Section 1 of 16: Overview
Legal
Grievance redressal: who reads your complaint, and how long it takes
If something here has gone wrong — a deliverable, a bill, a form you filled in, a cookie you did not expect, or data held about you — this page tells you exactly who reads the complaint, what to put in it, how long you should have to wait, and what to do if the answer is unsatisfactory. It is short on purpose. A grievance procedure that takes twenty minutes to understand is not a grievance procedure.
Purpose
1Why this page exists
In shortThree different rules require a complaints officer. One person does all three jobs, and the strictest deadline applies to everything.
Three separate sets of rules apply to this business at the same time, and each of them requires a named person who receives complaints. Rather than publish three officers and three inboxes, there is one officer, one address and one set of deadlines.
1.1Three rules, one page
The first two are in force now. The DPDP Act is on the statute book and its provisions are being brought into effect in stages. This page does not wait for the last of them: the route the Act describes is already running.
1.2One officer, and the strictest clock
Where the three rules set different periods, the shortest one is applied to every complaint, whatever its subject. That means an acknowledgement within 48 hours and a substantive answer within 30 days of receipt, for a data question and a disputed invoice alike.
Some readings of these rules permit a longer outer limit. That limit is a ceiling, not a target, and publishing a ceiling as a commitment would misrepresent how this studio actually works.
1.3A note on the plain-English summaries
Every section on this page carries a one-line summary in the margin. Those summaries are not part of the commitment; where a summary and the clause differ, the clause governs.
You will find those summaries on all thirteen sections here, because this document contains no limitation of liability, no indemnity and no assignment of intellectual property. In the documents that do — the Terms and the Engagement Terms — those three sections deliberately carry no summary. A friendly one-liner on them reliably understates what they say, and a mismatch there is the most expensive kind. The omission there is a decision, and it is recorded as one rather than left to look like an oversight.
Who reads it
2The grievance officer
In shortA named, real person reads every complaint himself. He is also the proprietor, so there is nobody above him inside the business.
2.1A real person, not a queue
The details above are not a role account with an auto-responder behind it. The officer named there reads every complaint himself, writes the reply himself, and does the work that fixes the problem. PixlNova is a sole proprietorship with one person in it; there is no support tier, no ticket triage and no account manager between you and him.
The practical consequence is good and bad, and both halves are worth stating. The good half: nothing is lost in a handover, and the person answering can actually change the thing you are complaining about. The bad half: he is one person, so an answer may arrive at the end of the published period rather than the beginning.
2.2There is no internal escalation above him
The grievance officer and the proprietor of the business are the same person. If you are dissatisfied with his answer, there is no manager to appeal to inside PixlNova, and pretending otherwise would waste your time.
That is precisely why section 10 lists the external routes with their real addresses rather than burying them. When the internal route ends, it ends, and you should be told where to go next.
2.3When complaints are read
Working hours are Monday to Friday, 10:00–18:00 IST (UTC+5:30). Complaints are read during those hours; a reply outside them is a courtesy rather than a commitment.
The deadlines in section 6 are measured in calendar time from receipt, not in working hours. A complaint that arrives on a Friday evening is still acknowledged within the same period as one that arrives on a Tuesday morning.
Scope
3What this page covers, and what belongs elsewhere
In shortThis is the route for pixlnova.com and the studio's services. The two sibling sites publish their own terms and their own grievance details.
3.1In scope
- Anything about a service engagement: the written scope, a milestone, an acceptance decision, a stop at a milestone boundary, the handover, or the transfer of intellectual property on cleared final payment.
- Defects reported inside the warranty period stated in your plan — thirty, sixty or ninety days by tier.
- Invoices, amounts, payment methods and refunds.
- Anything on this website: the contact form, the /chat assistant, cookies, analytics identifiers, and email sent to you about an enquiry.
- Any personal data held about you by this business, including data collected through the sites and data you sent by email.
- The conduct of the studio itself — a missed reply, a commitment made and not kept, anything you think was handled badly.
3.2The other two properties
PixlNova operates two sibling properties that sell different things under different contracts. This page does not govern them, and saying that plainly is more useful than implying a single procedure covers everything.
