✓ You get a refund
Whenever we’re the reason your report didn’t get produced — VIN we couldn’t find, vehicle we don’t cover, or our systems were down.
✗ You don’t
When the report was actually produced — including reports with few records — or when the order issue was on your side.
The short version
We want VIN Story to feel like a fair deal, so we put this policy together to be very explicit about what we’ll refund and what we won’t. The principle is simple: if we delivered the service you asked for, the order stands; if we couldn’t, you get your money back.
Before we get into the details, one expectation worth setting from the start: a report which contains few or no main-dealer service records is still a real result. It tells you the vehicle probably wasn’t maintained at a franchised dealer — useful information when you’re negotiating a price or comparing two cars. We don’t treat that as a failure on our part, and it isn’t a ground for a refund on its own.
When we’ll refund you in full
You’re entitled to a complete refund of whatever you paid in any of the situations below.
We can’t locate the VIN
Your VIN doesn’t turn up in any of the data sources we work with. The usual reasons:
- A typo or wrong character somewhere in the 17 digits
- A vehicle imported from a region we don’t cover
- A VIN that no source we have access to has on record
- A VIN whose format simply isn’t valid
The vehicle is outside our coverage
We can’t produce a report for some categories of vehicle:
- Manufacturers that aren’t on our supported list
- Commercial vehicles, motorcycles and other specialist vehicles
- Older vehicles for which no digital service records exist anywhere
Our data sources are unavailable
Sometimes a third party we depend on goes down or hits a maintenance window, and we can’t finish your report through no fault of yours. If that happens, you don’t pay for the attempt — you get refunded and you’re welcome to try again later.
You were charged twice by mistake
If you accidentally placed the same order more than once, let us know and we’ll refund the duplicates. You keep access to the report you actually need.
When a refund isn’t available
The report was generated
If we ran the lookup and produced a report for the VIN you gave us, the order is fulfilled — even if the report turned out to be thin. At checkout you’re asked to acknowledge that the depth of any given report depends on how the vehicle was actually maintained, and that VIN Story can’t conjure records that don’t exist.
The wrong VIN was entered
We work with the identifier you give us. If a typo slipped through and we generated a perfectly valid report for the wrong vehicle, that’s a service we delivered correctly — and a refund isn’t possible. Two quick rules of thumb to avoid this: a real VIN is exactly 17 characters, and it never contains the letters I, O or Q(they’re skipped to avoid confusion with digits).
Change of mind after viewing
Once you’ve opened your report you can’t un-see it. Like any digital purchase, we can’t take it back, and the change-of-mind cooling-off period that normally applies to online shopping doesn’t cover digital content you’ve already accessed.
You expected a different kind of check
We describe what each report covers on the home page and at checkout. If you were hoping for something we don’t offer — outstanding finance, insurance write-off history, independent workshop receipts, market valuation — that’s a mismatch in expectations rather than a defect in the service. Please check the description before you buy and write to us if anything is unclear.
You can’t access your report on your end
If your inbox quarantined our email, your connection dropped, or you lost the link, that’s not a refund situation — but it isn’t something you have to live with either. Drop us a line and we’ll resend the report or help you get to it.
How to ask for a refund
Email support@vinstory.co and tell us:
- The VIN you ordered a report for
- The email address you used at checkout
- A sentence or two explaining what happened
We typically reply within a working day, and rarely longer than two. We’ll check the order in our system, look at the report we produced (if any), and write back with a clear answer either way. Approved refunds are sent back to the original payment method — they usually appear within a few business days, but the exact timing is your bank’s call.
After 30 days
We’d like to hear from you within 30 days of your purchase. After that we can no longer guarantee that a refund will be possible, but we’ll still look at the request and do what’s fair.
Not sure where you stand?
If you’re reading this and you’re still not sure whether your situation should be a refund, just write to us at support@vinstory.co and explain the story in your own words. We’d rather get you to the right outcome than have you wrestle with this page.