Our refund guarantee

We stand behind the accuracy of what we ship. If a report contains a factual inaccuracy or a quality issue, we correct it or refund it. If our central prediction turns out to be wrong, we refund the fee for that document. Three specific guarantees:

1. Every report — accuracy and quality guarantee

If a report contains a factual inaccuracy or quality issue — a material error in the planning controls identified, an incorrect application of eligibility criteria, or a report that doesn't reflect the property or proposal details you gave us — contact us within 30 days of purchase via the contact page with your payment receipt and a description of the issue. Where we agree there's an inaccuracy, we'll either reissue a corrected report at no cost or refund your purchase in full.

What this doesn't cover: a report that is accurate but delivers news you didn't want — for example, correctly advising that your proposal doesn't meet CDC eligibility criteria. Finding that out for $39 instead of after a refusal is the point of the report. Nothing here limits your rights under the Australian Consumer Law.

2. DA Report — prediction accuracy guarantee

If your DA Report scored council's refusal risk at 20% or lower and council refuses your DA, we refund the $149 DA Report fee. Applies to DAs lodged within 60 days of purchase and determined within 12 months. Send the refusal letter to refunds@planadvice.com.au and we'll refund within 5 business days.

Why we can offer this: our predictions are cited against 73,000+ real DA outcomes from your council. A prediction score of ≤ 20% means our model saw very few refusals like your case. If we're wrong about that, you keep the report and we refund the fee.

3. Full SEE — council rejection guarantee

If council rejects your DA (not requests further information — a full rejection) and their reason letter specifically names the Statement of Environmental Effects as the reason, we refund the $399 Full SEE fee (or $59 SEE Outline fee). Applies to SEEs lodged within 60 days of purchase.

Why we can offer this: our SEE is structured to Schedule 1 of the EP&A Regulation 2021 and Section 4.15 of the EP&A Act. A rejection where council specifically cites a defective SEE is very rare — but if it happens, you keep the report and we refund the fee.

What's not covered

A report that is accurate but reports an outcome you hoped would be different.
Requests for further information (RFIs) — these are normal and happen with planner-prepared documents too. Every paid document unlocks free re-runs for 60 days from purchase so you can address RFIs at no cost.
Refusals for reasons unrelated to the specific document (e.g. neighbour objections upheld, submission-quality issues, engineering matters).
Reports on DAs lodged more than 60 days after purchase (the corpus data may have drifted).

Refund process: for an accuracy or quality claim, use the contact page with your payment receipt and a description of the issue. For a prediction or rejection claim, email refunds@planadvice.com.au with your DA reference number, your PlanAdvice document ID (visible in your account) and a scan or link to the council's refusal letter. Refunds are processed back to the original payment method within 5 business days. The full wording is in clause 5 of our Terms.

Start with the free property analysis

How the Plan Advice accuracy and refund guarantee works

Buying a report about a Development Application is a judgement call — you can’t inspect the product before you pay. Our guarantee is about the one thing that matters: the report has to be right. If it contains a factual inaccuracy or a quality issue, tell us within 30 days of purchase and we’ll either correct and reissue it at no cost or refund your purchase in full. On top of that, if the council’s determination contradicts the outlook we published, we refund the report — with no time limit at all.

What the guarantee covers

The accuracy and quality guarantee applies to every paid report on the site: the $39 CDC Fast-Track Check, the $149 DA Requirements Analysis, the $199 Pre-DA Meeting Report, the $299 Pre-DA Ready Bundle, the $649 Standard Complete Pack and the $949 Complete Pack with Clause 4.6, plus the $99 Clause 4.6 Pre-DA Memo add-on. It also covers the Statement of Environmental Effects add-ons where you purchase them separately.

What counts as an inaccuracy or quality issue

A material error in the planning controls we identified, an incorrect application of eligibility criteria, a citation that turns out to be wrong, or a report that doesn’t reflect the property or proposal details you gave us. What it doesn’t cover is a report that is accurate but delivers news you didn’t want — for example, correctly advising that your proposal doesn’t meet CDC eligibility criteria. That report did its job, and knowing early is precisely what you paid for.

How to claim

Contact us within thirty days of purchase via the contact page with your payment receipt and a short description of the issue — which control, which finding, and what you believe is wrong. Where we agree there’s an inaccuracy or quality issue, we’ll either reissue a corrected report at no additional cost or refund the full report price to your original payment method, at our discretion. We aim to resolve claims within one business day.

Where the guarantee doesn’t apply

The guarantee applies to Plan Advice reports themselves, not to third-party costs. If you have already paid council DA lodgement fees, engaged an architect, or commissioned a certifier on the strength of a Plan Advice report, we can’t refund those. Claims about an inaccuracy also need to reach us within 30 days of purchase — after that the LEP or DCP may have moved on. If you’d like a fresh report on the same address after 30 days, buy the current version at the current price and we’ll credit you 20% off with a promo code.

Why we can afford to guarantee this

Because our methodology is auditable end-to-end — deterministic compliance checks, LEP/DCP citations you can Google-verify, and a precedent corpus of 413,770 real determinations — the failure mode is rarely "the report was wrong". Where it happens, it’s usually a live-data outage (the NSW Spatial layer was down for that minute) or the report answered a slightly different question to the one you were really asking. Both are our problem to fix, not yours to pay for.

The accuracy commitment behind the guarantee

On top of the 30-day window, we track the predicted outcome of every paid report against the council’s later determination. If we said your DA would be approved with conditions and council refused it, we refund the report even if you’re outside the 30-day window. That commitment is unlimited by time — we’ll never leave a paying customer stuck with a report whose central prediction turned out to be wrong.

Your rights either way

Nothing in this guarantee limits your rights under the Australian Consumer Law, including your right to a remedy where a service isn’t provided with due care and skill or isn’t fit for its disclosed purpose. The guarantee sits alongside those rights; it doesn’t replace them. The full wording is in clause 5 of our Terms & Conditions.