If you are not sure which property a complaint belongs to, send it here anyway. It will be routed rather than returned, and the clock starts when it first arrives — not when it reaches the right place.
3.3The contact form and /chat land in the same place
The contact form on this site collects thirteen fields: name, email, phone, company, role or title, service, product stage, budget band, timeline, project description, reference URL, important requirements, and how you found the studio.
/chat is a guided assistant that answers from published content on this site. It is not a language model and it does not improvise. A brief submitted through it goes into exactly the same pipeline as the contact form, is held in the same records, and is complained about here on the same terms.
Channels
4How to raise a complaint
In shortEmail the officer, or write by post. No form, no account, no fee, and a reply on an existing thread counts.
4.1The channels
- Email the grievance address published in section 2. This is the fastest route and the one that produces the clearest record.
- Reply on an existing email thread and say that you are raising a grievance. It will be logged as one; you do not have to start again in a new message.
- Write by post to the registered address below. Post is slower and the clock starts on the day it is received, not the day it was sent.
4.2No form, no account, no fee
There is no complaint form to fill in, no account to create and nothing to pay. A plain email in your own words is a valid grievance and is treated as one.
You do not have to use the word grievance, quote a rule, or know which of the three sets of rules in section 1 applies. Working that out is the officer's job, not yours.
4.3Complaining on someone else's behalf
You may complain on behalf of a company you work for; say which company and in what role. For a complaint about another individual's personal data, written authority from that person will be asked for before any of their data is discussed. That is a protection for them, not an obstacle for you.
Contents
5What to put in the complaint
In shortWho you are, what happened, when, and what you want done. Never send passwords, card numbers or OTPs.
A complaint missing none of the following can usually be answered in one round rather than three. None of it is mandatory — an incomplete complaint is still accepted and still starts the clock.
5.1The useful list
- Your name, and the email address the studio already knows you by if it differs from the one you are writing from.
- What happened, in your own words, with dates.
- Anything that identifies the record: an invoice number, the title of the written scope, a milestone name, the date of an enquiry, or the reference on a payment.
- What you want done. A fix, a refund, an explanation, an apology, deletion of data, or simply a decision you can act on.
- Whether you have already raised this and with whom, so the same ground is not covered twice.
5.2For a complaint about personal data
- Which property it concerns: this site, projects.pixlnova.com, or freelancer.pixlnova.com.
- Whether the data reached the studio through the contact form, /chat, an email exchange, or an engagement.
- For a cookie or analytics question: the browser and device, and whether your browser was sending the Do Not Track signal at the time. Section 8 explains why that last one changes the answer.
- For a correction request: what the data currently says and what it should say.
5.3What never to send
Do not put passwords, full card numbers, UPI PINs, CVVs, one-time passcodes or API keys in a complaint. They are not needed to investigate anything, and email is not a safe place to keep them.
You will never be asked for any of them. A message asking you for one is not from this business, and forwarding it here is itself a complaint worth raising.
Commitments
6Acknowledgement and resolution: the two clocks
In shortAn acknowledgement within 48 hours and a substantive answer within 30 days, both measured in calendar time from receipt.
| Stage | Commitment | What drives it |
|---|---|---|
| Acknowledgement | Within 48 hours of receipt. A human reply confirming what was received, that it is being treated as a grievance, and who is handling it. | Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, Rule 4(5). Applied to every complaint, not only consumer ones. |
| Resolution | Within 30 days of receipt. A written decision: what was found, what is being done, and by when. | IT (SPDI) Rules, 2011, Rule 5(9) and Rule 4(5) of the E-Commerce Rules both set one month. Thirty days is the shorter of the readings and is what is committed to. |
| Data-specific grievances | Same two periods. No separate track and no separate inbox. | DPDP Act, 2023, section 13 requires a published means of redressal but sets no shorter period; the periods above are applied to it. |
Scroll the table sideways for every column
6.1How the clocks are measured
Both periods run in calendar time from the moment the complaint is received, including weekends and public holidays. Receipt means when it arrives, not when it is opened.
If a complaint arrives on more than one channel, the clock starts at the earliest arrival. Sending the same complaint twice does not restart it and does not slow it down.
