Payment Policy

What we accept

Major credit and debit cards, processed by Stripe. The card networks accepted are the ones Stripe makes available to us; you will see them on Stripe's payment page.

• A billing address is required at checkout. Your bank uses it to verify the card, so it needs to match the address your card issuer has on file.
• Your card does not have to be issued in the United States, but the delivery address does have to be in the 50 states or the District of Columbia, because that is the only place we ship.
• Stripe may show a wallet or saved-card button — Apple Pay, Google Pay or Link — on its page. Those are still card payments; no other payment method is enabled on our checkout.
• One card per order. Stripe's checkout cannot split a single order across two cards, so if you need to do that, place two orders.

Nothing is added on top at checkout beyond sales tax where it applies. Shipping is free on every order, there is no handling charge, no card surcharge and no minimum spend.

What we do not accept

This is worth stating plainly, so you are not hunting for an option that is not there.

• No PayPal.
• No Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay or other buy-now-pay-later or instalment plans are enabled on our checkout.
• No cryptocurrency of any kind.
• No cash on delivery.
• No purchase orders, invoicing or net payment terms, for business or institutional buyers.
• No paper checks, money orders or bank transfers.
• No gift cards: we do not sell them, and refunds go back to your card rather than being issued as store credit.

This is how the store is set up rather than a temporary gap we are about to close. If you are not able to pay by card, we are unfortunately not able to take the order.

When your card is charged

Payment is taken in full at the moment you place the order, on Stripe's checkout page. We do not wait until dispatch, and we do not take a deposit and bill the rest later.

If Stripe does not confirm the payment, no order reaches us at all. If the payment does not complete, no order is created and you owe us nothing.

The amount charged is exactly the total shown on Stripe's page before you confirm: the items in your cart, plus sales tax where it applies. There is nothing further to pay afterwards.

We do not sell subscriptions or anything on recurring billing, and we do not keep your card on file to charge again later. Every order is a single, one-off payment that you initiate.

Where checkout happens

When you click through to pay, we hand you over to a checkout page hosted and operated by Stripe. Your browser's address bar will show a Stripe domain at that point. That is expected, and it is the part of the arrangement that keeps your card details away from us.

Your card number, expiry date and security code are typed into Stripe's page and travel to Stripe, encrypted in transit over HTTPS. They do not pass through our servers, our database or our logs at any stage.

What Stripe passes back to us is the information we need to fulfil and account for the order: confirmation that the payment succeeded, the amount, your name, email address, phone number, billing address and delivery address, and the card brand and the last four digits. We never receive the full card number, the expiry date or the security code.

Our own site runs on Next.js, hosted by Vercel, and is served over HTTPS throughout. Your cart is held in your browser's local storage on your own device and is only sent anywhere when you start checkout.

Card security and PCI DSS

PCI DSS is the card industry's security standard for anyone who handles card data. Because the payment page is entirely Stripe's, the obligations that come with storing and processing card numbers are Stripe's. Our own obligations are limited to keeping this site and the handoff to Stripe secure. Stripe states that it is certified as a PCI DSS Level 1 service provider.

Our side of that arrangement is to keep the handoff intact and to stay out of card data altogether. We do not store card numbers, do not write them to logs, and do not hold them in our email.

One practical consequence, and a useful rule of thumb generally: we will never ask you to send card details to us by email or any other message. If you receive a message claiming to be from Hearthsweep and asking for a full card number, a security code or a password, it is not from us. Forward it to us and we will confirm.

There is nothing to sign in to on this site. We do not operate customer accounts or logins, so there is no password of ours that can be lost or leaked.

Currency and sales tax

All prices on this site are in US dollars, and USD is the only currency we can charge in. We do not currently support any other currency, and we cannot quote or settle an order in one.

If your card is denominated in another currency, your issuer converts the amount at its own rate and may add a foreign transaction fee. That conversion and any fee are entirely between you and your issuer; we only ever see the USD amount.

Product prices are shown excluding sales tax. Where we are required to collect it, sales tax is calculated at checkout from the delivery address you enter, and appears as its own line on Stripe's page before you confirm.

• Rates differ by state and often by county or city, so the figure depends on where the order is going, not on where we are.
• Because shipping is free, the total you pay is simply the items plus any applicable tax.
• We are not set up to process tax-exempt or resale purchases at checkout.

If your payment is declined

A declined payment is almost always a decision made by your card issuer, or by Stripe's automated risk checks, rather than by us. Issuers do not tell merchants why a card was refused, so in most cases we are told only that it failed.

