Knowledgebase
Everything a member needs to know about using HonmeiDate. Looking for a shorter answer? Try the FAQs.
2. Subscriptions & tiers
HonmeiDate offers three access levels, with paid upgrades gated by a monthly subscription.
- Browse all public rooms
- Read all messages in real time
- 2 chat messages per session per room
- Receive likes, favorites, DMs
- Basic keyword search
- Everything in Deai
- Unlimited chat messages
- Send direct messages
- Advanced search filters (age, distance, interests)
- Open Private Chats (preference gate applies)
- Hide your gender color option
- Everything in Goen
- Saved searches
- Top-of-inbox placement when you message
- Read receipts
- Priority support queue
Current rates are listed on the Pricing page. Upgrades are effective immediately; downgrades take effect at the end of the current billing period.
3. Payment processing
Payments are processed by Stripe, a PCI-DSS Level 1 payment provider. HonmeiDate does not store your card number or CVV — Stripe retains those on their compliant infrastructure and returns us only a tokenized reference.
Supported methods
- Credit and debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, JCB)
- Apple Pay and Google Pay where the device supports them
- Additional local methods (convenience-store, bank transfer) may be available to members billing in Japanese yen
Billing cycle
Monthly, billed on the anniversary of your first successful payment. Failed-payment grace period is 72 hours — during that window your tier remains active and Stripe retries automatically. After 72 hours your account falls back to Deai (free) until a successful payment.
Receipts & records
Every charge triggers an emailed receipt from Stripe. Your payment history is also available in Settings → Subscription → View history (Stripe Customer Portal).
Currency & tax
Charges are in your account's configured currency. Applicable consumption tax or VAT is displayed at checkout and itemized on receipts. We do not provide tax advice; for business-account deduction questions consult your accountant.
4. Refund policy
Summary
HonmeiDate operates a no-refunds policy on subscription payments. When legitimate billing concerns arise, our approach is to resolve them through service credits, extensions, or account accommodations — delivered via a cooperative support relationship with the member.
Why social and dating platforms generally decline refunds
The decision to operate without refunds is not unique to HonmeiDate. It reflects a set of structural realities shared across social and dating services:
- Access, not inventory. A subscription unlocks the capability to reach other members during the billing period. That capability is consumed at signup — every message sent, every profile viewed, every room entered has already been delivered and cannot be returned. Refunding retrospectively would be equivalent to recovering value the member has already used.
- Refund-abuse is a well-documented vector. Platforms that offer easy refunds attract a class of repeat offender who signs up, extracts contact information or relationships, and then reverses the charge. Permitting this pattern degrades the experience for members acting in good faith and economically subsidizes exactly the behavior the platform is designed to discourage.
- "I didn't like what I saw" is not a service defect. Unlike a manufactured product, a social platform cannot guarantee outcomes of human interaction. The service provides access and tooling; the outcomes depend on the people involved. A member disappointed by conversations, unreciprocated interest, or the broader dating market is experiencing life, not a failure of product delivery.
- Chargeback risk to the whole community. Excessive chargeback rates damage a platform's relationship with its payment processor. If a small minority forces refunds through card-issuer disputes, the resulting processor-level penalties raise costs for every paying member and can ultimately jeopardize the platform's ability to accept payments at all.
- Fairness among members. A refund issued to one member is subsidized, in effect, by every other paying member. Issuing refunds based on subjective dissatisfaction would privilege members who are most willing to escalate, at the expense of those who accept outcomes gracefully.
What we will do
A no-refunds policy is not an adversarial policy. Our aspiration is to resolve legitimate concerns through direct, respectful engagement with members. Depending on the situation, support may offer:
- Service credits — equivalent to a future subscription period, applied to your next billing cycle.
- Extensions — additional days or weeks added to your current period at no cost.
- Downgrades with remainder — a higher-tier cancellation may surface the unused value as a Deai-level extension, depending on time elapsed.
We deliberately do not extend refund-style accommodations on the basis of claimed hardship. Verifying such claims cannot be done fairly or privately across jurisdictions, and a policy that treats different members differently based on unverifiable circumstances would erode trust for everyone else. The remedies above are the complete list.
What we will not do
- Process a cash refund on delivered subscription time, regardless of whether the member used it.
- Undo a payment when the motivation is stated as dissatisfaction with another member's profile, conversation, or decision to decline contact.
- Permit a chargeback dispute to override this policy — chargebacks initiated in bad faith may result in account suspension and, in severe cases, platform-level bans.
How to raise a billing concern
Open a support ticket via the Support page. Describe the situation in your own words — context matters more than formatting. We respond within one business day for standard billing inquiries and within four hours for safety-related concerns. Keep the conversation within the ticket so both sides have a written record.
By purchasing or renewing a subscription, you acknowledge this policy. Thank you for treating us — and each other — with good faith.
5. Zero tolerance — prohibited conduct
This is a hard line. Not a strike system. Not a graduated warning.