6.2The clock is not quietly paused
If more information is needed from you, it will be asked for inside the acknowledgement period rather than on day twenty-eight. Waiting for your reply does not stop the clock, and a decision will still be issued inside the resolution period on the basis of what is known — the pending question will be named in it.
The one exception is a complaint that cannot be identified at all: if there is no way to tell which record or which person it concerns and a request for that has gone unanswered, the complaint is closed with a written note saying so, and reopens the moment you reply.
6.3If a deadline is going to be missed
You will be told before the deadline passes, not after. The message will say why, what remains outstanding, and the date by which the answer will arrive.
A missed deadline is itself a failure of this policy and can be escalated under section 10 immediately, without waiting for the revised date.
6.4These are the only response commitments
The two periods above are the only response times this business publishes. There is no uptime guarantee, no round-the-clock support, no priority tier and no separate service level attached to any plan. Where a plan includes a defect warranty, that warranty governs what is fixed free of charge; it does not shorten the periods here, and these periods do not extend it.
Procedure
7What happens between the acknowledgement and the answer
In shortLogged, investigated, decided in writing with reasons, then acted on — and you can reopen it if something was missed.
- LoggedThe complaint is recorded with the date and time of receipt, the channel it came in on, and a reference you can quote later.
- AcknowledgedYou get a human reply inside the first period confirming the reference and who is handling it. Anything unclear is asked about here.
- InvestigatedThe relevant records are read: the written scope, the milestone history, the invoice, the email thread, the form submission or the stored data, whichever applies.
- Decided in writingA written decision setting out what was found, what is being done about it, by when, and what to do if you disagree.
- ClosedThe complaint is closed only after the action described in the decision has actually been taken, or after you have been told plainly that it will not be.
7.1Decisions come with reasons
Every decision is in writing and gives reasons. A complaint that is not upheld gets the same treatment as one that is: you are told what was looked at and why the conclusion went the way it did.
The decision is yours to keep, quote and forward. Nothing in it is confidential to this business, and no acceptance of it is asked for as a condition of receiving it.
7.2Reopening a closed complaint
If the decision missed a fact, misread a document, or answered a question you did not ask, say so and the complaint reopens. A reopened complaint gets one further round: a fresh look and a fresh written decision inside a new resolution period.
After that round, the internal route is exhausted. You will be told so explicitly, in the same message, together with the external routes in section 10.
7.3What a decision can actually do
Depending on what went wrong, a decision may correct or delete data, re-do work inside the agreed scope, fix a defect under warranty at no charge, correct or reissue a billing document, refund an amount, change how the sites behave, or record that a commitment was not met and what has changed so it does not recur. Where a refund is due it is returned by the method it was paid on.
Personal data
8Complaints about personal data
In shortAsk what is held, have it corrected or deleted, or object to how it is used — and know that it is stored in Sydney, not in India.
8.1What you can ask for
- A summary of the personal data held about you and what it is used for.
- Correction of anything inaccurate, and completion of anything misleading because it is incomplete.
- Erasure of data that is no longer needed, subject to records that have to be kept for tax, accounting or an ongoing engagement.
- Withdrawal of consent where processing rests on consent, which stops the processing going forward but does not undo what was lawful before.
- An explanation of any transfer of your data to a service provider, and to which country.
The Privacy Notice sets out these rights and the retention periods in full. This page is the route for exercising them and for complaining if the answer is wrong or late.
8.2Where the data actually sits
Personal data collected through these sites is stored in a Supabase Postgres database in the ap-southeast-2 region, which is Sydney, Australia. If you are in India, your personal data is stored outside India. That is stated here plainly rather than left to be inferred from a subprocessor table.
Payments are processed by Razorpay and by Stripe, and transactional email is sent through Resend. Each is an independent company with its own privacy terms and its own storage locations. A complaint about what one of them did with your data will be investigated and passed on, but the final answer on their own processing is theirs to give.
8.3Cookies, analytics and the Do Not Track signal
If any of that did not behave as described, that is a defect and a legitimate complaint. Say which browser and which property, and whether Do Not Track was on.
