) you lose the right to cancel once the service has been fully performed. Festival judging works exactly this way — we want to begin processing and evaluating your entry straight away, not wait two weeks.

So that this is fair and clear, we ask you to expressly agree at the point of payment. During checkout you will tick a box confirming a statement to the following effect (this is what you are agreeing to):

"I expressly request that the festival begins the judging/evaluation service immediately, before the end of my 14-day cancellation period. I understand that I have a statutory 14-day right to cancel a service bought online. I acknowledge that I will lose that right once the service has been FULLY PERFORMED — that is, once judging of my entry is complete and my results have been issued. I understand that if I cancel within the 14-day period while judging is still in progress, I will be charged a proportionate amount for the assessment and administration already provided, and the balance will be refunded."

By ticking that box and completing your entry, you give that express consent and acknowledgement. We will confirm this in your order-confirmation email — a durable record you can keep — restating that you asked us to begin the service early and acknowledged how and when your cancellation right is lost, as required by consumer law.

What this means for you, step by step:

Before judging begins: you have your full cooling-off rights and can cancel for a full refund.
You cancel within 14 days, while judging is in progress (partial performance): you keep your cancellation right. We charge only a proportionate amount reflecting the assessment and administration already carried out on your entry, and we refund the rest. If essentially no assessment work has yet been done, the proportionate charge may be little or nothing; if your entry has substantially been judged, it will be larger.
After full performance (judging of your entry complete and your result issued): the cancellation right is exhausted, and your entry fee is non-refundable, except for the goodwill exceptions in Section 3 and your statutory rights in Section 5.
More than 14 days after you submitted: your statutory 14-day cancellation period has ended, and from that point your entry fee is non-refundable (subject to the goodwill exceptions in Section 3 and your statutory rights in Section 5), whether or not judging of your particular entry has happened yet.

The proportionate-charge rule only applies to a cancellation you make within your 14-day window while judging is still in progress. Once those 14 days have passed — or once judging of your entry has been completed, whichever comes first — the cancellation right no longer applies and the entry is non-refundable, as above. This is also recorded in our Submission Rules & Eligibility (Section 13), so the two documents say the same thing.

5. Your statutory rights are not affected

A non-refundable policy does not take away the legal rights you have as a consumer. In particular:

If we fail to provide the service we promised — for example, your entry is not actually judged when it should have been, or the festival is cancelled and does not take place — you keep your statutory rights, including the right to a remedy or refund as appropriate.
If a service we supply is not carried out with reasonable care and skill, or is not as described (for example, after a material change to the core service), your statutory remedies under UK / EU consumer law remain available.

Nothing in this policy is intended to limit or exclude any right you cannot lawfully be asked to give up. Where the goodwill exceptions in Section 3 are narrower than your legal rights, your legal rights take precedence.

6. Disqualification (no refund)

We may disqualify an entry that is ineligible, incomplete, or contains false or misleading information, in line with our Submission Rules & Eligibility. Disqualification in these circumstances does not entitle you to a refund, because the issue arises from the entry itself rather than from any failure on our part — and without prejudice to your statutory rights in Section 5.

7. How to contact us about a refund

For anything in this policy — including duplicate-payment refunds, withdrawals, material-change remedies, or questions about your rights — please contact:

THREE OH FIVE LTD (trading as Liverpool Indie Awards)

Email: info@liverpoolindieawards.com

We aim to respond to refund queries within a few working days and to treat every request fairly.

This Refund & Withdrawal Policy should be read together with our Submission Rules & Eligibility and our Privacy Policy.