refund-policy

---
name: refund-policy
description: Turns your till receipts, complaint log and any existing refund wording into a written refund and cancellation policy that matches your actual statutory duty under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, a decision tree your team can follow at the till, a corrected version of any sign or menu line that currently overstates or understates a customer's rights, and a log of every refund given with the reason recorded against it. Use when you are writing a refund policy for the first time, when a "no refunds" sign has been sitting on the till for years, or when a customer's argument has made you unsure what you actually owe them.
---

# A refund policy that is lawful and stops the argument, because it says only what the law actually requires

You give this your current refund wording, whatever is printed on a sign, a menu, a booking confirmation or a website, your booking and deposit terms, and, where you want the pattern checked, a log of recent refund requests and how they were handled. You get back a written policy split by what was actually bought, a decision tree staff can follow without asking a manager every time, a corrected version of any line that oversteps or understates the law, and a refund log template. It will not tell you a refund rate, a typical complaint volume or a chargeback avoided figure for a business like yours, because no published figure exists for a single independent UK venue and inventing one to sound authoritative would make the policy worse, not better.

## What it does

1. **Split what was sold into goods and services, because the two are governed differently and a meal is both at once.** The Consumer Rights Act 2015 treats food and drink supplied as part of a meal as goods under Part 1 Chapter 2, and the table service, the cooking and the booking as a service under Part 1 Chapter 4. Section 11 requires that "every contract to supply goods by description is to be treated as including a term that the goods will match the description," and section 9 that "the quality of the goods is satisfactory." Section 49 separately requires that "every contract to supply a service is to be treated as including a term that the trader must perform the service with reasonable care and skill." A cold plate returned untouched and a booking mishandled are not the same complaint, and the policy answers them differently because the statute does.

2. **Write down, in one place, that there is no general right to a refund for a customer changing their mind about a meal they have seen, ordered and eaten.** Trading standards guidance is explicit: a customer may be refused a refund where they "simply changed their mind about an unwanted item" they had seen in person, and there is no statutory cooling-off right attached to an in-person purchase at all. This is the single most common source of the argument at the till, and it is also the single easiest thing to get right in writing, because the answer does not depend on facts you have to establish. State it once, plainly, so no member of staff has to invent the justification under pressure.

3. **Write the goods remedy for food and drink that is faulty, not as described, or not fit for purpose.** Where food or drink fails to meet sections 9, 10 or 11, the customer is entitled to a remedy under sections 19 to 24, including, within the first 30 days, the short-term right to reject and a full refund. Section 31 removes any doubt about whether a sign can narrow this: "a term of a contract to supply goods is not binding on the consumer to the extent that it would exclude or restrict the trader's liability" for sections 9 to 11. A dish sold as "gluten free" that contains gluten, or meat sold as one cut and served as another, sits here, and the remedy is not a favour, it is the statute.

4. **Write the service remedy for booking, timing and delivery failures separately, because the remedy is different.** Where the service itself falls short of reasonable care and skill, section 55 gives the customer a right to require the trader to perform the service again "to the extent necessary to complete its performance in conformity with the contract," and section 56 a right to a price reduction where repeat performance is not possible or not done within a reasonable time, with any refund due "within 14 days" of the trader agreeing it is owed. Section 57 makes this the same non-excludable floor as section 31 does for goods. A table not honoured at the booked time, or a set menu served two courses short, is a service failure with a service remedy, and conflating it with the goods remedy in step 3 produces a policy that answers the wrong question.

5. **Write the deposit and cancellation position for advance bookings, and state the exemption plainly rather than implying it.** The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 give a 14 day cancellation right for services arranged at a distance, but regulation 28(1)(h) removes it for "the supply of accommodation, transport of goods, vehicle rental services, catering or services related to leisure activities, if the contract provides for a specific date or period of performance." A table booked for a Saturday night, a private dining room, or a wedding catering contract for a named date all fall inside this exemption, and a customer who booked online or by phone has no statutory 14 day cooling-off right to fall back on. State this in the booking terms themselves, not only in an internal note, so a deposit dispute does not turn into a discovery process.

6. **Write what happens to the deposit itself, and be honest that this is a contract term you are setting, not a statutory answer.** Neither the Consumer Rights Act 2015 nor the 2013 Regulations fix how much of a deposit is retained on a late cancellation. That is decided by your own booking terms, tested against the Act's unfair terms provisions, which void a term that would be "contrary to the requirement of good faith" and cause "a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations to the detriment of the consumer." A deposit retention clause that is proportionate to the notice given and the cost actually incurred is defensible. A blanket "all deposits non-refundable regardless of notice" clause is the kind of term that gets struck down when tested, because it takes the same amount whether the table was re-let in five minutes or sat empty all night.

