Check whether your refund policy says the right things

The difference is mainly scope. Here, the legal work is centred on your refund policy document: what it says, what it leaves out, and whether the wording creates avoidable risk or confusion. A broader consumer law engagement might also examine your checkout flow, advertising, complaint handling, staff scripts and other customer documents. This service is narrower and more document-specific. It is a good fit if the main issue is getting the refund policy itself into better shape rather than commissioning a wider review of business practices.

We look at how the policy describes refund rights, exchanges, store credit, cancellation outcomes, exclusions and any conditions customers must meet. We also check whether the wording could be misleading, overly absolute or inconsistent with the way your business handles claims in practice. A common issue is language that sounds commercially convenient but creates legal risk because it overstates when refunds are unavailable. We also look for gaps where the policy is silent on common scenarios, such as damaged goods, change-of-mind requests or partially used services.

Important details include whether you sell goods, services or both, whether sales happen online, in person or through third parties, and what refund scenarios come up most often. We also need to know how payments are taken, whether bookings or subscriptions are involved, and whether you offer exchanges, credits or partial refunds in some cases. The wording should reflect the information your business collects, the reasons it is used and the parties it is shared with. with customers as part of the refund process, because that can affect how the policy should be framed and explained.

It can be, especially if the template was written for a different business model or jurisdiction. A generic document may not match your sales channels, cancellation process, product type or customer communications. That mismatch can create problems when staff apply one process internally but the published policy says something else. Templates also tend to use broad statements like no refunds or store credit only, which may be too blunt for real-world scenarios. A tailored review helps identify where the wording is too rigid, unclear or disconnected from actual operations.

Timing depends on whether you already have a policy, how much redrafting is needed, and how quickly the relevant business details are provided. A review of an existing document is often quicker than building a new policy from the ground up. Once the lawyer has the current wording or instructions, they prepare comments or a draft, then you can respond with questions and requested changes. The service covers the refund policy work described on this page, not implementation across your website, staff training or ongoing legal support after completion.

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 Refund Policy Review 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.