8.4Hashed IP addresses are still your data
Client IP addresses are not stored in the clear. What is stored is the SHA-256 hash of a secret salt joined to the address. That is pseudonymisation, not anonymisation: the same address always produces the same value, and anyone holding the salt can test a guessed address against it.
The practical consequence is that these values are treated as personal data and are inside the scope of any request under 8.1. They are not excluded on the grounds of being hashed, and a claim that they are anonymous would be wrong.
8.5Checking who you are, before disclosing anything
Before personal data is disclosed, corrected or deleted, reasonable steps are taken to confirm that the request comes from the person it concerns — usually by replying on the address already held. Where the identity cannot be established, the request may be declined with reasons.
This check exists so that someone else cannot obtain your data by asking for it. It is not used to run the clock down: the verification request goes out inside the acknowledgement period, not at the end.
Commercial
9Complaints about scope, delivery, invoices and payment
In shortThe written scope is the reference for any delivery dispute, and the billing document is not a tax invoice because this business is not GST-registered.
9.1Scope and milestone disputes
Every engagement has a written scope agreed before any invoice, listing what is included and what is explicitly excluded, with milestones against it. That document is the reference point for any dispute about what was owed. If the scope says something different from a conversation, the scope governs — which is the reason it exists.
An engagement can be stopped at any milestone boundary. You pay for what has been delivered and accepted, you keep that work, and the code is already in your own repository because it is pushed there from the first commit. A complaint that this did not happen as described is a serious one and will be treated as such.
9.2Defects inside the warranty period
Each plan carries a defect warranty of thirty, sixty or ninety days by tier, running from handover. Inside that period, something that shipped broken is fixed at no charge. Outside it, a fix is chargeable work and will be quoted before anything is done.
A disagreement about whether something is a defect or a change of scope is a legitimate grievance, and the written scope is what settles it.
9.3Invoices, tax and what the document is called
If a document you received is titled incorrectly, shows an amount you did not agree to, or appears to add a tax that is not payable, raise it here. Billing documents are corrected and reissued rather than argued about.
9.4Payments, refunds and infrastructure costs
Payments are taken through Razorpay and through Stripe. Where a refund is due it is returned through the original payment method; how quickly it appears depends on the provider and your bank, and that part is outside this studio's control.
Hosting, databases and domains sit in accounts you own and are billed to you directly by those providers at cost, with no margin added. A charge from one of them is theirs to explain, but if it appeared because of how something was set up here, that is a complaint for this page.
Escalation
10If the answer does not satisfy you
In shortData matters go to the Data Protection Board of India; consumer matters go to a consumer commission. Both routes stay open.
Say so first — a reopened complaint under 7.2 is often faster than anything external, and it costs nothing. But if that round also fails, the following routes exist and nothing on this page limits them.
10.1Personal data: the Data Protection Board of India
Under the DPDP Act, 2023, a person whose personal data is processed may complain to the Data Protection Board of India — after first using the grievance route published by the business. That is what section 13 of the Act requires, and it is why this page exists in the form it does.
The Board is being constituted as the Act is brought into force. Where it is not yet accepting a complaint of your kind, the route under the IT Act, 2000 remains: a claim for compensation over sensitive personal data under section 43A is heard by the Adjudicating Officer appointed under section 46, who is an officer of the State government.
Current filing addresses and procedures are published by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and by the Board itself. They are not reproduced here, because a stale address in a legal document is worse than no address.
10.2Consumer matters: helpline and commissions
- The National Consumer Helpline, on 1915 or at consumerhelpline.gov.in, which mediates before anything is filed.
- The e-Daakhil portal at edaakhil.nic.in, for filing a consumer complaint online.
- The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission. Under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 you may file where you reside or personally work for gain — you do not have to travel to where this business is based.
Which commission hears a matter depends on the value involved. The helpline or the portal will tell you; this page deliberately does not quote thresholds that change.
10.3Payment matters
For a charge you do not recognise or a refund that has not arrived, you also have your card issuer's or bank's dispute process, and the grievance channel published by the payment provider that processed it — Razorpay or Stripe. Using one of those does not stop a complaint here, and a complaint here does not have to finish first.