7. **Check every existing sign, menu line and booking confirmation against sections 31 and 57, and correct the ones that go too far.** A "no refunds" sign is not a technicality. Guidance is direct: "it's illegal to restrict or take away customers' rights or to mislead them about their rights, for example by displaying a sign that says you do not accept returns or offer refunds," and adding "your statutory rights are not affected" next to a contradictory line does not cure it, because "where two contradictory statements are used together, they are still likely to mislead consumers about their rights." Breach of this sits under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, which carries criminal penalties. Rewrite any sign that says "no refunds" without qualification into a statement of the actual policy from steps 2 to 6.

8. **Build the decision tree from the four questions that actually separate the cases, in order.** Was it goods (food or drink) or a service (booking, timing, table service)? If goods, does it fail sections 9 to 11, or is this a change of mind? If a service, did it fall short of reasonable care and skill, and has repeat performance already been tried or refused? If a booking cancellation, does regulation 28(1)(h) apply, and what do the written deposit terms say about the notice given? Four questions answer nearly every case a hospitality till sees, and the tree is only useful if staff can run it without calling a manager for the common ones.

9. **Hand the drafting and the log template to Codex once the legal position for each case type is settled.** Put the current signage and menu wording, the booking terms, any recent refund requests with how they were resolved, and the decisions from steps 2 to 6 in one working folder and run, from that folder:

   ```
   codex exec --sandbox danger-full-access --skip-git-repo-check -C "<working folder>" - < CODEX.md
   ```

   Claude hands over which remedy applies to which product type, the deposit and cancellation position, and every existing wording that needs correcting. Codex returns the written policy document, the till decision tree, the corrected wording for each sign or menu line with the original kept alongside it, and the refund log template. Codex never decides what the policy says and never rewrites a legal position, it only assembles what Claude has already settled into the documents staff will actually use.

10. **Read the refund log after it has a month of entries, and look for the pattern that is a training problem rather than a policy problem.** If the same dish generates most of the food-quality refunds, that is a kitchen consistency issue no policy fixes. If most refunds trace to a table not honoured at the booked time, that is a booking system issue. The log exists to show which of the two it is, not to produce a refund rate, because no rate exists to compare it against.

## Then it checks

1. Every product type sold is classified as goods, a service, or both, and the classification is stated in the policy document itself.
2. No sign, menu line or booking confirmation states "no refunds" or an equivalent blanket denial without the qualifying statutory position next to it.
3. The deposit and cancellation wording names regulation 28(1)(h) or states plainly that no statutory cooling-off right applies, and separately states the deposit terms as a contract term, not as a legal requirement.
4. The decision tree resolves every one of the four questions in step 8 to a named outcome, with no branch left as "use judgement."
5. Every remedy stated for goods traces to a numbered section of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and every remedy stated for services traces to a different numbered section, and the two are not merged into one generic "refund" answer.
6. No file states a refund rate, a chargeback avoided figure, a complaint volume benchmark or any comparison to a typical UK hospitality business.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- Never state a refund rate, a typical complaint volume, an average deposit retention percentage or any other benchmark for a single independent UK hospitality business. No published figure exists, and an owner who prices a policy against a borrowed figure will either under-provision for a real problem or worry about one they do not have.
- Never write "no refunds" or any blanket denial into a corrected sign or menu line. The correction states what is actually owed and in what circumstance, because that is what the law requires and it is also the version that survives being challenged.
- Never claim a 14 day cooling-off right exists for a table booking, private dining booking or catering contract tied to a specific date. Regulation 28(1)(h) removes it, and stating otherwise gives a customer a right they do not have and confuses a member of staff who then has to unwind it.
- Never set the deposit retention percentage or the notice period. Those are commercial decisions for the owner, tested against the unfair terms provisions, and this skill states the test, not the number.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner to check against their own booking system and signage, and for their accountant and solicitor to check before anything currently displayed is replaced or any refund is refused on the strength of it. It applies published consumer law to the facts supplied. It is not legal advice and it is not a ruling that any policy is compliant.

## Built from
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, sections 9, 10 and 11, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/part/1/chapter/2, read 23 September 2026: satisfactory quality, fitness for purpose and description for food and drink as goods, in step 1 and step 3.
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, section 19 to 24, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/part/1/chapter/2, read 23 September 2026: the short-term right to reject and the 30 day period, in step 3.
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, section 31, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/section/31, read 23 September 2026: the rule that a term cannot exclude or restrict liability for sections 9 to 11, in step 3 and step 7.
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, sections 49, 51, 52, 55 and 56, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/part/1/chapter/4, read 23 September 2026: reasonable care and skill, reasonable price, reasonable time, repeat performance and price reduction for the service element, in step 1 and step 4.
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, section 57, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/section/57, read 23 September 2026: the rule that a term cannot exclude or restrict liability for section 49, in step 4 and step 7.
- The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, regulation 28(1), https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/3134/regulation/28/made, read 23 September 2026: the catering and leisure exemption at 28(1)(h) and the perishable goods exemption at 28(1)(c), in step 5.
- GOV.UK, "Accepting returns and giving refunds: the law", https://www.gov.uk/accepting-returns-and-giving-refunds, read 23 September 2026: the rule against misleading refund signage and the change of mind position for in-person purchases, in step 2 and step 7.
- Citizens Advice, "Cancelling a service you've arranged", https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/changed-your-mind/cancelling-a-service-youve-arranged/, read 23 September 2026: the plain statement that there is "no cooling-off period for: catering or leisure activities for specific dates (eg hotel and restaurant bookings... catering for a wedding or party)", in step 5.

