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Furbol — How It Works

I was charged for a game but didn't show up — can I get my money back?

I was charged for a game but didn’t show up — can I get my money back?

You booked an online-paid game, your fee went into pending, the game happened — but for whatever reason (illness, traffic, plans changed at the last minute), you didn’t actually play. You’re looking at your wallet wondering whether that money is gone, or whether there’s a way to claw it back.

Short version: yes — during the 3-hour feedback window after the game, there’s a single-tap “I didn’t play a game” option that reverses your fee back to your wallet. Outside that window, the fee stays with the host.

This is a different case from I paid online for a game that didn’t happen. That one covers games that were cancelled or never reached quorum — the game itself didn’t exist as far as Furbol is concerned. This page is about games that did happen without you.

The “How was the game?” dialog

Once a game you’re booked in reaches its end time, Furbol opens a “How was the game?” dialog the next time you land on the home screen. It has two paths:

  • Vote on the game’s quality — one of bad / sad / meh / yay / wow. This treats your booking as a played game and your fee stays with the host.
  • Tap “I didn’t play a game” — the text button below the votes. This is the fee-reversal path.

What “I didn’t play a game” actually does

Tapping it sends a game-level “didn’t play” vote to Furbol. The server finds your fee record for this game and reverts it — subtracting the amount from the host’s wallet and adding it back to yours, atomically.

  • Your spendable balance goes back up by the fee amount within seconds.
  • The original pending hold clears.
  • Your past-transactions list will show the reversal line.
  • The host sees their host earnings for that game adjust downwards.

No host approval, no support ticket, no back-and-forth. It’s a single tap and it’s done.

Timing — the feedback window

This only works during the feedback window — the 3 hours that start when the game’s scheduled end time passes. After that window closes, feedback can’t be submitted at all, and the reversal path goes away with it.

  • If you open the app within 3 hours of the game ending and tap “I didn’t play a game”, your fee comes back.
  • If you open the app a day later, the game is already processed. The money stayed with the host.

The window isn’t extended for lateness or for “I was travelling, couldn’t open the app.” It’s 3 hours from the end of the game, full stop.

Cash and free games

This whole page is about online-paid games — where the fee moved through Furbol’s wallet system. For cash games there’s nothing to reverse — you either paid the host in cash or you didn’t; Furbol wasn’t the middle-man. For free games there’s no fee at all.

What the host sees

From the host’s side, if a player taps “I didn’t play a game”, the earnings for that game shrink by the reverted amount. The host doesn’t get a prompt or an approval request — it just reduces what lands in their wallet. See Host Earnings for the wider picture and my host earnings look lower than I expected for a scenario framed from the host side.

Abusing this

Worth naming: this is a self-declared path. Nothing stops a player from playing the full game and then tapping “I didn’t play” afterwards. But the same feedback round also collects a peer-rated score of whether you played; repeatedly no-showing erodes your solidity, which in turn keeps you out of games whose host has set a minimum-solidity restriction. The mechanism trusts you, and the reputation system notices if you abuse that trust.

What if you missed the window and the fee stayed with the host

No in-app reversal exists after the feedback window closes. Your options:

  • Ask the host directly. Hosts can refund a player out of their own wallet — it’s not a one-tap button, but it’s a conversation they can choose to have.
  • Contact support through the account screen if there’s something genuinely wrong with the charge (e.g. you were removed from the game by the host but the fee didn’t come back).