Personal trainer not delivering? The s60 'due care and skill' guarantee

You signed up for a block of personal training sessions, paid upfront, and now the trainer keeps cancelling, turns up unprepared, or isn't delivering anything close to what was promised. Maybe they claimed to specialise in rehabilitation and then gave you a generic program that made an existing injury worse. Maybe they sold you a 12-week transformation package and disappeared after week four. Whatever happened, you're out of pocket and wondering whether you have any real options.

The short answer is yes — and the legal ground is stronger than most people realise. When you pay a business for a service in Australia, the Australian Consumer Law automatically guarantees that the service will be performed with due care and skill. That guarantee doesn't disappear because you signed a contract with a cancellation clause, or because the trainer's terms say "no refunds on packages."

Quick answer

Under section 60 of the Australian Consumer Law, every service supplied by a business must be performed with due care and skill. If your personal trainer failed to meet that standard — through repeated cancellations, poor technique instruction, a program that caused injury, or simply not delivering what was promised — you have a statutory right to a remedy. Depending on how serious the failure is, that remedy can be a full refund, compensation for losses, or a re-do of the service. No contract clause or "no refund" policy can take that right away.

What the law actually says

The Australian Consumer Law is Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, and it applies to services you buy from a business for personal use. Personal training is a service. The moment a business takes your money to provide it, a set of consumer guarantees automatically attaches to the transaction.

The two guarantees most relevant to personal training disputes are:

• Section 60 — Due care and skill. The service must be performed with the care and skill that a competent person in that field would bring to it. A trainer who programs exercises that are contraindicated for an injury you disclosed, who fails to correct dangerous technique, or who simply doesn't show up isn't meeting this standard.
• Section 61 — Fitness for purpose and achieving a result. If you told the trainer what you needed — "I want to train safely around a lower back condition" or "I need to prepare for a specific event" — and they said they could deliver that, the service must be reasonably fit for that purpose. If they made a specific promise about a result and you relied on it when signing up, the service must be reasonably capable of achieving that result. A failure may breach section 61, particularly where the promise was a key inducement.

When a guarantee is breached, your remedies come from section 267 of the ACL. The remedy depends on how serious the failure is:

• Major failure: You can cancel the contract and get a refund of the amount paid for the undelivered portion, or claim compensation for the difference in value between what you paid for and what you received. A major failure is one where the service is so poor that a reasonable consumer wouldn't have entered the contract had they known, or where the failure can't be fixed within a reasonable time.
• Non-major failure: The business gets a chance to fix the problem first — re-deliver the sessions, provide a substitute trainer, or otherwise remedy the issue. If they fail to do so within a reasonable time, you can then seek a refund or compensation yourself.

It's also worth knowing that if the trainer made specific claims about their qualifications, specialisations, or the results you'd achieve that turned out to be false, section 18 of the ACL on misleading and deceptive conduct may also apply. Claiming to be a certified rehabilitation specialist when you're not, for instance, is exactly the kind of conduct section 18 is designed to address. You can read more about how that plays out in practice in our guide to services that go wrong under the ACL.

When this applies (and when it doesn't)

The section 60 guarantee applies when:

• You paid a business for personal training services. This includes sole traders operating as a business — most personal trainers qualify, whether they work at a gym or independently.
• The service was for personal use (not a corporate wellness contract, for example).
• You can show the service wasn't performed with due care and skill, or wasn't fit for the purpose you communicated.

The guarantee is less likely to help you when:

• You're claiming a change of mind. If the trainer delivered exactly what was agreed and you simply decided you don't want to continue, the ACL doesn't require a refund. Check whether the contract has a cooling-off period or cancellation clause — that's your avenue in this situation.
• The result you expected was unrealistic or not specifically promised. General fitness improvements are hard to guarantee. If the trainer never claimed you'd achieve a specific result, and they delivered competent sessions, a failure to reach your personal goal isn't a breach of the guarantee.
• The guarantees generally do not apply to purely private arrangements where the person is not acting in trade or commerce. However, most personal trainers operate as a business (even as sole traders), so the ACL will usually apply.
• The failure was partly or wholly caused by your own conduct — for example, you didn't follow the program or attend sessions, and now the results aren't there.

If you're unsure whether your situation crosses the threshold, the services that go wrong under the ACL guide walks through the framework in more detail.

What to do today

Acting in a structured way from the start makes a real difference if the dispute escalates later. Here's the order of operations:

1. Document everything now. Gather your contract or terms and conditions, receipts or bank statements showing what you paid, any written communications (texts, emails, social media messages) with the trainer, and a clear record of which sessions were cancelled, rescheduled, or delivered poorly. If you suffered an injury, get a medical assessment and keep those records too.