Common causes, in rough order of how often they turn up:

• The billing address or postcode entered does not match what your issuer has on file.
• Your issuer has placed a fraud hold, which is common on a first order with a merchant it has not seen before, or on a larger than usual amount.
• Insufficient funds, or the purchase would exceed a credit limit or a daily spending limit.
• The card has expired, or the expiry date or security code was mistyped.
• The card blocks online or card-not-present transactions, which some prepaid and bank-issued debit cards do by default.

What to do, in this order. First re-check the billing address, expiry and security code and try once more. If it fails again, contact your card issuer, using the number on the back of the card. They can see the actual reason and can usually clear a fraud hold in a few minutes. If they confirm the card is fine and it still will not go through, try a different card.

Please do not retry many times in a row. Each attempt can place its own temporary hold on your account, which makes your statement look alarming for a few days even though no money has been taken.

We cannot override a decline, and we have no way to take the payment by another route. A declined payment means no order was placed, so there is nothing to cancel and nothing owing.

Pending charges on your statement

When a card payment is attempted, your issuer may place an authorisation on the account: a temporary hold that reserves the amount and shows up as a pending line on your statement. An authorisation is not a completed charge and no money has left your account.

• If the payment succeeds, the authorisation becomes the actual charge. You should end up with one charge, not two.
• Release timing is set by your bank, not by us. Most release within a few business days; some issuers hold for up to seven to ten days.

If you retried a declined card several times, you may see several pending lines for the same amount. They look like duplicate charges but usually are not: all but the successful one should fall away.

We cannot make a bank release a hold any faster. If a pending amount is still showing after ten business days, contact your issuer, and email us as well. We can confirm in writing whether we actually took a payment from you, which is normally what the bank needs to see.

How refunds are paid

Refunds always go back through Stripe to the card that was charged. Card network rules require the credit to return to the original card, so we cannot send it to a different card, to a bank account, or to anyone other than the person who paid. We do not issue store credit, vouchers or checks in place of a refund.

Timing depends on why you are being refunded.

• Order cancelled before dispatch: we issue the refund in full, usually the same business day.
• Item returned to us: we issue the refund within 5 business days of it arriving back at our warehouse, and in every case within 14 calendar days of receipt.
• After we issue it, your bank or card issuer takes its own time to post the credit, usually 5 to 10 business days. That stage is outside our control and is the most common reason a refund appears slower than it was.

A full refund covers everything you were charged, including any sales tax. Shipping was free in both directions and there is no restocking fee, so nothing is deducted.

How it looks on your statement depends on how far your bank had processed the original payment. You may see the original charge and a separate matching credit, or you may simply see a pending charge drop away. Either way, the net effect is zero.

If the card you paid with has since expired or been replaced, the refund normally still reaches the same account, because the issuer routes it to the replacement. If the account itself has been closed, speak to your issuer about how they will return the money to you.

The full terms sit on our returns and refunds page: 30 days from delivery, free return shipping on a prepaid label, and no restocking fee.

Fraud prevention and orders we cancel

Every payment goes through Stripe's automated checks, which include address verification and network-level risk signals. We also look at an order by hand when something about it is unusual.

We may decline, hold or cancel an order where we reasonably believe the payment is fraudulent or has been made without the cardholder's authorisation. If we do cancel on those grounds, we refund the payment in full. We do not keep part of it, we do not hold the funds pending anything, and we do not issue credit in its place.

We may occasionally email you before dispatch to confirm an ordinary order detail, such as a delivery address that does not match the billing address. If we do, we will only ever ask about normal order information. We will never ask for a full card number, a security code, a photograph of the card, or any password.

If you see a charge from us on your statement that you do not recognise, contact your card issuer first, since they can protect the account immediately. Then email us the date and amount and we will check it against our records. If the charge is ours and the order was not yours, we refund it.

You are of course free to raise a dispute with your issuer. It is usually quicker to email us first, because we can look the payment up straight away.

Questions about a payment

Email support@hearthsweep.store with your order number and what you are seeing on your statement, and we will look it up. We read email Monday to Friday, 9:00-18:00 ET, and we answer every message.

Please do not include card numbers, security codes or photographs of your card in an email to us. We do not need them, we cannot accept them, and we would only ask you to delete the message.

Our warehouse and returns address is 1812 Roanoke Ave, Louisville, KY 40205, United States.

This page describes how payments work on this site. It sets out our practices rather than legal advice, and it does not affect any rights you have under applicable state or federal law.