Two years on the mechanism.

We cover every SneakPen for two years from the day your order is delivered, against faults in the materials or in the way it was put together. This is a promise we make on top of the law, not instead of it.

In practice, a covered fault looks like one of these:

• The brass twist mechanism. A crown that turns loose or seizes, a spindle that slips, a barrel that will not draw the scroll past the window, or a mechanism that grinds where it should glide.
• The anodised shell. Anodising that bubbles, flakes or lifts on its own. A barrel that splits. Threads that strip under ordinary hand pressure. A clip that snaps rather than loosens.
• The window and the scroll carrier. A window that crazes, clouds or comes away from the shell. A carrier that will not hold a ribbon fed in correctly.
• Manufacturing defects. Anything that left the bench wrong — a part missing, a component fitted badly, a pen that never worked properly from the first day you opened the box.

One claim does not use the warranty up. A repaired or replaced pen keeps the remainder of the original two years, counted from the first delivery date — and never less time than was left when you wrote to us.

A warranty covers faults. It does not cover the ordinary life of an object you carry in a pocket every day, and we would rather tell you here than in an email once your pen is already in the post.

• Normal wear. Anodising that softens where your fingers sit, brass that darkens, a clip that relaxes over years of pockets. That is the pen ageing, and it is meant to.
• Scratches, dents and marks. Aluminium marks. A pen carried loose with keys will show it by the second week.
• Drops and impacts. A bent barrel, a cracked window, or a mechanism knocked out of true by a fall onto a hard floor.
• Water. The pen is not sealed. Immersion, a wash cycle, a soaked bag or a night in the rain are not covered.
• Taking it apart. If the pen has been dismantled, drilled, engraved after purchase by someone other than us, or repaired elsewhere, we can no longer tell what caused what — and the cover ends there.
• Consumables. Paper rolls and ink refills are used up by use. They are covered only if they arrive faulty, damaged or already darkened.
• Loss and theft. Genuinely sad, but not a fault.

If something falls outside the warranty we will still tell you what it would cost to put right, before we touch anything. Most mechanism repairs cost less than people expect, and we would far rather mend a pen than sell you a second one.

The SneakPrint printer and the battery inside it carry the same two years of cover as the pen, from the same delivery date. A printer that will not pair over Bluetooth, will not charge over USB-C, feeds paper crookedly, or prints blank where it should print black is a fault, and we put it right.

Batteries need one honest paragraph. A lithium cell loses a little capacity every time it is charged and discharged. That is chemistry rather than a defect, and after a couple of years of regular use you should expect a shorter run between charges than you had on the first day. What is a defect: a battery that will not take a charge at all, one that empties within minutes of a full charge, one that swells, or one that runs hot. If a printer swells or overheats, stop using it, unplug it, and write to us the same day.

Charge it with a USB-C cable and an ordinary phone charger. Damage caused by a faulty third-party charger, by charging the printer while it is wet, or by leaving it flat in a hot car is not something we are able to cover.

The companion app is free, and it changes often. We will keep it working for as long as we sell the printer. It is software, though, so we cannot promise it will run on an operating system that has not been released yet.

Two things in the kit are consumables: the archival thermal rolls the printer prints on, and the 0.5 mm ink cartridge in the pen. Both sit outside the warranty, because both are meant to be used up. They are covered only if they reach you faulty — a roll already grey, a cartridge that has leaked in the box, a roll that jams from the first line. Tell us within 30 days of delivery and we replace them, no return needed.

The paper carries no ink of its own. The print head heats a coating and the coating darkens, which is why there is no cartridge to buy for the printer, and why the paper asks for a little care. The stock we use is BPA- and BPS-free and rated to stay legible for years away from direct light. It is still thermal paper, and thermal paper dislikes four things:

• Heat. A car dashboard in summer, a radiator, a hot wash. Past roughly 60°C the whole ribbon greys out at once.
• Direct sunlight and strong UV. A scroll taped to a sunny window will fade in a matter of weeks.
• Solvents and plasticisers. Alcohol hand gel, sticky tape laid across the print, soft PVC wallets and some plastic sleeves will lift the image.
• Pressure and friction. Anything hard drawn across the surface leaves a dark line behind it.

Rolled inside the pen, the scroll lives in the dark, which is exactly where it wants to be. Kept there, or in a drawer, or in a paper envelope, it stays readable for years. We will not pretend it is a stone tablet. If the words truly matter — a first letter, a last one — photograph the scroll once, or print the card twice and keep the second copy somewhere dark.

Two promises, often confused. The warranty is for faults and runs for two years. The return window is for second thoughts and runs for 30 days from delivery — no reason required, no fault required.

Inside those 30 days, send the pen back for a full refund. Returns are free from the United Kingdom and the European Union; from anywhere else $8 comes off the refund to cover the courier. Keep the scroll you printed — a used ribbon costs you nothing. Unopened printers and paper rolls should come home sealed. The full detail lives on the shipping and returns page.

