Cancellations and refunds

01

What this page covers

Five things get bought here: a seat at a class, a six-class pass, a gift certificate, an online track, and a private group booking. This page says what happens to the money when plans change — yours or ours.

There is no checkout on this website. Nothing is bought here, no card details are ever typed into this site, and no payment page exists. You send a request, we reply with a price and the times we can run it, and you settle at the door by card or cash. Passes, gift certificates and online tracks are paid up front, which means by phone or in person, before anything starts. That is the whole money story, and Terms sets out how a request becomes a booking.

02

How to cancel, and when it counts

Cancel by email to hello@culinaryteaching.com. Say your name, the class and the date. That is all we need.

This matters because our office hours and our class times do not line up. The office is open Tuesday to Saturday, 10 to 5. Classes run Tuesday to Friday evenings and Saturday and Sunday mornings and late afternoons. So the 48-hour deadline for a Tuesday evening class falls on Sunday evening, when the office has been shut since Saturday at five and stays shut all Monday. If we counted from the moment somebody read your email, you could not make that deadline at all.

We do not count it that way. Send the email on Sunday morning and you are inside the window, even though nobody opens it until Tuesday at ten. The clock stops when you press send.

If you would rather phone

Call +1 (417) 962-8474 during office hours and tell us. We will act on it the same as an email. Please send us a line by email as well, whenever you get a chance, because the email is the thing with a time on it and it is what we count if there is ever a question about when you told us. Outside office hours, email is the way to be sure.

What does not count: telling a friend who is also coming, or replying to a social post. Send it to the address or the number above and it is done.

03

Cancelling a seat at a class

More than 48 hours before the start

Free. Nothing is owed and nothing is charged. You have not paid anything yet, so there is nothing to send back either — the seat simply comes off the list.

Inside 48 hours

Half the price of the seat is due — half of whatever that class is listed at. We ask for it because by then the food is genuinely bought. Butter, flour, a whole bird, the jars — those are on the bench with your name on them and they do not keep for the next date.

We waive that half in three cases, and we do not make you argue for it:

• —You are ill, or someone in your house is. We would much rather you stayed at home than brought it into a kitchen where eight people share a bench. Say so and the charge goes away.
• —You send someone else in your place. A filled seat costs us nothing.
• —Someone else takes the seat before the class starts. If that happens we tell you, and the charge goes away.

If you simply do not turn up

The full price of the seat is due. Nobody else could take it, the ingredients were prepped, and the instructor taught to an empty station. If something went badly wrong on the day, tell us afterwards — we are not unreasonable, and the illness waiver above still applies if you were unwell.

Because no card is ever held on file, none of these charges can be taken automatically. We would ask you for it, and it stays owed until it is paid.

04

Moving your date, or sending someone else

Moving to another date

Tell us more than 48 hours before the start and we will move you to any other date with room, once, at no charge. If the class you move to costs more, you pay the difference; if it costs less, we charge the lower price. Ask to move inside 48 hours and it is treated as a cancellation inside 48 hours, because the shopping is already done.

Sending someone else

Always free, right up to the start of the class, including inside the 48 hours. This is usually the better answer for everyone: the seat gets used, the food gets cooked and nothing is owed.

Two things we need before they walk in. Tell us their name, and tell us anything they are allergic to — a substitution we agreed for you means nothing for them. Safety & allergens explains what we can and cannot do in a shared kitchen, and it is worth their reading it rather than yours.

Anyone taking a seat must be 14 or over, and anyone under 18 has to be with an adult who is taking part alongside them. That rule does not bend for a transferred seat.

05

When we are the ones who cancel

It happens. One instructor teaches every class here, so if the instructor is ill there is no second person to stand in. Ice storms close the roads. Sometimes not enough people book.

