A Can question

Can I get a refund if an SEO company fails to deliver?

3 min read

Sometimes, and it depends on two things: what your contract says, and what the company failed to do. When a contract pays for work rather than rankings, which is how an SEO contract should be written, disappointing results on their own are a weak basis for a refund. Work that was paid for and not done is a much stronger one. The most useful thing you can do, before or after a problem, is make the difference between those two visible on paper.

Work not delivered versus results not achieved

If the company did the audit, published the pages, made the fixes, and sent the reports you paid for, it delivered the service even if rankings did not move. The contract promised the work, not the outcome. A refund request in that situation is hard to support.

A refund request is far easier to support when the company did not do what the contract describes. Examples include:

  • You paid in advance for a period that has not been used, and you are ending the engagement. Money for work not yet done is the clearest case.
  • Specific deliverables in the scope never arrived: a promised audit, a set number of pages, or the agreed reports.
  • The company used methods outside what was agreed, such as link schemes the contract excluded.
  • The company misrepresented what it would do, or stopped responding.

Build the record

Put the scope of work next to what was actually delivered, month by month. For each deliverable, note the date it was due, whether it arrived, and where the evidence is: a report, a published page, a change list, an email. Keep the proposal, the contract, invoices, and any written promises. A request that says “these four items in the scope were not delivered, here are the dates” is far stronger than one that says “the results were not good enough.”

Read the money terms in your contract

Check what the contract says about prepaid fees for periods not yet started, setup fees, cancellation, and any guarantee. A setup fee may be described as covering work done at the start, which makes it harder to recover. A guarantee may come with conditions that decide whether it can ever be claimed, such as which keywords it covers and what you must do to qualify. Knowing these terms tells you what to ask for.

How to ask

Make the request in writing, refer to the contract terms, list the undelivered items with dates, and state what you are asking for: a refund of unused prepaid fees, a refund for specific undelivered work, or delivery of the missing work by a stated date. Give the company a chance to respond. If you cannot reach agreement, a lawyer can tell you what options apply where you are.

Before you sign next time

Ask how refunds work before signing, and get the answer into the contract: what happens to prepaid fees if you leave early, which fees are non-refundable, and what remedy you have if deliverables are missed. A refund that is defined in advance is far easier to obtain than one argued for afterwards.

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