Grievance Redressal

1. What this page is for, and who can use it

Canopus IT Solutions Private Limited ("Canopus", "we", "us") is a software engineering company registered in India, operating canopussoft.com. The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 set the benchmark Indian buyers expect of a company selling through a website: a published complaint route, acknowledgement inside forty-eight hours, and a resolution inside a month. We publish this page to that standard and hold ourselves tighter than it — acknowledgement inside one business day, and a written outcome inside fifteen days.

You do not have to be a paying client to use it. Prospective clients, former clients, a client's own end users, vendors, job applicants and anyone whose personal data we hold raise a grievance at the same address, and it is handled the same way. There is no fee, no form to download and no required wording — a plain email is enough.

2. Support request, billing dispute or formal grievance — pick the right one

Most things people call a complaint are answered faster somewhere else, so the tracks are separated here rather than merged into one inbox.

Scroll the table sideways for the full detail.

A grievance is the right channel when one of the other three has already failed you: nobody replied, the answer did not address what you asked, a decision was made that you believe is wrong under the contract, or the conduct of someone at Canopus is the problem. Raising a grievance does not cancel the other track — a refund decision under our refund policy still runs to its own five-business-day clock while the grievance is open.

You will not be pushed back down the ladder. If you email a grievance about something that turns out to be a routine support item, we fix it and still record and answer it as a grievance.

3. The Grievance Officer

Canopus appoints a Grievance Officer who owns this process: every grievance logged, answered inside the published windows, and reviewed by someone other than the person whose decision is being questioned. The role is reachable through the published channels rather than a private address, so a change of postholder never leaves a stale contact on a website:

• Email — [email protected] with Grievance in the subject line, which routes to the Officer directly
• Phone — +91 817 979 7732, during Indian business hours
• Web form — the form on our contact page, with "Grievance" as the first word of your message

Ask for the Officer's name and our registered postal address in your first email and both come back in the acknowledgement. We publish the channel rather than the person, because a monitored inbox reaches whoever holds the role today.

4. How to raise a grievance

Email [email protected] with the word Grievance in the subject line. Include as much of the following as you have — a missing item does not stop the clock, it only means we come back to ask:

• Who you are — your name, your organisation, and an email address and phone number we can reply on
• The reference — the invoice number, statement of work title or engagement name; where there is no engagement, what it concerns instead — an enquiry, a call, this website
• Dates — when it happened, and when you first raised it with us if you already had
• What you expected — the clause, deliverable, acceptance criterion, date or quoted figure you are measuring us against
• What actually happened, in your own words, with the email trail, invoice or report behind it
• What resolution you want — the work redone, an invoice line corrected, a refund, an explanation, or a change to how we operate

Naming the outcome matters more than the length of the description. A grievance that states its remedy is usually settled inside a week; one that does not costs an extra round of email to find out what would resolve it.

5. The escalation ladder, with timelines

Every grievance runs through the same four stages. The fast steps count in business days and the outer limit in calendar days, because that is how the rules are written.

Scroll the table sideways for the full detail.

Fifteen days at stage 2 is an outer limit, not a target — the long ones are long because they need timesheets, commit history and deployment records pulled together. Where we need something from you to decide, we ask inside the first five days and tell you the clock restarts when you reply, rather than letting a deadline pass in silence. Stage 3 is handled by someone who did not make the original decision: a review by the person being complained about is not a review, and a process that allows it is decoration.

6. If the response does not satisfy you

Reply on the same email thread within 30 days of the stage 2 response, say which part you disagree with and why, and it moves to stage 3 automatically. You do not need to use the word "escalate" or write to a different address.

After stage 3, the route depends on what the grievance is about:

• A contractual dispute — the good-faith resolution track in section 13 of our terms of service applies, after which the courts named there have jurisdiction, unless your organisation's own signed master services agreement says otherwise
• A consumer complaint in India — you may approach the consumer forum with jurisdiction over you, and we supply the correspondence file rather than making you reconstruct it
• A personal data complaint — the rights and routes in our privacy policy apply, including a complaint to your local supervisory authority if you are in the UK or EEA
• A card or bank dispute — your issuer's dispute process stays open to you at any point. We would rather you talk to us first, because most billing disputes are settled by email in a day where a card dispute takes weeks

Raising or escalating a grievance is never itself a reason to slow your work down. We do not withhold credentials or hold back code you have paid for because you complained, and an open grievance is not grounds for us to stop. A materially overdue invoice is the separate case, and section 6 of our payment terms governs it — a call to a named person and written notice come before any stoppage.

7. What we do not do

• We do not charge for raising or escalating a grievance, and there is no limit on how many you may raise
• We do not close a grievance by telephone. Every outcome is written, so both sides hold the same record
• We do not require a specific format, template or legal wording
• We do not make settling a grievance conditional on withdrawing a review, a dispute or a public comment
• We do not investigate anonymous grievances about a specific engagement, because we cannot verify the account without a reference. Send it under your name and it is treated confidentially inside the company

A grievance with no reply from you for 30 days after we have asked for information is closed as unresolved, with a final email saying so. Reply after that and it reopens under the original reference — the closure is administrative, not a refusal.

8. How records are kept

Every grievance is entered in a register held by the Grievance Officer, whether it arrives by email, by phone or through the contact form. One raised on a call is written up and the summary emailed back the same day, so the record is one you have seen and can correct.

Each entry holds the reference number, the date and channel it arrived on, the engagement or invoice it relates to, what was claimed, what we found, the decision, the remedy and the date it closed. Entries are retained for seven years alongside the accounting and contract records they relate to, matching the retention period in our privacy policy. Personal data in the register is handled under that policy and is never used for marketing.

The Officer reviews the register quarterly for patterns. Where the same complaint appears twice, the fix belongs in the process rather than in another apology — and where it changes what we commit to, it is written into our service delivery policy or payment terms rather than left as an internal note.

9. Contact

Grievances: [email protected] with "Grievance" in the subject, or +91 817 979 7732, or the form on our contact page. Anything not yet a grievance reaches an engineer, who replies within one business day.

This page sits alongside our terms of service, refund policy and engagement models. Where a signed statement of work or your own master services agreement sets a different escalation route, that document wins and this process runs underneath it. We update this page when the process changes; the date at the top reflects the current version.