Your rights when you buy online

Buying online from a trader in the EU gives you two rights that have nothing to do with each other, and confusing them is what costs people money. One is about regret. The other is about faults.

The first is the right of withdrawal: fourteen days from the day the parcel arrives, in which you can cancel without giving any reason at all. Not because something is wrong - simply because you have changed your mind. If the trader never told you about this right, the period does not end after fourteen days but twelve months later. That is not a technicality: it is precisely the situation with a shop whose terms are not in order, and therefore precisely the shop where you need it. On Amazon or any other large retailer it is stated plainly; with a name you had not heard of last week, it is worth checking.

If you withdraw, the trader must refund you within fourteen days - the product and the standard delivery charge you paid when ordering. They may wait until they have the goods back or until you can show you have sent them, but no longer. Return postage is yours unless the shop offers to cover it or failed to say it was yours. Where no delivery date was agreed, delivery must happen within thirty days.

Not everything is covered. Made-to-measure goods, perishables, sealed CDs, DVDs or software once unsealed, and tickets for a specific date carry no cooling-off period. Nor does buying from a private individual - that is not a consumer sale at all.

The second right is the legal guarantee, and it is independent of the first. Across the EU it runs for at least two years from delivery on anything you buy new as a consumer from a trader. If the product does not do what you were entitled to expect, you can require repair or replacement, free of charge, postage included. If that cannot happen within a reasonable time or without significant inconvenience, you can ask for a price reduction or your money back.

Two years is a floor, not a ceiling, and this is where the country you bought in starts to matter. For the first year the defect is presumed to have been there at delivery, so you prove nothing; some countries extend that presumption to the full two years, and some have no fixed guarantee period at all and ask instead how long the product should reasonably have lasted. A shop that tells you "it is more than two years old" is quoting the EU minimum, which is not necessarily the rule that applies to you.

One last distinction. A manufacturer's warranty is a commercial promise on top of your legal rights, never instead of them. "The warranty has expired" says nothing about what you can require from the seller - and it is the seller you go to, not the manufacturer.