• —Too few people means fewer than four booked seats. A class of two is a worse class, and we would rather say so than run it thin.
• —If we cancel for numbers, you get at least 48 hours notice — the same window we ask of you, so you are never left holding a deadline we did not keep ourselves.
• —If we cancel for illness or weather, you hear from us as soon as we know. Sometimes that is the morning of. We will phone as well as email, so check both.

Either way the choice is yours, not ours: everything you paid comes straight back, or we put you on another date, whichever you prefer. If you had not paid anything yet, nothing is owed and nothing gets charged. A seat taken from a six-class pass goes back on the pass. A gift certificate is untouched, and if its twelve months would run out before the date we move you to, we extend it.

What we cannot cover is what a cancelled class costs you elsewhere — fuel, a hotel room, a babysitter, a day off work. We are a one-room school in Cabool and we are not able to carry that. If you are travelling a distance to get here, call us the day before and we will tell you honestly what the weather and the numbers look like.

06

If we have to stop you taking part

Rare, and worth saying out loud. If someone arrives drunk, will not follow instructions around live fire or a pressure canner, or behaves in a way that puts other people in the room at risk, we will ask them to leave. The seat still counts as taken: the full price is due exactly as it is for a no-show, a pass seat is spent, and a certificate is spent. Eight people are standing around open flame with knives in their hands. That is the one place we do not negotiate.

The reverse also holds. If we turn you away for something we should have caught when you booked — an allergy we said we could work around and then could not, or a class we should have told you was unsuitable — that is our mistake, you pay nothing, anything already paid comes back, and you get first refusal on another date.

07

The six-class pass

$480 USD, paid up front, and it buys six seats at our published classes. It covers any class in the catalogue whatever it is priced at, including the dearest one. It does not cover private group bookings, which are quoted separately.

It is transferable, which we read the generous way: you can hand a seat to someone else and they can come without you, and you can spend more than one seat on the same evening and bring people with you. The pricing page says “bring a friend” and we will honour that. What a pass does not do is book out the room; seats are subject to the class having space on the date you want.

The twelve months

The pass runs for twelve months from the day you pay for it. That is the term printed on the pricing page, it is the window for booking your six seats, and it is also the window in which you get first pick when new dates go up.

Refunding a pass

Changed your mind within 14 days of paying and used none of it? All $480 comes back. After that, or once you have used a seat, we refund the balance: $480 less the published price of the classes you have already taken. If you have taken four of the dearer classes, that arithmetic may come out at zero, and then there is nothing left to send back. We will do the sum with you before you decide.

08

Gift certificates

Call us and we will write one out and post it to you. It is a piece of paper, not a code and not an email — we do not issue them electronically. Whoever holds it picks what they cook.

Everything else about them, in one place:

• —It is transferable. The person you gave it to can pass it on again, and we do not ask who is holding it.
• —It is not exchangeable for cash, and we do not give change on it.
• —A certificate can be written for a single class or for the six-class pass, which is what the pricing FAQ offers. If it is for a pass, the twelve months on the certificate is the deadline for redeeming it. The pass then runs for its own twelve months from the day we issue it, on the terms in the section above.
• —If the class chosen costs more than the certificate covers, the difference is settled at the door. If it costs less, the balance stays on the certificate until it is spent or the twelve months run out.
• —We write down who bought each certificate and what it was for. Lost it in a house move? Call us with the name it was bought under and we will replace it, still running to the original date.
• —The buyer can have their money back in full within 14 days of buying, as long as it has not been used. After that it stays a certificate.
• —Cancelling a class booked on a certificate works exactly as it does for a paid seat. Inside 48 hours, half the class price comes off the certificate and the rest stays on it. A no-show spends it.

09

The online tracks

Foundations is $180 USD, Bread is $220 USD, Professional is $340 USD, and all three are paid up front. You have 14 days from the day we send your access to change your mind. Email hello@culinaryteaching.com inside those 14 days and we refund the whole thing. We will not ask you why.

