Payment and Membership Terms

1. What these terms cover

These terms apply to every payment made to Exportain and to every membership sold through it. They sit alongside the Terms of Use; where the two differ on a question of payment, these terms apply.

They do not cover money paid directly between two companies outside the platform.

2. What a membership buys

A membership buys two things and nothing else: capacity on the platform — how many products or service listings you may publish, and the related limits — and, for providers, a commission rate.

A membership does not buy verification, a trust badge, a higher position in search results, or any other trust signal. A paying company and a free company holding the same evidence carry the same badges. A membership is also not a guarantee of inquiries, leads, orders or revenue.

A company may hold a seller membership and a provider membership at the same time, on different plans. They are billed separately, cancelled separately, and neither affects the other.

3. Seller plans

Prices are per month, in Bangladeshi taka.

Draft and archived products do not count against the published limit. Products awaiting review, and products that have been rejected, do count.

The Free seller plan has no time limit. It does not expire and it is not a trial.

4. Provider plans

Prices are per month, in Bangladeshi taka.

One service listing is one service category. Commission is explained in section 11.

5. The provider free period

A provider company receives a free period of 90 days, counted from the day the company was registered as a provider. It is given once and is never restarted. A provider who takes a paid plan and later stops paying does not receive a second free period.

Exportain emails a warning 14 days, 7 days and 1 day before the free period ends, and again once it has ended. Each warning is sent once.

If the free period ends and no paid plan has been bought, the provider's service listings come down from the public directory on that day. There is no grace period. The provider keeps the account and can still see everything in the provider dashboard. Nothing is deleted — no listing, document, lead, message or order — and no service order already placed is re-priced. Paying at any later time puts the listings back.

6. How you pay

Memberships are charged in Bangladeshi taka, monthly, and recur automatically until cancelled. By starting a checkout you authorise that monthly charge to recur on your card until you cancel it.

Payment is taken on a page served by our payment processor. Exportain never receives, sees or stores your card details.

Where a price is shown converted into another currency, that figure is an approximation for information only. The amount charged is the taka amount. Prices are stated as charged; any tax that applies to you in your own territory is yours to account for.

Invoices and receipts for membership charges are issued by the payment processor and sent to the email address on the account. Exportain emails you a reminder 7 days before each renewal, once per cycle.

7. Upgrading to a more expensive plan

If you upgrade while a paid month is running, the unused part of the month you have already paid for is credited against the price of the new plan. You pay only the difference.

The credit is worked out like this, and these details decide the figure:

• the month is treated as a flat 30 days, whatever the length of the calendar month;
• the daily rate is your current plan's monthly price divided by 30;
• the day in progress counts as used — on the tenth day of a period, ten days are counted, not nine;
• the credit is the price you paid, less the days used;
• the amount payable today is the new plan's monthly price, less that credit.

Your renewal date does not move. The new plan's first full monthly charge falls on the day your old plan would have renewed.

The figure you are shown before you agree is the figure you are charged. A credit only ever reduces what you pay today; it is never paid out as money and can never take the amount payable below zero.

8. Downgrading to a cheaper plan

If you move to a cheaper plan you pay that plan's full monthly price, and a new monthly cycle starts on the day you pay.

No credit is given for the unused part of the plan you are leaving. It is forfeited. This is a deliberate commercial decision and it is stated here so that nobody meets it for the first time at the checkout.

Moving from a paid plan down to a Free plan is done by cancelling (section 9), not by buying anything.

9. When a plan change is refused

Exportain refuses a plan change, rather than attempting it, in two cases.

You already hold that plan. Buying it again would open a second subscription and you would be billed twice.

The amount left to pay is too small to charge. If a credit has absorbed nearly all of the new plan's price and what remains is below the smallest amount our processor can take, the change is refused before you reach a payment page, rather than failing after you have agreed to it. Your current plan continues unchanged, and you can make the change at your next renewal.

10. Cancelling, and failed payments

You may cancel at any time from your own dashboard. Cancellation takes effect immediately — it is not deferred to the end of the month you have paid for, and the days you have already paid for are not refunded. Your company returns to the Free plan of that membership. Cancelling a provider membership does not cancel a seller membership, or the reverse.

If a monthly charge fails, our processor retries it. While it is being retried your plan continues: your listings stay online and your commission rate is unchanged for the rest of the period you have already paid for. Exportain emails you when a charge first fails — what failed, what happens next, and by when you must act to keep the plan.

If the charge is still unpaid when that period ends, the subscription is cancelled automatically and your company returns to the Free plan, and Exportain emails you again to say what has changed and what happens to your listings. Coming back later is a new subscription at the full monthly price on a new cycle — not a resumption of the old one. While a payment is failing, no credit is available towards a different plan: a period whose charge was never collected is not a period you have paid for.

