> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://paperplane-justin-winter-s-projects.vercel.app/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# The delivery guarantee

> If we accept it, we're sending it. If it doesn't reach USPS, you're refunded automatically.

## The guarantee

**If paperplane accepts your letter, one of two things happens: it gets mailed, or you get your money back — automatically, without asking.**

This isn't a support policy you have to invoke. It's a system property, and it's been running in production since before this page existed:

* Every order that reaches the print facility and fails to mail is marked `failed`.
* The moment that happens, the payment on that order is refunded — no ticket, no wait. See [`lib/fulfillment.ts`](https://github.com/justinwinter/paperplane): a failed order and its refund are the same atomic step, not two.
* An hourly reconcile job (documented in this repo's cron workflow) is the safety net for the rare case a provider webhook never arrives — it polls, detects the failure, and the same refund path fires.

You can watch this contract directly in the [error contract](/docs/guides/errors): the `failed` order state is documented as "refunded automatically," not "contact support for a refund."

## What "accepted" means

The guarantee starts once an order clears content screening and enters print — that's the same `submitted` state documented in the [order lifecycle](/docs/guides/errors#order-lifecycle). Before that point:

* A `held_for_review` or `refused` order was never charged past an authorization hold — the hold releases, nothing to refund.
* You can cancel anything before `submitted` and the same release happens.

So the guarantee isn't "we might mail it, trust us" — it's "money only ever leaves your account for a letter that either reaches USPS or comes back."

## What this doesn't cover (yet)

This guarantee is about **our** side of the pipeline — print, postage, and handoff to USPS. It does not currently cover:

* **Address accuracy claims beyond USPS verification.** Every address is checked against USPS's own database before you pay (see [Address verification](/docs/guides/addresses)), and an undeliverable address is rejected up front. But a technically-valid address that turns out to be the wrong recipient (a bad address the sender typed correctly) isn't something print-and-postage can guarantee — that's a sender-input problem, not a fulfillment one.
* **USPS-side loss after a valid mailing.** Once a piece is in USPS's hands and scanned, its physical journey is USPS's, not ours — see [Missing mail](https://sendpaperplane.com/guides/usps-missing-mail-claim) for that process. Certified Mail and Return Receipt exist precisely to give you proof of what USPS did with it.
* **A numeric accuracy SLA.** We're not yet publishing a specific "99.X% delivered" figure — that number would need real aggregate data from live volume, and we'd rather publish nothing than a guess. When we have the data, it goes here.

## Agents: this guarantee is machine-readable

The refund isn't just a promise on a page — it's the exact behavior documented in the [error contract](/docs/guides/errors), so an agent orchestrating a send can rely on it the same way a human does: a `failed` status on `GET /v1/orders/:id` means the refund already happened, not that you need to follow up.