The short version
- There is no general right to change your mind in the US. In the UK and EU there is: distance selling gives a consumer 14 days from delivery to cancel for any reason, with nothing wrong with the goods.
- Faulty is a separate track everywhere. A defective product attracts a remedy whatever your return window says, and no policy wording removes it.
- A dozen or so US states require the policy to be posted and impose a default if you do not — in California that default is a refund within 30 days.
- Publish a policy more generous than the law and it binds you. Publish one less generous and it is void to that extent, while still being read back to you by a card issuer deciding a chargeback.
Two separate questions get answered on one page, and merging them is what produces the policies that read confidently and collapse on contact. The first question is what a buyer is entitled to whether or not you ever wrote anything down. The second is what you are choosing to add on top. The first has different answers in the US, the UK and the EU. The second is genuinely yours — and is enforceable against you the moment you publish it.
The floor, and the part you decide
Set by law
- EU/UK: 14 days to cancel, no reason
- A remedy when goods are faulty
- A refund when you cannot ship on time
- US state defaults where no policy is posted
Set by you
- Any window beyond the legal minimum
- Who pays return postage
- Restocking fees, where permitted
- Store credit as an alternative, not a substitute
The mandatory column decides more disputes than the drafted one.
The US has no general right to change your mind
No federal statute gives an American buyer a right to return goods because they no longer want them. A store may offer ninety days, fourteen days, or nothing at all. What federal law polices is honesty about whatever you chose: advertise a policy and you have to honour it, and a refusal to honour a published policy is a deceptive practice rather than a contract dispute.
There are two real federal exceptions, and one of them catches online sellers constantly. The Cooling-Off Rule gives three business days to cancel certain sales made away from the seller's usual place of business — doorstep and temporary-location sales, not e-commerce. The Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule is the one that matters here, and it is covered below.
The state posting laws, and their defaults
Around a dozen states require a retailer to display its refund policy, and set a consumer-friendly default where it has not. California's rule sits in Civil Code section 1723: a seller that will not give a full refund, credit or exchange within seven days must clearly display its policy at the register, at the entrance, or on tags — and if it does not, the buyer may return goods with proof of purchase within 30 days. New York similarly requires the policy to be posted. Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, Utah and Virginia have variations on the same idea.
Common carve-outs run through these statutes and are worth knowing because they are also the sensible shape for your own policy: perishables, custom orders, goods marked final sale, items used or damaged after purchase, and anything that cannot be resold for health reasons.
The UK and EU give 14 days for no reason at all
This is the largest single difference, and it is not a policy choice. Under the EU Consumer Rights Directive and the UK Consumer Contracts Regulations, a consumer buying at a distance — online, by phone, by mail — may cancel within 14 days of receiving the goods without giving any reason. The goods do not have to be faulty. There is no requirement that they be unopened.
The mechanics are specific, and each leg has its own 14 days, which is where sellers get the arithmetic wrong.
| Leg | UK | EU |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer tells you they are cancelling | Within 14 days of receiving the goods | Within 14 days of delivery (services: from the day the contract was agreed) |
| Buyer sends the goods back | A further 14 days from telling you | No later than 14 days from communicating the decision |
| You refund | Within 14 days of getting the goods back | No later than 14 days from being informed of the withdrawal |
| If you never told them the right existed | The window extends substantially | The withdrawal period extends by 12 months |
Two further points that catch sellers out. You must refund the outbound delivery charge as well as the price, though only at your standard rate — a buyer who paid for next-day gets the standard rate back. And the buyer is allowed to handle the goods as they would in a shop: trying a garment on is not "used", and deducting for it is the mistake trading standards hear about most.
Three clocks, each with its own fourteen days
Delivery
The first 14 days
The buyer has to tell you they are cancelling. No reason required, and nothing about the goods needs to be wrong.
They tell you
A further 14 days
To send the goods back. Handling them as they would in a shop — trying a garment on — is not "used".
Goods returned
Your 14 days
To refund the price and the outbound delivery charge at your standard rate, whatever the buyer paid for faster shipping.
If you never said
The period extends by a year
Supply the missing withdrawal information inside that year and it becomes 14 days from the day the consumer receives it.
Return and refund policy template
The full text, free to read and copy — cancellation window, condition requirements, return postage, refund method and timing, and the exclusions written so they survive a consumer-law reading.
Faulty goods run on a separate track
Every regime treats "I changed my mind" and "it is broken" as different problems, and the second one is never something your policy gets to close off. In the UK the Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives a short-term right to reject faulty goods for a full refund within 30 days of taking ownership; after that the seller gets an opportunity to repair or replace before a refund is due, and a fault appearing in the first six months is presumed to have been there at delivery unless the seller shows otherwise. The EU runs a comparable legal guarantee. In the US the position is a patchwork of state warranty law rather than a single window, but the principle survives: a defect is not a return.
