Playbook, online course
Course refunds, where your policy is not the only rule that applies
A course sold online to a consumer usually falls under distance selling rules, which give a cancellation period. Digital content delivered immediately can lose that right, but only if certain things were done at the point of sale. Most refund disputes in this trade are really disputes about whether those things were done.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for refund requests holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- There is a statutory right in many markets that exists alongside the published policy, and the policy cannot remove it.
- The loss of that right on immediate access is conditional on what the buyer was told and agreed to before purchase, which is a checkout design question rather than a support question.
- Partial consumption is the grey area: somebody who watched two lessons of thirty is in a different position from somebody who watched none.
- Cohort based courses with a start date behave differently from self paced ones, and the policy usually only covers one of them.
How it arrives
- can i get a refund
- i bought it by mistake
- the course is not what i expected
- can i cancel before it starts
- i have not started it yet, can i get my money back
- do you refund if i fail the assessment
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The refund policy, with the statutory position named | Your own terms, and an explicit acknowledgement of the cancellation right that applies where you sell. A policy that pretends the statutory right does not exist is the one that produces disputes. |
|---|---|
| What happens on immediate access | Exactly what the buyer agreed to at checkout, quoted. This is the pivot on which most cases turn, and it needs to be readable rather than buried. |
| Cohort courses and their own terms | Start dates, transfer to a later cohort, and the deadline for each. Transferring is often what the person actually wants. |
The reply
Our refund policy is on the terms page, and where you bought as a consumer there is also a statutory cancellation period that applies alongside it. If you have not started the course, that is usually straightforward. If you have, the position depends on what you agreed to at checkout about immediate access. Tell me which applies and I will point you at the right route, or pass your request to the team.
It names the statutory right rather than hoping the buyer does not, which is both correct and disarming. Then it splits the two cases so the person can see which one they are in before anybody argues about it.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any actual refund request, any dispute about what was agreed at checkout, and anything about a specific order.
I cannot look up your order or process a refund. Leave your name, the email you bought with and a short note, and the team will pick it up and reply to you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- That a refund will be given, or refused.
- That the statutory cancellation right does not apply.
- Anything about a specific purchase, payment or account.
- A refund timescale beyond what the policy publishes.
Questions
- Does acknowledging the statutory right increase refund requests?
- It changes their tone more than their number. Somebody who has read a policy that acknowledges their rights argues less than somebody who has read one that appears to remove them and then discovers otherwise.
- Should the assistant explain what we agreed to at checkout?
- It should quote it. Paraphrasing a contractual term is how an assistant creates a version of the term that the business then has to honour.
- What about a transfer instead of a refund?
- Offer it explicitly if you allow it. A meaningful share of refund requests on cohort courses are timing problems rather than product problems, and a transfer solves them for both sides.
Keep reading
- Everything for a online courseWhat is included, how long access lasts, refund and cooling off rights, and the honest limit that it cannot see a learner's own progress.
- Handling refund requests in generalA refund question is really about eligibility and timing. What to index, what the reply may promise, and where it has to reach a person.
- Cancelling a course subscription, and the access question underneath itThe question underneath a cancellation is what a learner loses and when. Answer that plainly and the churn conversation improves.
- Access problems on a course platform, and which ones are answerableWrong email, expired invite, a course bought by an employer. Three access problems with three different answers.
- When the video will not play, and what an assistant can usefully sayMost playback failures come from the network, the browser or a work firewall. Here is the order to check them in.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.