Put a clear consumer promise policy in place

Terms and conditions often deal with the overall customer relationship, but they may not explain in a practical way how your business handles faulty products, service problems, repairs, replacements or refund requests. A separate policy can help staff apply a consistent process and can make customer-facing information easier to follow. That is especially useful if you sell across multiple channels or deal with repeat claims. The policy should still align with your broader contract documents, but it serves a different purpose from general sale terms.

It will usually address when a customer may be entitled to a repair, replacement or refund, how claims are raised, what information your team may need to assess a claim, and how outcomes are communicated. It may also explain how the process differs for goods versus services, online versus in-store sales, or damaged versus faulty items. The wording needs to be careful because overstatements, blanket exclusions or oversimplified rules can create problems if they do not match the legal position or your actual business practices.

The drafting depends on what you sell, how you sell it, and the claim patterns your team actually sees. For example, a retailer selling physical goods may need different wording from a service provider, subscription business or mixed online and in-person operation. We will usually look at your sales channels, fulfilment model, returns handling, customer communications and any existing policy wording. If your business uses promotions, special offers or bundled deals, the terms need to reflect the actual promotion mechanics and prize structure where relevant.

It can be. Templates often use broad statements that sound simple but do not fit the way your business handles claims in practice. That can create inconsistency between what your website says, what staff say, and what your internal process actually allows. A generic template may also miss channel-specific issues such as online fulfilment, service bookings or third-party sellers. A tailored policy is particularly helpful if you have multiple product lines, mixed service offerings or customer complaints that tend to arise in recurring patterns.

Timing depends on the condition of your current document and how complex your sales model is. If you already have a draft policy, a review can often move faster than starting from scratch. Once we have the key details, a lawyer prepares the draft or mark-up, then you can comment on the wording and raise practical questions about how the policy should read for your team and customers. This service covers the policy document and related amendments, not broader staff training, marketing review or ongoing legal management.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Consumer Guarantees Policy service, pricing starts from $900.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.