2. Write down what was promised. Before you contact the trainer, write a clear account of what was represented to you at the time of sale — qualifications claimed, results promised, session frequency, program type. This is the baseline against which the actual service is measured.

3. Contact the trainer or business in writing. A phone call is easy to deny later. Send an email or message that states: the date of purchase, the amount paid, what was promised, what actually happened, which consumer guarantee you believe has been breached (section 60 is the key one), and what remedy you're seeking (refund of unused sessions, compensation for injury-related costs, or both). Give a specific deadline — 14 days is reasonable for most disputes.

4. Be specific about the remedy. If you've had four sessions out of a ten-session package and the trainer has been cancelling the rest, you're seeking a refund for the six undelivered sessions. If you suffered an injury due to negligent instruction, you may also be seeking compensation for medical costs. Separate these out clearly.

5. Keep using the service cautiously, or stop if it's unsafe. If continuing sessions poses a risk to your health, stop and say so in writing. If the issue is cancellations rather than safety, document each one as it happens.

If drafting that letter feels daunting, fairgo can help. Generate a free demand letter in under two minutes — the tool identifies the relevant ACL sections based on what happened and produces a letter you send under your own name.

What if the business refuses

If the trainer or their business ignores your letter or refuses to provide a remedy, you have several escalation paths — all of them free or very low cost.

Your state or territory Fair Trading body is the first stop. Each state has a free conciliation service that contacts the business on your behalf and tries to broker a resolution. This works surprisingly often — a formal complaint from a government body lands differently than a consumer email. Find the right agency for your state at /agencies.

Your state consumer tribunal is the next step if conciliation fails or the business won't engage. NCAT in New South Wales, VCAT in Victoria, QCAT in Queensland, and equivalent bodies in other states and territories handle these disputes. Filing fees are typically between $50 and $100, you don't need a lawyer, and the process is designed for ordinary people. Our guide to choosing the right tribunal explains the differences between them and how to file.

For injury-related claims, if the trainer's negligence caused you physical harm and your losses are significant, the tribunal may not be the right forum — a personal injury claim through the courts may be more appropriate. This is a situation where getting specific legal advice matters, and your state's Fair Trading body can point you in the right direction.

One thing worth knowing: a well-written demand letter that cites the ACL by section number and makes clear you know your escalation options resolves the majority of disputes before they reach a tribunal. Businesses — including sole-trader personal trainers — generally don't want a formal hearing on their record.

Common mistakes

These are the errors that most often weaken a personal trainer refund claim:

• Relying only on the contract. Many trainers include "no refund on packages" clauses. These clauses cannot override your statutory rights under the ACL. Section 64 of the ACL makes it unlawful to exclude or restrict the consumer guarantees. The clause is unenforceable to the extent it conflicts with your rights.

• Waiting too long. There's no hard deadline for a consumer guarantee claim, but the longer you wait, the harder it becomes to prove what was promised and what went wrong. Act as soon as you identify the problem.

• Claiming for results rather than conduct. The guarantee is about how the service was performed, not whether you achieved your fitness goals. Frame your complaint around what the trainer did or didn't do — cancelled sessions, unsafe programming, misrepresented qualifications — rather than "I didn't get the body I wanted."

• Accepting a credit instead of a refund without thinking it through. If the business offers you a credit for future sessions with the same trainer who already let you down, you're not obliged to accept it. For a major failure, you're entitled to a refund. Don't accept a lesser remedy under pressure without considering whether it actually fixes the problem.

• Going straight to a review platform. Leaving a negative Google review might feel satisfying, but it doesn't get your money back and can complicate your legal position if the business responds aggressively. Write the demand letter first.

• Confusing the ACL with the gym's membership contract. If your personal training sessions were bundled with a gym membership, the two contracts may be separate. Your rights against the gym for the membership are covered in our gym membership cancellation rights guide, while the personal training component is governed by section 60. Keep the two issues separate in your correspondence.

Also worth reading: our hair salon service ruined guide covers very similar territory — a service provider who didn't meet the due care and skill standard — and the approach to documenting and escalating is directly applicable here.

Related reading

• Services that go wrong under the ACL — the full framework
• Hair salon service ruined — your ACL rights explained
• Gym membership cancellation rights in Australia

This article is general information about Australian Consumer Law, not legal advice. The ACL is complex and your situation may have details that change the analysis. For advice on your specific case, see your state's Fair Trading body — full list at /agencies.