Payment and Cancellation Policy

Last updated 02/17/2021

When you request an order or confirm an order request on a service package, you agree to abide by our Payment and Cancellation Policy. This policy is a binding legal agreement between you and Walnut that governs the details about payment, payouts, cancellation and refund.

1. Fee Rounding

The service item fees in a package can only be entered with integers however the fees associated with an order such as payment processing fee and platform fee may contain decimals after calculation. In such cases, fees are rounded to the nearest integer with zero decimal point.

2. Creating an Order from a Service Package

A service package becomes an order when students click the order button on a package. Consultants can add retainer ratio to the order to change how the package fee is paid during the services.

2.1 Order item fee . Each service item in a service package becomes an order item in an order. Each order item fee is calculated by the respective service item fee *(1- retainer ratio).

2.2 Retainer ratio and retainer fee . The difference between all the service item fees and order item fees are collected into a pool called retainer fee. It will be paid to the consultant after the overall order status is updated to completed. It can be negotiated with the student when reviewing an order. The purpose of the retainer fee is to encourage consultants to provide good services.

3. Payments and Payouts

3.1 Payment processing fee. A 3% payment processing fee is charged for domestic credit card payments by our third party payment processor Stripe. This fee is not refundable after the payment has been made.

3.2 The order item fees and prorated platform fees. The fee for each order item is paid to your consultant after each order item is completed. Walnut charges 10% platform fee for each payout. This fee helps us advertise our services to more students and provide customer supports.

3.3 Order item status update. The order item status is updated to completed when:

  • student updates the student status to service completed
  • consultant updates the consultant status to service completed and the student does not respond to the update in 7 days

To avoid automatic payout, students can respond to the consultant status update by marking the status to “service not completed” within 7days, then the order item status will be updated to on hold until the conflict is resolved.

3.4 The retainer fee payout. The retainer fee is paid to the consultant after the overall order status is updated to completed. The retainer fee is non-refundable once it is paid to the consultant.

4. Order Cancellation and Refund

4.1 Cancellation before payment. The Student and the consultant can cancel the order when reviewing an order before making the payment.

4.2 Cancellation after payment

  • Before the overall order status is updated to completed, students can request cancellation and consultants can accept it, the unpaid order item fees, prorated platform fees, and the retainer fee will be refunded to students.
  • If the consultant does not respond to a cancellation in 7 days, the cancellation request will be automatically validated and order will be cancelled. To avoid automatic refund, consultants should update the status to decline the cancellation and the refund will be put on hold until the conflict is resolved.

Order Status Conflict

5.1 Conflict situations. During the service, both students and consultants can update the order item status, order program status and overall order status. There is a chance that the updated status between the two is conflicted. For example:

  • For order item status update, the consultant status update is completed and student status update is not completed;
  • For order program status update, the consultant status is application submitted and student status is application not submitted; The consultant status is accepted by school and student status is not accepted by school; The consultant status is enrolled and student status is not enrolled;
  • For overall order status update, the consultant status is completed and student status is not completed. The student status is request cancellation and the consultant status is decline cancellation.

5.2 Resolve conflicts. When such conflicts on status update happen, the respective order status becomes on hold. Try to talk to your consultant or your student to discuss the conflict. If that doesn’t work, you may contact our support team for a resolution.