Refund Policy
We don’t offer refunds once an engagement begins — but you’re protected by our 50/50 payment structure, two rounds of revisions, and our outcome support guarantee. This page explains how it all works, transparently.
1. Our position on refunds
We do not offer refunds once an engagement begins. The 50% deposit secures your writer’s calendar slot and starts the project work. The balance covers the drafted document delivered to you. Because the work is custom, single-use, and engineer-hours intensive, refunds aren’t practical or fair to the team that did the work.
We’ve designed our engagement structure so this position isn’t a problem in practice. The 50/50 payment split, the two rounds of revisions, and the outcome support guarantee are how we keep clients protected without needing a refund mechanism.
This page sets out exactly how each stage works, what your money buys, and what we do if something goes wrong.
2. Why we don’t offer refunds
Three reasons:
1. The work is custom and single-use
Every CDR, KA02, or ACS RPL we deliver is written from scratch for one specific engineer’s situation, qualifications, and project history. We can’t resell or reuse the work — once written, it belongs to you.
2. Engineer-hours are the cost
The dominant cost in every engagement is the time of a discipline-matched Australian engineer drafting your report, plus a senior engineer reviewing it. Those hours are spent during the engagement — they’re not recoverable once delivered.
3. Refunds incentivise the wrong behaviour
Services that offer easy refunds tend to either (a) be cheap-template operations where the cost of refunding is low, or (b) build a refund premium into the headline price. We’d rather price our packages honestly and stand behind the work with the guarantee structure on the rest of this page.
3. What protects you instead
Four protections, layered:
You only pay 50% upfront. The balance is due when we deliver the draft for your review — before any revisions. If we can’t deliver the draft (which essentially never happens), you’ve only paid the deposit.
Every package includes two rounds of revisions. If the draft doesn’t meet your expectations, we revise — at no additional cost. Most concerns get resolved in the first round.
If Engineers Australia (or Engineering NZ / ACS) returns a negative outcome on a report we wrote, and the rejection grounds are within the scope of our work, we prepare the recovery rewrite at no additional charge. Full details in section 8.
Before you pay anything, you get a free 15-minute consultation to confirm we’re the right fit. About one in four times we tell people they don’t actually need the service they came for — and we say so before any money changes hands.
4. Free consultation stage
The initial 15-minute consultation is always free. No fee, no card details collected, no obligation. If at any point during the consultation you decide the service isn’t right for you — or we decide we’re not the right fit for your situation — that’s the end of it. Nothing to refund.
5. Pre-drafting (after deposit, before drafting begins)
Once you pay the 50% deposit, your writer is assigned and your project enters the queue. The deposit is non-refundable from this point, because writer-allocation and scheduling work has begun.
However, between deposit and the start of active drafting (usually a 1–3 day window), we’ll send you the structured intake questionnaire. If you decide at this stage you no longer want to proceed — for example, your visa pathway changed, or you’ve decided to self-write instead — let us know straight away.
In genuine pre-drafting cancellation cases, we may at our discretion offer a credit against a future engagement (rather than a cash refund) if you may return to use our services within 12 months. This is decided case by case and isn’t a contractual obligation.
6. After draft delivery
Once the first draft has been delivered, the balance is due. From here:
- If you’re not satisfied with the draft, we don’t refund — we use the included two rounds of revisions to address your concerns. The revision rounds cover any reasonable adjustment (tone, structure, section rewrites, competency-element re-mapping, factual corrections).
- If after two revision rounds the draft still doesn’t meet your needs and the gap is on our side, we’ll continue revising at no additional cost until we get it right. We don’t refuse revision requests on the grounds that “you’ve used your two rounds” when the original brief wasn’t met.
- If the issue is scope expansion (e.g. you’ve decided to change your ANZSCO occupation, or substitute different projects entirely), we’ll quote the additional work separately.
Client-side cancellation after draft delivery is not eligible for refund. The work has been done and delivered.
7. If we cancel the engagement
This is rare, but it can happen. If we decide to cancel an engagement after the deposit has been paid — for example, we discover a conflict of interest, we can’t match you with the right writer for your discipline, or we find out information you provided was inaccurate but we choose not to escalate it — we’ll refund the deposit in full.
If we’ve already started drafting and need to cancel mid-engagement (extremely rare), we’ll refund a pro-rated portion based on the work not yet completed, plus the unused portion of any balance you’ve paid.
In the very unlikely event we cease trading entirely, any deposits held for projects not yet drafted will be refunded.
8. Outcome support guarantee
This is the most important protection on this page. If your CDR, KA02, or ACS RPL returns a negative outcome from the assessing body, and the rejection grounds are within the scope of work we performed, we prepare the recovery rewrite at no additional charge.
What’s covered
- Compliance issues with MSA Booklet 2026 (or KA02 / ACS RPL equivalents)
- Summary Statement errors or weak competency-element cross-referencing
- Plagiarism flagged in content we drafted
- AI-content flagged in content we drafted
- Insufficient demonstration of complex engineering activity in Career Episodes
What’s not covered
- Qualification verification disputes — e.g. EA disputes whether your degree is genuine or as represented
- English language test results — your IELTS / PTE / TOEFL outcome isn’t our scope
- Document attestation issues — notarisation, embassy attestation, or apostille requirements
- Wrong ANZSCO occupation when we specifically advised a different one during consultation
- Inaccurate information you provided — if material you gave us turns out to be incorrect and that’s the rejection reason
- Plagiarism in sections you self-authored (e.g. for CDR Review engagements where you wrote the original)
How to claim
- Send us the assessing body’s outcome letter within 30 days of receiving it
- We review the rejection grounds against the scope of our work
- If covered, we schedule the recovery rewrite (typically 10–15 working days)
- You re-submit to the assessing body; their reassessment fee is paid directly to them by you
The outcome support guarantee covers the writing work, not the assessing body’s reassessment fee. EA charges around AUD 907.50 for a reassessment regardless of where the rejection came from.
9. Disputes & how to raise them
If you’re unhappy with anything — a draft, a revision, a billing question, a communication issue — please raise it with us directly first. Most disputes are misunderstandings that get sorted in one conversation.
How to raise a dispute:
- Email [email protected] with the engagement reference and a clear description of the issue. Or message us on WhatsApp at +61 414 269 514.
- We’ll acknowledge within 2 business hours during office hours, or first thing the next business morning if outside hours.
- We aim to resolve straightforward disputes within 5 business days, and complex ones within 15 business days.
If we genuinely can’t reach agreement, you have rights under Australian Consumer Law.
10. Australian Consumer Law
Nothing on this page excludes or limits any rights you have under the Australian Consumer Law (Schedule 2 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010) or other consumer protection statutes that can’t be lawfully excluded.
In particular, you’re entitled to:
- A service that’s provided with due care and skill
- A service that’s fit for the purpose you communicated to us
- A service delivered within a reasonable time
If we fail any of these guarantees, you may be entitled to a remedy under Australian law independent of this policy. This usually involves us re-performing the service; in more serious cases, the law may require a refund.
To exercise rights under the Australian Consumer Law, contact us first — most cases resolve without escalation. If you need to escalate, you can contact the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) at www.accc.gov.au or your state’s Fair Trading office.
11. Contact us
Questions about this refund policy or a specific engagement?
CDR Report Guide
Suite 105/30-34 Churchill Avenue
Strathfield NSW 2135, Australia
Phone / WhatsApp: +61 414 269 514
Email: [email protected]
Hours: Mon–Sat 9am–7pm AEDT
Got concerns before engaging?
Talk to us before paying a deposit. Free 15-minute consult — we’d rather flag a fit issue upfront than have a difficult conversation later.