How to Handle a Refund Request as a Female Founder
Get your terms wrong and a client can claim a full refund up to twelve months later, even after you've delivered the work. Shannon Kate Murray, founder and editor of High Flying Design, on what UK refund law actually requires of service businesses, and why founders give back money they were never obliged to.
Nobody teaches you what to do when a client asks for their money back.
Then again, nobody really teaches you any of it. You learn to price by getting it wrong a few times, to pitch by fumbling through calls until they stop feeling awkward, to deliver by delivering. Most of running a business is learned on the job, one rep at a time. Refunds are the exception, and not in a good way. You can't practise them, because if you're any good, they barely happen. So the first one lands with no muscle memory behind it at all.
And when it does land, you realise you have no idea what you're actually allowed to do. Do you have to say yes? Can you say no? Does it depend on what you sell, or how far along the work is, or what your contract says, assuming you even have one that covers it?
For a lot of founders, the first request comes after years of nothing. Years of good reviews and repeat clients and referrals, not a single unhappy customer, and then suddenly there it is. I know, because when it happened to me, the thing that caught me off guard wasn't the request. It was how fast I moved to make it disappear, before I'd even worked out whether I owed a thing.
That reflex is the real story here. A refund request can feel like a verdict on your work, and it almost never is, which matters, because that feeling is exactly what makes founders decide with their gut instead of the facts. Handling one well isn't only about knowing the law, though the law is far more on your side than you'd expect. It's about noticing the pull to fold, and deciding in advance that you won't do it out of guilt.
Most refunds aren't about your work
Here's the reframe that takes the sting out: most of the time, a refund request isn't a referendum on your talent. It's a gap between what the client pictured and what got delivered. A date that meant one thing to you and another to them. A scope that felt obvious on your side and vague on theirs. The work is often perfectly good. What slipped was the shared understanding of it, and that's a communication problem, not a competence one.
That distinction changes what you do next. If the work is genuinely poor, that's feedback worth taking. If the work is sound and the expectations drifted, that's a fixable gap, and it's rarely yours alone to carry. Either way, the first move isn't to reach for your card reader. It's to work out where you actually stand, and that starts with the law.
What UK law actually says about refunds for services
Whether you're legally obliged to refund comes down to who your client is. If you sell a service, there are really only two cases to know.
If your client is a consumer, meaning they're buying for reasons outside their own trade or profession, and they bought at a distance or off your premises (online, over the phone, or anywhere that isn't your own business address), they get a statutory 14-day cooling-off period. Here's the catch, and it's the one that catches founders out most: if you haven't written that cancellation right into your terms, a consumer can cancel and claim a full refund up to twelve months after the contract was formed, even after you've delivered the whole service. Silence in your terms is expensive. Put the wording in, and you can legitimately start work during that window and charge pro-rata for what you've done if they pull out.
If your client is a business, buying for their own trade or profession, there's no automatic right to a refund just because they're unhappy with the result. You deliver what you agreed. A change of heart doesn't oblige you to hand money back, as long as your terms are clear and you've actually done what the contract said.
So before you reach for the refund button, work out which of those two you're dealing with. The rules sit under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, which cover goods, services and digital content alike.
If you sell physical products rather than services, the same 14-day right applies, with a few extras worth knowing. The clock starts when the item is received rather than when the contract is signed, the customer gets another 14 days to return it after telling you they're cancelling, and you refund within 14 days of the item coming back. You have to cover standard outbound delivery, though not a premium upgrade they chose, and you can dock the refund if they've handled the item beyond what they'd reasonably do in a shop. Some things are exempt unless faulty: personalised or made-to-order items, perishables, and sealed hygiene products once opened. On top of all that, faulty or misdescribed goods carry separate rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
The area where founders trip up isn't the law itself; it's copying someone else's version of it. Lucy Wheeler, the solicitor behind small-business law firm Lucy Legal, warns against lifting your refund wording from whoever's biggest in your industry. Phrases like "no refunds" or "no contract" get passed around and copied without question, and, as she puts it, "just because someone else is doing something a particular way it doesn't mean that it's legal, even if they are a big name in the industry." In plenty of situations a client is entitled to a refund whatever your sales page claims, and a blanket "no refunds" can quietly land you on the wrong side of consumer law.
There's a subtler trap, and it's set long before any request arrives. Over-promising in your marketing can invite the refund you're dreading. If your sales page implies a transformation you can't guarantee, taking a client from anxious to anxiety-free, say, and the outcome doesn't land, the distance between what you suggested and what you delivered can amount to misrepresentation. The fix costs nothing: sense-check your copy so the enticing version of your offer doesn't promise more than the real one delivers.
Knowing all this changes the temperature of that first email. A lot of the panic comes from not knowing whether the answer has to be yes. For service founders, more often than not, it doesn't, as long as you haven't talked yourself into a corner before the work even began.
Knowing the law is only half of it. The rest is human
The law tells you where you stand. It doesn't answer the email. That part is a relationship, and how you handle it decides whether a client leaves warm or leaves badmouthing you.
