A tile order can go wrong in ways no amount of measuring prevents. The pallet arrives with crushed boxes, the colour is not the one that was ordered, or the boxes hold a size the order did not name.
What happens next is not settled by a shop’s returns page. It is settled by guarantees that attach to the goods automatically, and that a returns page is not permitted to narrow. This page sets out what those guarantees say in the ACCC’s published wording, and what the product pages here do and do not claim — because under one of them, what a seller says about a product is the thing the seller has to make good.
The ACCC quotations were read on 24 August 2026; the sixty product pages and the collection counts were recounted on 28 August 2026.
The guarantees come with the goods, not with the policy
The ACCC’s guidance on consumer rights and guarantees puts the starting point in one sentence: “Consumers automatically receive these consumer guarantees when they buy goods and services.” Nothing has to be registered, asked for or paid for. The same page adds that “it is unlawful for businesses to mislead consumers about these rights.”
Under the heading “Businesses can’t take away a consumer’s rights”, the ACCC writes that the basic rights “can’t be taken away by anything a business says or does”, and names three attempts that do not work: a “no refunds” sign, “saying they aren’t responsible for problems with a product or service”, and “suggesting the consumer must sign an extended warranty to avoid losing these basic rights after a certain date”.
The ACCC’s page on repair, replace, refund, cancel says the same thing from the other side: “It’s illegal for businesses to rely on store policies or terms and conditions which deny these rights. For example, policies which say ‘no refunds’ or ‘no refunds or exchanges on sale items’.”
The refund policy on this site carries the matching sentence — “Nothing in this policy limits your rights under the Australian Consumer Law” — which is worth reading as a statement of rank rather than a courtesy. Where a shop policy and the guarantees disagree, the policy is the part that gives way.
382 characters of the refund policy were written by the law
Businesses that give a warranty against defects have to reproduce a fixed form of words. The ACCC’s warranties guidance for business states that “the law specifies the text that a business must exactly include”, and then sets out the mandatory text for the supply of goods:
“Our goods come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. You are entitled to a replacement or refund for a major failure and compensation for any other reasonably foreseeable loss or damage. You are also entitled to have the goods repaired or replaced if the goods fail to be of acceptable quality and the failure does not amount to a major failure.”
That paragraph appears on this site’s refund policy page. Set the two side by side and, once line breaks are normalised, all 382 characters are identical — as they have to be, since the wording is prescribed rather than drafted. It is not a promise this shop invented, and not one this shop can edit.
One wrinkle is worth carrying with you. The mandatory text says “major failure”. The ACCC’s consumer-facing pages say “major problem”. They are the same threshold under two labels, so a phrase copied off a shop’s policy page can still be found in the ACCC’s own guidance.
What counts as a major problem, and who chooses the remedy
The distinction decides who picks what happens next. The ACCC’s definition: “A major problem means the product:
- is unsafe
- is very different from the description or sample
- has either one serious problem or several smaller problems that would stop someone buying the product if they knew about them beforehand
- can’t be used for its normal purpose, or another purpose the consumer told the seller about before they bought it, and can’t easily be fixed within a reasonable time.”
Where the problem is major, the choice belongs to the buyer, not the shop: “it must give the consumer the choice of a: refund, or replacement of the same type of product.” Three further sentences each close a common argument:
- “A refund should be the full amount the consumer paid for the product. The business must not deduct an amount from a refund to take into account the use a consumer has had of the product.”
- “Refunds should be provided in the same form as the original payment, unless the business and consumer agree otherwise.”
- “A consumer can also choose to keep the product but be compensated for the drop in value caused by the problem.”
Where the problem is minor, the shop chooses at first: “the business must fix the problem or repair the product for free”, and it “does not have to offer a replacement or refund for a minor problem, although it can choose to do this”.
That is not the end of it. If the business “can’t or won’t repair or fix the problem within a reasonable amount of time, or at all”, the ACCC says the consumer is then entitled to have it done elsewhere at the business’s cost, or to “get a refund or replacement instead”, or to keep the product and be compensated. A minor problem left unfixed does not stay minor.
Two sentences frame all of it. A business “has the right to assess the product or service before they provide a remedy”, so an inspection is a legitimate step rather than a stall. But a business “must not tell consumers to go to the manufacturer for a remedy” — the shop that sold the tiles is the one that has to sort it out.
Fit for a particular purpose is switched on by what the seller says
This is the guarantee that bears hardest on how a tile shop is allowed to write. Three situations trigger it, and any one is enough. “This guarantee applies when:
- a consumer tells a business they want to use a product for a particular purpose
- the consumer buys the product based on the advice of the business
- the business advertises in any way that the product can be used for a particular purpose.
