What to do if your account is locked, or your plan paused

Occasionally we have to interrupt access to an account while we resolve a matter with its owner. The most common reason for this is an outstanding payment.

• When a paid plan is paused, only FREE plan features are available until the issue is resolved.
• When an account is locked, no access by any team member is permitted to its translation projects.

If your access is blocked for any reason, please contact us for help resolving the issue. You should also check your junk mail filters, because we will most likely have tried to contact you about the matter already.

Not the account owner?

If you're a member of someone else's team you won't be able to access any of their projects while their account is locked. If you get in touch we can discuss the matter with you, but please be aware that certain details (such as payment information) can only be discussed with account administrators.

Unpaid invoices

When you upgrade to a paid plan we take your first payment and begin providing the service to you immediately. If the following payment fails we'll continue supplying the service for a limited time period while we try to resolve the matter with you personally.

These are the steps we'll take to resolve an unpaid invoice:

1. If the problem seems temporary (such as insufficient funds) we'll try several times to take payment over a period of up to 10 days.
2. If a payment requires your personal authorization we'll email you as soon as possible so you can log in and confirm the transaction.
3. If payment failures seem permanent (such as an expired card) we'll get in touch and ask you to update your card details.
4. If we receive no reply to any messages and payment doesn't appear forthcoming, we'll take one or more of the following actions:

• Pause the plan
  This temporarily reverts your account to FREE plan levels until unpaid invoices are settled. Usually this is done to draw attention to a temporary payment problem without denying access to data.

• Cancel the plan
  If you haven't been using your account during the unpaid period, we may simply cancel your plan and void your invoice. We'll only do this if we think you've abandoned your account on purpose and don't intend to continue with your plan.

• Lock the account
  If pausing a plan doesn't prompt administrators to resolve a payment problem, we may place a lock on the account. This blocks all access to project data, and is only done when the account is storing data in excess of free quotas.

Please note that storing your data is part of the service. This doesn't affect your right to cancel, but if your account is abandoned without payment then any data left exceeding the free quotas is at risk of deletion.

Bank transfers

If your plan is under direct billing arrangements we follow the same protocol as above except that we can only wait for your payment by bank transfer. If an invoice remains unpaid we may pause the plan, or lock the account until the full funds are received.

If you believe that payment has been made then please get in touch to help us identify it. It could be that the amount debited does not match the amount invoiced due to currency exchange or bank fees. To avoid this, please reference your invoice number on the transfer.

Refunds

If you've unlocked your account by settling an overdue invoice we'll happily refund you for any days during the paid period your account was inaccessible. Please note however, that blocking card payments as a strategy to "freeze" your subscription is not acceptable as we still have to store your data and often spend time resolving the payment issues personally. We offer this refund in good faith, but accounts that abuse it on purpose will be closed.

Abuse

Very rarely we have to lock accounts for abusive behaviour. In these instances we are unlikely to contact account owners for a discussion.

We have final say in what constitutes abuse of our service, but one example is sending spam. By this we mean deliberately using our systems to send unsolicited messages that have no relevance to the function of Loco. Any account identified as sending spam will be locked permanently without notice and all related email addresses will be added to a list of banned accounts.

Please note that we only retain hashes of banned email addresses and cannot access the original data. See Email suppression list .

Data access

Having a locked account does not circumvent your right of access to your personal data. You can always make a Subject Access Request (SAR) and we will oblige according to the law.

Similarly, your translation data belongs to you. If you need to download your data from an account that cannot be unlocked for some reason (such as permanent payment failure) we can arrange temporary access.