The categories below result in immediate and permanent platform ban, no refund on any remaining subscription, and — where legally required — mandatory referral to law enforcement. No appeal. No negotiation. No second account. Attempting to create a replacement account after a ban is itself grounds for continued enforcement.
Categories
| Conduct | Action |
|---|---|
| Sexual content involving minors (CSAM) — any depiction, solicitation, sharing, or request, in any form. | Permanent ban. Mandatory report to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) or jurisdictional equivalent. Evidence preserved and handed to authorities. No refund. No exceptions. |
| Human trafficking / coerced sex work — recruiting, transporting, or marketing persons for sexual or labor exploitation, including thinly-veiled solicitation of such. | Permanent ban + referral to trafficking-specialist law-enforcement units where jurisdictionally supported. No refund. |
| Non-consensual intimate imagery — sharing, threatening to share, or brokering nude or sexual imagery of another person without their explicit consent (including "revenge" postings, sextortion, and selling intimate images). | Permanent ban. Content removed and preserved for law-enforcement handoff on victim request. No refund. |
| Threats of physical violence or physical harm — specific, credible threats directed at a member, an identifiable group, or HonmeiDate staff. Use the right-click Report violent language action in chat to surface these. | Permanent ban. Credible threats escalated to local law enforcement. No refund. |
| Fraud, scams, and impersonation — romance scams, financial grooming, pretending to be another person (including celebrities, staff, or specific members), fake identity, or any scheme designed to extract money or sensitive information from members. | Permanent ban. Affected members notified. Where financial loss occurred, evidence handed to the reporting member for their own fraud claims and, at our discretion, to payment processors and law enforcement. No refund. |
| Coordinated harassment / hostile targeting — brigades, pile-ons, dogpiling, or organized intimidation campaigns directed at a member or identifiable group. Includes using multiple accounts to evade individual blocks. | Permanent ban of every account identified as part of the coordination. No refund. |
| Spam and bulk unsolicited contact — mass-messaging, link-dumping, promotional accounts, automated messaging, off-platform contact farming, or any behavior that treats other members as a distribution list. | Permanent ban on first clear instance of intent (not a single misplaced message — we're talking about patterns). No refund. |
| Illicit marketplace activity — selling drugs, weapons, counterfeit goods, forged documents, or offering paid sexual services via the platform. | Permanent ban. Where legally required, referral to appropriate authorities. No refund. |
| Circumvention of safety controls — evading a ban by creating replacement accounts, bypassing the preference gate on Private Chats, scraping member data, probing admin endpoints, or reverse-engineering moderation to harass targets. | Permanent ban extended across any account linked to the attempt. Technical evidence retained. No refund. |
What we do not pretend to do
We cannot prevent every bad actor at the point of signup. We can — and do — enforce swiftly and permanently once behavior is identified. We do not treat the permanence of a ban as a matter for negotiation, and we do not re-open cases based on time elapsed, expressed regret, or offers of payment. A permanent ban is permanent.
Law-enforcement referrals are governed by the rules of the jurisdiction in which the conduct occurs, not by the member's preferences. HonmeiDate does not notify a reported member in advance of a law-enforcement referral.
Reporting prohibited conduct
- In chat — right-click the message → Report violent language for physical-violence language specifically.
- All other categories — use the Support form and select the closest category (safety, sexual content, impersonation, spam, illegal activity). These route to a priority queue with a 4-hour first-response target.
- CSAM and trafficking — if you encounter this, report it here AND, if you are able and safe to do so, report it directly to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at report.cybertip.org (or your local equivalent). We will act on our end regardless of whether an external report was filed; external reports help law enforcement build the broader case.
For members acting in good faith
This policy is written to protect you. The explicit enumeration above exists so bad actors know — before they invest time here — that the platform takes these behaviors seriously and acts on them without hesitation. If you're reading this because you're considering joining HonmeiDate and wondering whether the community is worth your time: yes. We defend it.
6. Chatting & community
Chat is organized into rooms under
categories. Every room has its own alias namespace — you appear as
user#a3f2c1 (or similar) in each, with
your initials in a colored tile next to your alias. The gender of your text is
communicated through color (blue / pink / gray); your real name and photo are never
visible in public rooms.
Actions you can take on a member's messages
| Action | Where | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Upvote | Click ▲ icon next to alias | Signals approval; counter visible to all. |
| Favorite | Right-click message | Colored vertical bar marks their messages in this room for you. Cleared when they leave. |
| Save text | Right-click message | Content copied to your local Saved Text. Never sent to server. |
| Silence | Right-click message | Fades their messages for you. Community-wide when enough members do it. Expires in 5 min. |
| Hide | Right-click message | Completely removes their messages + sidebar entry from your view. Persists per-device. |
| Report violent language | Right-click message (red) | Scoped specifically to physical-violence or physical-harm language. Routes to moderation with content snapshot. |
| Private Chat | Click member in right sidebar | Only appears when both sides' profile criteria mutually align. Opens a one-on-one DM-backed conversation. |
Message limits & moderation
- Max message length: 2000 characters.