In any of these situations, the product that the business sells must be fit for the particular purpose stated.”
Read the third limb carefully. “In any way” describes the form the advertising can take — written, spoken, in a photograph — rather than meaning that any remark whatsoever counts. What matters is the direction: the guarantee is switched on by something the seller put out, not by something the buyer worked out afterwards.
Two exceptions are published alongside it: the guarantee does not apply “if it’s unreasonable for the consumer to rely on the skill or judgement of the business”, or “if the business tells the consumer the product won’t meet their purpose, but the consumer buys the product anyway”.
Nine endorsement phrases, and none of them on any of the sixty product pages
That guarantee is a reason to count what a range actually says rather than assert a house rule. Across all sixty product pages here, none of these appears anywhere in the visible text: suitable for, ideal for, perfect for, recommended for, designed for, great for, approved for, rated for, safe for. Nor does waterproof, and nor does any claim of frost resistance — the only page containing the string “frost” carries it as part of a tile’s name. The FAQ already states the plain version, that no page here states a frost, load or structural classification for any tile; what counting adds is the reminder that a careless search turns a product name into a claim.
All sixty carry the same two sentences instead: “Use a qualified tiler and confirm the substrate, adhesive, grout, movement joints, sealing and care method for the exact tile and intended application before work begins”, and “A sample helps with colour and finish comparison but does not prove project suitability, final stock, exact batch appearance, box coverage or freight.”
What would be false is to stretch that into a claim that the range never says where a tile goes. It does. Three of the sixty name a kitchen, a bathroom or a splashback in their description — among them “for kitchens and bathrooms” and “for high-contrast splashbacks”. Twelve name a location of some kind once floors, walls and niches are counted in.
Those are sentences about where a tile is meant to go, published by the business, and under the third limb they are the sort of statement the guarantee attaches to. Counting them is more useful than a slogan about endorsing nothing, which a page of our own copy would disprove.
Sixteen of the thirty-six collection pages say the shelf label is not a claim
Product pages are not the only place a shop advertises. A collection name is a shelf label, and a shelf label is exactly the kind of statement the third limb watches. Of the fifty-nine collections publicly listed here as at 28 August 2026, thirty-six carry a description, and sixteen of those thirty-six use the words “suitability”, “not approval” or “not a claim about … intended application” to say the grouping decides nothing.
Several go further and rule out inference from the name itself. Subway tiles reads “No application suitability or colour grouping is inferred from product names or imagery.” Large format tiles reads “The grouping follows recorded tile dimensions, not a claim about material or intended application.” Those sentences are not modesty. They are a shop declining to advertise a purpose it has not verified, on the pages where a purpose would be easiest to imply.
Thirty-eight blanks are questions, not holes
The more interesting half is what is missing. Thirty-eight of the sixty product pages record no slip class, and on all thirty-eight the panel reads Not specified rather than filling the gap with an assumption. What to confirm before choosing takes the specifications panel row by row and asks which rows are filled. This page asks a narrower question about the empty ones: what is a blank worth to you?
All sixty carry the same note: “Fields shown as ‘Not specified’ are not stated in the supplier’s current documentation for this tile.” None of them tells you what to do next, so asking is a move you have to make yourself — and it is worth making in a message that leaves a record.
Telling the business what you intend to use the tile for, before you buy, is the first of the three limbs in its own right. An answer from the business about whether the tile will do that job is the second. A blank on a page is not a hole in your rights. It is a question not yet asked, and the answer to it is worth more than a printed adjective would have been.
Description and sample are two more guarantees
Colour is the complaint a tile shop hears most, and it has guarantees of its own. Under the heading “Matches description”, the ACCC states that “any description of a product by a business must be accurate, whether written or spoken”, and illustrates it with a consumer who ordered pink towels from an online colour chart and received red ones.
Alongside it sits “Matches sample or demonstration model”: “If a consumer buys a product based on a sample or demonstration model, the product must have the same quality and features.” That one bears directly on a range where every tile is also sold as a sample piece, and where the product pages themselves say a sample “does not prove … exact batch appearance”.
Whether a particular difference between a sample and a delivered pallet falls inside those words is not something this page can decide for you. What it can tell you is that both guarantees exist, and that keeping the sample — alongside a photograph of what arrives — is what makes the comparison possible at all. How to compare tile scale covers what a photograph cannot carry about size; the same limit applies to colour.
Who pays to send it back
“Consumers have the right to return a product if they think there’s a problem.” It “does not have to be in its original packaging”, though a business may ask for “some form of proof of purchase, such as a receipt”.
