Payment Terms
These terms cover money: what you pay, what a Teacher is paid, what we keep, and what happens when something goes wrong. They form part of the Terms of Service and, for Teachers, the Teacher Agreement.
1. Nothing is being charged yet
1.1 Payments are switched off. No card is charged, no Teacher is paid, and no money moves through BuffUp today. Prices shown in the interface are indicative.
1.2 We publish these terms before charging begins, as Terms of Service clause 9.3 and Teacher Agreement clause 8.3 promise. They describe how payments will work once they are turned on.
1.3 We will give notice before payments are turned on. Reviews completed while payments are off will never be charged for.
2. Who you are paying
2.1 When payments are live, you pay BuffUp, not the Teacher directly. Your card statement will say BuffUp. We collect the money and pass the Teacher's share to them.
2.2 Your contract for the review is with us, so refunds, disputes and anything going wrong are ours to answer, not an individual Teacher's.
2.3 Payments and payouts are handled by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number.
3. What a review costs
3.1 Each Teacher sets their own prices, between $5 and $500.
3.2 On top of the Teacher's price you pay a service fee of 9% of the Teacher's price, at least $2. When we run an introductory offer, a new student pays no service fee on reviews invited in a set number of days from sign-up. We tell you on screen when it applies, and the Teacher is paid the same either way.
3.3 The total you pay is the Teacher's price plus the service fee. Every price we show you is the all-in total.
3.4 The fee covers card processing and running the platform. In dollars it is smaller on cheaper reviews, but because of the $2 minimum, as a proportion it is higher on a cheap review than an expensive one.
3.5 All prices are in US dollars.
4. What the Teacher is paid, and what we keep
4.1 We take a commission of 18% of the Teacher's price. The Teacher receives the remaining 82%. When we run an introductory offer, a new Teacher pays a lower commission, as low as 0%, for a set number of days from the day their payouts are set up. The commission in force when a review is invited is the one that applies to it. It never changes what you pay.
4.2 We also keep the service fee in clause 3.2.
4.3 Worked example. A Teacher sets a $30 review:
| Teacher's price | $30.00 |
| Service fee you pay (9%) | $2.70 |
| Total you pay | $32.70 |
| Commission we take (18%) | $5.40 |
| Teacher receives | $24.60 |
| We keep | $8.10, before card processing costs |
4.4 The commission and the service fee are fixed when an invitation is created. A later change to the Teacher's price or to our rates does not change what that review costs.
4.5 We may change these rates for future reviews, and will publish the change before it applies.
5. When money moves
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| You send an invitation | We place a hold on your card. You are not charged yet. |
| The Teacher accepts | You are charged. |
| The Teacher submits your feedback | The Teacher is paid their share. |
| The Teacher declines | The hold is released. You are not charged. |
| No Teacher accepts | The hold is released. You are not charged. |
| The Teacher runs out of time | You are refunded in full. See clause 6. |
5.1 A hold may show as a pending amount on your statement. It is not a charge.
6. The deadline, and your refund
6.1 Once a Teacher accepts your video they have 14 days to submit your feedback. We remind them before the deadline.
6.2 If the deadline passes without feedback, the review is cancelled and you are refunded in full, automatically. The Teacher is not paid.
6.3 If nobody accepts your invitation, we offer it to up to three Teachers in turn. Each has 48 hours to answer before it moves to the next. If none of them takes it, the invitation ends and you are not charged.
6.4 If you invite a Teacher directly and they neither accept nor decline within 7 days, the invitation ends and you are not charged. It is not passed to another Teacher. You can invite someone else.
7. Refunds
7.1 Before a Teacher accepts: nothing has been charged, so cancelling costs you nothing.
7.2 After a Teacher has delivered feedback: no refund. Disagreeing with feedback is not grounds for a refund.
7.3 We may refund you in exceptional cases only: feedback that is abusive, or that was plainly given in bad faith, such as a review that is not about your video at all. Ask us.
7.4 Refunds go back to the card you paid with. Your bank decides how long that takes, usually a few days.
7.5 The service fee is refunded whenever the review is refunded.
8. Chargebacks and disputes
8.1 If you dispute a charge with your bank rather than asking us, your card network's rules and timescales apply.
8.2 We carry chargebacks, not the Teacher. A dispute you raise does not take money back from the person who reviewed your video.
8.3 Please come to us first. Clause 7.3 is usually faster than a chargeback.
9. If something breaks
9.1 Payments can be switched to maintenance while we fix something. New reviews cannot be started during maintenance. A Teacher can still work on and submit your feedback, and any money owed moves once maintenance ends. The deadlines in clause 6 pause during maintenance and for 24 hours after it ends, so no review is cancelled and no invitation ends or moves because of it.
9.2 We will say on the site when this is happening.
10. Teachers: getting paid
10.1 You are paid through Stripe, into an account you set up and own. You give Stripe your identity and bank details; we never see them.
10.2 You cannot accept paid work until your payouts are set up.
10.3 You are paid when you submit the feedback. There is no holding period.
10.4 You are responsible for your own taxes on what you earn. We are not your employer.
10.5 If a review you accepted expires undelivered, you are not paid for it and the Student is refunded.
11. Where we operate
11.1 Payments are available in a limited set of countries, shown before you start.
11.2 Being able to pay and being able to be paid are separate, and a country may allow one before the other. Where neither is available you can still use BuffUp; reviews simply happen without money.
12. Your own notes
12.1 You can take your own notes on your own video, with no Teacher involved. When we charge for this, it is one price per video, shown before you start, and paid to BuffUp. Nobody else is paid from it.
12.2 You pay once, when your notes start. Your card is charged then, not held. That covers the video for as long as we keep it, and adding, editing or removing notes costs nothing more.
12.3 Each video keeps the price it was started at. A later price change does not apply to it.
12.4 If your card is refused, nothing is charged and your video waits for payment. You can try again for two days; after that an unpaid video is deleted.
12.5 No refund once your notes have started, except as clause 7.3 describes. Deleting the video, or our deleting it at the end of the time we keep it, does not give a refund.
12.6 While charging for notes is switched off, notes are free. Once it is on, we accept cards issued in a limited set of countries, and a card issued elsewhere is refused before anything is charged. During maintenance (clause 9) new notes cannot be started.
13. Changes
13.1 We may change these terms. Material changes get notice before they apply, a review already invited keeps the terms it was created under (clause 4.4), and a video's notes keep the price they were started at (clause 12.3).
13.2 The version at the bottom of this page tells you which one you are reading.
14. Contact
Questions about anything here: buffup@derusty.com.
Last updated: 29 October 2026. Version 2026-10-29.