After 14 days the sale is final. What you have downloaded and printed stays yours — we are not going to try to take a prep sheet back off your fridge.

Nothing to prove

Some sellers make a refund conditional on how many modules you opened or whether you downloaded the pack. We do not. The 14 days is the whole test, and how much of the material you used makes no difference to the answer.

If access never reaches you, that is a different matter entirely and the 14 days does not start. Tell us and you get every dollar back whenever you ask.

Terms promises that every track stays available for at least three years from the day you buy it, and that if we retire one after that you get at least 90 days’ notice and the written material in a form you can keep. On the money side: if we ever take a track down inside those three years, you get every dollar of it back.

10

The $40 credit that comes with a track

Buy an online track and $40 comes off an in-person class. Here is exactly what that means, so nobody has to work it out at the counter.

• —One credit per track you buy. Buy two tracks and you have two credits.
• —Each credit comes off one seat, at one class, once. Two credits cannot be stacked onto the same seat.
• —It works against any class in our published catalogue, whatever it costs.
• —It does not come off a seat taken from a six-class pass — that seat is already paid for, so there is nothing left to take off.
• —It is not exchangeable for cash and it does not transfer to someone else.
• —It runs for twelve months from the day you buy the track. Tell us you are using it when you ask about a class and we will put it on the quote.

If you cancel that class inside 48 hours, the half-price charge is worked out on what you were actually going to pay, credit included. If you cancel more than 48 hours ahead, the credit goes back in your pocket and keeps its original expiry.

11

Private groups and deposits

Six or more of you and we close the room and build the menu around the group. The room holds eight, so that is the ceiling. Because a private date takes the calendar off everyone else, private bookings are the one thing we take a deposit on. The amount is written into the quote before you agree to anything, it is never more than a quarter of the quoted total, and it comes off the bill on the night.

Numbers move, and that is fine. Confirm your final headcount seven days before and that is the number we shop for and the number we bill. People can still be added after that if there is room and the shopping can stretch; people dropping out inside seven days do not come off the bill, because their food is bought.

12

How a refund actually reaches you

Money goes back the way it came, as far as we are able. We start the refund within three business days of agreeing it, and we tell you when we have.

• —Paid by card at the door? It goes back through the same reader, to the card that paid. How long it then takes to appear is your bank’s decision rather than ours, and it is usually not the same day.
• —If that card has since been closed or replaced, or the refund cannot go back that way, we post you a check instead — out within five business days.
• —Paid cash? Take it in cash next time you are here, or ask us to post a check. Your call, and the check goes out within five business days.
• —We do not deduct a processing fee, an administration fee or a restocking fee from a refund. You get the number we agreed, whole.

If any sales tax was added to what you paid, it was on the quote before you agreed to it, and it comes back with the refund. We do not keep the tax on a refunded sale.

13

If you think we have got this wrong

Tell us first. Email hello@culinaryteaching.com or call +1 (417) 962-8474, say what happened, and we will look at it properly and give you an answer within ten business days — the same window Terms commits to. If we were wrong, we fix it and we do not make you push for it.

You are of course free to go straight to your card issuer instead. We would rather you asked us first, because we can usually settle it in a day and a bank dispute takes weeks — but nothing on this page takes that right away from you. Terms sets out where a dispute goes if we cannot settle it between us.

Want to know what we hold about your booking, or want it deleted? Your data & choices is the page for that.

14

Changes to this page

If we change these rules, the version in force on the day you booked is the version that applies to you. A pass you already hold, a certificate already written, a track already bought and a class already confirmed all stay on the terms they were bought under. New rules apply to what comes after.

Every version carries an effective date and a version number in the strip at the top of this page. We keep every superseded version and will email you the one that was live on your booking date if you ask for it.

Culinary Teaching LLC, 931 Garst St, Cabool, MO 65689. Questions about anything here go to hello@culinaryteaching.com or +1 (417) 962-8474, and the rest of the set is at all legal pages.