REFUND POLICY

JERVIS BAY SEA SPORTS Pty Ltd, in its various trading capacities, will comply with all NSW Fair Trading requirements and acknowledge that our products, courses, trips and services come with an "Automatic Consumer Guarantee" that the product or service that you purchase will work, is what we said it is, and will do what we said it will.

SUPPORTING INFORMATION FOR THE POLICY

IMPLEMENTATION GUIDELINES All Products and Services, including trips and courses that are purchased from us, or our trading entities, will meet the following general guidelines: 1. Provided with acceptable safety, care, skill and technical knowledge by our staff2. Fit for purpose, and provide appropriate results like what we have described3. Delivered within a reasonable timeframe with appropriate consideration to, weather, environment, availability, any extenuating circumstances or other matters beyond our control If we have not followed these implementation guidelines, you may be entitled to a refund, exchange or a gift certificate depending on the situation and type of product, and what is agreed with you as the consumer. When we are assessing if a refund is appropriate for your situation, it is the above three guidelines that we will be assessing your claim against, not any other factors you may claim.

REFUND PROCESS

Each Course, Trip, Service or Product will have specific refund conditions on your invoice. The following information are the general guidelines that we operate under when determining if a refund is appropriate and what, if anything, is due to a consumer.

• If you believe that you are due a refund because one of the above guidelines has not been met, please email info@jbseasports.com and explain the circumstances and provide all relevant documentation.
• If you send a complaint to us, we will provide you with a written response to your concerns within 21 days.
• Refunds, once approved by Management, are usually processed by our Accounts Department (not the shop) within 21 days of the approval to provide a refund being sent to them.

Please be aware that these timeframes are guidelines and may change due to circumstances beyond our control. Please allow these time periods to expire before contacting us regarding your complaint or refund.

WHEN ARE YOU NOT ENTITLED TO A REFUND? 1) Under NSW Fair Trading Guidelines, and Australian Consumer Law, businesses generally do not have to provide a refund in certain circumstances such as:

• You simply changed your mind, or choose not to use the product or service that we provided for you.
• You in some way contributed to us not being able to provide a product or service; for example, not being available to pick up items or attend a course or trip within appropriate time frames.
• You did not listen to our advice about the product or service; for example if you used a product incorrectly or demanded a service in a different way than what is safe or reasonable, or went against what we advised.
• You were unclear in describing your needs or your problem and this contributed to us not being able to provide the product or service; for example, you asked for specialist Yoke Equipment but actually needed DIN.
• The failure to provide the product or service is TOTALLY BEYOND OUR CONTROL; for example, weather, local disaster, pandemic, international availability, a 3rd parties actions or other localised factors (visibility for example).

2) If we reasonably believe that your complaint falls into one of these categories we may refuse to provide a refund for the products or services that we supplied.

GIFT CERTIFICATES 1. We do not redeem Gift Certificates to cash or refund Gift Certificates under any circumstances.2. Gift Certificates are for the nominal cash value at the time of purchase, not simply the product that they were purchased for.3. We may at our sole discretion, transfer a Gift Certificate to another person or allow you to purchase stock from the store to the value of what you paid rather than the product originally purchased.4. We believe that it is reasonable that most people can rebook a cancelled service within a 3-year timeframe. COVID GIFT CERTIFICATES Barring further Government actions; Covid lockdown will not be accepted as a reason to extend a gift certificate past NOVEMBER 1, 2024 as this date will be 3 years from the final lockdown being lifted. We reserve the right not to honour gift certificates older than 3 years.

CANCELLATIONS

WHAT DO WE CONSIDER TOTALLY BEYOND OUR CONTROL It should be noted that Jervis Bay Sea Sports is not responsible for the weather, the visibility underwater or the behaviour of sea creatures. These factors are certainly "totally beyond our control" and change depending on many natural factors. Given localised changes and the size of the Bay, most times you cannot tell what the situation is until you are actually out at a site. Additionally, although all of our vessels, equipment and mechanical items are fully maintained as required within their preventative maintenance schedules, breakdowns or failures in vessels or equipment can present a safety hazard, and we are required to not run or cancel the service if, in our opinion, there is a safety issue. In certain circumstances we may be required to change, cancel or modify a trip, service, vessel or booking due to a situation beyond our control. If time permits and we believe it is reasonable to do so, we may give you the option to cancel or rebook your booking if the service will be substancially different, in these cases if a customer requests a refund we will review the situation in line with the What refund am I entitled to section below. Alternatively, If you feel that the situation or safety for a proposed, service, course or trip is unsuitable and you wish to cancel your booking; However, we still believe, as the service provider and the industry professionals, that it is safe and reasonable for it to go ahead as planned, we will treat this as a change of mind by you and apply those guidelines to your situation.

