Sometimes a provider's system is down when we try to hand over your new address. Here is exactly what happens next, how long we keep trying, and when you do and do not get your money back.
If a provider cannot be reached, we keep trying for up to 48 hours.
The first few attempts come quickly, because most outages are brief and a retry a few seconds later often just works. After that we slow down, so that a provider having a bad morning is not also dealing with us knocking every thirty seconds.
Those first 4 attempts are all over within about 43 minutes. The remaining 24 are spaced 2 hours apart, which is what stretches the whole thing out to roughly 48 hours and 28 attempts in total.
We say "up to" 48 hours rather than exactly, because the window can close earlier in one narrow case: if the encryption key that provider gave us is being retired, we stop at the point that key expires rather than keep an envelope alive that nobody can open.
If the 48 hours run out, or all 28 attempts are used, we mark that delivery as given up and stop retrying it. Nothing keeps running quietly in the background afterwards.
When we stop trying, we email you and name the provider we could not reach.
The update is also marked as finished-and-failed on our side, which matters because it is what stops you receiving reminder emails telling you to complete something that is already dead. You will see the same outcome on your dashboard against that provider.
Not every failed delivery is our fault, and we do not refund every one. The rule below is applied by code at the moment an update gives up, not decided case by case, so here it is in full.
Two patterns count as evidence, and either one is enough:
In both cases the refund is issued without you having to ask for it.
This is the uncomfortable part, and it is the reason this page exists. If your update reached your other providers and one of them could not receive it, that is classed as their outage rather than ours, and you paid and you do not get that money back.
The honest reasoning: the thing you paid for did happen. The identity check ran, your address was encrypted separately for every provider you chose, and we attempted delivery to each of them for up to 48 hours. One company's system being down is not something we caused, and refunding you would not achieve the thing you actually wanted, which is that provider holding your new address.
We would rather you read that here than meet it for the first time when you ask for a refund and are told no.
If nothing was delivered at all and your update went to two or fewer providers, there is not enough to tell an outage on our side from an outage on theirs. Rather than guess, we put it in front of a person.
Contact that provider directly. They are the only ones who can apply your new address to your account with them, and a refund from us would not change that.
You will not have to work out which one it was. We name the provider we could not reach, both in the email we send when we stop trying and on your dashboard, so you know exactly who to call and exactly what to tell them.
If you think we have classified your update wrongly, contact support and a person will check it. The rule above is applied automatically, and automatic is not the same as infallible.
An update waiting for another attempt stays encrypted exactly as your device sealed it. OneAddress cannot read it while it waits.
What is actually queued up for another attempt is the sealed envelope your own device produced, encrypted for that one provider before it ever left your browser. Waiting in the retry queue does not unwrap it, and there is no point in the process where it is held in the clear so that it can be sent again. We hold no key that opens it.
Every provider gets its own sealed envelope, so an update that fails to reach one provider is never delivered to another.
Each provider you select gets its own separate envelope, encrypted to that provider alone and queued as its own separate delivery. A retry can only ever re-send the same envelope to the same provider it was sealed for. A failure to one of them has no effect on the others, and cannot deliver anything to the wrong place.
More on how your address is protected end to end is on our security page.