The shipping rule that turns into a refund rule
The FTC's Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule requires a US seller to have a reasonable basis for expecting to ship within the advertised time, or within 30 days if no time was stated. If you cannot meet it, you must contact the buyer, offer the choice of agreeing to the delay or cancelling, and refund promptly if they cancel — within seven working days where the payment was not on credit you extended.
This is not a returns rule and it does not depend on your policy at all. It is why a long supplier lead time is a compliance problem and not just a customer-service one, and why a shipping policy that states real dispatch and delivery windows is worth more than an optimistic one.
What your policy is actually free to decide
The choices that are genuinely yours
- The window, above the legal minimum. Longer windows reduce disputes more often than they increase returns.
- Who pays return postage on an unwanted item — in the UK and EU this can be the buyer, but only if you told them before they bought.
- Restocking fees, where the jurisdiction permits them and the deduction reflects real loss rather than a penalty.
- Condition requirements: tags attached, original packaging, accessories complete.
- Whether store credit is offered as an option. It cannot replace a refund the buyer is legally owed.
- Genuinely final-sale categories, named specifically rather than as a general disclaimer.
- The method: refund to the original payment method is the expectation, and departing from it is a chargeback generator.
Two drafting rules follow from the asymmetry. First, a policy more generous than the law is enforceable against you, so do not promise a window your operations cannot honour. Second, a policy less generous than the law is not merely unenforceable — its presence tends to be read as an attempt to mislead the buyer about rights they have, which is a worse position than saying nothing.
Where your policy gets read back to you
The refund page has a second audience that most sellers never think about. When a customer disputes a charge, the card issuer asks for the policy text and for evidence of where and when the buyer saw it. A policy that exists only as a footer link, with no record of it being presented at checkout, is materially weaker evidence than the same words on the confirmation screen. That is the mechanism behind defending a chargeback, and it is worth building the checkout around.
Marketplaces and payment processors ask for the policy during onboarding for the same reason, and will apply their own minimums on top. Selling through a marketplace usually means accepting a returns standard set by the platform that is more generous than the law requires — see marketplace terms for how those obligations flow down to you.
The part that is not really about law
A refund page is the last thing a hesitant buyer reads before deciding, and the first thing an unhappy one reads afterwards. The legal floor is low enough in the US that almost every published policy exceeds it, which means most of what is on the page is a commercial decision wearing legal clothes. Decide it as a commercial one: what a generous window costs you in returns is measurable, and what a mean one costs you in abandoned carts and disputed charges usually is not.
What is not negotiable is accuracy. The policy has to describe what your operation actually does, in the markets you actually sell to, with dates you can actually meet. That is the same discipline the rest of your legal pages need, and it fails in the same way when copied from somebody else.
Sources
- GOV.UK — Accepting returns and giving refunds: the law
- Your Europe — Returns and the right of withdrawal
- Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU, Articles 10, 13 and 14
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, section 23
- California Attorney General — Refund policies
- FTC — Business guide to the Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule
- Customer returns and refund laws by state
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
Is a "no refunds" policy legal?
In the US, generally yes for unwanted goods, provided it is clearly disclosed before purchase and, in the states with posting laws, displayed as those statutes require. It is never effective against faulty goods. In the UK and EU it is void as against a consumer buying at a distance, because the 14-day cancellation right is statutory and cannot be excluded by the terms of sale.
Can I charge a restocking fee?
Where the jurisdiction permits it and you disclosed it before the sale. It cannot be applied to faulty goods, and in the UK and EU it cannot be used to erode a distance-selling cancellation refund. Any deduction should reflect a real reduction in the value of the goods caused by the buyer handling them beyond what they could have done in a shop.
Does the 14-day cooling-off period apply to digital products?
It applies until the download or stream begins. A consumer who has expressly consented to immediate supply and acknowledged that they lose the cancellation right by doing so cannot then withdraw. If your checkout does not capture that acknowledgement, the right survives and the sale is cancellable.
Who pays return postage for an unwanted item?
In the UK and EU the buyer can be made to pay, but only if you told them so before the contract was made — if you did not, the cost falls on you. Faulty goods are different: the trader bears the return cost. In the US it is entirely a matter of your published policy.
Do these rules apply to business customers?
Largely not. Distance-selling cancellation rights, the faulty-goods regimes and the state posting statutes protect consumers, not businesses buying in the course of trade. A business-to-business sale is governed by the contract, which is why a trade account should sit on separate terms rather than the consumer-facing ones.