How disputes work

Most projects finish without one. This page is what happens when they do not.

The short version

  1. Either side can raise a dispute on a funded contract.
  2. The money it is about freezes immediately. Nobody can move it.
  3. Khebrah support acknowledges within 24 hours.
  4. Both sides are asked for their account, and get a substantive reply within 72 hours.
  5. Support decides within 14 days, and that decision is final.

What freezes, and what does not

A dispute about one milestone freezes that milestone only. Every other milestone on the contract carries on — the student can keep delivering, the company can keep approving, and that money keeps moving normally.

While a milestone is frozen, nobody can approve it, release it, refund it, or deliver against it. The automatic approval countdown stops too, and restarts with the same time on it once the dispute closes — so an argument never costs the student days from their review window.

What you can raise

  • The work was never delivered
  • The work does not meet what was agreed
  • Being asked for work outside the agreed scope
  • Approved work has not been paid
  • The other side stopped responding
  • The work is not original
  • Something else

What support can decide

  • Release the full amount to the student
  • Release part of it to the student
  • Return the full amount to the company
  • Return part of it to the company
  • Split it between both sides
  • No change — the work continues

Where money goes to the student, Khebrah's commission and the VAT on it are taken from the student's share only, at the rate frozen when the contract was created. A student awarded part of a milestone pays the fee on that part, never on the whole.

What we will not do

  • Reopen a decision. There is no appeal, on purpose — a process that reopens for whoever complains loudest rewards complaining loudest.
  • Reach money that has already been paid out. A released milestone is settled; a dispute cannot claw it back.
  • Decide without hearing both sides. If you have not been asked yet, you will be.
  • Hide one side's account from the other. Both parties read the same thread.

Before you raise one

A dispute is for a disagreement, not a misunderstanding. If the other side has simply not seen your message, or the brief turned out to be ambiguous, saying so on the milestone is faster and costs nothing. Contracts carry a fixed number of revision rounds precisely so that "this is not quite right yet" has somewhere to go that is not here.

Khebrah holds project funds in a segregated account during a project. This is not a licensed escrow service and we do not describe it as one; the pilot runs on manual reconciliation while payment licensing is in progress.