Cancellation & refund policy

This page explains what happens to your money when a booking does not go ahead — whether you cancel, a friend you paid for cancels, or CSFC cancels the game.

Every situation, in one table

Leaving a game you paid for

Open the game and tap Leave game. Before you confirm, the app tells you exactly what you will get back — either a refund amount, or a note that this is inside the no-refund window.

1. 1

   Open the game and tap Leave game

   You will see either the refund amount, or a warning that leaving within 24 hours of kick-off returns nothing.

2. 2

   Check the amount

   The number shown is what will be added to your balance — the price of the game.

3. 3

   Confirm

   Your spot is released to the next player immediately, and any refund lands on your balance right away.

Why 24 hours?

CSFC books and pays for the pitch in advance, for a fixed number of players. A spot dropped on the morning of a game usually cannot be refilled, so the cost is already spent. The cutoff is what lets us price per player instead of charging everyone for the empty spots.

Refunds come back as balance, not to your card

When you cancel, the refund is credited to your CSFC balance and nothing is sent back to the card you paid with. A game on a fixed date is one of the few things EU law lets us decline to refund at all, so balance credit here is a choice we make, not an obligation we meet.

Two cases work differently, because there the law does bind us: when we cancel a game, and when you change your mind about buying credit. Both are below, and in both you can ask for your money back on your card.

If you used a first-game discount

You get the full price of the game back, not the discounted amount you actually paid — so you end up slightly ahead. The discount itself is used up and is not restored, so it will not apply to your next booking.

A spot you paid for a friend

If you paid for someone else's spot, the money is yours, not theirs.

• Cancelling more than 24 hours before kick-off returns the amount to the person who paid — you — not to your friend.
• Inside 24 hours, nothing is returned. You can still free the spot so someone else can play.
• If your friend leaves the game themselves, the refund still goes to you.

If an organizer added you manually

Some players are added to a game by an organizer rather than booking themselves. If you were added that way you paid nothing, so there is nothing to refund — you can leave the game freely.

If CSFC cancels the game

If we cancel a game — not enough players, an unusable pitch, or a problem at the venue — you do not need to do anything.

• The full amount you paid is returned to your CSFC balance.
• You get an email confirming the cancellation, the reason, and the amount returned.
• That email lists upcoming games at the same pitch so you can rebook in a tap.

Credit packs

Credit packs are a prepayment for pitch time, not a product in themselves. Buying one is not a booking for a dated game, so — unlike a booking — it does carry the 14-day right to change your mind.

Two details worth knowing:

• Bonus credits are not money. They came free with the pack, so they are not reimbursed and they do not reduce what you get back.
• Credit you already spent on a game stays spent. That game was a booking on a fixed date, and those are outside the withdrawal right.

After 14 days the credit stays on your balance. It never expires and it pays for any game, but it does not convert back to cash.

Your rights as an EU consumer

If you are a consumer in the European Union you generally have 14 days to withdraw from a purchase without giving a reason, under Directive 2011/83/EU.

That right does not apply to a booking for a specific event on a specific date — Article 16(l) exempts leisure services with a fixed date from the withdrawal right, and the Court of Justice confirmed in C-96/21 that a ticketed event on a set date is covered. A football match at a set kick-off time is exactly that, which is why the 24-hour rule above applies to game bookings instead.

It does apply to buying credit. A top-up is not an event on a date; it is a prepayment you have not spent yet. So the 14 days run from the purchase, and the refund goes back the way it came — that is what Article 13(1) requires, and it is why we do not ask you to take balance instead.

To use the right, a plain email to team@csfc.app saying so is enough. You may use the model withdrawal form in Annex I(B) of the Directive if you prefer, but you do not have to.

Nothing on this page limits any right you have that cannot be excluded under Portuguese or EU law — in Portugal, Decreto-Lei n.º 24/2014.