That's the through-line from Am Golhar, founder of PR and media agency Abstract PR, who has built her business on client relationships and knows how fast an awkward conversation can curdle into a lost one. Her rule is to resist making it purely procedural.
"I always advise handling refund requests case by case where possible," she says. "Communication is everything. Your client relationship is everything. Approach each situation with respect and clarity and the vast majority of the time, it can be resolved without damage to the relationship."
The paperwork still earns its place, she adds, just not in the way people assume. "Having the right documentation in place from day one means you can spot when someone is taking advantage, and you have the foundation to stand firm when needed."
That's the part worth holding onto. Clear terms aren't there to win arguments. They tell you which arguments are worth having, and they give you permission to hold your ground when your gut is quietly telling you to cave.
The partial refund trap
The hard call isn't whether to refund. It's whether to offer a partial one when you don't have to, and it's exactly where founders give back money out of guilt.
Denise Duffield-Thomas, the money mindset mentor and author of Get Rich, Lucky Bitch, tells a story that should be pinned above every founder's desk. One year she ran a launch with a generous 60-day money-back guarantee. Sixty days later, landing right on Christmas Eve, she had the most refund requests she'd ever seen. The gut-punch wasn't the numbers. It was that most came from people who had raved about her programme for two months, turned up to every call, tagged her, told her it had changed their lives, and then asked for their money back anyway, because Christmas was tight and the cash was sitting there to be clawed back.
Her response wasn't to become hard. It was to let a policy do the work a feeling couldn't. "You have to let your boundaries do the work for you," she says, so there's no agonising over whether you're being mean, just a clear line you set when you were calm. She shortened the refund window, stopped taking it personally, and stopped talking herself into a yes.
So when the guilt rises, get practical. Separate your actual costs from your time. Hard costs you've already paid out, a template licence, a subscription bought for the job, a referral commission passed on before the work was done, are real losses worth protecting first. Your time is the murkier one. You can't get it back, and if you delivered what you agreed, you're under no obligation to refund it. Plenty of founders who do choose to offer something cap it well below what's asked, and often find the client would rather have the work finished than take a small sum back.
Then there's the case that catches people out completely: a client asks you to stop, declines the work, and uses it anyway. Publishing what you made, launching the site, running with the design, all of that is acceptance, and it dismantles any argument for a refund. If you ever find yourself refunding someone who's actively using what you built, stop and ask whether you're being fair to them, or just soothing your own discomfort.
There's no clean formula. But the founders who regret a refund almost always regret being too soft out of guilt, rarely too firm out of principle.
Safeguards to put in place now
Everything above is easier when the decision is half-made before the request arrives. Clear terms and a few simple habits do the deciding for you on a day when you're rattled and would rather just make it go away. A handful worth having in place:
A refund clause
State your policy plainly: a clear window to process, a clear cancellation right. If you sell to consumers, include the 14-day wording so you're not exposed to that twelve-month claim.
A pause clause
Sets out what happens when a client goes quiet. A common version says that past a set number of inactive days, the project is paused or cancelled and may need re-quoting to restart. It stops jobs dragging on for months, which is often where the real losses hide, more than in the refund itself.
A kill fee
Defines what a client owes if they cancel partway through, so you're not absorbing the cost of work already done.
Milestone payments over full upfront
Money moving in step with the work, rather than a lump sum you might later be asked to return.
Dates and scope in writing
Nearly every refund request traces back to a mismatch in expectations. A two-line message confirming deadlines and deliverables after a call heads most of them off before they start.
None of this makes you cold. It makes you clear, and clarity is the kindest thing you can hand a client, because it means neither of you is ever guessing.
Your work isn't on trial
Here's what to hold onto for next time, because there will be a next time.
Duffield-Thomas frames a refund request as a rite of passage, something that turns up precisely because you're brave enough to put yourself out into the world and sell. Seen that way, it isn't a verdict on whether you're good enough. It's proof you're in the game. It tests your systems, and quietly, your boundaries, and almost never your talent.
It helps to remember that the biggest, most profitable companies in the world process refunds and returns every single day. It's a normal line item, not a sign the business is failing. They refund, they learn what it tells them, and they carry on growing. A refund isn't the moment your business stops working. It's one of the ordinary costs of the fact that it does.
That first request I mentioned, the one that caught me off guard? I folded. Not completely, but I gave back more than I owed, because saying yes felt easier than sitting in the discomfort of holding a line. I don't regret being kind. I regret not being clear months earlier, when it would have cost me nothing. That's the whole lesson: the women who handle this well aren't the ones who never get asked. They're the ones who decided where they stand before the email ever landed.
So sort your terms this week, while nothing's on fire. You're allowed to be a real human behind the work and still hold a line, and leading without being labelled difficult or too much runs on exactly the same muscle. Get it in writing now, and the next request is just a form to process, not a referendum on your worth.
This article is general information, not legal advice. For guidance on your own contracts and terms, speak to a qualified solicitor.