In a careful review of refunds and in the light of my own experience with persons demanding refunds, and due to two recent upsets in organizations (Australia and London) regarding refunds, the following data may be of assistance.

In 13 years involving hundreds of thousands of hours of processing and millions of dollars of income, in any organization where I was assuming direct command I have always promptly and immediately caused to be refunded every penny of the money paid by any person who was dissatisfied with his or her processing. This has been the consistent policy I myself have worked with.

In all that time I have only refunded about $3,500.

This is due in part to ensuring a certainty of results in any HGC and working hard to make sure the pc gets results, regardless of the current style or mode of processing.

This low amount of refund is also due in part to my firm policy that persons who demand refunds may have them exactly according to the Code of a Scientologist, but that any person demanding or accepting refunds thereafter shall be refused as an HGC preclear and posted for the information of field auditors.

I have only worked then with these three policies:

1. Refund at once in full any refund demanded;

2. Work hard with tech staff to ensure good results;

3. Forbid the sale of further processing to anyone receiving a refund and make the case known to Scientologists.

It is notable that all but one refund were made to persons with histories of insanity who had been accepted unwittingly for processing.

Recently Australia was sufficiently remiss in following the Code of a Scientologist as to incur potential legal action. I did not understand why and investigated. The facts resulted in my sending a cable to the Continental Director requesting that he do the usual — Refund the money and locate the by-passed charge. The case promptly resolved. What was shocking to me is that he had not immediately refunded, whatever else he did. Of course he was absent when the incident occurred, but still his first thought on finding the matter out should have been to refund the money, not because of threatened legal action, but because AN ORGANIZATION IS BOUND BY THE CODE OF A SCIENTOLOGIST.

A Central Organization is as successful as it gives good technical service.

A tough refund policy injects aberrated stable data against the confusion of bad or poor technical service. A mild refund policy keeps technical on its toes.

The world of Scientology is based on ARC and held together with ARC. Bad technical and tough attitudes concerning the remedy of poor service break down this world.

My own often repeated policy to my personal staff is “Give them what they want and keep them happy.” That sounds like a very indefinite policy indeed. But it makes people face up to and handle individual confusions as they occur, each on its own merits, it presupposes people are basically good and it is successful.

The more thetan you have present, the less policy you need and the better things run. Only a thetan can handle a post or a pc. All he needs is the know-how of minds as contained in Scientology. That was all he ever lacked. So, given that, sheer policy is poor stuff as it seeks to make a datum stand where a being should be. That’s the whole story of the GPM’s. So why not have live orgs?

Policy is only vital where agreement must exist between two or more thetans working together. Beyond that it fails. A needful policy is “We’ll start work on time” since without it the org goes ragged. A useless policy would be “The registrar must always smile at an applicant” for that puts a datum where a person should be.

So there are two kinds of policies — those needed to obtain work-together ease and those which seek to put a datum instead of a being in a position. The less you have of the latter the better things will get. The more reasonable the former, the more work will be done.

A refund policy is an agreement type policy. Needful. But it must be very mild indeed or it will stand in lieu of good service.

The new policy then is:

1. Refund any fees when and as demanded whether for training or for processing;

2. Refuse further and all future training or processing to anyone demanding a refund as the condition of refund;

3. If (2) is not acceptable to the person demanding the refund, then do all possible to smooth out the case or training situation;

4. Count only on high technical results in the HGC and Academy to inhibit or reduce demands for refunds.