Refunds

The short version

If a recovery you paid for did not work, you get your money back. No argument, no restocking logic, no “you already downloaded it”.

Before you ask, because it probably still works

A refund closes the file. It is worth thirty seconds first to know that the footage is very likely still coming back.

Roughly nine out of ten .rsv files recover on the first try, and nearly all of the rest recover once a technician has looked at a sample and tuned the engine for that file. So far we have not met a genuine Sony .rsv that stayed unrecoverable. The troubleshooting guide walks the steps in order, and the short version is:

1. Reload and run it again. Retries are free once a file is paid for, on this machine or any other, because the unlock is keyed to the file rather than to you.
2. Copy the .rsv off the card to an internal drive and try from there.
3. Check the destination drive has room for a file the size of the original.
4. Send us a sample with your email address. Someone reads the file, adjusts the engine, and writes to you when it works. You then run the same file again at no extra charge.

A refund revokes the unlock. So if we fix your file next week, a refunded file is charged again like any other, while a file you held on to is not. Waiting costs nothing and usually ends with the footage. That is the only reason we mention any of this, and if you would rather just have the money back, say so and it is done.

What counts

• The recovery failed and no file was written.
• A file was written but its picture will not play, or it stops well short of what was recorded (the tool tells you this on screen: it saves the file and warns that the picture freezes while the audio runs on).
• The recovered file is not the footage you recorded.

What does not

• You changed your mind after a recovery that worked. The preview exists so you can see what you are buying before you pay, which is why it is free and why it plays your own footage rather than a demo.
• The camera never wrote the footage. A .rsv can only give back what is inside it, and a preview that plays is the best evidence of what is there.
• The preview failed, so you never paid. Nothing was charged and there is nothing to refund. The preview runs before the paywall. A preview that fails to build says very little about the file, so talk to us rather than paying for a recovery you cannot see first.

How to ask

Write to support and say which file it was. There is no form, and you do not need an order number, though the Stripe receipt email makes it faster.

Refunds go back to the way you paid, and take a few days to appear. If your receipt came from Link rather than OTTOMATIC, you can also ask Link support directly.

A refunded file goes back to being unpaid, so if you later want to recover it after all, it is charged again like any other file.