Claim a refund for a delayed or cancelled service in Whangārei / Northland

BusLink (Northland Regional Council).

Your region's public-transport authority (e.g. Auckland Transport, Metlink, Metro, or your regional council's bus service).

Claim within about 30 days while the service records are fresh.

Consumer Guarantees Act 1993, ss 28–29 (may apply)

Where it applies, a paid trip is a service that must be carried out with reasonable care and skill (s 28) and be reasonably fit for purpose (s 29), so a cancelled or seriously delayed service supports a fare refund and sometimes reasonable extra costs. Some public-transport services may sit outside the Act, so frame it as 'may apply', not a certainty. Most regional operators publish no dedicated delay/cancellation refund process at all — only a general customer-service or complaints channel — but that absence does not defeat the claim: where the Act applies, the guarantee applies by force of statute, not because the operator has chosen to publish a process for this situation. Write to whatever general channel the operator does publish and argue the Act directly; an absent policy is evidence of nothing about whether the claim is well founded.

The operator's own conditions of carriage or refund policy — ONLY where that operator actually publishes one

SOME public-transport operators publish conditions of carriage, punctuality or reliability commitments, or a refund policy. Where one exists, a failure against the operator's OWN advertised standard supports a fair-refund request even where the Consumer Guarantees Act is uncertain. MANY OPERATORS PUBLISH NOTHING OF THE KIND, AND YOU MUST NOT ASSUME OTHERWISE. Verified both ways: eBus (Nelson Tasman) DOES acknowledge the Act expressly in its conditions of carriage — "Under the Consumer Guarantees Act you may have the right to a partial or full fare refund in relation to unplanned service disruptions unless the service disruption was due to: causes beyond our control; or an act, default, omission, or representation made by a party other than us or our agents" — and names a refund route for it. Metlink names its general address in its own conditions of carriage. By contrast NO delay-or-cancellation refund policy is published at all for the scheduled bus services in Waikato, Waipa or Western Bay of Plenty, and Environment Canterbury publishes none either. These are not the same desk and must not be argued as though they were. SO: NEVER quote, paraphrase, name or refer to an operator's policy, service standard, punctuality target or refund process unless it is actually in this case file. Do not write "your published refund policy", "your own service standards" or "as your conditions of carriage provide" against an operator whose policy you have not been given — that asserts the existence of a document you have not seen. Where there is no policy, argue the Consumer Guarantees Act and fairness directly: an absent policy is evidence of nothing about whether the claim is well founded.

Bee Card Scheme Terms and Conditions, cll. 61-65 — applies ONLY in a Bee Card region, and most of it cuts AGAINST the contractual route

APPLIES ONLY where the region is a Bee Card region (not Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch). Read live at beecard.co.nz/Pages/Terms and re-confirmed on 2026-09-08. Know what these clauses do BEFORE you write, because three of them close arguments off rather than opening them. Clause 63: "It will not be a breach of these Terms if you cannot use a Bee Card for a Journey because the Bee Scheme is not functional." Clause 64: neither party is liable for loss or damage caused by "the action or inaction of Transport Operators or other third parties". Clause 65: liability "is limited to $100, and excludes indirect or consequential loss, and loss of profits or income". So a CONTRACTUAL claim against the council for a service that did not run is weak on the scheme's own terms, and consequential losses are capped. Do not cite these clauses as though they helped, and do not promise the user consequential losses. BUT CLAUSE 61 RUNS THE OTHER WAY AND IS THE ONE THAT MATTERS FOR A PRIVATE TRAVELLER: "If you use the Bee Scheme for a business then the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 does not apply. Otherwise, nothing in these Terms limits your rights under the Consumer Guarantees Act or the Fair Trading Act 1986." For a consumer the disclaimers above therefore do NOT cut down the statutory guarantee. Run the claim under the Consumer Guarantees Act rather than under the scheme terms — and if the operator relies on clause 64 or clause 65 against a consumer, clause 61 is the answer to it.

• Your service was cancelled and you weren't refunded
• A long delay made the service useless (you missed a connection/appointment)
• You paid for a pass/period you couldn't use due to their failures

Only raise what genuinely happened — a well-evidenced, honest request works best. Useful evidence: The date, time, route and stop; The fare or pass you paid (card record / receipt); Any alert, app screenshot or real-time data showing the cancellation/delay; Reasonable extra costs you incurred (e.g. a taxi).

If it can't be resolved directly, the only forum is the Disputes Tribunal, which you would need to file and attend yourself. We hand you a tidy file of the correspondence and arguments to take in.