How to get a refund from Teachers Pay Teachers

Unfortunately, with the surge of AI (and human) slop on TPT, it’s become more common to buy resources which turn out to be just bad and unusable with our students. Luckily, it’s pretty straightforward to get a refund from TPT if you know the right words to use when asking for a refund.

The refund request shown in this post was completed automatically by Muse + Steletta, with no human intervention. See how it works.

How does a refund actually work at TPT?

There are two types of refunds at TPT: seller-initiated or TPT-initiated. In practice, what happens is that customer service will first evaluate the request and if it falls within their refund policy, they will just process it. This is what happens in the vast majority of cases if you ask for it the right way.

If customer service doesn’t think that the refund is within their policy terms, they will contact the seller and ask if they are OK processing a refund anyway. It is much safer to avoid this step and try to just get the TPT-initiated refund. However, even if it gets to the seller, in our experience, sellers almost always agree to legitimate refund requests. A bad review can cost a seller much more than a refund.

How to ask for a refund the right way

TPT customer service will mainly check boxes and see if your request is within their policy. Here you can find the categories (e.g. Misrepresentation, Duplicate Purchase, etc.) and here is the refund request link.

In the “Refund reason” field, you can select the specific reason, which for bad content is typically going to be either “Content is missing” or “There’s an error in the resource”. The most important field, though, is the actual message you write in the “Tell us more” box. Here you want to mention misrepresentation and explain why it applies. Mentioning it allows customer service to process your refund request under one of the categories in their policy.

Obviously, you also need to specify in the message the actual mistakes or issues, pointing to the specific page. A generic “this is misrepresentation and it is AI slop” won’t get you a TPT-initiated refund, but will move you to the seller refund path (which ideally we want to avoid). The form should look something like this:

After you complete the form, you will get an email from TPT like this:

If you have done all that and clearly documented the issues with the resource in your message, you will typically get your refund approved very quickly, often within a few hours on weekdays. The approval email from TPT will look like this:

Although the wording sounds scary and makes the refund seem like a special exception, it reads like a standard template that makes an approved refund sound like a favor, which can discourage people from asking.

And if you want to automate the refund process and recover the money spent on unusable teaching material, you can use Muse together with Steletta. Muse + Steletta will automatically go through all your TPT purchases, evaluate their quality, and autonomously fill out refund requests for the AI or human slop, specifying in the message what was bad about the resource.

You will get peace of mind about the good resources knowing that they are safe to use with your students and get your money back for the bad, unusable AI or human slop.

What if the store you bought from is gone and you can’t download the resource anymore?

If TPT has removed access to a resource you paid for, that gives you a clear reason to request a refund. You can just select “Something else” in the form and specify that you cannot download the resource anymore because the store is gone.

In the cases we’ve seen, stores have disappeared because they were banned. It’s been happening a lot recently and in a recent TPT town hall they said it is happening mostly because of AI slop (interestingly, the closure notices we’ve seen cite “misrepresentation” as the official reason). You shouldn’t have to chase a refund for a resource that TPT has made inaccessible or that TPT itself decided to ban. Unfortunately, TPT hasn’t been very proactive about refunding customers, so you’ll often have to ask for a refund yourself. The bottom line: if you haven’t received a refund, definitely request one.

Btw this is the first step of Muse + Steletta automatic flow: look for refunds you should have got because the store is gone and ask for them before even starting to review the material.