The short version
- There is no general federal right in the US to cancel an online purchase. The three-day "cooling-off" rule people remember is a door-to-door sales rule and excludes sales made remotely.
- In the EU there is a 14-day right of withdrawal on distance sales — but it is lost for digital content the buyer started downloading or streaming after expressly agreeing to lose it. That consent has to be collected at checkout, not assumed.
- "Lifetime access" is a contractual promise with no expiry you can rely on. If you mean the life of the product, say so, and say what notice you will give before withdrawing it.
- A course sale transfers no copyright. What the buyer gets is a licence, and if the terms do not define its scope, the scope is whatever a court later thinks was reasonable.
A course sale is a small contract that has to answer four questions: what is being supplied, for how long, what the buyer may do with it, and when money comes back. Everything else in a terms page is either boilerplate or a consequence of those four. This is what each one has to say, and where the standard wording quietly commits the seller to more than they intended.
Terms of sale and terms of use are different documents
They get merged, and the merge causes real problems. Terms of use govern the platform — accounts, acceptable behaviour, uptime, the right to suspend someone. Terms of sale govern the transaction — price, delivery, access, licence, refunds. A single document is fine, but the sale terms have to be the ones presented at checkout, because that is the moment the buyer is agreeing to something. Terms linked only from a footer are a familiar way to end up with nothing enforceable; the mechanics are covered in terms of service and the click that makes them binding.
The six regions of a course terms page
Online course terms of sale
The refund position is not what most sellers think it is
In the United States there is no general federal right to change your mind about an online purchase. The three-day cancellation right people half-remember is the Federal Trade Commission's Cooling-Off Rule, and it is a door-to-door sales rule: it covers sales solicited in person somewhere other than the seller's place of business, above $25 at the buyer's home or $130 elsewhere, and it expressly excludes transactions conducted and consummated entirely by mail or telephone. An online course sale is not within it.
That does not mean a US seller can refuse refunds freely. State consumer protection statutes reach misleading refund practices, payment processors adjudicate chargebacks against whatever you published, and a policy you advertise becomes a term of the contract. It means the refund window is yours to design rather than something the law hands the buyer.
Whether the withdrawal right survives is decided at checkout, not in the terms
Express consent taken at checkout
Has the buyer started the content?
Not opened
Downloading or streaming begun
No box, or a pre-ticked one
Full 14 days, no reason needed
The ordinary position and the correct one. Refund it and move on.
The worst square available
The buyer has consumed the material and kept the withdrawal right, because nothing was taken from them at the point of sale.
An unticked box, actively agreed
The right is still live
Consent was given but the exception has not been triggered, because nothing has been performed yet.
The exception applies
Immediate access requested, the consequence acknowledged, the content begun. The only square where a refusal holds.
The UK operates a comparable distance-selling regime with a 14-day cancellation period. Where you sell to UK buyers, check the current position on digital content specifically rather than assuming it mirrors the EU wording exactly.
"Lifetime access" — whose lifetime?
This is the clause that ages worst, because it is written as marketing and read as a term. Sold without qualification, it is an unlimited promise: the buyer paid once and access has no stated end. Three years later the platform is being migrated, the course is superseded, and the seller wants to retire it — and every past buyer has a contractual answer to that.
Sellers get out of this in one of three ways, and only two of them are honest.
| What you write | What you have promised | When it bites |
|---|---|---|
| "Lifetime access" | Indefinite access, no stated end, no stated notice | The day you want to retire, rebuild or migrate the course |
| "Access for the lifetime of the course, currently expected to be at least X years, with 90 days' notice before withdrawal" | A defined product life plus a notice period | Rarely. The notice period is what makes it defensible |
| "Access for 24 months from purchase" | Exactly what it says | Never — but it converts worse, which is why sellers avoid it |
Whichever you choose, add a downloadable form of the core material. A buyer who has the PDFs is a buyer who does not much mind that the portal was retired.
Online course terms template
Free full text — access period, licence scope, refund window, changes and withdrawal, and the disclaimers that stop a course being sold as a guarantee of results.
What the buyer actually gets is a licence
Copyright vests initially in the author of the work, and a transfer of copyright ownership is not valid unless it is in writing and signed by the owner. So no course sale — however expensive — moves the copyright. The buyer receives a licence, and if the terms do not define it, the scope is left to argument.
A workable grant states four things, and they are worth spelling out because each one closes a specific hole.
- Who — one named individual. Without this, a "customer" can be a company, and a company has staff.