- Rate limit: 10 messages per minute per room.
- Duplicates suppressed for 5 minutes.
- Excessive capitalization auto-normalized.
- Profanity masked with asterisks (not rejected).
- Links outside the approved allowlist (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, X, Wikipedia, honmei.date) replaced with
[link removed]. - Real-member display names appearing in public chat are redacted with asterisks to prevent cross-room doxxing. Your own name is always exempt.
Retention
All public chat messages are permanently deleted after 30 days. HonmeiDate does not retain a long-term transcript of any chat room.
8. Profile updates
Reach your profile editor via My Profile → Edit from the navbar avatar dropdown.
What you can edit
- Display name (used in private chats after reveal, never in public rooms).
- Bio — up to 500 characters.
- Gender and seeking-gender preferences.
- City and state (encrypted at rest; searchable via deterministic hash).
- Interests list.
- MBTI type (optional, hidden by default).
- Profile photos — up to six. Primary photo shown in member cards.
- Per-field visibility (Everyone / Members only / Mutual favorites / Hidden).
What you cannot edit
Age (derived from your registered birth year) and account email (changed via settings → confirmation email). Mistakes in either require a support ticket.
Photo moderation
All uploaded photos pass through an automated safety check (TensorFlow Lite NSFW classifier) before being served publicly. Images flagged with high confidence are blurred and queued for human review; you are notified if a photo is rejected.
9. Settings
Settings is organized into four tabs:
| Tab | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Account | Email, password, language, timezone. |
| Privacy | Who can message you, who can view your profile, profile visibility, block list, report submissions. |
| Notifications | Per-category toggles for in-app toasts, push, and email. Pause-all toggle. Quiet hours. Daily digest mode. |
| Subscription | Current tier, next billing date, upgrade/downgrade, cancel, Stripe customer portal for payment-method changes and receipts. |
Changes to settings apply immediately unless marked otherwise (e.g. email changes require confirmation of the new address).
10. Security & privacy
HonmeiDate applies defense in depth across transport, authentication, data, and community-level controls.
Account security
- Passwords stored as
argon2idone-way hashes; plaintext never persisted. - 12-character minimum on new and reset passwords.
- Brute-force protection: 5 failed logins per IP+email in 15 minutes triggers rate-limit.
- Session cookies are HTTP-only, Secure, SameSite=Lax.
- JWT access tokens expire every 15 minutes; refresh tokens are revocable.
Data at rest
- Email addresses: Fernet-encrypted with a deterministic HMAC hash for equality search.
- City and state: same pattern.
- All other profile data: plaintext in a private Postgres instance, accessible only via the application.
- Encryption keys are stored on an encrypted filesystem separate from the database; key loss does not compromise hashes but does invalidate encrypted fields.
Anti-doxxing protections
- Every public surface (chat rooms, topic comments) uses obfuscated aliases by default.
- Real-member display names in public text are auto-redacted with asterisks.
- Non-allowlisted honmei.date links in public text are replaced with
[profile link removed]. - Reveal of real identity is explicit, per-person, reversible, and only available inside Private Chats.
- A doxxing warning is surfaced at the moment of reveal, reminding the member that revealing identity exposes them across the public web.
Your privacy controls
- Block a member to remove all visibility in either direction.
- Hide gender color (paid tiers) — your text renders in the neutral color regardless of your gender.
- Per-field visibility on profile (Everyone / Members / Mutual favorites / Hidden).
- Deactivate or delete your account from Settings → Account. Deletion is permanent; deactivation is reversible.
Data export and deletion (GDPR / equivalents)
Request a full data export (downloadable JSON) or full account deletion via Settings → Privacy → Data request. Requests are processed within 30 days. On deletion, your profile data is removed; content you authored (comments, chat messages within retention window) is anonymized to a stub alias rather than attributed to you.
11. Support
The Support form
is the canonical channel. Every ticket is numbered
(HM-YYYYMMDD-NNNN) and tracked in the same system a human
support agent uses.
Response targets
| Category | First-response SLA |
|---|---|
| General question | 24 business hours |
| Billing | 24 business hours |
| Account access / password | 8 business hours |
| Safety concern (harassment, threat, self-harm) | 4 hours (priority queue) |
| Feature request | Acknowledged within 7 days; no commitment to build |
What support cannot do
- Reveal another member's identity, contact information, or messages to you.
- Force another member to respond to you or to change their preferences.
- Issue cash refunds (see §4 Refund policy).
- Bypass the preference gate on Private Chats.
- Share internal moderation records.
Being helpful to yourself
- Include the exact steps you took and the outcome you expected.
- If you saw an error message, paste the exact text — screenshots welcome.
- Mention your browser, device, and approximate time of the issue.
- One ticket per issue; multiple open tickets on the same topic slow everyone down.
7. Comments & topics
The Community space aggregates shared content — videos, articles, music — and allows members to discuss each piece. Commenting conventions: