What has to be said before the order is placed
Schedule 2 of the regulations lists the information a trader must give a consumer before a distance contract is concluded. "Before" is doing real work in that sentence: it means on the site, reachable before the customer confirms, not in the confirmation email afterwards.
- The identity of the trader, such as the trading name.
- The geographical address at which the trader is established, with telephone and email details allowing rapid and effective contact.
- The main characteristics of the goods or services.
- The total price inclusive of taxes, and where that cannot be calculated in advance, how it will be calculated.
- Any additional delivery charges and other costs.
- The arrangements for payment, delivery and performance.
- The conditions, time limit and procedures for exercising the right to cancel — or, where there is no right to cancel, that there is not and the circumstances in which it is lost.
- Whether the consumer has to bear the cost of returning the goods, and where goods cannot normally be returned by post, the cost of returning them.
- The trader’s complaint handling policy, where there is one.
- The duration of the contract and the conditions for terminating it, where relevant.
- For digital content: its functionality and any relevant compatibility.
Most of that list is uncontroversial and most shops have it somewhere. The failure is usually not absence but placement — terms reachable only from a footer link the customer never opens, when the requirement is that the information is given before the contract is concluded.
The 14 days, and where they start
Regulation 30 sets the cancellation period, and the start date differs by contract type.
For a sales contract the period "ends at the end of 14 days after the day on which the goods come into the physical possession of the consumer, or a person, other than the carrier, identified by the consumer to take possession of them". So the clock starts on delivery, not on order.
For a service contract it ends 14 days after the day the contract is entered into.
This is a cancellation right rather than a faults right. It exists because the customer bought without seeing the goods, and it applies whether or not anything is wrong with them — which is the part shop owners most often resist and have no discretion over.
The rule that turns 14 days into 12 months
Regulation 31 deals with what happens when the trader does not provide the information about the right to cancel. There are two outcomes and neither is comfortable.
- If the trader provides the information late but within 12 months, the cancellation period ends 14 days after the consumer receives it. The clock restarts.
- Otherwise, the cancellation period "ends at the end of 12 months after the day on which it would have ended" under the normal rule.
Read plainly: a shop that never tells customers about their cancellation right is accepting cancellations for a year and fourteen days instead of fourteen days. That is not a penalty imposed by a regulator after an investigation — it is simply what the contract term becomes, available to any customer who asks.
It is also, uniquely among the obligations on this page, a problem created entirely by the website. The warehouse cannot cause it and the finance team cannot fix it. A missing paragraph on a checkout page extends every order’s liability by twelve months.
Returns, costs and who pays
Two practical points that shops get wrong in opposite directions.
First, the cost of returning goods falls on the consumer only if the trader told them so before the order. Stay silent and the trader bears it. A returns page that quietly assumes the customer pays, on a site that never said so at the point of sale, is both a compliance problem and an argument waiting to happen.
Second, the information must include whether the customer bears those costs and, where goods cannot normally be returned by post — a sofa, an appliance — what returning them will cost. Vagueness here is not neutral; it defaults against the trader.
Where this lands on the actual site
Everything above is a content and layout problem rather than a legal one, once somebody has read the list.
- Put the cancellation terms where the order is placed, not only in a Terms page. The requirement is that the information is given before the contract is concluded, and a footer link is a weak reading of that.
- Show the total price inclusive of tax, with delivery costs visible before the final step rather than revealed at it.
- Publish the trader’s name and geographical address as text on the site. An address that exists only inside a contact form does not meet the requirement and is a trust signal thrown away for nothing.
- State who pays return postage explicitly, including for anything too large to post.
- Keep a returns and cancellations page that a customer can find before buying — it converts better than hiding it, because the customer deciding between you and a competitor is looking for exactly that reassurance.
Why the compliant version sells better
There is a persistent belief that making returns prominent invites returns. The opposite is the better bet: the customer who cannot find the returns policy does not conclude that returns are difficult, they conclude that the shop is a risk and they leave.
In a market that hard, a checkout that answers every question before it is asked is worth more than another blog post.