If the pen is faulty, use the warranty instead, whatever the date on the calendar. A fault in week two is still a fault in month eleven, and you lose nothing by taking the route that suits you. If you are inside 30 days and the pen is faulty, you may use either — tell us which outcome you want and we will do that one.

No form to download, no warranty card to have registered, no receipt to have kept. Your order number is the proof, and if you have lost that too we can find it from the name and the rough date.

1. Write to us. Use the contact page or email [Email]. Give us the order number, the finish, and a sentence about what the pen is doing that it should not.
2. Send a photograph or ten seconds of video. A mechanism that slips is far easier to see than to describe, and footage often saves the parcel a journey — some faults we can talk you through in a single reply.
3. We answer within one working day. If it needs to come back, a prepaid label reaches your inbox with that answer. We pay the postage, wherever you are.
4. Pack it as it came, if you still have the box. A padded envelope is fine otherwise. Send the pen alone unless we have asked for the printer as well.
5. We assess it within five working days of the parcel arriving at the workshop, and tell you what we found in plain words rather than a code on a form.
6. Repair, replacement or refund leaves within 48 hours of the claim being approved, tracked, at our cost.

If we decide the fault is not covered, we tell you why and what it would cost to fix. Either way the pen goes back to you free of charge. Nothing is scrapped without your say-so.

We work through the options in this order, and we always tell you before doing anything that cannot be undone.

• Repair first. A mechanism can be re-seated, a spindle re-tensioned, a window replaced. It is quicker than you would think, and it keeps your pen — the one with your marks on it and your scroll inside.
• Replacement when the fault is in the shell itself, when a repair would leave a visible scar, or when the same part has failed twice. Same finish where we hold it; if we do not, you choose again.
• Refund when we can neither repair it nor replace it — the full price you paid, back the way it came, within five working days of that decision.

If you would rather have one outcome than another, say so when you first write. If it is reasonable, we do it. What we will not do is send the same faulty part back to you twice and call it fixed.

We are a small workshop and finishes come and go. If your pen fails under warranty and the model or the colour has since been retired, the cover does not retire with it.

In order: we repair it with parts we hold, and we keep mechanisms, shells and windows in stock for at least two years after a model leaves the shop. If the part has run out, we offer the closest thing we currently make, at no cost to you, even if it now sells for more than you paid. If you would rather not swap finishes, we refund what you paid instead — your choice, not ours.

The same holds for the printer. A discontinued SneakPrint is replaced by the current model, and we do not ask you to make up the difference.

On a claim we accept, we pay the postage in both directions. You should never have to buy a label to send us a faulty pen.

Pack it as well as you reasonably can — a mechanism that survives the post is a mechanism we can still diagnose. The original box is ideal; a padded envelope is fine. If a parcel goes missing on its way to us while travelling on a label we issued, that is our loss to carry, not yours.

Parts and pens we replace stay with us. Brass and aluminium go back into the melt through a local recycler, and usable mechanisms are stripped for spares that go on to repair somebody else's pen. If you would rather keep the old one — for the scroll inside it, usually — ask, and we will send it back alongside the new one.

The warranty follows the pen, not the buyer. If yours was a gift, you are covered. Ideally you have the order number of whoever bought it; if asking would spoil the point of the gift, give us the name and the rough month and we will find the order ourselves.

It applies to pens bought from this shop or from a stockist we supply. We cannot stand behind a SneakPen bought second-hand through a marketplace or from a seller we do not know, because we have no way of knowing what happened to it in between. Engraving carried out by us is covered; engraving done elsewhere is not, and it usually voids the shell cover on the panel that was cut.

The cover assumes normal personal or office use. A pen handled all day as a demonstration piece on a shop counter will wear far faster than this warranty is priced for, and heavy commercial use of that kind sits outside it.

This is a commercial warranty. We offer it voluntarily, and it sits on top of the rights consumer law already gives you. It never replaces them, and nothing written on this page limits them.

If you bought from within the European Union, the legal guarantee of conformity applies. Under Directive (EU) 2019/771 the seller is liable for goods that do not conform to the contract for at least two years from delivery, and for the first year any fault that appears is presumed to have been there all along unless we can show otherwise. Several member states go further than the minimum, and where your national rules are more generous than this page, your national rules win.

In the United Kingdom, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires goods to be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described. It gives you a short-term right to reject in the first 30 days, and remedies beyond that for up to six years in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, or five in Scotland.

Elsewhere, the consumer law of the country you bought from applies in the same way. You never have to choose this warranty over the law — take whichever route gets you the better result. If you are not sure which that is, ask us and we will explain it rather than argue with you about it.

We update this page when the products change or when the law does. The date at the top is the version you are reading. The terms that apply to your pen are the ones published on the day you ordered it — unless a later version is more generous, in which case you get the better of the two.

Nothing here excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded. Beyond that, our liability under this warranty is limited to repairing the product, replacing it, or refunding what you paid for it.

These terms are governed by the law of [Governing law], and by the courts named there, without removing the protection of the mandatory consumer rules that apply in the country where you live.