Freight is split in two. “Consumers are responsible for returning products that can be posted or easily returned.” Against that, “businesses are responsible for paying for the shipping costs or collecting faulty products that are large, heavy or hard to remove”. Tiles are not among the ACCC’s published examples of that second category, and whether a particular pallet answers the description is not something this page can decide for you — but those are the words of the test, and on a pallet order they are worth quoting.
Costs already paid are recoverable: “if the business confirms that the product does have a problem, it must reimburse the consumer for any reasonable return costs they have already paid.” Keep your postage receipts either way.
Fourteen days, 20%, and the case where neither applies
This site’s refund policy sets out an ordinary change-of-mind path: “We accept returns for 14 days from delivery”, tiles unopened in full boxes with proof of purchase; “return freight is paid by the customer, and a restocking fee of 20% of the returned tile value applies”; and no returns on tiles cut, installed or partially used, on opened boxes, or on sample pieces. Approved refunds go back “to your original payment method within 10 business days”.
Then comes the sentence that matters most on that page: “The 14-day window, the restocking fee and customer-paid return freight do not apply to damaged, faulty or incorrect goods. We cover the cost of putting those right.”
Two mechanisms are running there, and they are worth keeping apart. Changing your mind is not covered by the consumer guarantees at all; the fourteen days, the freight and the 20% belong to that voluntary path, and the ACCC’s rule about such a path is that “if a business has a ‘change of mind’ policy, they must follow it”. Goods that arrive damaged, faulty or not as ordered are the other mechanism entirely, and there the timetable and the fees are not in play.
A warranty is extra, never instead
The ACCC’s consumer page on warranties heads one section “Warranties are voluntary and are additional to consumer guarantees”, then states it plainly: “Warranties can’t replace, change or take away a consumer’s basic rights. These basic rights can last longer than a business’s warranty.”
Which makes an expiry date less final than it looks: “after the warranty expires, the consumer guarantee of acceptable quality usually still applies.” Businesses “must not mislead consumers into thinking that their rights are limited to the remedies or timeframe set out in a warranty against defects”.
The ACCC’s own illustration of a warranty against defects happens to be a tiling one: a contract in which “the tiler will repair any tiles that become loose within 5 years of the tiling being done”. Note whose promise that is. A tiler’s undertaking about the tiling work is a separate thing from the guarantees that came with the tiles when they were bought, and a renovation can carry both at once without either shortening the other.
When the guarantees do not apply
The guarantees are not cover against every disappointment. Consumers are not entitled to a remedy where they “got what they asked for but simply changed their mind”, where “the problem with the product was caused by the consumer misusing it”, or where “they knew of or were made aware of the problem with the product before they bought it” — though on that last one a consumer may still claim “for a different problem with the product that wasn’t made clear to them”.
Buying for a business is a boundary rather than an exclusion: goods bought for business use are still covered where they cost “less than $100,000 including GST” or are “commonly bought for personal, domestic or household use”, with carve-outs for goods bought “for resupply”. Where a given trade purchase of tiles lands is a question about that purchase, and this page does not answer it.
If an order arrives wrong
- Photograph the packaging, the labels and the affected tiles before anything is moved, disposed of or installed.
- Keep the order reference and your proof of purchase; a receipt is what the ACCC names.
- Write to
sales@tilekind.com.ausaying what is wrong and what you are asking for — repair, replacement or refund — and keep the thread. - Wait for a return to be approved before sending anything back. The refund policy states that “items sent back without an approved return will not be accepted”.
- Do not cut or lay a tile you believe is wrong. That is about preserving the evidence. It is not the policy bar on returning cut or installed tiles — that bar sits on the change-of-mind path described above, not on goods that arrived damaged, faulty or incorrect.
- Keep receipts for any postage or transport you pay, so they can be reimbursed if a problem is confirmed.
This page is a reading of published guidance on a stated date. It is not legal advice and not a ruling about any particular order — the ACCC says the same of itself, that it does not “resolve individual disputes or give legal advice about a consumer’s right to a repair, replacement or refund”. Guidance is revised, so the quotations here are tied to 24 August 2026, and the four ACCC pages linked above are the source of every one of them. If something arrived wrong, write to sales@tilekind.com.au; the guarantees described here travel with the order whether or not anyone quotes them.
Passages quoted from the ACCC on this page are © Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. The wording is unchanged; where the ACCC sets a definition out as a list, it is set as a list here too. They were read on 24 August 2026.
Where this guide sits: Where to start sets out the order the guides follow.