# refund-policy

## You are given
Every current piece of refund or cancellation wording the business displays or issues: till signage, menu lines, website terms, booking confirmation text and deposit terms, each copied verbatim with where it appears. A classification, already decided by Claude, of each product type sold (a la carte food, set menu, drinks, private dining, event catering, table booking) as goods, a service, or both, and which numbered statutory section applies to each. The deposit and cancellation position for advance bookings, already decided, including whether the catering and leisure exemption at regulation 28(1)(h) of the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 applies and what the owner's own deposit retention terms say. A log of recent refund requests where one exists, each with a date, the product type, the reason given and how it was resolved. All legal judgement calls, including which remedy applies to which product and the deposit position, have already been made by Claude and are supplied to you as finished decisions.

## Produce
Write into a `./refund-policy-output/` folder:

1. `policy.md` the customer-facing refund and cancellation policy, organised under headings that match the product classification supplied: one section for food and drink as goods, one for table service and bookings as a service, one for deposits and cancellation on advance bookings, and one plain statement that there is no general right to a refund for a change of mind about a meal already seen, ordered or eaten. Every legal statement in this file is copied from what Claude supplied; you do not add a legal claim that was not given to you.
2. `till-decision-tree.md` a flowchart in plain text or a numbered branching list, answering in order: was the item goods or a service; if goods, does it fail the standard supplied or is it a change of mind; if a service, did it fall short of the standard supplied and has repeat performance been offered; if a booking cancellation, does the exemption supplied apply and what do the deposit terms say. Every branch ends in a named action a staff member can take without escalating, taken from what Claude supplied. Any branch you cannot resolve from the supplied material is listed in `gaps.md` instead of guessed.
3. `wording-corrections.csv` with columns: `location`, `original_wording_verbatim`, `problem`, `corrected_wording`, `source_section_relied_on`. One row per piece of existing wording supplied. `problem` is exactly one of `blanket denial of statutory rights`, `overstates a right that does not exist`, `contradictory statement`, `no problem found`. `corrected_wording` is drafted only from the legal positions Claude supplied in this brief, never a general form of words you generate independently. Rows marked `no problem found` need no correction.
4. `refund-log-template.csv` with columns: `entry_ref`, `date`, `product_type`, `goods_or_service`, `reason_given_by_customer`, `remedy_offered`, `amount_gbp`, `staff_member`, `resolved_yes_no`. Pre-populate one row per entry supplied in the owner's existing log, using `entry_ref` R001 upward; leave the template ready to extend for a business with no existing log.
5. `gaps.md` a numbered list of: any product type supplied with no classification as goods, service or both; any till decision tree branch you could not resolve from the supplied material; any existing wording you could not classify against the four `problem` values; and any refund log entry missing a required field.

## Rules
- Codex assembles, classifies against categories already defined, and drafts wording strictly from legal positions supplied. It never states a new legal conclusion, never invents a statutory right or exemption not named in the brief, and never sets a deposit retention amount or a notice period.
- Never write "no refunds" or an unqualified blanket denial into `corrected_wording`. Every correction states what is owed and in what circumstance.
- Never state a refund rate, a complaint volume, a chargeback figure or any comparison to a typical business, in any file.
- Never treat a refund log entry as evidence of a wider pattern. `refund-log-template.csv` records entries; it does not summarise them into a rate or a trend.
- Use British English, GBP written as `GBP` or the pound sign, and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes in any file you write, and any supplied text containing one is recorded verbatim and flagged in `gaps.md`.
- Every quoted sign, menu line and booking term is copied exactly as supplied, including its punctuation and capitalisation, in the `original_wording_verbatim` column.
- Every file ends with this line: this is a working document prepared for the owner to check against their own signage, booking system and menu, and for their accountant and solicitor to check before anything currently displayed is replaced or a refund is refused on the strength of it. It applies legal positions supplied by the owner's adviser to a draft policy and is not a ruling that any policy is compliant.

## Return
The absolute path of every file written, the row count of `wording-corrections.csv` and how many rows carry each `problem` value, the row count of `refund-log-template.csv`, whether every branch of `till-decision-tree.md` resolved to a named action or how many did not, and the `gaps.md` item count.