TOTAL CANCELLATION If we are forced to totally cancel a service, trip or course that you have purchased before it even starts due to bad weather, safety issues or any other reason that is out of our reasonable control, we will automatically issue you with a Gift Certificate (with a 3-year expiry date) by email. You can then use that Gift Certificate to rebook the service at a time and date that suits you anytime within the next 3 years. If you would prefer a refund to the Gift Certificate, please reply to the email and state that you would like a refund and we will provide the refund in line with the What refund am I entitled to section below. Our timeframes for rebooking a totally cancelled service meet or exceed those provided by both PADI Guidelines and NSW Legal Requirements and a 3 Year Gift Certificate allows plenty of time for any customers to re-book the service. If you, as the consumer, do not indicate within a reasonable time frame (such as a month) of the cancellation, that you would prefer a refund for a totally cancelled service we will accept that you are satisfied with a Gift Certificate and you will need to book the service at a later date. Our standard terms and conditions will apply to these Gift Certificates including that they are non-refundable.

PARTIAL CANCELLATION OF A DIVE TRIP If a Dive Trip, a Swim with Whales Trip is PARTIALLY CANCELLED by Jervis Bay Sea Sports for whatever reason after it has started, a pro-rata Gift Certificate will be provided depending on the circumstances. Our standard terms and conditions will apply to these Gift Certificates including that they are non-refundable. PARTIAL CANCELLATION OF A COURSE BY US With Courses, PADI requires that any course where you have already commenced the Practical Component is to be completed within 12 months. This means you will have 12-months to rebook a time to complete your training from the last date you attended the Practical Component, otherwise you must start the whole course again, and a re-booking fee may apply. Except in extenuating circumstances, if you choose, for what ever reason, not to proceed with a Course with us, we will generally treat it as a Change of Mind situation. We do not refund Students on courses who cannot continue with their training with us after commencing the Practical Component. Any students who so desires, will be issued with a referral document to continue it at any PADI Dive Centre worldwide if they advise us of their needs during that 12 month period.

SAFETY or ENVIRONMENTAL CANCELLATION We may, at our sole discretion, refuse to provide you with a product or service that you have booked and paid for if in the reasonable opinion of our staff you present a danger to yourself or others or you present a danger to the marine environment, for example: - You have booked and paid for a course or trip, but are not qualified for it. - You have failed to meet the requirements of a course and the Instructor has deemed that you are unsafe to continue diving at that level - You have paid a deposit for a special order, but cannot safely use that item with what you are proposing - You are observed harming marine life during a dive, and are told you cannot get back in the water with us - You are acting inappropriately, making threats or harrassing our staff or other customers In these cases you generally forfeit all monies paid to us and we will not provide you a refund. REMEMBER IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO PROVIDE US WITH YOUR APPROPRIATE CERTIFICATION IF NECESSARY TO GO DIVING

CHANGE OF MIND

NSW Fair trading advise that businesses are under no obligation to refund consumers who simply change their mind. Our position is that any refunds requested that are due to ‘a change of mind’ are purely at our discretion and made as a good will payment. In these cases, the principles that we apply to determine a goodwill refund are below:

PRODUCT RETURNS1. Products must be returned in a timely manner usually a maximum of 7 days from purchase, and unused and unopened suitable for resale.2. The amount of any refund of a product for change of mind will be determined by the items suitability to be resold.3. We may at our sole discretion refuse to provide a change of mind refund, or not refund the full amount, if the product or packaging has been damaged by you or the product cannot be reused or resold.4. We will generally charge a $25 restocking fee to deal with the cost of the refund and putting it back into stock. SERVICES, TRIPS AND EXCURSIONSAny cancellation due to you changing your mind will generally result in the loss of any deposit, fees or charges paid to us. Any changes that you require to be made to your booking after it has been paid for, may also incur a charge to cover any cost we occur in doing this. If, at our sole discretion, we decide to provide a refund, the refund will incur an appropriate administration/breaking contract charge/Fee for service from the amount originally paid to us depending on the reason for the change of mind and the time between when you advised us of the request to cancel and the date of the trip or excursion, please see the What refund am I entitled to section below and also the conditions on your Invoice.
PADI COURSESIf you change your mind about completing a course with us, we generally do not provide refunds unless there are extenuating circumstances. Rescheduling a booked course will incurr fees dependant on the timeframe given to us when rescheduling. After the practical componant has started, you can elect to get a referral document from the instructor to take to another PADI Dive Centre to complete your course, however it is the sole discretion of the Instructor as to what skills and competencies they are willing to sign off as competent within the Referral. If you start a course with us but pull out partway through to then book for another date, we may charge you a rescheduling fee dependant on the reasons. Please be aware that another PADI Dive Centre will charge you additional fees to finish the course with them, and that is purely between you and the new training provider. We will not be involved with, or responsible for, any third party arrangements with the new training provider and the charges you paid to us for the courses Practical Component are not transferable to the new Dive Centre in any way.

EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES

As a business, we do try our best to be fair and reasonable in all personal circumstances, however sometimes we simply cannot deal with your concerns or meet your expectations. If you personally suffer an extenuating circumstance and need to cancel services that you have booked with us, then please discuss this with us as soon as possible so that we can review your circumstances when assessing if a refund is appropriate and possible. PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES If you make a booking with us and then your situation changes, including but not limited to: 1. Getting diagnosed with a serious health issue, or disability2. Becoming pregnant3. Suffering from a significant personal situation or loss4. You have an accident on the day or have been hospitalised5. You have been declared permanently unfit to dive You will need to provide us with some form of documentation to demonstrate your situation that we can consider and then we may provide an appropriate refund if there is no other way to assist you in line with the What refund am I entitled to section below. LARGE SCALE MASS EVENTS 1. DURING LARGE SCALE MASS EVENTS (Such as bushfires, Covid-19, floods or similar) that effect people’s ability to travel, where there are general community health and safety concerns or our ability to open and provide services is impacted through circumstances totally beyond anyone’s reasonable control, Be aware that we will not review requests for refund until the situation stabilises, especially if we are directly affected, if our store is forced to close, or we don’t know what the recovery situation will be. As a small business, we simply do not have the resources to fund months of closure such as occurred with COVID and as a result we generally close to save costs which means we will not even see your request untill we return. The timing of any refunds due to a large scale mass event will depend on our ability to fund them after the event has stabilised and normal operations can resume.

What REfund am I entitled to

TOTAL CANCELLATION If you seek a refund off us for a total cancellation, and it meets the relevant guidelines for the situation as detailed above, or we decide to provide a refund to you for extenuating circumstances, we will provide the refund as soon as possible to either your card or bank account depending on how you paid us. The amount of the refund will be less administration fees that are included in your booking. This would usually be $75 but could vary depending on each situation. PARTIAL CANCELLATION If a service, whether a Boat Trip or Swim with Wales Adventure or similar has started, and you seek a refund off us due to that trip being forced to return early, any refund will be solely at our discretion and generally only in extenuating circumstances. The amount to be refunded will be based off the amount of time spent on the trip or service. From the total booking charge, a $75 administration charge for costs will be taken. On the remaining amount for the booking you will be charged 25% of the remaining amount per hour on the trip from the departure time to the early finish time. If the time on the trip was over 4 hours no refund will be payable to you. COURSE REFUNDS If you are seeking a refund off us due to extenuating circumstances, for a course that you have booked and cannot complete. We will reduce the refunded amount by the cost of any consumables used or opened by you (i.e. PADI eLearning Pass, Text Books, etc.) as well as the prorata cost for any parts of the course that you have already completed or attempted as well as the administration charge.
This is because - PADI eLearning courses and textbooks can be used at any PADI Dive Centre in the World to continue your training.- We cannot refund, redeem, or reuse these items once you have opened them as they are provided by a third party (PADI) to you directly for your personal use,- PADI will not refund the item if it is used or opened in any way. - We will have to pay the instructor and other staff for the time you spent on the course and general administration regarding your booking. After the retail cost of any consumables used or opened by you (i.e. PADI eLearning Pass, Text Books, etc.) is subtracted, a $75 administration charge will be taken from your payment, and the per day cost of any training provided to you by us will also be subtracted (this is $275 per day or part thereof). We will then refund you any remaining amount. If, as a student you fail to complete all pre-tests and pre-learning, prior to the commencement of your Practical Componant, or you fail to turn up without reasonable notice, you will be liable for a $110 rescheduling fee to transfer or to move to another date and time.