Contact and support

How to reach us

Email support@driveau.com. That one address covers support, complaints, privacy requests and safety concerns.

We do not offer phone support, and we are not available around the clock. We aim to respond as soon as we reasonably can — we have not published a response time, because we will not promise one we cannot reliably meet.

Safety concerns come first. If your message is about safety, or the safety of a child, say so and we will look at it ahead of everything else.

What to include

Only what we reasonably need:

• the email address on your DriveAU account
• the booking reference, if it is about a particular lesson
• what happened, in your own words, and roughly when
• anything else that helps — a screenshot, for instance

Tell us as soon as you reasonably can. Problems are easier to look into while the details are fresh. Contacting us later than you would have liked does not take away your rights.

Making a complaint

There is no separate complaints form — email support@driveau.com and say that is what it is. It helps to put complaint in the subject.

Where we treat something as a complaint, we open a record for it. A person decides that; it does not happen automatically to every email. A record carries a reference, what it is about, how urgent it is, where it has got to, and — where it is relevant — the lesson and the people it concerns. Everything that then happens to it is added as an entry that cannot be edited or removed afterwards.

Because records are kept against the lesson and the people involved, we can see when something keeps happening — a pattern no single complaint would show on its own.

What happens after you contact us

1. A person reads it. Every complaint is handled by a person. Nothing about it is decided automatically.
2. We may ask you for more, or ask the other person involved for their account of what happened.
3. We decide what to do, and we record the outcome.
4. We tell you the outcome.

Making a report does not prove it. A report is an account of what someone says happened. It is not a finding, and we do not treat it as one — we look into things properly and use neutral language until we know more.

We cannot promise an outcome. Contacting us does not guarantee a refund, a suspension, or any other particular result.

Something in a message

The DriveAU iOS and Android apps let a learner and an instructor send each other messages about their lessons. There is no messaging on this website, and parents and guardians have no messaging of their own.

There is no way to report a message from inside the app yet, and no way to block someone. If a message worries you — anything abusive, threatening, harassing, or that makes you feel unsafe — email support@driveau.com and tell us who the conversation was with and roughly when. A person will read it, and a DriveAU administrator is able to look at the conversation to investigate.

Nobody is watching messages as they are sent. There is no monitoring and no moderation. If someone is in immediate danger, call 000 first.

About a lesson

Lessons are provided by independent driving instructors, so a question about how a lesson was taught is in the first instance one for your instructor. You can always raise it with us as well — we will listen, and it may affect whether an instructor continues on DriveAU.

Money, cancellations and refunds

We can look into a payment that failed or looks wrong, a refund you are waiting on, a cancellation, or a lesson that did not go ahead. The rules themselves — the 24-hour cancellation window, what happens when an instructor cancels, and why we do not do part-refunds — are set out in our cancellations and refunds policy. Contacting us does not change those rules, and asking is not a promise that we will refund.

Privacy

To ask what information we hold about you, to correct it, to have it deleted, or to make a privacy complaint, email support@driveau.com and say it is a privacy request. Our privacy policy explains what we hold and why.

If your complaint is about DriveAU

Tell us, and say that is what it is. Where it is reasonably practicable, the person your complaint is about will not be the only person deciding it.

We will be honest about our size. DriveAU is a small business. We do not have an independent complaints department and we are not going to pretend otherwise. If there is no genuinely independent person available to review a matter, we will tell you that rather than describe a review as independent when it is not.

Your rights

This page is a way to reach us. It is not a limit on your rights. Nothing here prevents you from taking a matter to a consumer protection agency, an ombudsman, a tribunal, a court or a regulator, and nothing here excludes or restricts any right or remedy that cannot lawfully be excluded — including under the Australian Consumer Law.

What we will never ask you for

We will never ask for your full card number, expiry date or security code, your bank login or PIN, or your DriveAU password — and you should never email them to us. Payments are handled by Stripe, so we do not have your card details in the first place. If anyone claiming to be from DriveAU asks you for them, it is not us.

Please do not email copies of identity documents unless we have specifically asked you to.

General enquiries

For anything else, including partnerships and press, email hello@driveau.com.