When you’re on a payment plan, it’s normal for your account to go into credit from time to time. To get a refund, we'll need to cancel your payment plan so the instalment amount can be re-assessed without a credit balance.
How payment plans work
On payment plans, your payments are evened out so that sometimes you’ll use less than what you pay for, so you have credit in your account for when you use more than what you’re paying for. Other times, it may just be that your account was accidentally overcharged, and so a credit will appear.
Getting a refund
If you choose to request a refund of any credit, we may need to adjust your payment plan to keep your instalment amounts as close as possible to the actual cost of your usage, also covering any debt you may be paying off. To do this we need to cancel your payment plan and set it back up again. This is because the instalment amounts take into consideration your account balance and usage history.
How it affects your instalment amount
It’s possible that if you request a refund while you’re on a payment plan, your instalment amount will increase after the refund’s been paid. In this case, we’ll give you a call before setting up your new payment plan and talk you through any changes to your instalment amounts.
We’ll make sure any change to your payment plan works for you first. If your instalment amounts don’t change or are reduced, we'll simply set up your plan again automatically.
If I get a refund, does it count as a missed plan instalment?
Absolutely not. We only cancel your plan to refund your money and adjust your plan to make sure you're paying the right amount. So, this will not count as a broken or missed payment plan instalment. Once we set up your payment plan again, everything will go on as normal, though you may have a new instalment amount.
When we pay your refund credit, we have to:
pay it back to the card or account you paid with, or
pay it back to the bank account you used when you paid your last bill, or
pay it by cheque if you paid via Centrepay or with cash
So, for example, if you paid using your Visa card, we'll pay the refund back to that card.