Home/Refund Policy

Refund Policy

When you get your money back, when you do not, and how to ask. We would rather set honest expectations up front than argue about them later.

Last updated31 July 2026 ABN61 183 020 382

01The short version

This policy applies to services and digital products supplied by Jesse A Mckenzie trading as Automated Australia (ABN 61 183 020 382). It works alongside our Terms of Service.

Deposits are non-refundable once we have started work — they hold your slot and pay for discovery.
Cancel a project mid-way and you pay for work performed, not the whole thing. Anything you have paid for work not yet done comes back to you.
Recurring plans need 30 days notice to cancel, and the current paid period is not refunded.
If we get it wrong, we fix it or refund it. Your Australian Consumer Law rights sit above everything on this page and we do not try to contract out of them.

Everything below is the detail behind those four points.

02Your rights under the ACL

These rights come first

Our services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law (Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth)).

For major failures with a service, you are entitled to cancel your service contract and to a refund for the unused portion, or to compensation for its reduced value. You are also entitled to be compensated for any other reasonably foreseeable loss or damage. If the failure does not amount to a major failure, you are entitled to have the problem rectified in a reasonable time and, if this is not done, to cancel the contract and obtain a refund for the unused portion.

A major failure is where the service has a problem that would have stopped you buying it had you known, is substantially unfit for its purpose and cannot be fixed within a reasonable time, or is substantially unsafe.

Nothing in this policy limits those rights. Where anything here conflicts with the Australian Consumer Law, the law wins.

03Project and build work

Custom work — websites, applications, AI agents, automation systems, brand and content packages — is quoted and scheduled for you specifically. Once we commit a slot, we turn other work away for it.

Before work starts

If you cancel after paying a deposit but before we begin any work — discovery, research, design, writing or setup — we will refund the deposit in full, less any third-party costs already incurred on your behalf. In practice this window is short, because we usually start within a couple of days.

After work starts

Once work has begun, the deposit is non-refundable. It covers the slot we reserved and the discovery, research and setup that happen first.

Beyond the deposit, if you cancel part-way through you pay only for what has actually been done. We will send you a written summary of work completed to that date and either invoice the shortfall or refund the balance for work not performed. You keep whatever has been completed and paid for.

If we cancel

If we end an engagement for a reason that is not your fault — we cannot deliver, or we lose capacity — you get a full refund of everything paid for work not yet delivered, and we will help you hand the project to someone else.

04Recurring plans

Hosting, care plans, support retainers, content and social packages, and agent or automation running costs are billed in advance for each period.

Notice period: cancel any time by giving us 30 days written notice. Email is fine.
Current period: the period you have already paid for runs to the end of its term and is not refunded pro-rata. You keep full access and support for the whole period.
Next period: you are not billed again once notice takes effect.
Price rises: if we increase the price of your plan, you may cancel before the increase takes effect without serving the 30 days, and we will not bill you at the new rate.

If we fail to deliver a plan's inclusions in a period — for example a serious hosting outage caused by us, or support that never arrives — that is a service failure, not a cancellation, and section 8 applies. You may be entitled to a refund or credit for the affected period.

Before your plan ends, take a copy of anything you need. We keep a backup for 30 days after the end date, then delete it.

05Digital products and templates

Some items are delivered instantly or near-instantly — template licences, downloadable assets, documents and prepared packages.

Because these cannot be returned once delivered, we do not refund them for change of mind after you have downloaded or been given access. Please check the description, the demo and the licence terms before purchasing, and ask us anything first — we would rather answer questions than process a dispute.

You are still entitled to a remedy if a digital product is faulty, is significantly different from its description, or does not do what we said it would. In that case section 8 applies and your Australian Consumer Law rights are unaffected.

If you bought something by mistake and have not downloaded or accessed it, email us within 48 hours and we will refund it.

06Third-party costs

Some costs we pay to other companies on your behalf and cannot get back. These are not refundable once incurred:

domain registrations and renewals;
third-party software licences, paid fonts, stock photography and video;
advertising spend already placed;
app store and platform fees;
SMS, email and AI usage credits already consumed;
payment processing fees on refunded transactions, where the processor keeps them.

We will always tell you before committing to a pass-through cost of any size, and we itemise them so you can see exactly what they were.

07What is not covered

Being straight about the limits saves everyone time. We do not refund for:

Change of mind after work has begun, or a decision to go in a different creative direction after sign-off;
Commercial results — rankings, traffic, leads, sales or revenue. We guarantee the quality of the build, not the behaviour of your market;
Delays or abandonment on your side — if a project stalls waiting on your content or approvals, work already performed is still payable;
Third-party failures outside our control — a platform changing its rules, an outage at a provider, an account suspension;
Changes made after handover by you or another provider that break something we delivered working;
Work already delivered and accepted, as defined in our Terms of Service;
Breach of our licence terms — if access is terminated for copying or reselling our materials, fees are not refunded.

08If something is wrong

Tell us. Most problems are a misunderstanding of scope or a fixable defect, and we would much rather fix it than have you quietly unhappy.

Raise it. Email us describing the problem, ideally with screenshots or a link. We acknowledge within 2 business days.
We assess and respond. Within 10 business days we will tell you whether we think it is a defect in our work, and what we propose to do.
We remedy it. Where it is our fault, we fix it at no charge, within a reasonable time.
If it cannot be fixed — or we do not fix it in a reasonable time, or the failure is major — you can cancel and we will refund the unused portion, or agree a partial refund reflecting the reduced value of what you received.

Genuine faults in our work reported within 30 days of acceptance are fixed free of charge regardless of any refund question.

09How to request a refund

Email jesse@automatedaustralia.com with "Refund request" in the subject line and include:

your name and business name;
the invoice number or order reference, and the date of payment;
what you are asking to be refunded and why;
any supporting detail — screenshots, links, correspondence.

We acknowledge within 2 business days and give you a written decision within 10 business days. If we decline, we will explain why in writing and tell you how to escalate.

If you are not satisfied with our decision, you can contact the ACCC at accc.gov.au, or the consumer protection agency in your state — in Queensland, the Office of Fair Trading.

10How refunds are paid

Approved refunds are paid to the original payment method — card refunds go back through Stripe to the card used.
We process them within 5 business days of approval. Your bank or card issuer then typically takes a further 5 to 10 business days to show it.
Where a card refund is not possible, we will arrange a bank transfer to an Australian account in your name.
Refunds are made in Australian dollars for the amount paid, excluding any pass-through costs under section 6. We do not cover exchange-rate movement or fees charged by your own bank.
Where a refund is issued, any licence granted to you for the affected deliverable ends, and you must stop using it.

11Chargebacks

If you believe a charge is wrong, please talk to us before raising a chargeback with your bank. We answer quickly and we would rather resolve it directly — a chargeback takes weeks and costs both of us.

Where a chargeback is raised for a charge that was legitimate and delivered, we will respond with our records, and we may suspend services and recover reasonable costs while the dispute is resolved.

12Contact

Entity: Jesse A Mckenzie trading as Automated Australia · ABN 61 183 020 382
Email: jesse@automatedaustralia.com
Phone: +61 468 484 006
Location: Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

These terms are written to be read, not to hide things. If anything here is unclear, or you think something is wrong, email jesse@automatedaustralia.com and we will explain it in plain English or fix it.