I hoped a CV-writing site would be just the job

I went to work in Spain two-and-a-half years ago, but because of Covid I was made redundant and I’m now looking for a new job.

After visiting a few websites, I came across TopCV which offered to review my CV and improve it. I decided to purchase the £129 option of a revised CV and covering letter. I didn’t check reviews.

I was sent a draft, but it was poor with lots of grammatical mistakes. I told them I was not happy and wanted a refund. I suspect the writer was not an English native speaker and based abroad, as emails were always written late in the afternoon.

I emailed support and the person who initially reviewed my CV without success. Now it is refusing to give me my money back. I have found other people on the internet in the same situation.

MC, London

The company insists that it has a strict no-refund policy since the documents are a “non-tangible” and personalised digital item.

You could have tried to reclaim your money via your card issuer as a chargeback. But it would have been down to you to prove the service you received was not fit for purpose.

TopCV says that while its standard policy does not provide refunds, it will make an exception due to the pandemic and the job market. It says it has helped more than 25,000 customers since the start of the crisis, adding: “While our goal is to make every customer happy, we regrettably learned that this customer was not satisfied. Developing a CV is an iterative process, and we offered MC a new writer.”

As you say, if you had checked earlier you would have found that many commercial CV-writing services attract large volumes of complaints online.

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