Customer Wants Their Deposit Back? A Wedding Supplier’s Defence Guide

You pour yourself into getting weddings and events right, and then an email lands: the customer wants to cancel, wants their deposit back, or says what you delivered was not what was promised. It is stressful, it feels personal, and it is easy to react badly in either direction – refunding money you were entitled to keep, or digging in on money you have to return. This page sets out, in plain terms, how an Australian wedding or event supplier (photographer, venue, caterer, florist, celebrant, planner, hire company, band or DJ) can respond properly, lawfully, and in a way that protects the business.

The one distinction that decides almost everything

Before anything else, work out which of two very different situations you are in. The law treats them in opposite ways, and most disputes go wrong because the supplier answered the wrong one.

The customer is cancelling or has changed their mind. The wedding is off, the date changed, they found someone cheaper, or they simply changed their mind. In this situation there is no automatic right to a refund under the Australian Consumer Law. The ACCC is clear that consumers are not entitled to a refund where they “got what they asked for but simply changed their mind, found the product cheaper somewhere else, or decided they didn’t like the purchase.” What is refundable is governed by your booking contract – the ACCC’s position is that in a cancellation the customer’s right to a refund “will generally depend on the terms and conditions of their booking.” A “no refunds for change of mind” position is lawful.

You failed to deliver the service, or delivered it defectively. This is the opposite. Here it is not the customer who walked away – it is you who did not supply what was promised, supplied it late, or supplied it below the standard the law guarantees. Now the consumer guarantees apply in full, and the booking contract cannot sign them away. A “no refunds” line is no answer to a genuine failure.

Decide this honestly first. A change-of-mind cancellation is a contract question; a failure on your side is a consumer-guarantee question. Everything else follows from which one it is.

Your service obligations: the guarantees

When you supply services to a consumer in trade or commerce, three guarantees apply automatically and cannot be contracted out of:

• Due care and skill (s 60) – the service is carried out competently and carefully.
• Fitness for a particular purpose or result (s 61) – where the customer made known a purpose or the result they wanted, the service and anything it produces is reasonably fit for that purpose or might reasonably be expected to achieve that result. This has a limit: it does not apply where the customer did not rely on your skill or judgement, or where it was unreasonable to rely on it (s 61(3)).
• Reasonable time (s 62) – where no time is fixed, the service is supplied within a reasonable time. Most weddings fix the date, so the date governs; but delivery of albums, edited photos or video that is not tied to a fixed date must still be within a reasonable time.

When you fail, the remedy depends on how serious it is. For a minor problem, you must fix it for free within a reasonable time, and you may choose how; you do not have to refund for a minor problem. For a major failure, the customer chooses: cancel and get a refund, or keep the service at a reduced price – plus, in some cases, compensation for reasonably foreseeable loss. Crucially, a refund for a major failure need not be the whole fee: the ACCC states the customer “needs to pay a reasonable amount for any work done so far and as expected”, and how much comes back depends on whether the services were provided at all and whether what was provided had problems. If you have genuinely done part of the work, a fair refund reflects only what was not provided or was defective.

How deposits and cancellation fees are judged

When the customer has changed their mind, the booking contract governs – but a term is not lawful just because it is written down and signed. A non-refundable-deposit term or a cancellation fee in a standard-form consumer or small business contract is only enforceable so far as it is a fair term under the unfair-contract-terms law (ss 23-28).

A term is void if it is unfair and the contract is standard form. A term is unfair only if all three limbs are met: it causes a significant imbalance; it is not reasonably necessary to protect your legitimate interests; and it would cause detriment. The burden is on you – a term is presumed not reasonably necessary unless you prove it is (s 24(4)). The statutory examples of possibly unfair terms (s 25) include a term that lets one party but not the other avoid or limit performance, or that penalises the other party for ending the contract – so a one-sided “we keep everything, you get nothing, but we can cancel freely” clause is the paradigm risk. The headline deposit amount, as part of the upfront price, is likely outside the regime (s 26); the one-sided forfeiture mechanism around it is not.

Since 9 November 2023, relying on an unfair contract term is not merely unenforceable – it is prohibited and can carry penalties. So the safe and lawful approach is simple: set and apply your deposit and cancellation terms to your genuine costs and loss – deposit administration, holding the date off the market, work already done, suppliers you have in turn booked. A term pitched to those genuine interests, applied transparently and not one-sided, is the kind that stands up. An out-of-proportion forfeiture is the kind that is void.

What you cannot do

• Rely on an unfair cancellation or forfeiture term.
• Use a “no refunds” sign or clause to defeat a genuine failure on your side – the guarantees cannot be removed by anything you say or do.
• Misrepresent the customer’s rights or remedies (s 29(1)(m)) – for example telling them “deposits are never refundable” or “the consumer law does not apply to us” when a genuine failure would give them a remedy.
• Keep money for a service you did not and will not provide.

How to respond

Acknowledge the demand in writing, promptly. Work out honestly whether this is a change of mind (apply only a fair cancellation term, retain your genuine loss, refund the rest) or a failure on your side (provide the remedy – fix a minor problem, give the customer their choice on a major one). Set out your reasoning and your figures plainly; a transparent explanation is more persuasive and more likely to be treated as fair. Keep every record: the booking contract, the correspondence, your calculation of costs, and evidence of what you delivered. If it escalates, you engage with Fair Trading or Consumer Affairs, and then the state tribunal or small claims court – respond on time, be accurate, and bring your records.

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This is general information about the law, not legal advice. Claim Done is not a law firm.

Questions people ask