Deposits & Refunds

The deposit is the mechanism that makes Network Coffee work, so it deserves a page of its own with no ambiguity in it. The deposit is not a fee and not income for us. It is your money, held briefly, and returned when you turn up.

1. What the deposit is

A deposit is a refundable amount that both members commit before a meeting is confirmed. Its only purpose is to make sure that two people who agreed to meet actually meet. We do not treat deposits as revenue, we do not earn interest for you on them, and a deposit is never a charge for the introduction itself — that is what your membership covers.

2. How much, and when it is taken

• The deposit is AED 110 per person, per meeting (roughly USD 30).
• It is taken once both of you have accepted the introduction, before the meeting is confirmed. If either of you declines, nothing is taken.
• Depending on your bank and card, this may appear as a pending authorisation hold rather than a completed payment. Either way the money comes back to you on the timetable below.
• The amount is always shown to you before you confirm. If we ever change it, the new amount applies only to meetings confirmed after the change.
• Your bank may apply its own currency-conversion or foreign-transaction fee if your card is not in AED. That fee is your bank's, not ours, and we cannot refund it.

3. When you get it back

You attend, you get all of it back. Once your meeting is verified, we release your deposit within 24 hours, in full, to the same card or payment method it came from. We cannot send it anywhere else.

Once released from our side, how fast it lands is up to your bank: a pending hold usually disappears within 1–3 business days, and a completed refund typically shows within 5–10 business days. If it has been longer than 10 business days, email us and we will chase it with evidence of the refund.

4. Rescheduling and cancelling

• More than 12 hours before the meeting: reschedule or cancel free. Your deposit is either carried to the new time or returned in full, as you prefer.
• Within 12 hours: it counts as a no-show, because by then the other person has already arranged their day around you. See section 5.
• Genuine emergencies — illness, an accident, a family crisis, a flight cancellation — are not no-shows. Tell us as soon as you reasonably can and we will return your deposit. We are not going to demand documentation for a first occurrence, and we would rather be generous than clever about this.

5. If someone does not show up

You attended, they did not

Your deposit is returned in full and your next introduction is free — we do not take a deposit for it. Their deposit is forfeited.

You did not attend, and did not give 12 hours' notice

Your deposit is forfeited. This is the one circumstance in which a deposit is not returned.

Neither of you attended

Both deposits are returned. Nobody was left sitting in a café, so nobody is penalised financially — but both no-shows are recorded against your accounts.

You arrived, waited, and they were very late

If you wait 20 minutes past the agreed time and they have not arrived, you may leave and report it as a no-show. You keep your deposit.

You left early because the meeting was inappropriate

You keep your deposit. Report what happened — leaving a meeting that made you uncomfortable never costs you money. See our community guidelines.

Repeated no-shows are an account matter, not a revenue stream. A pattern of missed meetings — whether or not deposits were forfeited — will get you paused and then removed from Network Coffee. The deposit exists to change behaviour, not to be collected.

6. If verification fails or you decline the selfie

Technology fails and phones die. If the check-in does not work, or you would rather not be photographed at all, you do not lose your deposit. We verify the meeting manually instead — normally a short confirmation from both sides — and release both deposits.

Where the evidence is genuinely unclear and we cannot establish what happened, we return both deposits. We would rather absorb an occasional unverifiable meeting than keep money from someone who did turn up.

7. Disputing a decision

If you believe we got it wrong — you attended and were marked absent, or your refund has not arrived — contact us through this website within 30 days of the meeting. Tell us the date, who you were meeting, and anything that supports your account, such as a café receipt with a timestamp, or your messages with the other member.

• We acknowledge disputes within 2 business days.
• We decide within 10 business days, and we explain the reason in writing.
• A real person reviews it. The decision is not made automatically by the verification system.
• Where it is genuinely one person's word against another's, the deposit goes back. We will not keep money on the strength of a coin toss.

8. Membership fees are separate

Deposits and membership are different things. Cancelling your membership does not affect a deposit we are already holding — it comes back to you on the normal timetable. Equally, a forfeited deposit does not affect your membership, and forfeiting one does not entitle you to a replacement introduction.

Membership fees themselves are covered in our Terms of Service.

9. Chargebacks

Please talk to us before asking your bank to reverse a payment. We can almost always resolve it faster than a chargeback, which takes weeks. If you do raise one, we may pause your account while the bank investigates, and we will give the bank the records of the meeting and the refund. If a chargeback is raised on a deposit we have already returned, we may recover the duplicated amount.

10. Your consumer rights

Nothing here removes any right you have under UAE consumer protection law, including Federal Law No. 15 of 2020. If anything in this policy conflicts with your statutory rights, your statutory rights win. You can also raise a complaint with the UAE Ministry of Economy's consumer protection department or the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism.

11. Contact

Geek Falcon Coding and Machine Learning Co. L.L.C, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Commercial licence no. 1109170.