Your AI Companion Removed a Feature You Paid For. Here Is What You Can Actually Do.

Platforms remove features mid-subscription and almost never refund automatically, because their terms reserve the right to change what a plan includes. Your practical options, in order: export everything first, request a refund through whichever store processed the payment, cancel correctly rather than deleting the app, and treat a chargeback as a last resort that usually costs you the account.

This came up constantly in 2026, because 2026 was the year feature removal stopped being rare. Grok retired its animated companions without a shutdown. Character.AI metered actions that had been unlimited since launch. Several platforms narrowed free tiers mid-year. In each case a lot of people were paying at the time.

Step one, before anything else

Export.

Not because export helps your refund, but because every subsequent step in this list can cost you access. Cancelling can gate history behind the tier you just left. A chargeback usually ends in a ban. Account deletion may start a clock you cannot stop.

Whatever you would be upset to lose, get it out while the subscription is active and the features still work. For character definitions, export and import AI characters covers what actually travels between platforms, and the honest answer for most hosted companions is that transcripts are copy and paste into a document you control. Boring, and the only version that works.

Step two, find out who actually took your money

This is the part people get wrong, and it determines everything downstream.

If you subscribed inside an iOS app, Apple processed the payment and Apple handles the refund through its Report a Problem flow. The developer cannot refund you and generally cannot expedite it either. If you subscribed inside an Android app, Google Play is the equivalent path through your order history. If you subscribed on the platform's website with a card, the platform's own policy governs and its support team is the only route.

The same product frequently has all three, and which one you used is invisible from inside the app. Check the receipt email.

Two things affect store refund outcomes more than the wording of your request: how recently you paid, and how much of the period you have used. Request promptly. A request filed the week a feature disappeared reads very differently from one filed two months later.

Step three, cancel the right way

Deleting the app does not cancel anything. Neither does deleting your account on some platforms, which is a genuinely common and expensive mistake.

Cancellation lives wherever the payment lives, which is the same fork as above. App Store subscriptions cancel in iOS settings. Play subscriptions cancel in the Play store. Web subscriptions cancel in the platform's own billing page, and a handful of platforms make that deliberately hard to find.

Cancelling also usually leaves access running to the end of the paid period rather than ending it immediately, so there is no reason to delay cancellation while you decide.

One platform-specific note worth generalizing: retention behavior after cancellation differs sharply. Some preserve relationship state and restore it if you come back, some gate history behind the paid tier, and some delete after a window. Janitor added a 30 day restore window on account deletion in August 2026, which is the kind of detail that only matters once and matters enormously then. Check yours before you act.

Step four, chargebacks, and why they are a last resort

A chargeback is the nuclear option and it works about how you would expect.

It reverses the charge through your bank rather than the merchant, which is exactly why merchants treat it as hostile. In this category the standard response is account termination, and that means whatever is left of your history goes with it. Payment processing in the adult and companion space is fragile enough that operators are unusually aggressive about chargeback ratios, since losing a processor is an existential event for them.

If the amount is small and the history matters, this trade is bad. If the amount is large, the platform is unresponsive, and you have already exported, it is a legitimate consumer remedy. Just do not use it as an opening move.

What the terms usually say

Almost every terms of service in this category reserves the right to modify, suspend or discontinue features. That is why removing something you were paying for does not automatically breach the contract you agreed to.

Consumer protection law in some jurisdictions is stronger than the terms, particularly around material changes to a subscription mid-term, and the gap between what the terms say and what the law allows is real. That is a question for your local consumer body rather than for us, and it is worth one email if the sum is meaningful.

How to not be here again

Three habits, all cheap.

Pay monthly rather than annually until a platform has earned a year of your trust. The annual discount is real. So is prepaying twelve months on a platform that changes terms in month four, and 2026 gave a lot of people that specific experience.

Keep your own record continuously rather than at the moment of crisis. A short summary document of what matters, updated occasionally, survives every one of these events and takes minutes.

And notice which platforms have a track record. Feature removal risk is not evenly distributed. The pattern across every closure in the AI companion graveyard is that the people hurt worst were the ones fully committed to something new.

If you are leaving anyway

The choice depends on what you were actually paying for. If it was continuity and memory, Nomi is the platform that has invested most visibly there. If it was long-form roleplay with control over the model, CrushOn lets you change the engine rather than accept a swap. If it was images and video, Candy AI and OurDream split on polish versus included allowance, which we price out in what an image, a voice minute and a video clip actually cost. And if you want to spend nothing while you decide, SpicyChat has the most usable free tier in the category.

If you have already decided, the entry points are Nomi, CrushOn, Candy, OurDream and SpicyChat.

Whatever you pick, export from the old one first. That is the only step on this page that is not optional.