10.4Nothing here signs away a right
This procedure is in addition to your legal rights, not instead of them. Nothing on this page requires you to come here before going elsewhere, except where the DPDP Act itself imposes that order for a complaint to the Board.
the laws of India govern the relationship, and the jurisdiction clause in the Terms applies to any court proceedings. Neither displaces a statutory forum that Parliament has given you.
Honesty
11What this channel cannot do
In shortIt is not legal advice, it cannot bind a third party, and a complaint answered twice will be closed rather than answered a third time.
11.1Not legal advice
The officer is an engineer, not a lawyer. He will tell you what this business did, why, and what it is doing about it. He will not advise you on your own legal position, on what to file, or on whether a claim is worth bringing. For that, take independent advice.
11.2It cannot bind a third party
Complaints about what a hosting provider, a payment provider, an app store, an email provider or another company did with your account or your money can be investigated and passed on, but their decision is theirs. Where a complaint is really about them, you will be told so and pointed at their channel rather than left waiting for an answer that cannot be given here.
11.3Repeated and abusive complaints
The same complaint sent again after a decision and a reopened round will be acknowledged and closed with a reference to the earlier answers, rather than answered a third time. That is a limit on repetition, not on subject matter: a genuinely new fact reopens it.
Abusive or threatening messages will be answered once, in substance, and the correspondence will then be limited to writing. The substance is still dealt with. The deadlines in section 6 still apply.
11.4Anonymous complaints
An anonymous complaint is read and, where it identifies something real, acted on — a bug is a bug regardless of who reported it. But no personal data can be disclosed, corrected or deleted in response to one, because there is no way to establish whose data it is.
Confidentiality
12What is recorded about a complaint, and who sees it
In shortOne person handles it, the record is kept as a business record, and complaining never affects your engagement.
12.1What is logged
A complaint record holds what you sent, when it arrived, what was found, what was decided, what was done, and when it was closed. It is kept because a grievance procedure without a record cannot be audited, and because the two deadlines are only meaningful if they can be checked afterwards.
12.2Who sees it
The officer, and nobody else by default. Where a specialist collaborator is needed to investigate — the same arrangement described on the FAQ page for specialist production work — you will be told before anything is shared, not after, and only what is necessary is shared.
Complaint records are not used as marketing material, case studies or examples, with or without your name on them.
12.3How long it is kept
Complaint records are kept for as long as the Privacy Notice states for business and accounting records, and are stored in the same Supabase database described in 8.2 — that is, in Sydney rather than in India. No separate retention period is invented for them here; the Privacy Notice is the single place that number lives.
12.4Complaining does not cost you anything
Raising a grievance does not affect an ongoing engagement, a quotation, a warranty, or how quickly your other messages are answered. If you believe it has, that is itself a grievance and should be raised as one.
Versioning
13Changes to this page and to the officer's details
In shortIf the officer or the deadlines change, this page changes the same day, and every version is listed at the foot.
13.1If the officer changes
The officer's name, designation and contact details are held in one place and rendered into this page, so a change updates the contact block and this document on the same day. Publishing an officer who has left is the most common failure of a grievance page, and it is designed out rather than watched for.
A complaint sent to a superseded address still counts. It is forwarded, and the clock runs from when you first sent it.
13.2Material changes and clarifications
A change is material if it lengthens either published period, narrows what this page covers, or adds a step you have to complete before complaining. Material changes are published and take effect thirty days later. Everything else — wording, examples, a corrected link — takes effect on publication.
A complaint already open when a material change publishes is finished under the version in force when it was received.
13.3The status of this document
This version is a draft that has not been through legal review, and it says so at the top rather than in a footnote. The commitments in it are nonetheless real: the periods in section 6 are what this business holds itself to today, and a lawyer's review is expected to sharpen the language rather than lengthen the deadlines.
Every version of this page, with the date it took effect and a line on what changed, is listed in the version history at the foot.
Contact
Who to write to
Everything below reaches the same person. There is no ticket queue and no account manager.
Grievance redressal
If a complaint is not resolved within 30 days, or you are not satisfied with the outcome, the full escalation route — including your statutory options — is set out on the grievance page.
Changes