- What they may do — access and view for their own learning, and print or download for personal use. Silence here is what buyers point at when they put the videos on an internal wiki.
- What they may not do — resell, share credentials, redistribute, upload to another platform, or use the materials to teach others commercially.
- What happens to downloads at the end — permitted copies usually survive the access period; that is a choice, so make it deliberately.
If you sell to teams at all, price a separate seat or organisational licence and say so on the page. Buyers who want to train a department are not trying to cheat you — they are looking for the option, and if you have not published one they will improvise.
Where the materials will be used by another institution to teach from, that is a different document again: see the course materials licence template, and who owns course materials and student work for the ownership question underneath it.
Subscriptions change the shape of the problem
A course sold as a recurring membership is a different contract, and it brings the whole body of automatic-renewal regulation with it — consent to the recurring charge, notice before renewal, and a cancellation route no harder than the signup route. Those rules bind the seller and are enforced by regulators rather than by buyers. The detail is in auto-renewal clauses.
One point specific to courses: decide in advance what happens to already-completed modules when a membership lapses. Buyers reasonably expect to keep what they finished. If they do not, that has to be stated at checkout, not discovered at cancellation.
The clauses sellers regret leaving out
Before you publish the page
- An outcomes disclaimer. No promise of a job, a grade, a certification pass or an income — and no testimonial on the sales page that implies one.
- Whether the certificate is accredited by anyone. If it is not, say so plainly; this is the most common complaint in course disputes.
- A substitution right for live sessions — instructor, dates, format — so an illness is not a breach.
- Community rules and the right to remove someone, if a forum or group is part of the sale.
- How and where tax is applied for buyers outside your country. Many jurisdictions tax digital sales by the buyer's location and the rates change; check the current position rather than hard-coding a number into the terms.
- A record of which version of the terms each buyer accepted, and when. Terms change; contracts do not change retroactively.
The test to apply before publishing
Read the page as a buyer who is about to be disappointed. They finished two modules, the third was thinner than expected, the live call was rescheduled twice, and they want their money back on day nine. Does the page answer them without you having to improvise? If it does, the terms are doing their job. If you find yourself deciding the answer case by case, you do not have terms — you have a preference, and the first buyer who pushes will discover it.
Sources
- FTC Cooling-Off Rule — definition and exclusions, 16 CFR § 429.0
- FTC Cooling-Off Rule — the three-business-day cancellation right, 16 CFR § 429.1
- EU right of withdrawal on distance sales and the digital content exception
- GOV.UK — accepting returns and giving refunds on distance sales
- 17 U.S.C. § 201 — copyright vests initially in the author
- 17 U.S.C. § 204(a) — a transfer of copyright ownership must be in writing and signed
General information, not legal advice. This guide explains how these documents and rules generally work. Law varies by jurisdiction and changes, and none of it is applied to your circumstances here. For anything consequential, consult a licensed attorney where you are.
Frequently asked
Do I legally have to offer refunds on an online course?
It depends on where the buyer is. In the US there is no general federal cancellation right for a remote purchase, so the refund window is a commercial decision — though whatever you publish becomes a contractual term and payment processors will hold you to it. In the EU, distance sales carry a 14-day withdrawal right unless the buyer expressly consented to immediate access and acknowledged losing it.
Does the FTC three-day cooling-off rule apply to my course sale?
No. The Cooling-Off Rule covers door-to-door sales — sales solicited in person somewhere other than the seller's place of business, above $25 at a residence or $130 elsewhere. It expressly excludes transactions conducted and consummated entirely by mail or telephone. It has never been a general right to cancel purchases made online.
Can a buyer share the course with their team?
Only if your licence allows it. A course sale grants a licence, not ownership, and the scope is whatever the terms say. If the terms are silent, you are arguing about what was reasonable to expect, which is a bad argument to have after the fact. Grant the licence to one named individual and publish a separate team or seat licence.
What does "lifetime access" commit me to?
Read literally, an indefinite obligation with no stated end and no notice period before withdrawal. Sellers who intend "for as long as we sell the course" should write that instead, with a minimum expected period and a notice period — typically 60 to 90 days — before access is withdrawn. Offering downloadable copies of the core material largely removes the problem.
Can I change the course terms after people have bought?
Not retroactively. Existing buyers hold the terms they accepted, which is why keeping a versioned record of what each buyer agreed to matters. You can change the terms for future purchases at any time. For an ongoing subscription you can usually change terms on notice if the terms provide for it, but a change that materially reduces what a member already paid for is a different question.