Cancel a booking, and know what happens to the money.

The five stages, and what each one costs

A booking sits in exactly one of these stages at any moment. Find yours and the answer is below it. In the current phase a booking can only reach stages 1, 2 and 5: nothing is funded through Serproz, so the funded stages do not arise.

• Stage 1 — posted, nobody has accepted: Cancel at any time from the job page. Nothing has been charged and no money moves. The request is withdrawn, any live quotes close, and every provider who registered interest or quoted is told.

• Stage 2 — accepted, nothing funded yet: Cancel at any time from the job page — including once the work has started, when you are paying the provider directly. No money has been taken by Serproz, so none is returned by Serproz. The provider is notified and, for an instant booking, the reserved calendar slot is released, which is the courtesy the notice exists for. Anything you have already paid the provider directly, or owe them for work already done, is settled with them.

• Stage 3 — a milestone is funded (not reachable in the current phase): Once the in-platform payment step is switched on, cancelling an instant booking triggers a refund of its milestone rather than a release, committed together with the cancellation. A quoted job with money held cannot simply be cancelled, because cancelling around held money would strand it: the funded milestone is refunded through Serproz support, or decided by a dispute, first. When every funded milestone on a job has been refunded and nothing was released, the job closes with the last refund. Either way a job never ends up cancelled with the money still held, or refunded with nothing left open to do.

• Stage 4 — the milestone is in dispute (not reachable in the current phase): Where a milestone has been funded, cancellation is refused and the dispute decides the outcome, because the same money cannot be settled twice. A dispute can end in a full refund, a full release, or a defined split.

• Stage 5 — the work is complete: Every milestone has been released, or — when you pay the provider directly — every stage confirmed. The job is complete and is no longer cancellable. Money already paid to the provider is not clawed back by a cancellation; a problem with completed work is a dispute or a Consumer Guarantees Act claim, not a cancellation.

A milestone that has been submitted as complete auto-releases seven days later if the customer neither accepts nor disputes it. That window is your opportunity to raise a problem; once it passes and the milestone releases, Stage 5 applies. On a job you pay the provider for directly, a stage they mark complete is confirmed automatically after the same seven days if you neither confirm it nor send it back.

Who bears which cost

Being explicit about this matters more than the cancellation button. These are the actual positions, not aspirations.

• Serproz charges nothing to cancel: There is no late-cancellation fee, no admin fee and no non-refundable platform charge at any stage. If a fee were introduced it would appear in the fee schedule and on this page before it could be charged.

• The customer bears the platform fee only on work that goes ahead: No customer platform fee is charged in the current phase. Where one does apply, a cancellation with a refund returns that fee and its GST along with the milestone amount. You do not pay a platform fee for work that never happened.

• The provider bears their own preparation cost: Travel, quoting time and scheduling are the provider's own cost unless the customer separately agreed in writing to a callout or deposit for them. Serproz does not create such a charge, and does not collect one for the provider after a cancellation.

• A callout or deposit paid to the provider is between the two of you: Money paid directly to the provider — which is how every job is paid for in the current phase — is outside the milestone mechanics and outside the milestone dispute process. Serproz cannot refund what it never held; ask the provider for it, in writing.

• Materials already bought: If a provider has ordered materials specifically for your job before you cancel, that cost is a matter between you and the provider under the work contract. Ask for evidence of the order, and settle it in writing.

• Cancellation by the provider: If the assigned provider withdraws, the job is cancelled and returns to you to re-post: one step on the job page posts it again with the same details and sends it to matching providers. A provider can withdraw this way only while no money is held; a funded milestone is refunded first, on the mechanics below, once that step is in use. A pattern of withdrawal after acceptance is a conduct matter under the quality standard.

How a refund against a funded milestone works

This applies once the in-platform payment step is switched on; in the current phase Serproz holds nothing to refund. It is the mechanical sequence, and it is worth reading once, because it explains both what you get back and why the timing is not entirely in Serproz's hands.

• 1. The cancellation is recorded first: The reason is written to the job and to the audit log before any money is touched, so the intent survives even if a later step has to be retried.

• 2. A refund operation is created: The refund is an immutable, recoverable money operation rather than a fire-and-forget call. If the process crashes mid-flight, the operation is picked up and completed rather than lost or duplicated.

• 3. The amount is the milestone plus your fee: The refunded total is the milestone amount plus the customer platform fee and the GST charged on that fee. Refunding only the milestone amount would leave you out of pocket on the fee, so it is refunded with it.

• 4. It goes back the way it came: The refund is issued against the original payment, so it returns to the card or payment method that funded the milestone. Serproz cannot redirect it to a different account.

• 5. The job closes with it: When the refund leaves nothing funded or delivered on the job, the job closes in the same transaction as the refund — with the milestone, the calendar slot for a booking, and the notices to both of you. There is no window where one has happened and another has not.

• 6. Timing on your statement: Serproz issues the refund immediately. How long it takes to appear is set by your bank and card scheme, not by Serproz. If it has not appeared after your bank's stated window, contact support with the job reference.

Partial refunds do not run through cancellation. A part-refund arrives as a dispute split, with a written rationale, through the dispute process.

Rescheduling instead of cancelling

If the work is still wanted and only the timing has changed, reschedule rather than cancel.

• A reschedule keeps the provider, the agreed scope and any funded milestone in place, so nothing has to be re-quoted or re-funded.

• A proposed new time has to be confirmed by the other party before it replaces the original slot. Until it is confirmed, the original booking stands.

• Repeatedly rescheduling to avoid cancelling is not a way to hold a provider's calendar. Either party can cancel a booking that is not progressing.

Where a specific service differs

Some services carry their own, stricter cancellation terms — a scheduled inspection with a fixed appointment cost behaves differently from a general repair.

• Version recorded per service: A Popular Service cannot be made transactional until a cancellation policy version is recorded against it. That is a hard requirement in the platform, not a checklist item.

• What you will see: Where a service publishes terms that differ from this page, the difference is shown on that service and at checkout before you confirm. Absent that, this page is the policy that applies.

• This page is the baseline: The version of this policy is cancellation-policy-2026-09-22-v3. A service-specific policy can be stricter about timing, but it cannot remove a right you have under New Zealand law.

What this policy does not override

A cancellation policy is a contractual term. It sits underneath your statutory rights, not on top of them.

• Your rights under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 for services already supplied are unaffected by anything on this page.

• If work was not carried out with reasonable care and skill, the remedy is a Consumer Guarantees Act claim or a dispute, not a cancellation.

• Nothing here prevents you from going to the Disputes Tribunal, or from seeking adjudication under the Construction Contracts Act 2002 where it applies.

The guarantees, and when they attach to a marketplace transaction, are set out on the your rights page. A complaint about how Serproz handled a cancellation belongs on the complaints page.