Nothing is deleted at the moment of cancellation.

11. What happens to your listings when your capacity shrinks

Nothing is deleted at the moment a plan ends, is cancelled, or is changed for a smaller one.

Providers. The newest service listings up to your new plan's limit stay online. Every older one is withheld: hidden from the public directory, its public link disabled, and still visible in your own dashboard marked with why. The listing and everything attached to it is kept. If you pay again, withheld listings come back automatically, newest first, up to whatever the new plan includes — there is no manual step and nothing to re-enter.

Sellers. Published products above the new limit are archived, keeping the newest. An archived product is not deleted and not published. Paying for a larger plan republishes them automatically, newest first.

Deletion of withheld provider listings

A provider service listing withheld because a paid plan ended may be deleted 15 days after it was withheld. Before that, Exportain emails you twice — at the moment of withholding and again 5 days before the date. Each notice names every affected listing, says which will be deleted and which kept, and on what date.

• The clock stops the moment a listing comes back online. Upgrade on day fourteen and nothing is deleted.
• A listing carrying any buyer inquiry or published freight-rate history is never deleted. That history belongs to the other party as much as to you, so the listing stays withheld instead.
• A listing that Exportain has rejected is never deleted by this process.
• Listings withheld because a free period ended unpaid are never deleted, however long they stay withheld.
• Deletion is permanent and cannot be reversed.

12. Commission on service orders

Exportain charges the provider a commission on each service sale, at the provider's plan rate: 5% on Free, 2% on Gold, 0% on Platinum.

The commission is charged to the provider and deducted from what the provider receives. It does not change what the customer pays.

The rate is fixed at the moment the offer is accepted and recorded on the order. A later change to plans or prices — including the provider changing plan — never re-prices an order already placed.

Where an offer is priced in a currency other than taka, the taka equivalent is recorded on the order at the rate in force when it was accepted, and that recorded rate is what every later calculation uses. If no rate is available, the acceptance is refused rather than priced on a guess.

13. Money held for a service order

When a customer pays for a service order online, the money is charged to their card and held by Exportain. It is not passed to the provider at that point. For a trade in goods between a buyer and a supplier, Exportain holds nothing at all.

A held order moves through these states, and only these:

• Awaiting payment — nothing paid; either side may cancel.
• Funds held — the customer has paid and Exportain is holding the money.
• Completion declared — the provider says the work is done.
• Release approved — the customer has agreed to pay the provider. The money has not moved yet.
• Awaiting review — a person at Exportain is looking at the order. Either the customer did not respond within 3 days of the completion claim, or the order reached the 90-day maximum hold with neither party acting.
• Disputed — a problem was raised and the money is frozen.
• Released — the provider has been paid.
• Refunded — the customer has been paid back.
• Cancelled — the order ended before anything was paid.

Money never moves on a timer. Silence is not agreement. An unanswered completion claim goes to a person, not to an automatic release.

Exportain does not hold money indefinitely. If an order is still held 90 days after the customer paid and neither party has acted, it is passed to a person at Exportain for review and both parties are told. It is not released and not refunded by that step — a person decides.

Payouts to providers are made by hand, by bank transfer outside the platform, against a recorded transfer reference. “Release approved” therefore means the customer has agreed, not that the money has arrived. Exportain pays no interest on money it holds.

14. Disputes about a service order

Either party to a service order may raise a dispute — the customer and the provider both, and either before or after a completion claim. Raising one freezes the money; nothing is released or refunded while it is live.

A dispute must state a category and describe what went wrong. Both parties may upload evidence: images, video, audio or documents.

Exportain reviews the evidence and decides one of two outcomes: the full amount released to the provider, or the full amount returned to the customer. There is no partial outcome.

Exportain aims to decide a dispute within 14 days of it being raised. That is a target for Exportain's own turnaround, not a rule that decides the dispute: if it is missed, the money stays frozen, nothing is decided in either party's favour, and the case is escalated inside Exportain until a person rules on the evidence.

That decision settles what happens to the money Exportain is holding and nothing else. It does not determine any other right or claim between the two companies.

15. Records, changes and contact

Exportain records every change to a membership and every movement of held money, including who made it and when.

Exportain may change the plans it offers and their prices. A price rise is announced at least 30 days before it takes effect for a company already on that plan, and you are emailed once when it is announced. Until that period has run you keep paying the old price. A price reduction takes effect at once and is never delayed. A change to a commission rate never affects an order already placed; the rate recorded on that order stands.

What is not refunded, and the one circumstance in which money is returned, are set out in the Refund Policy.

Nothing in these terms affects the rights you hold against the bank that issued your card.

Billing questions: billing@exportain.com.