What happens if your guest search fails

When a refund happens automatically

Not found, still ambiguous, or a search that fails outright — none of these keep your money. The moment the deeds office comes back with no report to deliver, the R118 goes back to the card that paid, on its own, with nothing for you to request.

What you’ll see

The report screen tells you plainly what happened: the pull didn’t come through, and you weren’t charged. Try again in a few minutes rather than straight away — a search that fails once usually means the deeds office is briefly unreachable, not that the address itself is wrong.

If the refund itself fails

This is rare, but honest to say plainly: if the automatic refund doesn’t go through, the screen tells you so rather than repeating the line above, which would be untrue. The case is flagged, and you’re told which email address to expect to hear back on.

Not the same as a declined card

A search failing after payment is different from a card being declined before payment ever goes through. A declined card means nothing was charged in the first place, so there’s nothing to refund — that’s a separate, much more common situation, covered in this collection’s article on retrying a payment.

Next: once a refund lands, search again at findproperly.co.za/report whenever you’re ready.